Google has provided free storage for several years via their Gmail accounts–I now have access to over 7 GB of free Gmail (and Google docs) storage already, but they have recently announced a pretty attractive online storage solution with what seems to me to be very good pricing:

• 20 Gb for $5/year
• 80 GB for $20/year
• 200 GB for $50/year
• 400 GB for $100/year
• 1 TB for $256/year

The last three options in the list also come with a free EyeFi card for uploading photos wirelessly to Picasa from your camera (provided that your camera is SDHC-compatible; my Olympus FE-230 is NOT SDHC-compatible, as it turns out).  If you need more than a terrabyte of storage, Google has additional options, up to 16 TB for a mere $4,096/year.

Granted, you can buy a 1 TB external USB drive these days for less than $200, but if you need online storage that is accessible from any location where you have an Internet connection, the Google storage is a pretty good deal.

I’d hate to think of how long it would take to back up (or restore) my laptop’s drive via the ‘net, but I can imagine a number of possible scenarios in which it could be extremely helpful to have that safety net there, particularly when I’m on the road.

Check it out.

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And maybe, with a little planning and some re-organizing of my professional life, I’ll get back to it sometime soon.  But in the meantime, I wanted to post a shout out to Jon Daley, who hosts this site, who brought my attention to the fact that someone unleashed an “international botnet” to try to take down my site and the whole server–by the time he notified me, he had already taken care of the problem and done the plug-in upgrades I needed to solve the problem.

That’s uncommonly amazing service from an uncommonly conscientious hosting provider, and I am extremely grateful.  In that one act of customer service, he has insured that I will continue to be his customer (not that it was ever in question, because Jon came highly recommended to me by a close friend and fellow blogger, whose judgment I trust implicitly in such things).

So while I’m here, I’ll update you on what’s been happening around the Underpants Office of late:  the new job (now a year old) is going well.  I spend about three or four days a week in my office at the church where I work “part-time,” and the rest of my time I spend working in my home office, usually on things for my church, as it turns out.  Having this job (which I referred to in a previous post) has allowed me to hone several useful skills–I’m learning a lot more about video editing, using Final Cut Express; I’m doing some audio recording now and then, using Logic Express, GarageBand, and Audacity; and I’ve been forced to learn a lot more about Windows XP and Vista (the operating systems in use by several members of our church staff).  And thanks to the acquisition of an Asus eeePC netbook (a freebie I won in a drawing at a worship-leader conference this summer), I’m getting my feet wet with Ubuntu Linux (specifically Xubuntu), since I couldn’t bear the thought of keeping Windows XP on the thing.  (Is my bias showing?)

Perhaps the coolest thing in all of this is that I really like my work these days.  That’s a huge change for me–in my former job in the non-profit corporate technology world, I had begun to dread going to the office almost every day; now I actually look forward to my work–so much so that I have to be careful not to work all the time.

So anyway, I’ll get back to a more regular blogging regimen in time.  Thanks for stopping in.

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It’s a part-time job, theoretically, but the truth is that as I have been ramping up and learning the ropes, it’s actually been more of a full-time job, in terms of my time commitment (if not in terms of my compensation).  I’m still working in my home office about two days a week, but “home office” in this case can mean my actual office at home, a table at a coffee shop, the couch in my living room, or anyplace I can set up and connect to the Internet.

My new job is at my church–my official title is “Director of Media and Communications”–and my primary duties include managing the volunteer teams that provide media-related technical services for church worship gatherings, meetings, conferences, events, etc., such as sound, video projection, video production, still photography, and such.  But my responsibilities also include managing the church local area network, the church’s Internet connectivity, the church Web site, the church newsletter, and the church management system.  I also provide day-to-day workstation support for the church staff.  Oh, and I also lead the contemporary worship team, so I’m playing in the band, planning worship services, rehearsing the band, and running the worship services–pretty much everything except the preaching.

As you can imagine, this keeps me extremely busy, and it’s been difficult these past few months to make time for blogging–most of my various blogs have suffered because of this, but I am holding onto the hope that, in time, I’ll settle into a routine that will allow me to return to a more regular blogging schedule.  (You’d think that after nearly eight months I’d have found that routine by now, but clearly I haven’t.)

The upside of this is that I’m being forced to re-acquire many of the time-management and work-management habits that atrophied somewhat during the year I took off from regular employment.  As that happens, I’ll try to share my experiences and lessons learned here, because I suspect that many of you are in somewhat similar positions, that is, trying to balance a regular job with whatever it is you are doing in your home office.

Thanks for your patience!

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Photo: JoshBerglund19

The inauguration is now in the history books, and President Obama is settling into the most significant home office on the planet–the Oval Office in the White House.  So with that in mind, I offer these tips and suggestions for the new occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

1.  Although you’ll be working in a home office, technically, I respectfully suggest that you go ahead and get dressed for work every day.  I work in a home office, too, Mr. President, and I dress pretty much the same way I did when I worked in a regular office every day, and I find it helps me take my work more seriously.  I think most Americans want their President to take his work seriously, and frankly, we’ve got enough mental images of a President in his underpants to last us for a long time.  I personally don’t care whether you wear a coat and tie or not, but for Heaven’s sake, please wear some pants.

2.  You’ve reached a certain pinnacle in your career.   “Leader of the free world” is a pretty good gig.  Don’t blow it.  Some of us won’t always agree with you on every decision you make, but we want to be able to respect you anyway.  If you do what you said you would do, even if I didn’t like the idea in the first place, you will still have earned my respect.

3.  Please respect your office–it means a lot to us.  You’re going to be making decisions and having discussions in there that will have tremendous impact on our nation, and possibly on the whole world.  Whenever you walk in to that room, please remember who made it possible for you to be there, and what you were elected to do.

4.  I won’t give you any tips on software or time-saving Web-based tools; I heard they won’t let you use a computer or even your Blackberry.  Bummer.  Stuff is going to be way different by the time you are able to use these things again.  If you want to keep up with what’s happening, have one of your aides subscribe to this blog and print the feed for you.  I’ll watch your back, sir.  I’ll be honored to have Underpants Office in your daily briefing.

[Update: Apparently you've talked some sense into your aides on this matter, sir.  Congratulations!  But my offer still stands.]

5.  If you’re looking for a good to-do-list application, let me recommend…oh, right–no computer.  Sorry–never mind.

Good luck, sir, with your new job.

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http://alltop.com

AllTop is a site that aggregates the best of the Web–blog articles, Web sites, all sorts of stuff, all categorized and searchable by keyword and topic.  For example, if your interest is Web design, you can click on “W” in the alphabetic index strip and find “Web Design” in the list that appears–click on that and you’ll be taken to a page that lists up to five of the latest articles on more than fifty of the top Web design blogs and sites on the ‘net.

After just a short time of exploring AllTop, I was pretty impressed.  But the site acknowledges that the inspiration for AllTop comes from another similar site called PopURLS, which is also worth checking out.  PopURLS aggregates a whole slew of the most popular stuff on the Web, including the latest and greatest from sites like Digg, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, Slashdot, BoingBoing, Fark, Lifehacker, and many others.

http://popurls.com

With so much information available each and every day, tools like these can make it a little bit easier to keep abreast with what’s going on, what people are saying, what’s new and interesting–if you need an idea, or some inspiration, or if you’re looking for something specific, or if you’re just wanting to be entertained for a while, check these sites out.

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Photo: jakecaptive

When you’re setting up a business of your own at home, it’s easy to overlook the cost of software–it can add up fast.  In some cases, you simply can’t get around the fact that you have to buy a copy of Photoshop or Final Cut Studio or ProTools (or whatever).  But there may be other applications you need for which you can substitute open-source alternatives and save a bundle of money.

Cost-saving example

Here’s an example of what we’re talking about:  suppose your bread-and-butter application, the one that you use most of the time, the one that you’re an expert on, is Photoshop.  You’re definitely going to buy Photoshop.  You also occasionally do some word-processing, maybe a spreadsheet now and then, and on rare occasions, you need to make presentations–that sounds like a job for Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint).  In addition, you need a way to manage your business finances, so you could use Quickbooks, or MYOB, or Quicken or something similar.  Occasionally you get work that requires you to manage a larger project, so from time to time you need something like Microsoft Project.  So you could be looking at costs similar to these:

Photoshop           $600.00
Microsoft Office    $300.00
QuickBooks          $160.00
Microsoft Project   $450.00

Total:            $1,510.00

Depending on what sort of computer you have, you might be looking at more cost for the software than you spent on your machine!  Now consider the same list with some open-source alternatives for MS-Office, QuickBooks and MS-Project:

Photoshop           $600.00
OpenOffice                0
GnuCash                   0
OpenProj                  0

Total:              $600.00

By substituting open source alternatives for the software that isn’t your main business tool, you’ve saved more than half of the potential cost, and that’s money that you can probably put into buying some great plug-ins or other add-ons for Photoshop, or maybe a new graphics tablet.

osalt.com - open-source alternatives

osalt.com–finding open-source alternatives

There is a LOT of free, open-source software out there.  Some of it is great, some not so great.  You can search the repositories like SourceForge.net and Freshmeat.net, but there a lot to wade through.  One of the best places I’ve found to search for open-source software is osalt.com.  At osalt.com you’ll find a directory of open-source alternative software, organized into categories such as business, graphic applications, multimedia and audio, and much more.  You can search for a commercial package, and if there are open-source alternatives for that package in osalt’s database, you’ll see a list.  Each entry provides you with a basic description of the package and its features, shows where to download it, and points to the application’s Web site.

OpenOffice, GnuCash, OpenProj

In the example above, I found all three of the open-source packages listed at osalt.com.  OpenOffice is a great alternative to MS-Office, and comes with a whole suite of applications, including Writer (for word-processing), Calc (for spreadsheets), Impress (for presentations), Draw (for drawing and graphing), Math (an equation and formula editor), and Base (a database tool that also builds forms and reports). Runs on Windows, MacOSX and Linux.

GnuCash is open-source personal and small-business financial and accounting software.  It will help you manage your income and expenses in all your accounts; keep track of customers, vendors, and projects; help you with invoicing, AR/AP, and even communicate with your bank (if the bank supports the OFX DirectConnect and HBCI standards).  GnuCash can import data from Microsoft Money and Quicken, as well. And it is available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.

OpenProj is intended to be an alternative to MS-Project. It can import MS-Project project files, and does pretty much all of what you might expect–Gantt charts, network diagrams (PERT charts), and more.  Available for Windows, MacOSX and Linux.

Open-source caveats

Yes, I know some people will warn you to stay away from open-source software on the general premise that you get what you pay for.  There is some truth to this, to be sure.  Some open-source software is not well-supported, but I would argue that the communities that are involved with the development of the packages that have been out there for a long time, such as OpenOffice and Gimp (a Photoshop alternative), are very helpful and supportive.  This is true of all of the most popular open-source packages.  You might have to spend a little time in support forums asking questions in order to get the help you need, but the difference in price between MS-Office and OpenOffice more than makes up for that.

Not all open-source software is as mature and stable as OpenOffice, so you will occasionally run into trouble.  But if you stick with the packages that have been out there for a while, and around which there are well-developed support communities, chances are you’ll do just fine.

Some people like to remind us that “open-source” doesn’t necessarily mean “free”–while this may be true in some contexts, particularly where additional development is necessary, for the average user of open-source applications, “free” really does mean “free.”  If, at some point down the road, you decide that you really need the commercial software (and you might), you’ve at least saved some money for a while by getting by with something that was free as long as you could.

(If this has been helpful to you, Diggs and Stumbles are always much appreciated!)

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Photo: westernhorse

The ability to acquire new skills easily is not a universal trait, but it’s the sort of know-how that is extremely useful to the almost anyone who is self-employed at home–freelancers, consultants, Web or graphic designers, programmers–almost all of us find ourselves needing to learn something new from time to time.  (For some of us, it’s nearly every week!)  What follows is a set of suggestions for how to go about learning a new skill.  You’re probably not going to become an expert quickly, but with some hard work and directed activities, you can that old dog (you) some new tricks.

1. Take small steps.

You may have a lofty goal–”learn PHP,” for example–but if your goal is big and broad like that, you will do well to break it up into a set of smaller steps.

There are two aspects to this suggestion:  first, learning a new skill takes time, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t learn it all overnight.  For example, you might desire to learn CSS or Rails, or perhaps you want to learn how to use JQuery or do something in Photoshop.  Pick a reasonably long time frame as a deadline.  It might be two weeks, or a month, or a year, depending on what you’re trying to learn.  If you make that timeframe too small, you’ll end up frustrated; if you reach your objective faster, all the better.

Secondly, it’s a good idea to schedule your learning time.  That’s not always easy, and the nature of your workload and workflow may be such that you have to take spare time as it comes, but if you schedule some time for learning something new each day or each week, put it in your calendar and treat it as a priority, soon you’ll be on your way to acquiring that new skill.

2. Collect the necessary tools.

If you’re learning a new software application, for example, you obviously need to have that application.  If you’re learning a programming language, you may want to find a text editor that has some built-in features for that particular language.  If you’re not sure which application you’re going to use, look around for a demo version that will at least give you a feel for how it works.

In the example of learning PHP, you’ll probably want to use something like MAMP, WAMP or LAMP to install Apache, MySQL and PHP locally on your laptop or workstation, so you can experiment and learn in an environment over which you have complete control, and where the consequences of “breaking” something aren’t great.

In your quest to learn a new skill, don’t forget books.  I’ll admit that in recent years I’ve bought far fewer books on technology things than I once did, simply because of the preponderance of online technical information.  But some of us like having a book that we can take with us and peruse whenever we like.  If you’re looking for good books on stuff like Web development and programming, freelancing, starting a home-based business, and such, please check out the Underpants Office Bookstore–we’ve done some of the searching for you in these and other selected areas, and you might find just the right book to help you get moving on learning something new.

3. Take a class.

There are countless options for structured learning–you can probably find a local adult education or continuing education course through a nearby college or university or community college.  There are also hundreds (perhaps thousands) of online courses that you can take.  For example, if you’re trying to learn PHP programming, a simple Google search will turn up dozens of resources, many of which are free.  The same is true for almost any Web development skill, but even if you’re looking for information about something a bit more obscure, such as lutherie (guitar-building), you’re probably going to find some resources online.  If you’re reasonably self-motivated, the online option is great.

4. Set yourself some goals.

Without a defined goal, you might flounder for a long time, so take a little time to figure out some reasonable, measurable goals.  To continue the PHP learning example, you might find discover the Killer PHP site, where you’ll find a bunch of instructional video screencasts–you could decide that a reasonable goal would be to set aside an hour each day for a month (there are enough of them to do that), and work through all of the examples yourself.  You won’t necessarily be a PHP ace when the month is over, but you’ll be a few steps farther down the road.  (See item #1 above.)

5. Pick a simple, real-world project to work on.

If you’re learning something like PHP (and by now you might have figured out that learning PHP is on my list of skills I’d like to aquire), you can write simple “Hello, World!” programs until the cows come home, but what will really help you is to pick a project that is interesting to you (and might actually be useful) and work on that.  If it’s learning how to build a guitar, get an inexpensive kit and actually build one.  It might not be your best work, but you have to start somewhere, and you might as well start with something useful.

I’m hoping to invest some time in 2009 in learning PHP (and a few other Web-development skills), and I’ll try to post along the way to let you know how I’m doing with that.  In the meantime, I’d love to hear about your experiences and goals and approaches.  Leave a comment and let us know how it’s going!  (And if this article has helped you get off dead-center and decide to learn a new skill, I’d appreciate any Diggs or Stumbles!)

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Unbelievable! Paper Toy Transformer … – video powered by Metacafe

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Photo: orinrobertjohn

Most of us, at one time or another, find ourselves in a place like this:  our work has piled up, for whatever reason, and there is so much to do that we don’t even know where to start–it’s paralyzing, in a way.  This probably happens to some of us more than others, depending on a variety of factors.  I’ve had whole days when I got essentially nothing done because I simply couldn’t figure out where to start.

How did I get here?

Whether your work overload is a rare thing or a consistent pattern in your life, it’s helpful to consider how you got into that situation, provided you take steps to keep it from happening again.  Sometimes the reasons are entirely beyond your control–a supervisor suddenly assigns you a massive project with an unreasonable deadline; you become seriously ill and unable to work for an extended period of time; your business experiences a rapid, unanticipated growth spurt; your business partner suddenly quits, leaving all of her work in your lap.  I suspect, however, that much of the time, the work piles up for reasons that you probably can control:  procrastination, disorganization, bad prioritization, and yes, even laziness.  Perhaps you just took on too much work–it wouldn’t be the first time someone bit off more than they could chew.

But you probably already know how you got into this mess.  The question is, what do you do now?  How do you get off dead-center, or push past the paralysis that has settled in on you, making the problem worse all the time?

The answer is the same as the answer to the old proverbial question, “How do you eat a 500-pound banana?”  One bite at a time.  Here are some suggestions for how to begin chipping away at the mountain:

Assess your situation honestly.

Photo: castironskillet

When a debt counselor works with a client who is drowning in financial obligations, often one of the first steps is to do what the client has been avoiding–make a list of all of the money he owes.  Likewise, if you’re drowning under an overwhelming pile of backed-up work, you need to sit down and make a list of everything in the stack. Like the person in debt facing up to what they owe, you may find this to be a daunting, unpleasant task, but it is the only way you can begin to get back in control.  List everything, including the big projects, the small projects, and the routine tasks.

Break the big tasks into smaller pieces.

A task like “plan the conference” is too big and broad to be helpful to you.  Break every big item on your list into several smaller, more concise tasks.  Yes, it will make your list longer, but you’ve got to know what you’re up against, and when you begin prioritizing, you may find that there are some little tasks within those big tasks that might require higher priority than the bigger task as a whole.  For example, “plan the conference” is a big task, but “book the conference venue” is a smaller task that has a much higher priority than many of the other bits of the larger task.

Prioritize the list as best you can.

Illustration: doug

Do it in several passes.  On your first pass through the list, identify the tasks that are absolutely the most critical, if-I-don’t-get-this-done-I’m-fired sort of things.  It isn’t always the case that the highest priority tasks are those that are the most overdue or the oldest deadlines on the list–in fact, some of those tasks probably have become irrelevant, and you should cull those from the list.   Set yourself no more than three or four priority categories–every item on the list should be assigned to one of those categories.  When everything is divided into those priority lists, prioritize the items within each of those lists.

Delegate what you can.

Granted, for most of those of us who work in home offices, there may not be anyone to whom we can delegate anything.  “Delegating” for us might mean outsourcing.  As you look through your lists, are there things that you would normally do yourself that would be worth paying someone else to do, under the circumstances?

Begin working the list one task at a time.

Photo: kyshuttergirl

Take a deep breath and tell yourself that today you are going to begin to turn this thing around.  Begin with the highest priority item on the highest priority list, and focus on that task as if it were the only thing on your plate.  If you let yourself think about the rest of the list, or the other lists, or the size of the workload, pretty soon you’re going to be paralyzed again, or at least so distracted and discouraged that completing the work at hand is going to be much harder.

The difficult thing here is that when the work piles up, your brain will try to remind you that the time you spend working on one task is time that you can’t spend on the others, and that those other tasks are just going to fall further behind.  This is absolutely true, but you can’t let yourself focus on that.  It is better to get one thing done than to get no things done, and the sooner you get that first item on the list done, the sooner you’ll get to the second item.

Work hard, but be reasonable.

There’s no way around the fact that you’ve got a lot of work to do, and it’s going to be difficult to get caught up–you’re going to have to bust your tail for a while.  But with that said, it’s also important to remember that the quality of your work suffers when you’re exhausted, and trying to “binge work” your way through the list will probably end up badly for you.  Maybe you will have to work some somewhat longer work days for a while, but  if you don’t get enough rest, relaxation, time with your family, or other diversion, you won’t be able to do your best, and you’re likely to end up sick, or going nuts, which doesn’t do anyone any good.

Put up a “breakwater.”

Photo: 22189609@N08

The mouth of a harbor is often protected from the waves of the open sea by constructing a breakwater, a long barrier that helps break up the waves before they can get into the harbor.  Your breakwater is whatever measures you can take to stem the tide of incoming tasks for a while, so that the overwhelming pile of work doesn’t just keep growing.  Your temptation, as a freelancer, for example, might be to accept any and all incoming jobs, to keep the cash flowing, but unless you’re making a lot of progress on that backed-up mountain of work, is this wise?  As hard as it might be for you, until you get things a bit more under control, you might need to tell a potential client that you’re swamped at the moment, but that you want to work with them and will get back to them in a month (or whenever).

Let the machine get it.

Photo: kleinman

Unless your contract with your clients or customers dictates otherwise, you really don’t have to answer the phone every time it rings.  You could put a message on your voicemail or answering machine that says something like this:  “I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now.  However, I should be able to take your call or return your call between three and five this afternoon.  Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”  You can do something similar with your email: instead of checking your email every ten minutes, agree with yourself to check it once or twice a day, at most.  These tactics may get you some additional uninterrupted time to get caught up.

Get something done.

If you’ve made your lists and you’re still overwhelmed and can’t get started, find something else to do for a while–do a housecleaning chore, replace a burned-out light bulb, go around the house and test your smoke alarms, clean a toilet, rake some leaves, change the oil in your car, run a few errands–just do something so you can at least tell yourself that you haven’t wasted the day.  The fact that you accomplished something may boost your self-esteem a bit, and that may help you get moving.

Clean up your surroundings.

Photo: djbrady

I’ve seen this tip in multiple places, because it seems to work.  If your physical work space is as stacked up and cluttered as the pile of work you’re facing, it can be hard to be productive.  Whenever I’m beginning to feel like there’s just too much to do, it always helps to clean up my office and make some space on my desk and in the room.  I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but perhaps doing the same with your computer desktop might be equally helpful, if you use a computer for your work.

I’ve been in this situation more times than I care to admit, but I have learned that a mountain of work looks scarier from a distance–when you get up close and see what it’s made of, it’s just a big pile of individual things that you know how to do.  Figure out where to start, and you’re well on your way to reducing the mountain to something that will fit comfortably in your inbox.

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