OpenOffice.org 3.0

Anyone who has used a computer without Microsoft Office knows that Word Pad is no alternative to Microsoft Word. OpenOffice.org’s word processor is, with most of the functionality of MS Word, it does a great job. Even down to the look and feel, it’s right on.

And it’s not just Word, the spreadsheet program is great too. I do my household budget in Excel, so I was a bit concerned that it wouldn’t work in OpenOffice, but I had no problems. You can even save to .xls for other users to open in Microsoft products. I haven’t needed to use the other applications in the suite, but I’m quite confident they’ll be great too.

Learn more at OpenOffice.org

Avast Antivirus

When I chose to deselect Norton Antivirus from my home computer build, it dropped $85 off of the final price. That’s pretty great, since Avast does just as good of a job for me.

It has great active protection, if a threat is detected it will immediately prompt you. Plus it has a toolbar attachment to Firefox / IE, if you want to use it.

Learn more about it here

I have since learned that AVG is as good if not better. See it here.

This selector is super easy to use and looks like this:

a[href$=".pdf"] {
    padding:7px 0 4px 31px;
    background: url(images/pdfsmall.jpg) no-repeat left top;
    display: block;
}

This way any time someone links a .pdf document, a “Acrobat Reader” icon will show up to the left of the link, this way the visitor knows what he’s getting into when he clicks it.

Now the link looks like this:

This works just as well with any other attribute. Just swap out the .pdf and image name and there it is.

Note: It should be stated that this attribute selector doesn’t work in IE6 (what a shocker). Although it does degrade gracefully into just a standard link.

1. Will Power

Obviously, the biggest difficulty in choosing not to eat out is the choice. We’ve found that the times we’re tempted the most is when we’re tired, near restaurants where it’s convenient, or it’s getting late and we aren’t about to be home to take care of dinner. Especially with a child, the thought of getting home and feeding the little one, then getting her bathed and in bed can be a little overwhelming. Sometimes it takes a little extra umph on the will power side of things.

2. Cash Budget

Having envelopes devoted specifically to food helps keep you from overspending. It also provides a visual representation of how much money you have left, and with some simple calculations, how many more times you can eat out. It reminds you that your finances are limited.

It also helps balance the rest of your budget, because it keeps you from spending the money that’s intended for gas or housing.

3. Planning Meals out in advance

My wife is a stay at home mom, she does a great job of planning our meals. She offers these tips for planning ahead:

1. Make a Calendar of what you will eat throughout the week/month.
   • It’s easier to stay on your cash budget for groceries because you know what you will need.
   • It takes away the work of deciding what to cook. You essentially spend one day planning all the meals instead of every day thinking about what you’re going to make.
   • It’s easier to prepare the meal because at 8am you know what you’re going to make for dinner.
2. Take Inventory of what you need to purchase before you go grocery shopping
   • This enables you to have everything you need to make the meal before the day starts, eliminating the hassle of having to run to the store to get something, or not having what you need and adding to the frustration of cooking at home.
3. Find meals that you can make extra and heat up later
   • We make Black bean and corn burritos that are easy to heat up and make later, use paper plates to further eliminate the hassle of dish washing.
   • Spaghetti is another good one for reheating (it’s also pretty cheap and easy to make).
4. Finish preparing the meal at dinner time (or at least have it started)
   • The main reason for this is that you’ve already committed to dinner at home if you’re most of the way into it. It removes the temptation to take the easy route and order pizza.

Please keep in mind that I am releasing the theme “warts and all”, so don’t expect it to be perfect. It does, however, have dynamic sidebars and all major HTML element styles are supported.

Geekitopia Theme

1. Don’t go to sketchy sites.

2. Don’t download from sources you don’t know or trust.

3. Don’t open emails from people you don’t know, and ESPECIALLY not any attachments you get from them.

4. Don’t download Bittorrents.

5. Don’t be stupid.

After college I worked at a residential group home school where I started as a case aid, then became the GED Coordinator. In teaching GED math, I learned a profound lesson that would ripple through the rest of my life forever:

Most things seem harder than they really are.

The kids in my class would get so overwhelmed by fractions. When I was a teenager, I was TERRIBLE at math. I hated the subject. I hated math because I didn’t understand it, and it seemed so hard. The highest math I had ever achieved was Algebra 1 and Geometry. However, when I taught the kids in my program, it all made perfect sense. Fractions were easy, and algebra was . . . fun?

The next year, I was asked to give one-on-one instruction to a student in Algebra 2. As mentioned before, I had never taken Algebra 2, but I could read and understand the textbook better than he could, so I took on that task and found the same thing. Algebra 2 was easy – fun even. I enjoyed teaching, and wasn’t intimidated by the math because I now understood a further truth:

Everything can be understood, and thus learned.

After teaching for three years, I decided to see about designing (which was my college major) and got a job at a sign company. While I was there, we would develop custom solutions, and spend time thinking out of the box. I enjoyed this so much more than designing, that I became interested in Engineering. In the summer, I started on the Engineering track at the local community college, getting some prerequisites out of the way. I took Trigonometry 1 and 2. It was simple, something about understanding how it all works made sense. This new confidence spurred me on to realize this:

With enough Time or Effort, you can do Anything

And that’s the point I want to leave you with. Don’t hold yourself back because a task seems daunting. Every task has it’s own value of cognitive dissonance (the feeling of your brain shaking a big “NO”) that a person must push through in order to obtain control. The goal is not to obtain mastery, but competence in any area you like. Don’t hold yourself back because you’re not the best at any one thing; instead, build confidence by learning a new skill.

Today I’d like to share some tools (mostly Windows features) I use that save time on a PC. Some of these tips only save me seconds, but those seconds add up over a long time.

1. Getting Organized

I’m not the most organized person in the world by a long shot (just ask my wife). But I do try to make things easy to organize on my computer. So, I have one folder I save all my Out:think stuff in, one folder I save all my digital photographs in, and one folder I save all my personal projects in.

This allows me to quickly determine where a file would be located if I haven’t accessed it in awhile and need to get it again. In the old days, my computer was such a mess, I lost track of everything, using time that could have been used for a productive purpose.

Most of the tips below require that you use this type of “Main Folder -> Sub-folder” architecture to be useful.

2. Folder/Application Shortcuts

This might seem like a no-brainer, but you can put shortcuts just about anywhere. This enables you to capitalize on those folders that, by default, windows encourages (pushes) you to use.

Any windows user knows what it’s like when you need to save a document in Word, or in my case, Photoshop. The folder it starts you in is miles away from the desired destination folder. Fortunately, the left sidebar always has options for My Computer, My Documents, Desktop, and some other mostly unused stuff. Use this to your advantage.

1. Open two file explorer windows
2. Navigate the left window to your desired partition/drive (C:\ by default) that shows the folder you want to link.
3. Navigate the right window to “My Documents” (on Vista this is just the user’s name).
4. Now Right-Click and Drag the desired folder from the left window, to empty space in the right window (don’t drop it on a folder, or it will go into that folder).
5. When the option is given, choose “Create Shortcut Here”
   

   Here's how it's done.

6. Now when you save a document, you can navigate quickly to My Documents -> Your Favorite Shortcut, instead of clicking through.

It might be worth noting, that Vista brought back a feature I loved about windows 98, which is Favorites.

It’s pretty easy to take advantage of this. See the screenshot below:

Drag and Drop to add to favorites.

3. SendTo

SendTo must be a little known secret about Windows, because I’ve not seen a lot of people use it. Believe it or not, you can customize this feature. You don’t just have to ZIP things or send items to your email (which I’m not sure if anyone does). I also use this feature to send files to specific folders, and install fonts.

For Vista: To add to your SendTo list, just type “Sendto” in your file explorer destination field.

For XP: Go to Start Menu -> Run -> Type “sendto” in the field click OK.

Installing Fonts has Never Been Easier!

Now you just Right click and Drag your desired folders over to add their shortcuts the SendTo list. You can easily transfer files from one location to another (although I believe it copies by default). This is especially useful for downloading and installing fonts. When you get your new font and unzip it, just SendTo C:\Windows\Fonts to install the new font. I labeled mine “Install Font”.

4. Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts can be really effective…but most people don’t use them, who has time to remember the exhaustive list of them? Well, there’s a few that I bother to remember, they use the Windows Logo Key.

The windows logo key; Yeah, it’s the one between Ctrl and Alt — it has a purpose.

1. Windows Logo + D: Shows Desktop — press it again to go back to the previous state.
2. Windows Logo + E: Windows Explorer — allows you to look through your folders. It’s a quick access way to get to your files.
3. Windows Logo + F: Search for files and folders. — Saves you a couple clicks to get to this application.

5. Third Party Help

After using a Mac, I just can’t cope with Window’s abhorrant lack of concern for getting around quickly, so I call in some third party help. I have tried a number of programs that simulate the Expose feature, and have found some pretty good ones. Lifehacker had a pretty cool article on them that I would suggest reading. Right now I’m using TopDesk.

TopDesk isn’t freeware, its 20 bucks, but from what I can tell so far, it’s worth it. I am currently using a duel monitor system, and it does a very good job of showing all windows on both monitors…not consolidating to two.

Pretty cool right?

TopDesk will do more, so you can visit their website if you like, but I suggest trying out the free versions too, they might work just fine for your needs.

That about wraps it up. If you found this helpful, or would like to share a tip, Leave a Comment.