The not so smart phone/ Task orientation

I keep thinking about different things while messing with my phone.  I have a Motorola DroidX for work, and it feels somehow incomplete.  It's kind of like the framework has been built for what I want, but what I want out of the device just isn't there.  But it could be.  I keep thinking of the smart phone as a life management tool, not just a phone.

The parts are all there, but it's a disparate system where nothing matches up and tells me anything I want to know.  For example... there's a GPS in there, and I want to know where I've been all day.  Did I just wander to the office and stay there or was I out hitting dozens of stores?

I want a task list.  I do something like this with Outlook and GMail calendar, but that's not quite what I want.  I can't necessarily dictate what I want to do at every moment in the day, but I want to know what I need to do.  Let's say I have four tasks: T1, T2, T3, and T4.  These are things that need to be accomplished, but there isn't anything relating the tasks.  There may be a T1.1 in there, but T1 doesn't have to be completed to work on T4.  So I drive around and finish T1, and mark it off my list.  But then I have broken stuff to work on, and I end up just a few feet from where I need to do T4.  So I complete that task.   Now, T1 and T4 are complete. 

With gmail calendar and Outlook, if I finish the tasks out of order, I still get notifications about needing to go do T4 at 2PM.  I also have to go back at the end of the day and mark tasks as complete or incomplete.  I guess gmail and Outlook are more time oriented than task oriented.  But in my job I need task orientation and something that works towards task orientation. 

And if I create something that's task oriented, why can't I make something that has multiple subtasks for each individual task?  Example: T1 now has T1.1, T1.2, and T1.3.  These are all dependent on each other, and T1.1 has to be complete before I can complete T1.2, and T1.2 has to be complete before I start T1.3.  Now, if I finish T1.1 with the system I'm using now, I have to head back to the office, look through my task list table, and add T1.2 into my calendar.  That's not very efficient.

What if I add GPS capabilities into the device, and map a task to the GPS location?  So I need to buy milk, and I decide I want to buy it from Wal-Mart.  Next time I drive within a few miles of Wal-Mart, my phone yells at me and says "hey buddy, go to Wal-Mart and complete task T1, 'buy milk'".  Now that would be a smart phone.

Mists of Pandaria

So I decided to pop two quarters in the World of Warcraft machine and see what Mists of Panderia was all about.  It was probably closer to $45 in all truth.  But...  in the end, it's WoW with newer, pretty graphics and bears and Chinese mythology.  There really isn't much more to it than that.  Blizzard has done a good job of creating a game that gives players a reason to keep showing up and hitting the feeder for another food pellet.  Daily quests and achievements are jsut things they use to get people to show up day after day.

I'm not mad with Blizzard.  They want to make a buck and feed their workers.  And they came up with a game that gives people a reason to keep showing up.  But if you've played WoW, it's still WoW.  Once again, Blizzard hosed the fight mechanics so you have to relearn those all over again.  And they changed the way skills level up, so you have to grind dailies in order to level up skills and get better equipment beyond a certain point. 

So in the end, Blizzard made a game that wants you to keep showing up.  But I don't want to show up as much as I used to.  I've grown tired of the "find 8 things by killing 50 enemies and return it to me" quests.  I've grown tired of escorting weak pathetic idiots that take the WORST POSSIBLE PATH through an area because they are trying to escape.  Protip: if you are trying to escape, use the wide open forest ten feet behind you instead of going through the enemy encampment.  One bitey forest creature is a lot easier than 50 pissed off elves.  Seriously.

They do put a lot of character into the expansion.  The Virmen have been my favorite so far.  Virmen are giant rabbit creatures of questionable intelligence.  At one point, they bury tools to attempt to grow more tools.  I like these things for their humor.  Most of the rest of the races/creations aren't as interesting.  The worgen from the Cataclysm expansion were more interesting as a general rule, but they had a better back story and character growth.

The Pandarians themselves are all vaguely Chinese as is the entire continent of Pandaria, but I can't help but see this stopover in a strange continent as being a two page side story as opposed to a major event.  It just doesn't strike me as grand as going to Northrend was.  There's something about the entire territory that screams "time for an expansion and we're out of ideas" as opposed to a well fleshed out territory.  Pandaria is shaped a lot like Northrend to me. 

In many ways, that's my whole problem with the expansion.  After numerous great expansions that provide someplace to go and a new mythology everywhere, we end up in...  Pandaria.  It's just not as impressive as I expected it to be.  It strikes me of lots of polish in the build and quest, but it's all just a framework to get people showing up day after day and paying their $15 a month.  There's less heart to it.  But that's just me.

New Years Resolutions

So, a few days into the new year and I haven't written a new post.  I guess I should.  That's why I've got this thing up, right?  Producing new worthwhile content all the while trying to reap a profit from the whole proceeds?  Ok, so I'm only so altruistic.  Maybe.

Moving on.  I've set a few goals for this year.  Maybe they are simple.  Maybe they are not.

1) Get my baby emergency fund finished.   That's $1,000 in the bank for emergencies.

2) Pay off and cancel all the credit cards we have.

3)  Buy a house. 

4) Pass the CCENT and CCNA.

5) Learn Java.  Get a finished program on the Android Market.

So...  goals are one thing, but how am I going to accomplish this pile of stuff?  It's great to have goals, but what in the world are you going to do to make those goals a reality?  Let's say I wanted to go to Paris, France one day.  I don't, but it's a good example.  So if I wanted to go to Paris, I would create a list of stuff that I would need to accomplish in order to reach Paris, France.  I'd need a passport and a large sack of cash to pay for it all.  But how much cash would I need?  To know how much money I'd need, I'd have to figure out how long I wanted to stay.  If I wanted to stay for a just a few hours, then my cost would be a plane ticket and maybe a meal or two.  If I wanted to stay for a month, the plane ticket wouldn't be as big of a cost.  All the other little things would end up being the major cost. 

I said all that to say that goals are pointless unless you start making some sort of plan to accomplish them.  So what's my plan?

1) Wake up at 5:45 in the morning.  Study from 5:45 until 6:45 when I wake up the kids.  I tried waking up in morning before.  And it did great, but then I tied it to my wife, and then when my wife quit waking up at 5 in the morning, I quit.  Now, it's not tied to her.  It's tied to me.  If I want to get paid more, I need to pass the CCNA, and in order to pass the CCNA, I've either got to borrow money and take a class or teach myself.  Teaching myself is less expensive.  I just have to have more discipline.  And that's what I'm working on.

2) Pay off and cancel credit cards.  My credit card debt isn't horrible, but it's more than zero.  I'd rather it be zero.  The borrower is slave to the lender.  I'm using all I can save for my baby emergency fund and making minimum payments on everything, but that doesn't get the debt dealt with very quickly.  So the action step here is to wake up every Saturday morning I'm not on call and go donate plasma for $15-20 bucks a pop.  "That's not going to make much of a dent" is what you're saying.  But let's look at this logically.  My lowest credit card payment is $15 a month.  There are 52 weeks in a year.  I'm on call every 5th week.  4/5 or 80% of 52 is about 41 weekends.  So 41 weekends times $15 equals $615 in a year.  Let's say I mess up and only make it 35 times in the next year, that's $525.  The max on that credit card is only $300, so either way I pay off the credit card this year.  And my goal is accomplished.  Plus, I can run my recordings through my headset while donating plasma and study while making a buck.  It's win-win.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!  

Abandoned Thoughts

I was going to write several different things.  I realized they were all whiny, disconsolate answers of people blaming the world for their problems.  They were the thoughts of losers, and the thoughts of losers need to be plunged and scrubbed from our minds as quickly as possible.  The facts are facts.

1) I am expected to perform at work. 

2) No one cares what I think.

3) It is not my boss' job or responsibility to make me rich.

4) I am responsible for my own destiny. 

5) If I am mad at my destiny, then I am mad at my own choices.

6) I need to change my choices in order to succeed.

7) The choices I make must lead to action.

8) Those actions must lead me where I desire to go.

9) Before I can get anywhere, I need to figure out where I want to go.

So...  the facts are laid out, as best as possible.  I think Tom Stanley's The Millionaire Next Door pointed out that 80% of millionaires are first generation rich.  That means, to paraphrase Dave Ramsey, they started with nothing, did the right thing, and became rich.

Now why do I want to be rich?  Because if I am rich, then I can work when I want to work, and I can work on what I want to work on without having to worry about keeping the lights on and food in my stomach.  Instead of spending my spare time working on my desires, I can spend all my time working on my desires.  I'd much rather spend my time on what I want to rather than what I have to make a buck and put food on the table.  But that requires discipline to drag myself out of the laziness and apathy that surround the world and surround life.  It means dragging yourself out of what average life says and reinforcing your world with a different truth.

I'm not mad at marketing, but it pervades and eats at us.  I don't smoke cigars.  But working at an inbound call center that took orders for cigars forty hours a week made me think about cigars.  I didn't even take those calls.  I was stuck on PBS and some farm animal thing.  But the pervasiveness of what I listened to and what happened around me changed my thinking and made me change my behavior. 

The problem with me is that I've listened to the wrong people for too long, and I've got to beat those wrong thoughts out of my head, one thought and action at a time. 

The best example.

For all the effort I've been putting into describing what I've learned, a Cracked author narrowed it down to six truths. 

I would recommend everyone read this.  Because it's awesome.  And because this is the epitome of what I've been trying to espouse.  Both personally, financially, and pretty much everything else.  But it took a professional writer to go out and put it to paper well enough for it to get to the point of YES! 

It's an excitement that just can't be contained once you finally see someone point out the simple facts.  And it's strange, because everything David Wong, the author, discusses is biblical truth.  He even said so himself on page 2. 

So stop griping about what your life could be, and go create!  Create something FOR SOMEONE ELSE and not just for your consumption.  Create something because creating is worth the worth is.  Go out and create.  Because as people, that's what drives us and forces us. 

So get off your couch, quit being a damn slob, and take charge of your life.  

Quit whining about what you'd "like" to do and go out and do it.  

It's. Just. That. Simple.