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.

 

Travel Light: USB chargers

On the topic of traveling light, I have a guiding philosophy that helps quite a bit: Whenever possible, I charge my travel devices with USB.

In general, I charge things at night in my hotel room, so I turn on my laptop and charge devices off its USB ports. This approach comes in handy when traveling internationally, since I only need an international travel adapter for my laptop - not all the other devices.

On occasion, however, I need to charge one of my devices when it isn't convenient to boot up my laptop (after all, the laptop must be powered up to provide power to the USB ports). In those situations, I use a little travel charger, which I originally purchased for use with my iPod Nano.

This works for my Treo 650, my iPod, my camera, etc. and means I don't have to carry a bunch of different flavors of chargers.

I also carry a USB car charger in my suitcase, just in case (not in my laptop bag, since I don't use it as often). This can come in handy on road trips, long treks without my laptop, and also works in cars outside the US (in case I forget my adapter, or it's too bulky to carry along).

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Fresh Gear: Where does all the time go?

Do you ever sit down to do something at your computer, only to find that the "thing" didn't get done but you've just whiled away an hour of your time?

In the past, I've talked about some techniques for auditing your time (Audit time! - 1 March 2006), but it can be tricky to track how I'm spending my time on my computer. That's where "TimeSprite" comes to the rescue.

I recently discovered TimeSprite thanks to its author Andrew Rowley who pointed it out based on some of the posts on my blog.

What's TimeSprite?

TimeSprite is a cool program (there is a trial version, and the full version is $19.95) that monitors what you do on your Windows-based computer all day. It does a nice job of tracking what programs you're running, when you're idle, etc. It even tracks window names so you can get more granular than "Internet Explorer" or "Firefox" and actually see what sites you've spent most of your time viewing.

TimeSprite has two apps - one that monitors what you do, and another that provides some easy-to-use reporting functionality to help you analyze where you spend your time.

What's the Use?

I plan on incorporating this into my weekly review process to figure out if there are time sinks that are out of whack with where I want them to be.

A nice feature is the ability to create arbitrary, higher-level groups to organize blobs of related activities into projects or other meaningful categories.

This can help you with tracking how much time you spend working on specific projects, actions for particular clients, etc. Or you could simply create categories like "Research," "Blogging," or "Weekly Reporting." Pretty cool stuff.

Bottom Line

You can't improve what you don't measure (or at least you can't prove it's improving). If you want to put a bit more rigor in your time auditing, TimeSprite is a rockin' way to do that. Check out the free trial and see if it's for you.

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Have you noticed? - Issue 2

I was catching up on things over at the Mind Unbound business blog and found a thought-provoking post on "Not-so-human Resources." The post deals with the mechanization of the Human Resources function in a lot of companies, in the name of efficiency.

This rings true for me. In my past, I spent a lot of time working with HR as I built my teams. Getting their input, helping them "grok" what I wanted my team to feel like, and so forth. The HR folks provided lots of value in hiring and coaching. They also helped talk me through difficult situations. I'm lucky enough to work in a small company now, where I get a lot of this kind of assistance, but in large companies that is harder and harder to come by.

In my last "big" company experience, our company grew to the point where HR was one local person who basically dealt with coordinating insurance forms, paperwork associated with hiring and firing, and proofreading personnel reviews. They didn't feel like a partner any more - just an information desk.

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If I had 100 Bloggers...

Is the 100 Bloggers project on your radar yet? 100 Bloggers is a group effort of a bunch of bloggers I admire, and they even let me have a key to the posting booth.

I just dropped by with some thoughts for managers in a post called "Flair up?" If you have a couple of moments, click on over and look around.

And, if you're so inclined, you can join the fray and become one of the contributing bloggers. Despite the name, if the number exceeds 100, that's not a bad thing.

Don't have a blog of your own? That's no hill for a stepper. If you've got something to say in the spirit of helpful advice on business and personal development, you're welcome.

This is all about dialog and sharing - and your voice is welcome. You can go here for more information.

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What's the deal with the alligators?

I've gotten a couple of questions about my site's current banner. Here's the story: Earlier this month, I was down home visiting my parents in Louisiana. They live about 45 minutes from beautiful Avery Island, home of the famous McIlheny Company's Tabasco Pepper Sauce (that's where they've made it since 1868).

In addition to Tabasco manufacturing plant, which you can tour for free, Avery Island is home to a large botanical garden and bird sanctuary established by the McIlheny's. The alligator sign is affixed to an observation deck that allows you to walk onto a platform over a huge lagoon near a part of the island called "Bird City."

What you can't see in the banner picture is that there really is a small gator in the water about 5 yards from where we're standing.

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