By the time my colleague Chris and I finished our dinner meeting last night in West London, things were beginning to get back to normal again. We took a bus to King's Cross Station, and he snapped a shot 
of me just before I disappeared through the doorway to Platform 9 3/4 to board the train to Hogwarts.
This was around 11:30 Thursday night, or "half eleven" as they say it around Platform 9 3/4. Click the thumbnail for a full view. Hermione says "Hello."
Oh - and if you look carefully, you can just make out the Purell hanging from the handle of my laptop bag. I posted on the wonders of Purell for frequent travelers a while back.
Read MoreToday, I rode the train into London
for some meetings. One of the transfers I made was at Finsbury
Park
station. While standing on the platform, I could see the top of the mosque they raided recently and found a cache of weapons back in 2003. This is the same mosque that’s been linked to other terrorist activities in the past (the shoe bomber Richard Reid used to go there, for example).
Certainly made for an odd feeling getting on the train, particularly amidst the announcements about service disruptions due to the July 7th bombings.
Britain is strong and won't be broken, that's for sure.
Read MoreA short time ago, I posted my review of the book “Now, Discover Your Strengths,” in which I said I wasn’t all that excited about the book.
My friend Skip Angel had an entirely different experience with the book, as detailed in his excellent post, “Only the Strong Shall Survive.” He’s also suggested I go back and read the book’s predecessor, “First, Break All The Rules.”
I then received an email from Dick Richards who offers a different, but complementary, set of tools for determining your strengths, style, etc. His blog has information on “discovering your genius” and he offers a program for “career clarity” and “leadership clarity” which look intriguing.
To paraphrase a famous saying, “Opinions are like blog posts…everyone has one.” In this case, however, I’m happy to say I do want to look at other people’s.
Read MoreI’m traveling in England
this week, and am wondering what the deal is with duvets. For those of you who are unfamiliar with duvets, they are like a comforter with a cover on them.
They are quite comfortable, very warm, and all that. However, in the hotels in Europe, they are used as the only top cover on a bed. This creates two problems for me:
1) Temperature regulation issues
2) Cold feet
With regard to temperature regulation, I favor the layered approach of American bedding – a bottom sheet, a top sheet, then a bedspread, comforter, and/or blanket. Like layered clothing, this provides a large range of adjustability to accommodate various temperatures. In European hotels, I get the same duvet all year round and it’s either on or off. That’s just not enough choice for me.
The cold feet come about because the duvet isn’t generally tucked in at the bottom (and if I tuck it in, it’s too short. I’m 6 feet, 4 inches tall (193cm) so my feet tend to hand out the bottom of the duvet so I get cold feet.
I’d love a middle-ground approach – give me a top sheet between that bottom sheet and the duvet, and I’d be golden. Especially if I could tuck it in.
Read MoreFor quite some time I've used a 3M Privacy Filter for my laptop screen. It keeps prying eyes from my seatmates away (useful when I'm doing things like studying budgets, dealing with personnel reviews, etc. on planes).
The problem is that these privacy filters get scratched up over time since they rub up against my laptop keyboard (to a lesser degree, my laptop screen got keyboard-shaped scratches and wear marks even before I used the privacy screen).
Last year, I came up with a lifehack that helps prevent this. 
I used that rubberized shelf liner stuff to make a pad to go between my keyboard and the screen. It not only adds a bit more cushion to protect the screen, it also prevents those scratches (click the picture for an enlarged view).
- Pick a color that coordinates with your laptop, so you can be truly fashionable.
- Cut a rectangular section to fit within the outer bounds of your screen (you can use scissors for this, or I like to use the paper cutter at my office).
- Place it in between the keyboard and the screen when you close your laptop.
Voila - you prolong the life of your screen at a very low cost.
By the way - I previously had a black sheet of this, but I lost several of them because I'd forget about them on dark planes. I switched to the lighter shade you see in the picture and haven't lost one in a while.
Read More
