March 20, 2009 at 6:49 pm
JoeA (3/20/2009)
Coffee and RedGate tools
Sounds like someone aiming for a free shirt 🙂
March 20, 2009 at 6:53 pm
They have my vote Steve 🙂
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
March 20, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Heh... I agree... all of the technology is fasinating. But the thing that increases my productivity the most is... downtime. Even the hour long drive to work is great downtime. I turn off the cell phone, turn on my favorite oldies station, and hit cruise control. When I eat breakfast, that's all I do is eat breakfast. Technology has helped there, too. If the phone rings while I'm eating or showing, I just know that wonderful lil' voice mail feature will take care of things for me. 8 to 12+ hours a day is enough work for me whether I'm salaried or not.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
March 21, 2009 at 9:25 am
Blandry,
I'm late in a response, and apologies for that. However I have to say I'm a little surprised you'd make an assumption or imply that being able to work in different ways means I'm not enjoying life, balancing it, or neglecting my kids. Actually I'm a little insulted as well.
My being able to work in the kitchen while I'm cooking or on the road doesn't mean that I am missing time with my kids. Doctors, lawyers, heck, even when I dug ditches for water and sewer lines, I, and others, were away from my family, sometimes all night, which isn't a great balance. But it happens, and in the short term you are out of balance.
However wirelessly, I can handle things without leaving home. Or I can move work around. I take my kids to school almost every morning. I pick them up from the bus at 3:30, ask about their days, get them going on homework. Usually WITHOUT my computer. How many working parents can do that? I go on field trips, I eat lunch with them a couple times a month, things that I can do because I can check email on the road, or because I can work in different locations when it's appropriate. I'm not bound to a desk. I can work in bed, at night, after I've put kids to bed and get things done I missed during the day. I couldn't do that if I had to be in a specific physical location, especially an office, all day. Or if I couldn't do some things remotely and had to sit around waiting for them to complete before I could leave to do something with my kids.
Finding a balance is hard. I'll grant you that. Many people have trouble with it, but to imply that these technologies create that imbalance is incorrect. Plenty of the people that work too hard now would have been doing this 20 years ago by staying late at some office, not able to work wirelessly in other places.
And people do it too much, that's for sure. I stopped to check email yesterday at a gas station going, and coming, from the mountains. However in between the phone sat in my car, and I snowboarded with kids all day, giving them some Daddy time. I made up for it when they were asleep last night, all of us tired, me checking email with my wireless connection. Something that has made me more productive, and a father that spends more time with my kids.
March 21, 2009 at 12:31 pm
The smartphone is one of them, I'm on various sites during the week and being able to get my E-mails and calendar syncing straight to my cellphone was a major improvement. The internet and search engines, how often do we use these to help solve problems? I used to work long nights when I got back to the office, and my family life suffered. Now with laptop, wireless at home, VPN, I go home after a day visiting clients and complete my work at home. Rather than being stuck in a home office (where I might as well have stayed at work). I'm with my family, they're watching TV but I'm still able to work on my laptop.
March 23, 2009 at 8:33 am
Multiple monitors, definitely. I currently use 4, 3 hardware and 1 'software'. A few years ago I bought a little client-server application called MaxiVista which allows me to use any PC as a 2nd monitor, or remote control it so it can do something else.
Next would be the Internet and search engines (used to be Altavista, now it's Google).
Finally, my iPod Touch (it would be an iPhone, but I currently can't justify the contract to myself as I don't make enough calls :-D). I use it for eMail, Calendar and Internet access, but have also used it to control a PC in a presentation, to do spreadsheet calculations, to transfer files and, as a bonus, I can watch movies or listen to music! 😀
Derek
March 23, 2009 at 8:44 am
The multiple monitors definitely helps me work faster. I have 3 on the desk, struggle slightly when I'm on the laptop.
itouch controlling a presentation? Post a link!
March 23, 2009 at 9:11 am
I have to say both High Speed Internet (only available to me in the last 18 months) is the best. I commute to work and for the past 10 years if I had a job to perform that would be too hard using dial up and a vpn connection I would have to drive into work to perform the task (sometimes it would only take 15 or 20 minutes) and then drive back home. This has given me the BEST home/life balance. I have no problem turning myself off when at home and will perform what I know is required and then disconnect. If I don't check email I won't know about it until I am back in the office!
March 23, 2009 at 10:59 am
Steve Jones - Editor (3/23/2009)
The multiple monitors definitely helps me work faster. I have 3 on the desk, struggle slightly when I'm on the laptop.
My setup is actually using a laptop - its own screen + the dock output (which the Dell D810 can drive as 2 screens), a separate video card in the docking station) plus a desktop PC as a 'soft' screen via the network.
itouch controlling a presentation? Post a link!
Look for mbpowertools in the App Store (or go to http://www.mbpowertools.net).
I actually used WiFiRemote Lite (free) which has a touchpad area an 6 hotkeys which I programmed as Shift+F5 (start slideshow), Esc (end slideshow), PgUp, PgDn, Enter & Tab to try it out, and was sufficiently impressed to buy the full version, but often find that the Lite version actually does most of what I want.
Derek
March 23, 2009 at 2:08 pm
SSC has been an immense help - There have been so many times that I've found code snippets just in the nick of time to solve a problem.
iPhone - especially since I have downloaded an app which allows me to RDP to my home computer - anytime, anywhere!
- Paul
http://paulpaivasql.blogspot.com/
March 23, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Steve Jones - Editor (3/23/2009)
The multiple monitors definitely helps me work faster. I have 3 on the desk, struggle slightly when I'm on the laptop.itouch controlling a presentation? Post a link!
Totally agree. Once you get used to multiple Monitors it is hard to go back!
* Noel
March 23, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Ah. :sigh: I don't like multiple monitors. Get the geometry wrong and you can have stuff positioned between them. I had a coworker fight that for 15 minutes before we disabled his second monitor and refreshed his desktop. Too funny. Even he had a good laugh over that.
What I want is ONE monitor that does it all. Something lie the Grand Canyon. Google the phrase "grand canyon" monitor with the quotes and get a look at this wonder. I was trying to call them to order one, card in hand. Then I found out that it isn't. :crying:
ATBCharles Kincaid
March 23, 2009 at 6:11 pm
It must be called the "Grand Canyon" monitor because you need to have deep pockets to buy one.
March 24, 2009 at 6:11 am
Charles Kincaid (3/23/2009)
Ah. :sigh: I don't like multiple monitors. Get the geometry wrong and you can have stuff positioned between them. I had a coworker fight that for 15 minutes before we disabled his second monitor and refreshed his desktop. Too funny. Even he had a good laugh over that.
I have 4 monitors in an inverted T layout ...
X 4 X
3 1 2
... where X='no screen'.
Occasionally applications will open 'off-screen', but it's more likely to be below the bottom of the screen than elsewhere.
I think some applications try to get the screen size to work out an offset and get given the total dual screen height; since screen-4 is 1280x1024 and screen-1 is 1280x768 (widescreen laptop), this gives 1792 as the height; the app then takes half this and puts it's opening window this distance below the top of screen-1 in an attempt to center it, i.e. 128 pixels off the bottom of the screen! Of course, they do the same thing horizontally, so the window is actually below screen-2 (640 pixels rom left edge).
The solution is to use the old keyboard shortcuts to move the window ... alt-space, M, up-arrow(hold until it appears).
I'd severely miss the multiple screens. When developing I have Visual Studio on screen-1, SSMS on screen-4, Outlook overlaid by 'watch' windows on the left and internet explorer overlaid by the application on the right. So much easier than Alt-tabbing all the time!
Of course, I could probably do the same with a nice 50" screen if it had a resolution of 3600x2000 or better!
Derek
March 24, 2009 at 8:58 am
Bob Abernethy (3/23/2009)
It must be called the "Grand Canyon" monitor because you need to have deep pockets to buy one.
At the time I thought that I was coming into enough green to make it happen. Turns out that it was a hoax. The monitor, not the green. Turns out that the green did not come to me.
ATBCharles Kincaid
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