Life (or something like it....)

What has happened to me? (and where's my red bird?)

My posts used to be decidedly witty, whimsical, thought provoking, perhaps even charming. Then *pow* suddenly back to geek mode. I hate how that happens. I now work for a company that makes HDTV equipment and while not the most interesting company in the world, i do like the work and I get to watch HDTV whenever i want. Plus lots of trips to TV stations in the DC area and lost of free lunch. So all in all not too bad.

When I was a kid my dad was a purchasing agent. His job was to exclusively deal with vendors who were desperate to have their products involved with Sohio. (remember Sohio?) He used to always talk about these things he seemed to get on a fairly regular basis called red birds. I don't think I figured out that a red bird was free lunch until i was like 16.

-c

I am in organizational hell

I need help! I try to subscribe to the GTD philosophy, but I kind of want an electronic way to manage my actual job function. I am involved in customer support as well as a little sales so sometimes I am waiting for the phone to ring but often I have next actions etc. Is there software out there that lets me easily manage a project. I want something that historical, not just planning. I am looking for something that will let me take simple notes under a given project, and then from those notes i want to be able to create tasks and subtasks. So when I go to a particular project I can see all the steps I have taken, all the steps i have yet to take and notes that are important chronologically and project-wise but not actual tasks? The way I accomplish this now is a horrible combination of using 30boxes.com for tasks that require scheduling, freemind for tracking actions i have taken, and just the simple outlook task manager for freeform task lists.... but getting them coordinated is so manual and tedious that I end up not doing it and then missing steps and milestones.

Beyond this I have now thrown a PDA phone into the mix and started to abandon my hPDA.... I am really am organizationally screwed at the moment!

Any thoughts???

-c

30 Boxes VS Spingecell Part Duex

OK, so when i last addressed this issue i suggested that 30 boxes, well, basically, sucked. Wow, have there been changes. The interface is interfacalicious, with lost of fun tweaking, the event entry has gotten much smarter and on the whole, the entire site seems more functional and reliable. Interestingly enough, tagging rocks (flickr, delicious, who knew?) the power to tag events in one calendar is simply amazing and has made time organization much more streamlined. No longer do i have to maintain multiple calendars or put strict rules in place (on myself) for data entry.
However,I still believe that spongecell has a better interface. Selecting a range of dates and times is a much better way to manually enter date. Seeing a breakdown of time on a day is also a hug boon to efficiency, not to mention the variety of interface delights: emailing events from any of the emails i have added, SMS input, reminders and interfacing.

which leads me to this:
Spongecell needs to add tagging and the powerful variety of syndication options of 30boxes.

-or-

30Boxes need to add the difference calendar views, and the variety of i/o options of Spongecell.

However, if you want to know who I am throwing my weight (feeble through it is) behind, just check here for which calendar is linked for public events...