A Rare Shot at Self-Discipline

i've decided to try to enforce some rules upon myself to help be more "entertainment productive" at night so i don't get stuck reading whatever blog or site bloglines tells me has a new post, or scrolling through fanboyish posts on digg or slashdot or reading TV episode discussion at TiVo Community for way too long every night. when i say "entertainment productive," i mean knocking out movies and TV eps, logging a few hours on a game, reading a book, etc. my reasons for this include both aiding recuperation for my still ailing back as well as just plain making more significant progress on getting other things done in life.

i came across a few GTD-related programs that might help self-discipline a bit. one is this simple little OS X program called Fob that simply puts a countdown timer in your dock to remind you how much longer you have till [x] event happens. in my case, i'm using it to countdown how much longer i should be sitting at my computers.

the other piece of software i came across today is called DailyLogger, which is a ridiculously simple program that simply keeps a log of everything you enter into it. for my own purposes, i intend to enter into it what specific tasks i got involved with online, to justify why i spent a few hours in my office when i've already spent hours sitting upright all day at work.

hopefully a little discipline could maybe help me alter my still-weird-after-all-these-years hours just a bit.

--j

Macintosh > Mac > PC

after seeing this screen that pops up in iTunes 7 when you connect your iPod, it kind of occurred to me -- do we ever really use the term "Macintosh" anymore? i have a "mini mac" and a "macbook" but nowhere in there does it really call it a "macintosh." i think even the operating system is referred to officially as "mac os x." so, if macintosh means nothing at this point, why call it a mac at all? why not just a computer?

--justin

I'm a Switcher?

it's funny, something finally came up that made me wonder if i'm actually a switcher. a "switcher" being one who's gone from using a PC (and typically, some variant of windows) to a Mac with OS X. the truth is, i wouldn't say i'm a bonafide switcher. i envision a switcher to be someone who got sick of their spyware-infested dell, tossed it, and got a Mac instead. i've only kind of done that. i scrapped my old HP box from college (after it had been relegated to a secondary box running some flavor-of-the-month linux) for a mac mini april last year and immediately started using that for everyday tasks instead of my much more powerful XP box. in addition to that, just a few months ago i decided to finally get a laptop for portable usage, so i picked up the brand new MacBook.

i got an oil change over the weekend at my dealership, and given that i knew last time it took a good hour, i brought my MacBook to bide my time. as there didn't seem to be a wireless network to connect to, i went with my backup plan of watching a home movies episode with the commentary on. so i'm sitting in the corner of the room with my sleek white laptop, my matching white earbuds (not my usual choice, but that's what i had with me) and my matching white remote watching my movie. when i'm done and kind of milling around, this guy asks me out of the blue "were you using a mac?" and so i said sure, and he follows with "are you a... creative?" that's what he said, nothing after the normally thought-of-as-an-adjective word "creative," just using the word as its own noun i guess. i hesitated and told him no, but told him i'd made the switch about a year ago. he confirmed that he had as well, and we shared a moment of general yes-things-are-better and nodded in silent agreement. that was the first experience i've had where there was some kind of unspoken between two mac users.

i did find that funny though that it was a real world example where apple users are cast into being the creative types, which i would imagine would include graphic designers, architects, publishers, etc. given that lately i've been daydreaming about my innocent adolescent days of caring about nothing but comic books and video games, i found it an interesting coincidence.

--justin