Naquada

So yesterday I upgraded my blackberry 7730 to OS 4.

Generally its a nice upgrade, nothing major in there unless you have a BES 4 as well. Our company runs BES 3.6, and there seems to be no issues running BES 3.6 and OS 4.0 together.

Most of the changes I have seen are cosmetic, things like colours, some improvements to the calender (like ability to make appointments private), a new password keeper (for saving important passwords and codes, a picture album application (why?!?), and some other tweaks.

You can get the upgrade for both the Desktop Manager and the Blackberry itself from the Blackberry site, and its worth upgrading the desktop manager first, and then the device (and clear your messages first as the upgrade will be faster).

The new os also provides a full TCP/IP stack for the Blackberry, but it provides this effectively through the WAP APN, so if like our company you have that turned off in the BES then you’ll still need to use MDS to hit the net.

The BlackBerry browser is much improved as well, now supporting web pages better, and now supporting Java Script.

I also took the time to update my instant messenger client, WebMessenger. Now this has always been the messenger client for the blackberryand the new version, 2.3, really has some major improvements, most notibly the speed of startup and log on.

I have lots of contacts and my log on time to show the buddy list has dropped to about 10 seconds as opposed to almsot 30. General stability and useability has improved as well, other than that its cosmetic changes again, but kinda nice ones..

Well, since I got the previous Crumpler Gimp 14 inch, and it didn’t fit I ordered a smaller 12 inch Crumpler, which arrived this morning.

Unfortuantly it seems the 12 inch Gimp is too small for the Toshiba M200.. But its a perfect size for the Fujistu ST4110 TabletPC..

Back to the drawing board to find a case for my toshiba M200 then, at this rate I’ll be buying crumpler gimps for every laptop I have except the one I want it for!!

So, travelling back through Charing Cross was a bad idea, not because its not a nice station (which it isnt), it because Davenports Magic shop is located in the underground arcade.

A quick visit and I’m loaded up with stuff I didn’t intend to really buy. Black Tiger Decks, Max Maven books… I need to learn not to pop into shops on the way home!!!

So, I’m wondering now if I should go down the route of picking up a coach, no not the london to blackpool express, more the person that advises you on what you should be doing, and how..

I know you coudl say that it should be me that works that out, but sometimes its not that simple. The old adage of ‘a second pair of eyes..’ rings true here..

I picked up a book by Mark Forster when I took two weeks out, basically because I’d just had enough of my job, and it really helped. It didnt put me 100% back on the straight and narrow, more guided me back towards the right path.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m very very uneasy with all the ‘positive thinking’ methods of ‘improving your life’, they just have never seemed realistic to me..

I’ve read some of The Mind Gym: Wake Your Mind Up and its interesting how a lot of the practices that Marks talked about in his books Get Everything Done and Still Have Time To Play and How to Make Your Dreams Come True fit in well with this book..

As you know I attended a seminar that Mark ran a week or two ago, and to be perfectly honest I’m really getting on top of my work load, quite frightenly infact;

My backlogs are starting to clear, I’m no longer getting to the end of the day and wondering ‘where the day went’, or ‘I just didnt achieve anything today’. I’ve spotted dwindling the day away, I’ve started to (and I only say started to) get rid of trivia that I dont need to worry about and deal with during the day, and I’ve ended each day with a list full of completed tasked, and at least a few times getting to late afternoon and thinking.. ‘I have nothing more to do.. I’ve completed everything for today..’

So the question is.. Do I pick up coaching from Mark Forster, or survive on what I’ve learnt so far..? I guess its balancing out costs and the benefits, I’ve more decided on the methods of getting my stuff done (I mean the David Allen Getting Things Done vs other methods)..

Its just taking the plunge..

If you chase both rabbits, both will escape..

Very very true.. I used to chase lots of ‘rabbits’ (that is tasks) and I used to catch lots of them, but I started to find they started escaping..

On my new ‘effective me’ drive I’m really finding that going after one rabbit at a time means I’m catching much more, and its easier…

I also made Mark Forster’s Website harping on about the new effective me!! (check the testimonials towards the bottom..) – and if you want to book up… say Andrew Webb referred you!!

And what do you know? I completed everything I needed to again today!!!

Seems everyone is cashing in now..

“Don’t you hate it when you give your phone number to someone at a club, and then some time later her hardware gets hacked and your number gets broadcast all over the world for anyone at all to see? And then you start getting crank calls from these morons who don’t even know you, and your only option is to change your number so they quit calling you?”

Only $20 from Glarkware.com

So do you think… Real or Fake ??

Engadget reports on the fact (?) that Paris Hilton has had her SideKick hacked – Paris Hilton

Well, I spent alot of today trying to get my Toshiba M200 to boot from an external USB CD drive.

Why? Because I got the replacement drive from Toshiba this week to try and cure my Light Saber noise from the existing drive..

The issue is that I just cant get Symantic Ghost 9 to boot the recovery console.. The existing USB CD drive wont boot (it seems Toshiba wont allow a USB boot).

The Freecom Traveller drive I borrowed will boot when it’s connected through PCMCIA, but then blue screens after the Symantic Recovery Console has loaded.

I did however successfully boot from a SD Smart Media card into DOS, using the information from TabletPC Questions but the USB driver for the CDRom doesn’t seem to load..

So I left that little mess and decided to started back on rebuilding the machine that got fried in the power surge the other week.

A tasty new 3.6ghz Intel, with a gig of ram, Dual monitors, 6 Drive controllers (s-ata and e-ide) and space for 12 drives. On friday when I built the base of the machine I’d had major issues trying to get the Western Digital SATA Raptor drive to be the boot drive, but after a lot of fiddling the 10,000 RPM drive buzzed along with the boot OS.. It seems you have to get the BIOS settings just right!!

So at least the drives are back online again (with some additions). The iTunes storage on the Terabyte drive is running again, the existing two 120 gig backup drives are back on duty sucking ghost images overnight of the Toshiba and Dell laptops, as well as the backups of the Linux file server. The addition of another 120 gig drive provides more than enough room to start putting my music applications and plugins back on again..

But I still need to get that Toshiba drive reimaged from the backups, a task for another day I think..

So I arrive in Hamburg to a light sprinkling of snow on the ground.

I’m out here to assist a customer with an upgrade and to generally check out progress with them..

I did make a fundimental mistake though in that I managed to loose my power supply for my Toshiba TabletPC on the way… I did however find a treasure trove on site, seems that they have been deploying TabletPC’s to users over the last few months (250 and counting), and there laying in the middle of the pile of Fujitsu’s and Toshiba’s was a lone power supply for a Toshiba!!

So back on power, back on wireless and exhausted!!!

So I went to Mark Forsters seminar on saturday ‘Getting Rid of Time Management‘ (that cold trip out into Horsham for 3 hours), and I was very dubious about it all at the beginning, but I’m actually now really excited about it all..

It was probably the best or the most well spent 3 hours (and thats all it takes) of my life, well ok thats not quite true, but it was indeed a very well spent 3 hours..

On Sunday, the day after Marks seminar I put the principals into practise;

I had cleared my desk (a task I’ve put off for months), cleaned my house, tidied my kitchen, changed the bins, emptied and reloaded my dishwasher and hoovered within two hours of getting up.. (I even used one of Mark methods to get me out of bed early!) I also went shopping (to 3 different places) returned home to meet a colleague to assist them with some work they need my help with, cooked all three of use dinner, tidied the kitchen again, and then sent Mark an email evaluating the seminar.

Everything on the course is absolutely common sense, its simple, easy to follow, but its just never occured to me before!! The whole idea of trying to do one days work in a day.. simple!!

I’ve also had 3 stress free days, I havent worried about things ‘coming my way’ because I know I’ll be able to head them off and handle them.

Marks running this seminar over the next few weeks in Horsham, Bristol and Manchester, and you can book a place here, if you do book a place, please say that Andrew Webb Refered you..