I have learned to set a physical timer, on my desk, for meetings. Yes, Outlook has a reminder pop-up but it has a few problems for me. One is that it does not work consistently. The bigger one is that I have 15 (!) windows open on my desktop and the pop-up can get lost.
This timer was also featured in this blog in October:
Today my sister, Lava, told me that thinking about the same thing for too long does not do any good.
And since then, I keep thinking about this idea…
While shopping for a digital camera at Best Buy, I tried the Consumer Reports app to look for ratings. All you do is hold the phone over the bar code on the box. No reviews yet but they did show that Amazon had it $10 cheaper so I asked for a price match, while flashing the Amazon page, and got it!
Today I was cutting though a different Best Buy and saw the cutest case for my new camera. I thought $20 was a bit steep so I tried the CR scanner again and got it for $9.99! (they did not have Amazon in the cash register list and had to use “other” but it worked!)
There are other bar code lookup apps that will tell prices. Let me know what works for you.
Here is the prize itself:
I have learned to stock up on cool greeting cards when I find them. I want to be like my friend Gayl, who never misses a birthday!
I learned that I can copy a column in Excel and paste it into a row (flipping it 90 degrees) by using Paste Special and checking the Transpose box.
Did you already know this?
Carolyn introduced me to ravelry.com. This website has an advanced search engine for over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND knit and crochet patters, and two thirds of those are free!
This is dangerous stuff.
So many lessons from one event, and the first one learned by me about a thousand times so far,, and counting.
1. VERIFY the meeting time! Otherwise, a leisurely trip may turn into a big crisis, needlessly! It’s as easy as counting on the calendar, rather than my memory. Just do it!
2. Comm Ave at Kenmore Square is a great place to catch a cab
3. A cab ride is that saves the day is worth its weight in gold. Well…maybe not quite that much. But possibly the more than the number on the meter, and I can split the difference. Well… maybe not split it in half, but I can certainly afford to show my appreciation for having my day saved.
4. It feels really good, when going to a new place to meet with new people, to arrive early.
I don’t know why it has taken me years to figure this out, but I am always really cold at my beauty salon (or Beauty Saloon, as it is called. No kidding.)
I need to remember this and dress much more warmly.
From Gale:
I learned that when the temp is [very] cold, my garage fridge turns itself off and the food in the freezer defrosts.
Doodle is awesome – and free! It lets you propose and find common times to meet. Michelle introduced me to Doodle years ago when she used it for scheduling meetings across multiple companies. Since then we’ve used it for picking social dates, looking for common times. Now our family is using Doodle for elder care scheduling, looking to book unique times.
I learned a way to get around a missing feature: For “doodles” that span long periods of time, you lose the participant name on the side. It lacks what Excel calls “freeze panes”, so the names scroll away.
Steve showed me this: although you can’t always see the original list of names, each name will be displayed if you hover the mouse over a booked block.
Jane's Lessons Learned 