All posts by Dona

Hurry. Read American Gods. For free.

Reading, , , ,

A few years ago my daughter said she wanted to read a book called Coraline because she saw it in the book tent at the National Book Festival. I didn’t buy it there, but asked about it the next time we were in a bookstore. The book was not available for purchase at the store, but the sales person wrote down the name of the author: Neil Gaiman.

I found an audio version of Coraline at the library and picked it up so we could listen to it on our long drive from Maryland to Illinois for either Christmas or a summer vacation, I don’t recall which. We all loved the story as well as the voice of the narrator, none other than the author himself. There was even some fun-creepy music on the CDs by the Gothic Archies.

As soon as I had internet access again I looked up Neil Gaiman and found that he had an online journal. I subscribed to the blog feed and Mr Gaiman became a part of my daily routine. I bought several of his books, saw him speak twice (once at the National Book Festival and once at a bookstore in Northern Virginia) and marveled at his accessibility.

He’s done it again. In honor of the anniversary of his online journal he asked readers of the blog to vote on what book he would put online for free for a month. He cautioned readers to not vote for their favorite book of his, but for the one they would recommend for a first time Gaiman reader. I voted for Smoke and Mirrors. It is a collection of several short stories and covers the spectrum of his talent. It also is a testament to his accessibility and candor – he explains where each of the the stories came from, where he got the idea.

While you’re going to have to either buy Smoke and Mirrors or borrow it from the library, Neil Gaiman did put a book online for free: American Gods. But only for the month of March. So hurry and read it if you want to.

But don’t read it in the bathtub. You may get electrocuted.

RescueTime: Easy Time Management

Technology, ,

Because I work from home and am paid by the hour, I needed something to help me keep track of the time I spent working on projects. I’d been using Xnote Stopwatch successfully for some time, but often forgot to start it when I began working or stop it, when I moved on to non-project related tasks. I was forced to guess how much time I’d put into projects at the end of the day.

I then heard about a time management software program called RescueTime which was then in private beta and signed on to be a beta tester. After a few days or maybe weeks I was invited to help test RescueTime and found it to be exactly what I was looking for.

You sign up for an account and download a small application from the website. The application sits in your system tray and collects data on which application or website you are actively using and it periodically sends that information to your RescueTime dashboard. On the dashboard you can “tag” the applications and sites you visit with terms like “work”, “fun”, “volunteer”, etc. RescueTime then presents you with a graph that shows you how much time you spent on each category.

You can also set goals and keep track of your goals on your dashboard as well as view your productivity after rating your tags for productiveness.

The folks behind RescueTime are continuously working to make it better and are responsive to user feedback in an almost uncanily rapid time frame. Once I sent feedback through their little user feedback box and within a few moments received an email response from them.

I like it when software works the way it says it will.

Poor Andrew

Accomplishments, People, , ,

The kids and I went out to dinner this evening. We all had a lazy Sunday, but Saturday was big for both kids. Andrew placed (5th) in Regionals and Clare took her SAT. Andrew was giddy with the knowledge that he could eat what he wanted and not stay after school for the grueling practice wrestlers go through.

Saturday night Andrew ate the last of the ice cream, declaring it to be his first ice cream in 3 months. Tonight he ate sausage soup, tortellini with sausage, several bites of appetizers, an entire ice cream dessert, two root beers and half a cannoli. When we got home an email was waiting for Andrew from his coach. The coach wanted Andrew to practice with the team and be prepared to possibly step in should someone in his weight class not be able to wrestle.

He was nearly inconsolable. We talked and he is now prepared to have another week of hard practice and little food. After his dinner tonight, I’m not sure if he could loose the weight that he gained from the ice cream and pasta.

He asked me to buy him a lot of fruit for the rest of the week.