Categories
Work

23 Ways to Hack Your Work

Hands holding up handwritten sign: “Too busy to be creative — it sucks!”
Photo by Mary-Cakes / Desiree. Click to see it on its original Flickr page.

Over at the blog Dumb Little Man (whose slogan is “Tips for Life”), there’s an entry titled Hack Your Work: 23 Ways to Get Ahead, Work Less and Achieve More with some good ideas. Here’s the intro:

It’s something we’re all looking for — the perfect solution that will minimize our work life while still getting the stuff done that we need to get done. Well, that one solution doesn’t exist, but with a combination of strategies, you can get to where you want to be.

Now, none of these tips will turn your life around. But they can make a big difference, and when used together, your work life might just be enjoyable, productive, low-stress and high fun. And these tips won’t work for everyone. They’re not meant to be used as a step-by-step guide. It’s a list of strategies that work — choose your favorites and give them a try.

Categories
funny

Placement is Everything, Part Deux

Movie marquee listing “Pirates”, “Knocked Up”, “Shrek”
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

If you liked this movie marquee, you might also like this one.

Categories
Uncategorized

Blast From the Past: The Girl Who Cried “Webmaster”

Moving to a new blogging tool and URL has pretty much made every old link on this site invalid. In order to help the search engines re-index the site and regular readers find the more popular stories, I’m pointing to old stories. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, come stroll down memory lane; if you’re new to The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century, this is your chance to read some of this blog’s most popular entries.

The Kindness of Strangers

A phrase that’s been popping up lately — thanks to Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding — is “the kindness of strangers”. I benefited from the kindness of a stranger back in the spring of 2003 when a reader of this blog pointed out that the new girlfriend (“The New Girl”) I’d been gushing about was not who she claimed to be. The story, titled The Girl Who Cried “Webmaster” was my most popular article of 2003 and was the exact opposite of all those warnings about the people you meet on the internet: in this case, the con artist was someone whom I met in real life, while the honest person was a stranger on the internet.

Some interesting things about this story:

  • I am aware of only one person who was rooting for the New Girl — one “Rachel”, who let it be known in the comments of a friend’s blog. She saw it as a reason to celebrate female power in unexpected places. I wonder if she sought that much-needed professional help.
  • That entry led to my first contact with AKMA, who dropped me a line the in comments. I’d meet him in real life later that year, at a Bloggercon cocktail party I would gatecrash (with the assistance of the accordion), and at that party, he’d introduce me to the Ginger Ninja. Two years later, he would be one of the officiants at our wedding.
  • A friend of mine who worked in tech suggested that I take the story down, warning me that it would be “career-limiting”. In fact, it helped me land my current job at Tucows.
Categories
funny Music

Now That Pussycat Dolls Song is Stuck in My Head

This graphic made me laugh out loud:

Bea Arthur: “Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot like Bea”
Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

(I’ve been threatening to learn that song on accordion.)

Categories
Uncategorized

Unlikely Incoming Link of the Week

Andrew Sullivan caricature by Terry Colon.Well, if I handed out “Link from the Person Least Likely to Link to Me” awards, this week’s would have to go to Andrew Sullivan.

Yes, it’s a link to the wedding story.

And yes, that Andrew Sullivan.

Categories
It Happened to Me

Photos from Julie’s and Amanda’s Wedding

Since work’s been keeping me busy and since the story about Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding has given everybody on the Internet a serious case of the warm fuzzies (including Craig “Craigslist” Newmark and Amanda’s dad), I’m not going to post much today. Besides, I think it would be nice to have their story high up on the front page for another day.

What I will post is a link to the Flickr set of photos from the wedding. They’re larger than the ones in the blog entry:

Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding Flickr set.
Click to visit the page for the Flickr set.

Julie and Amanda, if you’re reading this, I have the full-size photos and will send ’em your way!

Categories
Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

The “Craigslist Wedding” Videos are Up!

YouTube took its own sweet time processing them, but the two (short) videos from Julie’s and Amanda’s wedding are finally up and I’ve included them in the blog entry. If you want to jump directly to those videos’ YouTube pages, here are the links: