Entries Tagged 'Office Life' ↓

When I saw the headline on the Microsoft Small business/ Microsoft at Work BlogI was sure I knew what they would say.  Undoubtedly they would blast the PDAers who are texting while they drive.  Surely they would comment on folks who sit in classes (mine sometimes) and read messages and answer.  What about talking on the phone in a restaurant, at the Dr’s office, phones that ring in church?  Turns out the etiquette for wireless devices is different.  Be concise, they tell us.  Don’t send really long text messages-works for me.  Follow up.  Not all quick messages are remembered so send another email later.  My favorite is, “Don’t compose and converse at the same time.”  Those are words to live by.  Here are my words to live by.  Put the phone down and go outside.  It is a summertime thing.

Hats off to a neat post by Jim Duncan on his blog Real Central VA.  Jim is a local real estate agent who tells about riding his bike from his office to an appointment.  As he said, “I saved gas, burned a few calories, and hopefully led by example.”  We know Jim isn’t going to take clients out on his bicycle but what a great idea for errands and “in-town”.

My own attempt (really small) is to walk from my office on Westfield Road to all of the meetings at the Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS building on Hillsdale. 

Way to go Jim-good job.

I get so much Spam-Most of which goes directly to the spam folder and I never see it-  I thought that I was immune. 

Free Bug Eliminator Software!

Are there corrupt files lurking inside your computer just waiting to cause harmful destruction?

How would you know?

Don’t let the peaceful operation of your PC (maybe it’s not that peaceful!) give you a false sense of security — you’d be simply astonished at the number of unnecessary files cluttering up and bogging down your computer right this instant!

Not sure why this caught my eye-but it did.  I go for long periods of time feeling “safe” and then this comes along and rocks my little computer world.  Which software is the best?  Your thoughts.

In an earlier post I talked about not feeling as professional in a home office, probably because working in a bath robe feels pretty relaxed to me-I did say we were ok as long as view phones aren’t in general use.  That, of course, was meant to be tongue in cheek; but can you believe it-there actually, factually is a prototype “smell phone”.  Unless this was another April Fools joke, NPR did a piece about the new technology which allows one to send smells over the cell phone.  They were quick to point out there are “spam filters” for undesireable downloads.  The example the journalist gave was of vacationers sending home the “scent from the ocean”.  Not sure about that-I may have to wait and “see”.  What’s next?

It may be the renovation of our building here at Westfield Road or it may just be the sign of the times but many of us are working from home offices.  With high speed DSL available (even in Free Union where I live) or cable Internet or even satellite Internet access we have our own window on the world from our home office.  I found some tips from Microsoft (naturally) about how to be productive.  Read More- Tips to Stay Focused.   Truthfully I just don’t feel as business like in my bathrobe-so one hint might be to make your work schedule at home more formal and on a time table. We should be OK until “view phones” are standard home office equipment. One of the real benefits of working at home is dropping any pretense of focus and just going for a walk on a pretty day. In fact, I feel a walk coming on now. Enjoy.