Using Google Calendar to Organize the Family

For many families (and some busy individuals), getting a handle on one or more calendars can become taxing. If you don’t use a calendar at all and you still find that you are more effective than most then it’s time to look at publishing your own best-seller. The truth is, most of us don’t have the mental capacity to keep all of that information in our heads and remember it with any sort of success rate.

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That’s where using Google calendars can become invaluable. I am both cursed and blessed with something called ADD. For those who are familiar with it that means there are flashes of brilliance mired by terrible follow through. Having a family calendar help get everyone on the same page and keep them there. While I have issues with the way that Gmail can work sometimes, the calendar feature is has been way more useful to me. Everyone is going to use it differently so I’ll provide the links I’ve used in the past when tweaking things instead of reinventing the well.

I’ve included some resources below that should prove helpful. I didn’t want to reinvent to wheel. When it comes to getting things working smooth with your iPhone or mobile device then that can be a different issue and if there’s interest in that I’ll be glad to point to some resources for that. Hopefully, this will give you enough information to want to check out that Google calendars has to offer. And hopefully you will take it to the level of sharing a calendar between more than one person (spouse) and improve coordination.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2010/12/12/out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new-set-up-a-truly-useful-calendar/
http://blog.fosketts.net/2010/04/18/how-to-share-google-calendar-caldav/
http://www.ehow.com/how_4550316_manage-family-schedule-google-calendar.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_4752900_organize-whole-family-google-calendar.html
http://lifehacker.com/5611457/use-multiple-google-calendars-to-balance-your-college-life

Comments { 0 } Posted on April 2, 2012 in Blogging, Google, Productivity

Facebook Fan Page as a Professional Outlet

I have given in to fighting the urge any longer. I’m pretty strict about trying to keep my personal and private life separate and I will continue to keep that balance in the future. Typically, Facebook is thought of more as a personal outlet and that is true for the most part. But if you were a business wouldn’t it make more sense to go to where your customer is already at, instead of expecting them to only come to your blog or website?

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In the past it has been as simple as using Facebook for personal and family needs, while using Twitter and LinkedIn for professional purposes. There are plenty of articles out there about the dangers that one can encounter with their employer while using Facebook, and I am sure you have seen the recent news about employers requesting passwords…legally or not. I have finally broken down and added a fan page to facebook. I have seen Pinal Dave (Blog | Twitter) and Brent Ozar (Blog | Twitter) use it successfully so I thought I would give it a go as well.

Hopefully, it can be another useful tool in forming my online brand and interacting with peers and potential clients. It’s also like anything else that we choose to invest time in, and we have to weigh the benefits to see if it helps us to reach our goals. I intend on writing more about how you can use facebook in this way for your business or freelance work (what I do), but I will sit back and enjoy the view for a bit and see how useful it can be first.

Have you used Facebook fan pages successfully? What do you wish you would have known when you set it up the first time? Feel free to offer any resources you’ve found helpful in the comments. Be sure to click Like on my Facebook fan page if you’d be so kind.

Comments { 0 } Posted on March 25, 2012 in Blogging, facebook, Social Media

T-SQL Tuesday #028 – Jack of All Trades, Master of None?

This is my first time to participate in the T-SQL Tuesday so take it easy on me. I really do come in peace.

It’s funny to me that this is one of the key things that drove me into the SQL world. I blogged about this last year explaining how I “Cheated on SQL Server”. Things have kept going uphill from that point and there are no regrets, but I don’t guess I will ever go from Jack blogger to Master blogger. Sounds like I should be in a guild or something.

Seeing Argenis Fernandez (Blog | Twitter) post on Leaving DBA-Land it resonates with how I feel about the leaving the SysAdmin world. I’m not sure if you ever really leave it all behind. I find myself needing to know more than ever about storage (like SANs) and how it pertains to SQL. I find myself needing to learn more about networking and the bandwidth that matters when you are discussing how SQL talks to its friends (or enemies).

I hate code by the way, never will I specialize in writing code. I will leave that to other Jacks and Masters because I really don’t want anything to do with it. Some people’s minds just don’t work as well when it comes to that. I’ll just stick with beating you in the 40-yard dash (based off my high school time of course). I tend to gravitate towards the Database Administrator side of things with Performance and Standards. It’s kind of cool to be dogmatic about at least one thing in your career, so master the “art of saying NO” to those developers who want too much access, that way you can sleep at 2am.

What is wild is that while we are always talking about specialization, the DBA certifications are trending more towards the developer (at least they were in 2008). Crap…I don’t want to be a developer. Anyway, hope you have fun getting just a little bit closer to being a Master or Jack of some trade so that you can pay the bills.

Comments { 1 } Posted on March 13, 2012 in Blogging, Networking, SAN, SQL General, SQLServer, SQLServerPedia Syndication, Tech

Microsoft releases Lync for iPhone

I’m a pretty big fan of OneNote, and although I have debated switching to EverNote I always come back to it. I’ve been using it on the iPhone with some success and now Microsoft has released Lync shortly after porting OneNote over to the iPad and add SkyDrive functionality (limited) to the iPhone. IMHO, this opens the floodgates on what a business can do with iPhones and iPads as laptop replacements. I’m currently working on getting an iPad to use in this format so hopefully I can have plenty of test cases to write about. Maybe they will port Management Studio over so that we can use it as well. That’s going on the wish list.

I’m still waiting to get an iDevice on the domain to test with, but if you happen to try Lync on an apple device let me know how it is working out for you as I will hopefully be doing the same thing pretty soon.

Comments { 0 } Posted on December 20, 2011 in Education, GTD, iPhone, Productivity, SSMS, Tech

Don’t sit up straight at your desk

Going in a slightly different direction than a previous post on “The downside to being in IT”, I saw a post by Michael Hyatt (Blog|Twitter) recently that had an infographic about why sitting down so much is killing  us. The biggest part about the graph for me was sitting at a reclined angle was actually less strain on  your back than sitting upright.  I guess you could argue that sitting that far back is going to put more strain on your eyes, neck, and other important body parts so maybe it’s a wash. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you do to help your body handle all this “desk stress” that we put on it in the office.

image courtesy of visual.ly

Comments { 1 } Posted on December 8, 2011 in Education, General, Life, Productivity, Tech