Been a very busy day here at the home office preparing for what will be about a week out of the office when all is said and done, so posting – regrettably – will be light. I’m on a plane most of tomorrow, which is why the grab bag is a day early, but in the interim here a couple of things on the docket.
GrandCentral
This isn’t the lengthier GrandCentral post I’ve promised, but given that I’m traveling this week it seems like a good time to roll out my GrandCentral number. That’d be 617.395.5685 (yes, it’s a Boston area code – long story). If you ring me on that, it’ll patch through to the office, the cell, and even my Gizmo client automagically, so obviously that’s going to be your best bet. I’ve altered my bio/contacts page to give that number rather than my cell. If this trial goes well, I’ll probably repoint the existing toll free (866.RED.MONK) over to that number, but for now use the number above if you need to reach me. Please.
Email Response Time
Was discussing this with a friend the other day, but had never really digested the impact it had on my email behavior. In short, I’m coming to believe that one of the reasons I take so long to reply to email is that I take a lot of time to reply to each email. Unlike many folks I know, I tend to not respond to emails quickly or lightly; I try to take the necessary time with each one, and answer everything completely, make sure nothing’s misspelled, and so on. I don’t turn them into novels, but I’d suspect that I take more time than the average email user to respond to emails. On the plus side, this means that my emails are misunderstood or poorly written less frequently than they might otherwise be, but at a substantial cost in terms of time.
The quick fix would be to lower the quality standards with respect to individual messages, but I’d still prefer to drive my current inbox traffic to other channels.
New Laptop
Just got word that the folks from Lenovo need the X60s they sent me for testing back (it’s apparently late, in fact), meaning that I’m going to have to strip this one and acquire a replacement. In all likelihood, I’ll be purchasing another Thinkpad, but I’m open minded. I was hoping for something solid state, but it looks like I should wait a bit on that. I was also considering getting the 13″ Macbook and dropping Ubuntu on it, until Alex reminded me at lunch that they a.) lack a right mouse button and b.) have a touchpad rather than pointing stick. Not going to work for me. I also need to figure out how likely it is that an X80 gets released in the next few months. Suggestions, as always, are appreciated.
