living a prolific life and other life hacks

Oh time for the blogosphere, where art thou? It seems like life has been getting ahead of me a lot these days and I am afraid fall is not going to have a reprieve for me. I'm excited about working more (Human Resources Coordinator at my church) and directing a program at my church called "EveryLeader," a leadership training course that launched last January. Mostly I am really beginning to appreciate the need to be more organized with my time in order to get everything done that needs doing and to not overcommit.

Karl's favourite expert on organizing life is David Allen, author of Getting Things Done (GTD); it's an excellent book/program if you're interested in personal productivity... though I've yet to complete it... it's one thing that I really need to get done... :) Here's a good blog that also serves as a bit of an overview of GTD.

A recent blog that Karl sent me that I have found quite inspirational is "Marc and Angel Hack Life" for which my entry today is titled. Check it out for such posts as, "50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do," 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing, "20 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Sunday", and "The 7 Habits of Highly Happy People"

Anyway, in other news... just winding down my night after a great day at the zoo (actually two days in a row at the zoo) and wanted to share this warm fuzzy with you... awwwww...

[I took this pic of the new baby giraffe]

Happy Birthday Leila!

Happy 10th Birthday Leila!

Leila is Karl's cousin (left) on his mom's side; her youngest sister's daughter. Here she is with Caleb and Karl's two nieces, Jessica (centre) and Josephine (right).

Not "doh", but "phew"

I have been working on a spreadsheet, and tonight, I transferred it over to Google Docs so I can easily share it with Dayna. Once I did that, I continued to work on it online and then I deleted the original files off my computer. You probably know where this is going, don't you? Long story short, somehow I managed to corrupt the file on Google's server and it kept telling me "a server error occurred" when I tried to open the spreadsheet! DOH!

Luckily, I use Mozy (an online backup service) to backup a few things on my computer including the original spreadsheet. I restored the original spreadsheet in just a few minutes and I only lost about an hour's worth of work on it. The service paid for itself tonight... considering that it is free (at least for the level at which I have signed up).

Actually, we had Dayna signed up for the paid service (USD$60/year) and it is keeping a current backup of some 25GB worth of photos and videos on her computer. If you are not using a backup solution now, I highly recommend putting one in place. Mozy is definitely one of the easiest ones I have used. Consider it insurance for your photos and other important files.

K

PS: If you happen to want to sign up, please use this link (https://mozy.com/?code=4237DB); it will give me a bit of extra storage quota on my free account :-) Thanks.