Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Better laptop safety on the road

I’ve found a couple of good utilities that can help you improve the security and safety of your laptop while you’re on the road (and one of them will help around the office, too).

Hands off, bud

laptoplockThe first one isn’t free after the trial period, but it’s pretty useful.  It’s called Laptop Alarm, and it’s from Syfer in The Netherlands.  Once you’ve installed (sorry Mac – it’s Windows only) and activated it, Laptop Alarm sits there quietly until someone does something to change the state of your laptop, such as unplugging the power cable; removing the mouse or another USB peripheral; or shuts down the laptop.

When one of the offending events occurs, it make a loud noise to alert you that someone’s messing with your laptop.  This can be handy in an airport lounge, library, or other venue such as that where you may need to walk off for a few minutes to get something.  [BTW – a laptop cable lock might be a good idea if you do that a lot]

You can download a free, fully-functional trial version if you’d like.  The full version is 10 Euros.

Automatic locking

The next one is pretty cool.  BtProx Screen It’s called BtProx and it’s a free utility that can automatically lock your laptop (yep, Windows only again) when you walk away.  This is handy if you often forget to lock your computer when you walk away for a meeting (by the way, the shortcut <Windows Key>+L will do it quick if you remember).

How does BtProx do its magic?  Well, it uses Bluetooth (which means both your phone and your laptop must support Bluetooth for this to work).  When your computer loses contact with your phone via Bluetooth, BtProx locks the system for you after a preset time.  Pretty cool.

As an added bonus, you can configure BtProx to automatically launch a specified application when it locks the system.  That could be handy if you combined it with other security programs (such as Laptop Alarm) or wanted to trigger a backup or antivirus scan when you are away from your computer.

So, laptop users – check them out and let me know what you think.

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Road Rules (are you the truck or the squirrel?)

Andrew Sherman recently released a book called “Road Rules:  Be the Truck.  Not the Squirrel.” which uses an interesting approach to explain some powerful business and relationship principles.  The book relates life concepts to driving rules, which I think are an excellent memory aid.road_rules

In the book, there are 12 “essential rules” to help you share the road of life.  This book is an easy read, as the material is relevant and the writing style is very engaging.  A lot of the advice is very common sense kinds of information, but the metaphors in the book provide new triggers and different perspective on when, why, and how to use certain techniques to better interact with the world.

Signs of life

Want a taste?  Well in the chapter “Pay Attention to the Road Signs of Life,” Sherman uses common road signs to take us through a number of critical skills.  Here are 2 examples from the chapter:

lane_ends  Pay careful attention to changes in your roadway of life that are truly inevitable.  You may be cruising along in your lane of choice, only to learn that you will be out of runway sooner than you expected.
caution Don’t speed past and endanger people working in teams when they are trying to be productive.  If you cannot add something to the process, do not interfere, impede, or endanger it.  Be respectful to those that are trying to make your pathway more passable.

Keeping it between the ditches

I liked the whole book, but there are a few chapters that really rang true for me.

  • The first is “Embrace Your Dashboard,” which is about determining the indicators, metrics, and “gauges” that will help you monitor your progress, live a more balanced life, and keep yourself on track.  There is some good advice in here.
  • The second is “Be Guided By Your Navigational System,” which is about planning your trip so you know where you want to go, being ready to take a detour if you get blocked, and listening to advice and feedback (like traffic reports).
  • The third is “Accidents Can Happen Even to the Best Drivers,” which provides tips to handle life when things don’t go your way.

In summary, this is a fun treatment of some serious content and is a good resource for honing your skills so you can be a better driver on the road of life.

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New Year, New Focus

Happy new year, everyone!  After an enjoyable break the week and a half or so, I’m jumping into the new year which, for me, means lots of reflecting and planning for the future.

I’ve read a couple of awesome books in the past couple of weeks and will be posting reviews here in the next week.  Meanwhile, if you’re prone to setting goals at this time of year, here are a few randomly selected resources to get your juices flowing:

  1. If you’ve written your resolutions but are concerned about keeping them, you owe it to yourself to read the (always insightful) Gretchen Rubin’s post on the magic formula for keeping your New Year’s resolutions.
  2. If becoming more physically fit is on your list, you can get a free (and equipment-free) regimen that is just excellent at the “hundred pushups” site.
  3. In the only post I wrote during my absence, I have an idea for how to make two lists to increase your productive focus in 2009.  It’s over on Joyful Jubilant Learning.
  4. Finally, you’ve procrastinated this long (or are just prolonging the experience) there are some “best practices” for setting resolutions at Persistence Unlimited that may help.

Here’s to an awesome 2009!

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Link sharing (December 22, 2008)

Here are some links of interest I’ve gathered in the past 24 hours, as shared on Twitter (you can follow me, if you like).

I’m just getting more active in sharing links via Twitter – what do you think?  Leave a comment with your feedback.

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Your vision can change the world

I just watched the movie "Bobby," a movie about the assasination of Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) and it's put me in a philosophical mood. The movie was pretty good, but what struck me was the intermingling of actual speeches by RFK. He was truly an idealist and a visionary. The brought hope and a vision of a better future to the people he touched, and is famous for the quote:

"There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"

This kind of thinking is what success is made of. By envisioning wild success for ourselves and others, we set in motion a stream of events that changes outcomes. By acting on our beliefs and visions, their power increases.

This is why so many "self help" books start with coming up with an aspiration, vision, or mission, and why so many of us are encouraged to repeat positive affirmations to support our visions.

RFK was a visionary when it came to civil rights, and RFK said a lot about this subject. If your vision is big enough and positive enough (and you share it with enough people), it will live on just as RFK's vision did.

Look for the good

Coincidentally, I re-watched my favorite movie ever with my family Friday night: Pollyanna. It's about the positive impact of one person on an entire town, and it is a wonderful movie.

A great quote from the movie is something from Polyanna's locket:

"When you look for the bad in mankind, expecting to find it, you surely will."

I've heard it put another way by a friend of mine who always says, "Inspect what you expect - you might be getting exactly what you're looking for."

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