Sometimes joy comes from unexpected places. Last week my sister sent an email out requesting help for a charitable organization with which she’s affiliated. It’s a free pantry and they are trying to organize a toy drive to provide toys for Christmas to the under privileged children of the families that are helped by the free pantry. They decided that it would be wonderful to be able to give each child something of their own to open this holiday season.

I thought it was a very nice idea and something to which my wife and I wanted to donate. Because I have a busy schedule I thought I would just write a check and let either my sister or one of the other volunteers pick up toys, but the more I got to thinking about it I thought it would be a nice gesture to actually go and buy toys myself. So my wife and I went toy shopping today.

I have to say that it was some of the most fun we’ve had in a long time. Once we got to the store and started going down the toy aisle we turned into kids, reaching out for toys and things we thought would be great for the kids. The time flew by and before we knew it an hour had passed and our shopping cart was literally overflowing with toys. We both had to keep our hands on top of the load as we slowly wheeled it to the checkout lines.

It was so powerful to get excited about these toys and to try to see through the childrens’ eyes to capture the excitement we can only hope they have this Christmas. It also was a powerful reminder that we don’t do enough throughout the year to help others. It’s so easy to let the holidays get us caught up with “good cheer” while the rest of the year our “holiday spirit” languishes in the hustle-and-bustle of the daily grind. It really made me take pause today to think about how I can keep myself more motivated throughout the year to help others and not just get “in the mood” during the holidays.

Something as simple as buying these toys made me stop and realize how fortunate my wife and I really are; and it made us realize that we need to take a more active role during the rest of the year to help others too.

I had the TV on and Geraldo’s show “Geraldo At Large” was on. He reeks of being an alarmist, ready to do anything for a rating, and he still has that slimy daytime-talk-show-host feel about him in general. I just felt intellectually dirty watching his show. He obviously panders to the lowest common denominator and it just insults my intelligence. I can’t imagine how people can enjoy watching his brand of “entertainment” (I can’t bring myself to call it news, not even putting it in double-quotes).

If you use technology at work, chances are high you will hear something quite often from your IT staff. Something that sounds vaguely like, “…make sure you backup your important work…”

IT people - of which I am one - like to say things like this. It’s because it indemnifies us when we have to tell you that it’s not normal for your computer’s hard drive to sound like it’s grinding coffee beans. It’s not normal at all! It’s likely the sound of your data being scrubbed into oblivion by the spinning electronic bits inside.

We like to lecture, “If you had backed up your data this would be no big deal.” And we cluck our tongues at the idea that backing up is “just too difficult” to do on a regular basis. “That’s no excuse,” we retort, “It’s a necessary responsibility of using technology!”

And the dirty, dirty secret that almost 99.6% of all IT people have is this; they seldom backup their own important files. And by seldom I mean never.

And do you know why? Because backing up files is difficult, boring and generally - to borrow a non technical term - not “sexy”. Who wants to stay home and make sure their backup runs successfully? No one, that’s who!

And that brings me to the point of this message. After an almost three months long hiatus - caused by a hard drive failure and no recent backup - my web site is once again functional. I’m finally back on-line and can once again write about what’s on my mind. I’m hoping my audience (of perhaps 7 people) will at this point rejoice.

I can say with some experience now; if you don’t backup your data on a regular basis you’re just begging for trouble. I wasn’t and trouble certainly had no problem finding my server.

So please make sure you actually heed your local IT professional’s advice to “backup often” and you have my permission to feel smug and superior on the inside with the knowledge that he probably doesn’t follow his own advice!

After filing many papers into my Pile Cabinet I have finally had occasion to need to retreive information from my Pile Cabinet.

The author of the system promises that I can “Locate any single piece of paper in 5 seconds”. I think that might be an exaggeration, but I was able to find the information I was looking for in about 30 seconds. I estimate that is the same amount of time it would have taken me to find the information in a more traditional filing system.

So if you’ve been intregued by the concept I can tell you this; it works for me!

After filing many papers into my Pile Cabinet I have finally had occasion to need to retreive information from my Pile Cabinet.

The author of the system promises that I can “Locate any single piece of paper in 5 seconds”. I think that might be an exaggeration, but I was able to find the information I was looking for in about 30 seconds. I estimate that is the same amount of time it would have taken me to find the information in a more traditional filing system.

So if you’ve been intregued by the concept I can tell you this; it works for me!

I’ve always been messy. Maybe messy isn’t the right work; I’ve always been a “piler.” I build stacks of things and then refer back to my stacks over and over.

Let me tell you, it doesn’t do much for the way your office and desk look at any given time. Piles of paper, stacks of un-read books and magazines…it’s a controlled chaos to be sure, but it’s still chaos!

I’ve always been good at starting a filing system, getting a few piles filed and then I slack off and don’t stay on top of things. New items go in my inbox, then into the inbox pile when the inbox is full and finally they migrate their way to the side of back of my desk where they will stay until dire need compels me to dig them out or throw them away. I’ve never been able to keep disciplined with my filing.

So imagine my surprise when I found a random web link for the Pile Cabinet. A filing system for “pilers.”

The referring link to the site had a minor warning that you had to wade through some rather sensational self-promotion about the system. So I went and checked it out and sure enough, there was a lot of “rah-rah” about the Pile Cabinet system. However I was intrigued enough to give it a try.

The basic premise is very simple; some people are filers and some are pilers. If you file you are probably into order and organization, instead of knowing where a piece of paper might be, you will file it so you can go straight to it. If you’re a piler you are more spatial, remembering which general pile holds the needed paper.

I am definitely a piler. I have been all my life - I was born a piler and I think I’ll die one. Since filing wasn’t working out so great for me I had to try something to get my desk under control.

The Pile Cabinet system is this: Get a box that will hold letter size paper, label each piece of paper with a unique serial number and log that somewhere searchable. Then stick the paper in the pile and forget about it. You have your searchable log with keywords to find the exact item you need, and then you just locate the piece of paper with the matching serial number.

If you’re a filer your skin is probably crawling right now (mom, are you out there?). Instead of dividing things up into organized and logical piles, you’re putting them all into one big meta-pile! The bigger the better! That doesn’t make any sense to a filer, but if you’re like me you probably had a light bulb switch on. It makes a lot of sense to consolidate your piles and then have a log to know exactly what’s in them! Eureka!

The author of the system - Blair Hornbuckle - claims you can add an item in 30 seconds and find an item in half that time. After using the system at work and at home for a few days now I can state that you can indeed add an item in about 30 seconds. I’ve not yet had to search for an item, but I imagine it would take between 15 seconds and 30 seconds.

In fact, if this whole idea piling makes sense to you then you should know this; it’s ridiculously easy to add items. As fast as you can type up a few key words and write the serial number on the document you can have it “piled” away. I spent 45 minutes at work tagging documents and piling them in my box. In that time my pile grew to 4″ high and my desk went from brimming with lose papers to looking almost respectable.

I still have some things to get piled, but with a minimal time investment I tamed months of papers that were just sitting around. As a benefit I also was able to purge about 30% of the items which had grown moot since I first received them.

I estimate it will take another 45 minutes to get my desk completely clear. Right now I don’t know how long it will take on a daily or weekly basis as paper crosses my desk, but it has to be better than my previous pile-it-on-my-desk-and-deal-with-it-someday system.

For all you pilers out there you should check this out. If not Blair’s system, check out The Paper Tiger. If you have piles of “stuff” cluttering your work space you may be very glad you looked into this!

As I yawned and stretched awake this morning it dawned on me that it was August first. July had slipped through my fingers and suddenly summer was feeling a little thin and faded. Sure, the weather is still hot and muggly, but in the early morning the very first hints - as faint and delicate as a gentle breeze - of the coming autumn are starting to be felt.

I remember being a child and dreading the coming forced death-march trips for the dreaded and feared back-to-school shopping. Such a trip holds no fun when the prospect of school is on the line. The days of doing nothing, but spending all day doing it were marked.

When I was a child I remember summers being a lot longer. We must have been out of school for five, maybe 6 months it seemed (it also felt like we must have been in school for fourteen, maybe fifteen months too)! Time was different. Summer lasted forever, stretching out before us with unlimited possibilities, the end never in sight.

Sometime between being a kid and becoming an adult time changed. Now every time I blink another month has ticked by. Every time I turn around a season has come and gone. Years tick by with increasing (and alarming) speed. Just last week it feels I was shoveling snow, yesterday I was cutting grass and tomorrow it feels as if I’ll need to rake leaves.

The worst part is there isn’t any break to just…be. Summer vacation is a long gone memory for me, and now school children are being integrated into “year-round” schools. Americans take so little time off and work more than almost any other country. We are productive, but at what expense?

We’re here on this mortal coil for so little time; why do we spend so much time focused only to look up now and then and marvel at how quickly time has passed us by?

We should remember our child within and strive to recapture that feeling of ultimate freedom and possibility that only a hot summer day with no responsibilities can create!

Everyone has language pet peeves. It drives me nuts when people pronounce the “T” in often and the “noise” in Illinois. Sure, these are minor grievances and I can usually look the other way (in the verbal sense).

I have, however, noticed a creeping trend of adding “or whatever” as a verbal crutch. I first noticed it in a person I work with, then I caught myself doing it. Now my reticular activator swings wildly around, spotting instances of “or whatever” everywhere it turns!

It’s a weak way to express an idea and it makes the speaker sound dumb, dumb, dumb. For example, “So I was talking to Carl, or whatever…” Well, either you were or you were not speaking to Carl. There is no need whatsoever to add “or whatever.”

And woe, the worst part is I’ve caught myself saying it! My brain consciously notices it about the moment the “..ver” slips out of my mouth. Inwardly I cringe, hating that I’ve let slip this most useless of verbal tripe. I’ve been working hard to banish it from my vocabulary, but I cannot seem to escape it in my life. All around me people reinforce the meme by saying it over and over.

We all must work to banish this saying from our lives! It does nothing to enhance the conversation. It does nothing to clarify the subject. It simply makes the speaker appear simple.

Stop saying it! Stop saying it! Stop saying it! This is the battle cry to myself and a league of people who feel their skin crawl when those two words are uttered.