Josh Young

With all of this talk and thinking about training and education - bringing people to a point where they can learn things and then teach others the same thing - I thought I should probably do some reading on it.

I happened to be skimming through Dave Ramsey’s recommended reading list, and I wrote down several books that I thought would be a great help (which were most of the ones on his list).  Then I searched the catalog of our local library to see if they had any of them.  They actually had several.

So on my way to band practice at church last night, I stopped at the Amelia branch, signed up for a library card (which I had been meaning to do anyway), and searched for some of the books.

I walked out with two books.  One of them was The One Minute Manager by Dr. Kenneth Blanchard and Dr. Spencer Johnson.  It was a small paperback - only about 110 pages.

I read the book in under one hour, and I have to say, it was better than I could have expected. It was very simple, and it was written in the style of a narrated story (which I wasn’t expecting), but it was chock full of some very practical methods of managing people and getting great results.

I won’t spoil the three secrets in the book for you.  I HIGHLY suggest you pick up a copy and give it a read.  It is definitely worth turning off the TV for an hour to read (which I need to do more of anyway).  This book is great whether you manage a home, a business, a family, or a life.

I’m definitely going to apply the things that I learned in this book, and I can already tell you that they are going to work.

On to the next book!

Have any of you read anything like this (or this one specifically)?  Any thoughts?

I’m trying to make more time for quick posts in 2008, so this will be my first.

As one of my Christmas gifts, Marie got me just what any true nerd would want: the highest-quality acid-free paper you can find marked off in square grids, bound by fine leather with a braided place holder, inner pocket and an elastic strap to keep it closed, and of course, small enough to carry with you at all times.

I’m speaking of course of the legendary Pocket Squared Moleskine notebook (pronounced mol-a-skeen’-a).

I’ve shown my new tool to a few close friends, and they all kind of look at my blankly like I’m some sort of weirdo (although I’m not disputing that). I guess Moleskines just aren’t as prevalent as they should be.

So anyway, I take my new friend everywhere with me now. He’s teamed up with the Fisher Brushed Chrome Bullet Space Pen that Marie got me last year for Christmas to make the ultimate note-taking duo. I’m a huge fan of checklists and notes, and now I don’t have to carry index cards around with me anymore. I’m loving it!

Since you may or may not be interested in my geeky little “toy,” I’ll save the rest. However, you can read more about these awesome little books at the link below. But beware. You’ll become obsessed. I can already think of two other ones that I’d love to have.

Moleskine History

The best deal I could find on my notebook (currently out of stock)

The second-best deal I could find on my notebook

My favorite shortcut application, Launchy, just released version 2.0. It’s got a few nice updates, and a slick new default skin.

If you’ve never heard of Launchy or used it, give it a try. It will save you a buttload of time.

Launchy

Googles Maps has made some great updates lately. Two that are extremely useful are the ability to drag your route to modify it and the ability to add a location to your directions if you don’t know the address but do know where it’s located on the map.

To show you these new features, Google has put together this short video. Enjoy!

Thanks to: Lifehacker

Since I mentioned a handy little tool that I’ve grown to love last time, I figured I’d give you one more.

RocketDock is a slick little [free] app that gives you some added organization and productivity. Here’s what their website has to say about it:

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

You can also set it up to minimize windows to the dock instead of your taskbar.

It’s very smooth, just like they said. It’s also very customizable, and it’s just plain fun to play with. There’s really not much else to say other than I love it. Everything is so neat and tidy, and you have so many options.

Swing over to their website and watch their quick video demonstration of RocketDock in action, and then give it a try.

RocketDock

Just a quick post to mention a tool that I have come to love.

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.

Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!

The other day, I accidentally closed this little gem, and then I realized how truly addicted to it I was. I had to go to the Start Menu to open it, and it was like a foreign concept to me. I have Launchy set up to index my entire Start Menu, so anything I open, I open through Launchy.

I set my “hotkey” as Alt+Space. When I press that combination, the Launchy window comes up, and I begin typing the name of the program I want to open. Once the autocomplete feature has correctly identified what I want to open, I hit Enter, and there it is. Simple as that. It’s a definite time saver, especially if you have a large amount of programs installed.

There are other tools like this out there, but Launchy’s simple elegance has me hooked.

Launchy

Right now I have a handful of things that I’ve been meaning to post about for a while but just haven’t. This is one of them.

We’ve been sort of redoing our budget and diligently tracking our spending lately since we’re new homeowners and whatnot (trying to stay on top of the game), and being the geek that I am, I looked all over for a good tech solution to help us with that.

Last year at some point, I stumbled upon (after a LOT of looking at other solutions) the website PearBudget.com. Not much to the site except the download link to one of the most awesome pieces of Excel handiwork I’ve ever seen. PearBudget was built to be easy and informative. You can assign categories to three different expense types (regular, irregular, and variable). Everything is very well explained within the cells of the spreadsheet, and there are notes and comments everywhere. You set your budget, enter your amounts, and it tells you in plain English how much you spent, how much you made, how you did with your budget each month (and a summary for the year), so you can easily track and adjust things as you go. I can’t say enough about how awesome PearBudget really is.

Except for one thing. It’s not online.

I’m on several different computers all day, so I like to be able to access important things online whenever I want instead of having to be on a specific machine. Thankfully, PearBudget has a Web2.0 version in the works, but it’s been a LONG time in the making, and although it was recently “finished”, the creator decided to go back to the drawing board to make it even more dummy-proof (AHHH!).

So since I was a little frustrated with this, I set out to find some more options. First, I thought, I’ll just throw PearBudget into Google Spreadsheets. Easy enough, right? Wrong. There are so many notes, comments, and conditional formatting, that it just loses it’s kitsch (and some of its functionality too). Plus, it’s a hefty spreadsheet (as in size), so it’s not exactly optimized for Google Spreadsheets.

Then, I ran into another little gem called Wesabe.com.

We’ve sort of changed our spending methods so that we use very little cash. Most everything is either with a debit card or a credit card (which we pay off each month in full). That way all of our transactions are already tracked for us. With PearBudget, we have to type in each transaction — not a big deal, but still slightly time consuming (maybe 15 minutes, once a week). With Wesabe, you can create a free account, download your transaction data from your bank in any one of a few different formats (thus it doesn’t contain any account info — only transactional data, so there’s no security risk), and then upload it to your account on Wesabe.com.

With the free account, you can upload up to three accounts (which is handy, because that’s exactly how many we track). Once your data is uploaded, you can tag and edit each transaction. I use my tags as sort of spending categories. Then, you can set a monthly spending limit on each tag (category) — there’s your budget.

The cool thing about Wesabe.com is that if you, for example, you eat at a certain restaurant all the time, once you edit the name and the tags in Wesabe, it remembers it the next time, so you don’t have to re-tag or re-name the new entry. It works great. Another cool thing is that it looks at your tags and gives you tips from the Wesabe community on how to save money in that certain area. There are some very helpful tips on there.

You can also set goals and track your progress. For example, if you have a goal of saving $500 for something, you can set a goal for that and use tags to track your progress. You can even get tips from others about it if you wish.

Overall, these are two great tools to help you track your personal finances. There are benefits to both. I’m really anxious to see PearBudget’s Web2.0 project though. I think that could really be a winner — if they ever finish it.

Obviously, there are a lot of other solutions out there, but as far as free options that fit our needs, these were the two strongest. Mvelopes.com seems to be really great too, but it’s a subscription service (and I feel a little weird about paying money to manage and track my money). If you want some more great ideas up this alley, check out some things they’ve had on Lifehacker.com in the Personal Finance Category.

PearBudget.com

Wesabe.com

I meant to post on this a while back, and I just forgot.

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine was having some computer problems, and I really didn’t have time to drive down and take a look at it for him, so I remembered a handy little app that I had run across a couple of weeks earlier called CrossLoop. It is a very simple and secure screen sharing program.

So I told him to download the small CrossLoop client, and I did the same. Once we had both installed it (in just a couple of minutes tops), we each opened the program. He chose “Host” and read the ID number to me (which changes each time), and I chose “Join” and entered the same ID. Then, presto, we were connected, and I could control his PC. I did my thing, and we were done. Problem solved.

Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the most robust remote program available by far. You can’t do file transfers, capture/record your sessions, etc. But for sheer ease of use and price (free), it’s hard to beat. There are occasions where more options might be needed, but for a quick hop onto someone else’s machine to help them out or demonstrate something, it works great. Give it a try.

CrossLoop - Simple Secure Screen Sharing

Wow. I’m impressed.

Back in November, I posted about installing ActiveCollab so that we could try it out for our planning for Apex and the “new” website. Well, it’s now February, and we’re still using it. I think we’re all hooked on it, which is exactly what I was hoping for.

Here are some of the “projects” we’re now using it for:

• Apex Planning
• Main Website Planning/Upkeep (including graphics and transcripts for weekly messages)
• Youth Website Planning/Upkeep
• Vacation Bible School Planning
• Leadership Collaboration and Planning
• Web/IT Planning and Strategy
• Worship Ministry Collaboration and Planning

And it just keeps growing. It’s finally to the point where we’re going to move it to its own hosting account and domain, which is really exciting. I had no idea that everyone would embrace it the way that they have. It has worked very well, and it has saved us a lot of time and energy.

If you’ve been using BaseCamp or something else for project management, and you’re looking for something with more flexibility for free, then give ActiveCollab a try. I can’t stress enough how great it has been — and how easy it has been.

ActiveCollab

Apex at the Amelia Church of Christ

Just read a post over at Lifehacker about a new feature that was rolled out in Gmail (which I just noticed this morning also). Now when someone e-mails you a Word document as an attachment, you have the option of opening it in Google Docs. They’ve been doing this for a while with Excel documents, but now Word is included. It apparently also works with Open Office docs and some others.

I love Google. As if you didn’t already know that.

Lifehacker