Amazon's Kindle App for Android Has Arrived!

Woo! Hoo! It just arrived Monday. I've been slowly progressing through a book that is on my laptop in digital "Kindle" form, wishing I had the Kindle reader on my phone. Now I do, so I expect to get much more reading done on this book. I love they automatic syncing between my laptop and the phone. When I open the book it is always where I left off which ever device I was last reading on. Plus the software for the PC and Phone is free! So, I didn't spend any money on the Kindle reader device!

Amazon's Kindle App for Android Comes at Crucial Time

Battery Drain of my Android 2.1 Phone

The other night I went to bed as usual and put my phone on silent mode and left it by my night stand.  Usually in the morning I just switch it back to normal mode and the battery level is only slightly lower than when I went to bed.  Not much battery drain when the phone is not in use other than stand by mode.  This particular morning I got up and the phone was dead.  I plugged it in and was able to turn it on only to find the batter was completely drained!  This was a bit disturbing.  Especially since I use task killer and never leave background tasks running. I continued to experiment during the day with charging to see what was going on.  I couldn't get it to charge more than 1/3 the way.  So, I went to the Verizon store at lunch and asked them about it.  Their response was, "Oh, with those phones you have to take out the battery, wait a moment then re-insert the battery to "re-register" the battery with the phone."  While this sounded like bogus hokus pokus, I decided to give it a try.  The after noon went much the same.  The phone still would not charge.  After work I went back and they decided to give me a new battery.  Well that didn't seem to make much difference.  So, I searched for similar issues and found nothing that really matched this problem.  Finally I decided it was a software "glitch" and recorded all the apps I had installed and my screen layouts then went for the "Hard reset" option.  This resets the phone to the factory settings.  Then I had to reactivate the phone but that was automated OTA (over the air).  So I was able to re-download my apps and put back all my screen icons.  Once I logged back in to Google all my contacts, email, calendar, etc. came right back.  This step of Settings, Privacy, Factory data reset fixed my problem. By the way, HTC's site says the Factory data reset is under Settings, Security.  I'm sure this refers to Android 1.5 that was originally on the phone.

Afternoon trip to Tahoe

After spending the first part of the day getting some things done and cooling off in the pool, my wife came up with the idea we run up to Pope's Beach in Tahoe, and enjoy the remainder of the day then get some dinner and head back.  So, we quickly packed up a few things and headed off to Tahoe.

The water was coolish but not too cold, we jumped right in!

After the beach we headed out for dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Express at Heavenly Village.  Anna was tired by the end of the day and fell asleep on the drive home.

Catch 22 in awareness of our own competence.

Catch 22 in awareness of our own competence.

9800 address plaque

9800 address plaque
Originally uploaded by picksnoz

Julie's latest mosaic! Visit her flickr site to see more photos of this project and others.

Time Management

The most difficult thing about time management is prioritizing tasks. Thanks to a lecture on this subject I watched by Professor Randy Pausch. I've found a logical, simple, and easy method for prioritizing tasks that both helps me get important items done while reducing or eliminating the unimportant busy work that often comes my way, thus saving me that potentialy wasted time.

Items should be organized on a 4 square table with Important / Due Soon in the upper left, Important / Not Due Soon in the upper right, Not Important / Due Soon in the lower left, & Not Important / Not Due Soon in the lower right. Here is an Example Time Management Chart. This chart / method of task prioritization came from a time management lecture by Professor Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon. He is also the author of The Last Lecture (book link at Amazon), here is the video of this lecture. This method struck a chord with me. Until seeing this method, I found most other systems for prioritizing tasks to be too combersome.

First big splash of the pool season!