My GTD System For Outlook
I frequently let my inbox get out of control and that was especially true over vacation. After reading a Lifehacker guide to setting up Gmail keystrokes for Outlook, I decided to set those up and add some of my own. It makes handling email in Outlook a whole lot easier.
I have tried to use my inbox as a todo list by leaving email in there that needs action. That has lead to a bloated inbox. My new solution is to drop email into one of three folders: Follow Up, Read Later and Deleted Items. I added simple keystrokes to Outlook using the techniques from the Lifehacker article so I both move an email to one of those folders and set a reminder at the same time. This seems to be working very well so far. I should mention that I also filter all email not sent directly to me into a “CCmail” folder. That becomes a second priority after my inbox.
Here are my additions to Gmail keys:
“0″, zero, shortcut key to leave an item in the inbox and set a reminder for 4pm today.
“1″ shortcut to move an item to the Follow Up folder and set a reminder for tomorrow morning
“2″ shortcut to move an item to the Follow Up folder and set a remider for Friday morning.
“s” shortcut to move an item to the Read Later folder. These emails seem to have important information I should know. I may get to these someday. “s” is like the Gmail “star” shortcut.
I have also set up “e” and “#” to delete email. I never flush my deleted folder. It is my entire archive. I frequently search it for old email. With good search tools like Xobni, Google Desktop, and Microsoft Search, a must have addon for Outlook search, there is no reason to store email in multiple archive folders.
Let me know if you would like my version of the config file. It uses AutoHotKey to automate keystrokes in Outlook. My biggest annoyance is AutoHotKey doesn’t seem able to use these keystrokes in an open email. This works only when viewing the main Outlook window. But it is still worth the effort.
A Simple Formula for Weight Loss
The New York Times had an article about the results of a study on various diets and their effectiveness. The surprising results are … <drum roll> …
“people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how.”
Wow. The formula for weight gain/loss is very simple: calories in – calories burned = weight gain/loss. It is as simple as that. Eat more calories than you burn and you will gain weight. Most of the popular diets are a distraction for people. They give people a set of rules to follow and that helps many people in the short term. What we really need is an emphasis on counting calories. Track the foods you eat on a daily basis and it will be immediately obvious how to lose weight.
I recommend The Daily Plate for this.
A Great Story: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas
I had been saving the link to this story for months and finally got around to reading it today. It is a great true story of the salvage of the Cougar Ace, a cargo ship full of Mazda cars. It is the story of the salvage company who went in to save the ship. The clock was ticking for the salvage company as the ship was sinking and drifting toward the rocky shoals of the Aleutian Islands. The prospect of losing a few hundred million dollars and creating an environmental nightmare were just days away. Exciting stuff.
I remember hearing about the story on Digg or somewhere like that. Even though the ship was successfully saved, Mazda decided to destroy all the cars to avoid potential warranty and legal problems down the road. The cars had been sitting at a 60 degree angle for two weeks.
This is a story that is begging to be told in a movie. I hope it happens.
Better late than never
I came across this a few mins ago and felt compelled to share it immediately:
I had high hopes for AIM Share a while back. It never took off the way I thought it would. It is nice to stumble upon it on the wild wild net.
Why does BCC exist in mail clients?
To all you email developers: please either get rid of BCC or warn me when I “reply all” when I’ve been bcc’d.
I almost fell into the bcc trap today.
Blind Carbon Copy (bcc) is an arcane feature that is carried over from release to release of new mail clients. Email ettiquite says we should never bcc anyone but forward the mail to them after it is sent. Otherwise, the person you bcc may just “reply-all” and expose your secret copy to them. Most bcc’s I’ve received are when there is some argument or disagreement and I get a bcc as a form of an FYI, “those people are assholes and I want you to know about it.” Those are the exact situations where we should not reply all. But it happens. Mail systems don’t have the good courtesy to warn you that you were bcc’d. This would be a very useful feature!
Airline to charge by the pound
An article on Gadling caught my eye this morning. It gives the saying “pack light” a whole new meaning.
It’s arrived. New airline to charge by pound
I have had this same idea for a while and think it makes sense. We pay by weight to ship packages. Airlines weigh bags when they are checked to calculate the amount of fuel needed. But they don’t weigh the passengers. That doesn’t make sense. They must use an average weight of a person in order to calculate fuel properly. The built-in cost of transporting an average weight person is spread across all passengers whether they are heavy or light. It’s not very fair to lightweights who subsidize the cost of flying a heavy person.
There will be some big challenges with this type of system. Consumers want to know the price of a ticket before they buy. The airline will need to estimate weight of passenger and baggage when when quoting a price. This is an easy problem to solve if tickets are purchased on the airline web site. Just enter your weight and verify at the airport. They could estimate baggage weight by allowing the consumer to click on icons of bags like theirs and using some averages. The airline would be shut out of big online travel systems such as Orbitz and Expedia until those systems make changes to accommodate weight based pricing.
A second problem is verifying the weight of the passenger and baggage at the airport and either charge or credit a passenger for an overage or underage. They are able to do this now with baggage. If a bag weighs more then 45 lbs., many airlines will add an extra charge. I don’t see why the bags and people couldn’t use the same process.
Update: Steve’s comment made me double check. I looks like this is a bogus airline and must be a publicity stunt. For what purpose, I can’t tell. I still like the idea 
MPG of a golfer
From an email that is making the rounds:
A recent study found the average American golfer walks about 900 miles a year.
Another study found American golfers drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year. That means, on average, American golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon.
Kind of makes you proud.
Buy Gas From Sunoco and Shell
An email about improving gas mileage has been making the rounds. It made me question where my gas comes from. I want to avoid sending my money to the Middle East. It turns out it is possible with a little care.
The DOE has some helpful data. Only 17% of U.S. oil imports come from the Persian Gulf. 50% comes from the Western Hemisphere. They just published data from 2007 that shows how much oil each company imported from the Middle East in a report called “Crude Oil Imports From Persian Gulf 2007“.
The bottom line here is that I will do my best to buy gas only from Shell and Sunoco who import very little to no oil from the Middle East. Exxon Mobile imported a huge amount of oil from the Middle East and will be avoided.
Update: it looks like Citgo is one of the good companies as well.
Blowing Up Spacecraft
I think our ability to shoot down satellites is very cool. It shows we may have a chance of defending ourselves when the space aliens invade
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