Saturday, December 27, 2008

Wii Fit Reviews




For Christmas we got our kids a Wii Fit. It's quite an amazing video game. My kids can't get enough. Here are our reviews:


Bud (age 9): It's fun. It makes you energetic and skiing is awesome. You can exercise without even leaving your front door.

Princess (age 7): It's really cool. Hoolahooping is really awesome. You have a piggy bank on it and you get money to get more games.

Tiger (age 5): Soccer is my favorite game.

Cousin Oshkosh (age 10): It's fun. My favorite thing is running. It sometimes hurts and you can trip.

Dad (age undisclosed): This is a great way to burn off all of the excess energy the kids have when you really want them to go to bed.


So there you have it. Our family gives Wii Fit it 5-stars.

Friday, December 12, 2008

E-mail Overload




I believe that communicating with each other has become MORE difficult with the advent of certain technologies. Is there a light anywhere in this dark abyss we've all fallen into?

For a long time now, I've wanted to calculate the number of e-mails I send and receive in any given year. So I just did. For the last 12 months, I sent 8,420 e-mails. I received 13,980 e-mails (not including all of the sp*m that ended up in my landfill account, a.k.a. Yahoo Mail). That means for every e-mail I sent I received 1.7 e-mails in return. Yikes!

Am I sick? Is everyone experiencing this amount of volume?

This pattern has got to stop!

It's taken me a long time to realize the benefits of IM. I know. I know. I've been a real laggard in the adoption of this technology. I text message like my thumbs are on fire, but the whole IM thing has taken some time to adopt.

However, today, when I had a server malfunctioning at a very inopportune time, and I needed to get a tech to troubleshoot it fast, I realized the true benefit of IM. [Tech geeks have used IM for years. What's taking the rest of us so long to widely adopt it?] With my server crisis burning, I was able to communicate quickly, effectively, and get the problem resolved without a single e-mail.

I just found an article written by By Anne Fisher, Fortune senior writer. She did a review of a book called The Hamster Revolution, written by some people that help "the sickies" cut down on e-mail.

Here are a couple of points that are sort of "duh" but it doesn't hurt to read them anyway.

Send less. Think hard before you use the "reply to all" and "cc" features, and use group distribution lists sparingly. By targeting your e-mails, rather than spraying them, you'll be more efficient and effective.

Quit boomeranging. Send 5 e-mails and you'll get, on average, 3 responses, most of which aren't necessary. If you eliminate just 1 in 5 of your outgoing e-mails, you'll instantly shrink the incoming volume, and save time on needless back-and-forth exchanges.

Stop - then send. Before hitting the "send" button, ask yourself: Is this information timely, topical, and targeted? Will it help the recipient do his or her job better? If not, skip it.

So, in short, if you need to communicate with me, please consider my plight.