Month: September 2005

Breaking News on CNN.com: President Bush says he takes responsibility for the federal government’s failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina. Details soon.

It takes a real man to step up and admit to one’s mistakes – whether they are fully to blame or not. CNN just reported that President Bush is taking responsibility for the government’s failure in responding to Hurricane Katrina. Is this really government’s fault? I don’t think so.

The City of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana are responsible for this tragedy. Those governments failed to act in a timely manner. They gambled with the lives of their citizens by assuming the levees would hold and New Orleans would be safe. If anything, I think the Federal Government has bailed them both out by coming in like they have done. Sure, one could argue that the Federal government should have come in sooner. But if they didn’t, I can only say that it’s because the state didn’t request them to come in quickly enough.

Why isn’t anyone pointing fingers at the state and local governments in Louisiana? This is as much their fault as anyone else’s…

I’ve been listening to a lot of Switchfoot lately. Their new album, Nothing is Sound, was released today. I downloaded it off of iTunes this morning.

I love songs like “Stars” and “The Blues”. I’m not sure I like it as much as their last album, “The Beautiful Letdown”, but I’m sure this album will grow on me as much as the last did.

Macromedia Flash Player 8 is out of beta, and is ready for public consumption.

Honey, he shrunk the iPod. How Jobs and his team of Apple innovators created this season’s must-have gadget.

Click here to read this article on Time.com

Revealed in a post by Jason Fried over the Basecamp Forums, 37Signals is now testing out email reminders associated with Milestones. Pretty cool, and couldn’t have come too soon if you ask me.

It’s hard to believe it’s been four years since that fateful morning in September where evil was unleashed upon thousands of Americans. It was hard to imagine, at the time, how anyone would be willing to go so far to destroy so much.

I was in the student building on the campus of Augusta State University the morning of the attacks. I was on a computer in the Phoenix magazine office working on a layout, or surfing, or something. My brother Matt called me on my cellphone and told me that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. He told me to cut on the news to see it. I was intrigued and panicked at the time, and walked feverishly over to the TVs on the second floor. A crowd of over 20 students was watching the news. And then it happened – ANOTHER plane hit the second tower. We were ALL in shock. How? Why? What’s going on? We all sat there, collectively confused at what the images we were watching on TV.

Little did we know that it had only just begun. I was glued to the TV from that point on. There were fears that other planes might strike other targets – the White House, the Pentagon, the Supreme Court, Congress… DC was in panic. We were in panic. If planes could strike the WTC, we feared they might come down in our neck of the woods as well. (The Savannah River Site – a nuclear weapons facility – is within striking distance [no pun intended] of Augusta, Georgia.)We then watched as the plane crashed into the Pentagon… and then the reports of the downed plane in Pennsylvania.

I was numbed by this point. I couldn’t believe that what I was watching on the news could possibly be true. But it was. It was too true.

Days afterwards, we watched as rescuers dug through the rubble of the fallen WTC towers… We watched brave men and women, search for survivors, for bodies, for anything. We watched our country unite, disaster be damned! We were going to make it through this! We weren’t going to let the enemy beat us!

For a few weeks, America was whole again. We mourned together. We prayed together. We stood strong together. We were going to fight back, rebuild. We were not going to let this keep us down.

So here we are… four years later. We are still battling back. Our troops are still in Afghanistan and Iraq. America is fighting a never-ending war against terrorism. 9/11 was the spark that started us down the path we are travelling now. Never forget. They struck us. They provoked us. The killed our citizens. They took our planes and blew up our buildings. They thought they could destroy us and demoralize us, but they only made us stronger. I hate to make things sound like it’s us vs. them, but when you get right to it, that is the way things are today. It is a war of Good vs. Evil.

We are going to win this fight. They are not going to keep us down. They are not going to change our way of life. They are going to lose this battle. God willing, we shall prevail.

I was sitting here checking my email, when I realized what day it was. I decided I would try and find an old article I had writted right after 9/11 happened that appeared in the local newspaper, but I couldn’t find it. What I did find was rather interesting though (at least to me, anyways). I found dozens of blog posts I had on an old version of cdharrison.com neatly tucked away on my external hard drive. Instead of sleeping (like any normal person would have done by now), I’ve posted those entries onto the site. You can read them by checking out the Archives. One interesting thing to note is, I didn’t blog for a couple of years… For a time, I kept my site online just as a way for me to showcase work. That explains the 3 year gap that appears in the archives. (For some reason, I felt compelled to explain the gap.)

I’ve been meeting Scott Villemain, a coworker and friend at PowerServe, weekly to study the Bible. When I first started, I read regularly from the NIV translation. Scott had a copy of the ESV Translation of the Bible, and recommended that I consider. We’ve been reading from it for several months now, and I really enjoy it compared to the NIV translation.

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered a copy of the The Reformation Study Bible off of Amazon.com. It features a lot of sidenotes, to help readers better understand the context which certain verses are delivered.

If you aren’t familiar with the ESV, why not give it a look? You don’t have to go out and buy a copy of the ESV, but you can if you like… I’d recommend checking out their website to read through some scripture…

What tools do you use to get your job done on a day to day basis? I’ve been thinking about this more and more often at work. What do you use that improves your productivity? I’ve prepared a list below of things I use on a daily basis… Would love to know what other people are using out there!

Project Management

Basecamp – I use Basecamp at work and for the limited number of independent projects I have on my plate. The fact that I can easily collaborate with clients through Basecamp to see a project through completion is a great thing! Basecamp makes us look more professional, too.

Billing

Blinksale.com – Before BlinkSale, I struggled to remember what invoices I have outstanding. The $6/month I pay for BlinkSale to keep on top of what I have outstanding is more than worth the expense.

Blogging

I use Blogger to publish blog entries. I tend to write most of them in w.Bloggar, a stand-alone app that plays nicely with the Blogger API.

Graphic Design

I use Adobe Creative Suite – PhotoShop CS, Illustrator CS and InDesign CS – for graphic design work. All websites I design start as concepts in PhotoShop or Illustrator.

Web Development

I use Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 for working with code, but I never leave home without Notepad. I figure if you’re going to work with HTML, CSS, etc. you better know how to get your hands dirty.

9/13 UPDATE: Welcome Basecamp Forum users! I hope this review is helpful to you if you are considering the new Time Tracking feature in Basecamp.

A couple of days ago, I shared the news with you that 37Signals had included Time Tracking to Plus and Premium level accounts in their latest update to Basecamp. This morning, I wanted to cover that update a little further.

First, Time Tracking in Basecamp isn’t meant to be comprehensive or a replacement time tracking software. It doesn’t include a “stopwatch”, for accurately accounting of time. It’s just a time log – where you can choose the date, number of hours spent on an item, and a description for that item, and press ‘Add to log’. Simple enough. Right? (That’s called Getting Real, folks!)

Above: The primary interface in Basecamp for inputting time. This screen includes a place for entering new time, and allows you to view time inputted so far. Clicking on ‘Create a Report’ allows you to generate reports based on date ranges, persons with time, etc. All reports can be exported to CSV files.

The 37S folks, took time tracking a step further by incorporating Time Tracking into To-Do lists as well… New and existing To-do lists can now have time tracking added to task items. Why’s this notable? Well, it allows you to better track the time you spend on individual tasks. Some shops already do this, but we tend to track time on the Client level, not the project level. By using Basecamp to track time spent on individual tasks, or projects, I am able to better gauge the amount of time I am spending on certain things. (It also allows me to compare actual cost of work vs. the estimated cost of the project.)

When you enable Time Tracking on To-do Lists, a little clock icon appears next to each task in the list. If there is any time involved in any of the tasks, the clock icon will be colored green. To add or view time associated with a task, click the clock icon and a widget will be displayed to allow you to view total hours spent on the task (if time is present already) and/or it will allow you to add time.

The more that I use the Time Tracking feature in Basecamp, the more I appreciate its simplicity. I am still using Quickbooks Pro Timer to track my time, but as I add entries into it, I copy the descriptions of work rendered into Basecamp as well. It’s a little extra work, but not that big of a deal. Time tracking is a great addition to Basecamp, one well worth the price of a Plus or Premium level plan.