Month: August 2008

Are the weight-loss concerns of white, overweight, male bloggers taken seriously?

Are the weight-loss concerns of white, overweight, male bloggers taken seriously?

Inspired by this post at Wine Me, Dine Me Cincinnati (and my reply here), followed by the creation of Cincinnati Losers, which focuses entirely on white female bloggers, I must ask the following question: Are the weight-loss concerns of white, overweight, male bloggers taken seriously?…

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things You Didn't Like About School

Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things You Didn't Like About School

From this site comes this week’s Ten on Tuesday: 10 Things You Didn’t Like About School. In no particular order, mine are: Homework Having to wear socks (part of the uniform for my Catholic high school. One day in my junior year, I got HALF…

How I use EverNote — it's del.icio.us for my life!

How I use EverNote — it's del.icio.us for my life!

In this article, I present a brief overview of how I use EverNote 2.2.1 to manage the stuff in my life.

I have two main EverNote databases (“ENbases”) — one for my office and one for everything else — and I keep them completely separate… Due to FERPA restrictions on student data leaving my office (I work in a college at a local university), I do not intermingle office and everything else at all.

OFFICE:
For my office, we decided that it would be useful to maintain a list of CONTACTS (phone, email, or in-person) so that we formally document our relationship with individuals. We wanted to record notes, comments, impressions, etc about individuals in a non-official, secure, private way (ie: not associated with the student’s official application packet, etc). This contact list also enables gathering of statistics about the workload (as a side note, during a typical three-month period, I recorded nearly 1500 contacts).

I started to develop a database for our office, but decided to see what was already available out there so I didn’t have to re-invent the wheel. I searched for “phone log” and various other terms and stumbled upon the Wired article that says that EverNote is “del.icio.us for your life”. Since I am an avid del.icio.us user, I understood this statement, and I started to explore EverNote. Within a few hours of playing with the free version, I purchased the PLUS version. I am so glad I did.

The ENbase for my office uses a slightly customized template (thanks Crane!) to record notes about conversations I have with prospective students and their families. If I receive a voicemail message, I record the name, telephone number, and brief notes from the caller’s message. Adding a template to the note list automatically assigns the “To Do” and “Phone Message” category. This way, I can quickly glance at my To Do category to see what’s on my plate, and using the category intersection panel, see only phone messages. Once I return the call, I check the Done box and add a “status” category (such as “Talked with caller”, “Left message”, “No answer”, or “Bad number”, etc) so I know the outcome of the call. The template also features a text box where I can make notes about our conversation for later reference. I can search EverNote by name, email, and phone number and have, at a glance, the most current information about the student’s relationship with the college. Additionally, I use my office ENbase to record policy changes, directives, things my boss said, and other work-related materials, and more.

EVERYTHING ELSE:
My everything else ENbase is the more interesting, and certainly the more varied, of these two databases. It contains aspects of my personal life organized into categories and sub-categories (and sub-sub-categories, etc, as necessary).

I like to keep the top-level as clear as possible, so I have a category called “Personal” (a throwback to the time before I split office & personal ENbases, though if I were to do it all again, I would probably keep the Personal category because it keeps things tidy) under which I keep the bulk of my sub-categories.

Continue reading How I use EverNote — it's del.icio.us for my life!

Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 9!

Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 9!

Wow! That was… unexpected! After a LONG time of not upgrading my site’s operating system, various initiatives I am undertaking required me to update from Fedora Core 5 (released March 20, 2006) to Fedora Core 9 (released May 13, 2008). I was very nervous about…