Jason's Notes About Stuff

The first time I sold everything I owned was 2009, when I moved to south Texas for four months as an experiment to see if I could run my consulting business remotely. The second time, Melissa and I knew that we were only staying in Toronto for a year, so we bought things cheap and knew we'd be unloading them soon. This time was a bit different. We had planned to stay in Victoria many years, so we were buying the "good stuff" -- things we planned to keep and enjoy for a long time. That made selling everything a bit more difficult for us. Not to mention, It's always a big inconvenience, of course :) I'm working from a coffee shop today because I sold my work desk and chair yesterday. That said, we've been given an absolutely amazing opportunity that we'd be crazy to turn down, so onward and upwards we go :) Nearly everything has been sold now, and we're counting down the days until our week-long stopover in Kitchener to visit friends and ...

As some of you may already know, Melissa and I were recently accepted for a one-year working holiday to France! We had our interview (which we conducted mostly in French) on November 18th, and received our visa in the mail the following week. I've been taking French classes at Alliance Francaise 3 days a week, and Mel has been practicing her French writing her resume and calling up places in France. I will continue to grow my startup, PMRobot , as well as managing consulting projects for Syllogistic Software , working remotely and following 4HWW principles. We're leaving Toronto for Paris on January 8th. After a few days in Paris, we're kicking off the trip with a cross-country of Italy, flying south to Naples on the 13th, then slowing heading north via Rome, Tuscany, Vienna, and Milan. From there we'll go west to Nice, where we'll be planting roots for a whole 3 months. It's been a lifelong dream of mine to live in the south of France, so here co...

For the longest time, I've been searching for a quick, easy way to take quick meeting notes. I used to use a text editor called SciTE, the same editor I use for quick code editing, but I find managing files in a file system to be a real pain. When I had an iPad for a while, I liked the default Notes application, but hated that there was no cloud storage or synchronization. (No, the crappy Gmail sync doesn't count) Then I heard about EverNote . I thought that was the answer to my prayers, but unfortunately those guys decided  to add every conceivable feature in the universe and have ended up with a bloated mess that takes an hour and a half to load. There's a bunch of others I've tried too, like UberNote , Springpad , and the Diigo mishmash of apps. But nothing was small enough, or simple enough for my taste. So I did what any good developer does. I created a "learning" project to scratch my own itch. I used technology I've discussed at the...

These days, I'm seeing more and more people who have trouble differentiating between things that are urgent , versus things that are important . I was reminded about this by a recent posting over at Business is Pleasure . Software and devices generally have a "do not disturb" setting that silences them and sends calls to voicemail. Use these features! If you're having lunch with someone and talking to them, don't try to answer emails and texts at the same bloody time! Urgency does not necessarily imply importance! In fact, they can often be inversely correlated. The most important things in your life often have little urgency attached to them, so it's up to you to keep track of them and make sure they don't get smothered and forgotten in the minutia of the day-to-day. So every day, take some time to turn off your cellphone , shut down your email , stop tweeting and twittering, sit down, and do something that's actually important ! Or...

Back last September, I reviewed my then-recent mobile phone watch purchase . All in all, it has done me fairly well.  For this review, I'll do a simple pros and cons list, followed by an overall recommendation. Pros It's on your wrist, so it's pretty difficult to forget to take it with you. It's quad band, so you can use it anywhere in the world. It has a camera and plays audio and video. It's a great conversation piece. Everybody calls you "James Bond" when you're wearing it :) But it's all not puppies and rainbows.  There are some serious problems. Cons The user interface sucks .  A lot.  The software is just plain awful and it's difficult to use. The Bluetooth functionality is buggy as hell. The build quality sucks .  A lot.  (see next few points) The stylus fell off within the first few weeks. The latch for the USB port broke after a few months. The band broke today.  This subsequently broke the casing and now it just say...

So today I received my Fido bill and noticed a new charge called "Other minutes." I was confused since I have a 150 minute plan and only used about 60 last month. I phoned in to customer support on my cell phone to inquire about the charge. The rep wasn't really sure, and had to put me on hold a few times to look things up, but guessed this was due to calls made "out of my zone." Now, I have a grandfathered plan from years and years ago (Sprint Canada before it was acquired) and I never used to have a "zone." Ever since Rogers acquired Fido, they've slowly (and without notice) modified my old plan to bring it in line with the current plans, which cost more and give you less . The hugely ironic thing: Just as she was starting to explain to me exactly my "zone" was -- the call was dropped . So I went to my online banking and paid the bill. Even if I wasn't leaving the country in a month, what could I really do? Switch to a new prov...