Jade Robbins

Time To Grow Up, Mr. Robbins

While I’m very happy with who I am, I’ve decided that it is time to GROW UP! The older I get the more I realize that I need to take care of myself. So how will I better myself? Through the power of the internet, that’s how! I love the idea of personal accountability, so I am asking my friends (both virtual and in the flesh) to help me better myself. The steps needed for me to be happy with myself are:

1. Stop Smoking and Drinking Soda. I have been an on again, off again smoker for the past two years. I desperately need to stop smoking. . . . permanantly. While I don’t personally judge anyone who smokes, I am personally making the decision to stop for my health. While I don’t drink a bunch of soda, I drink more than I should. Why should I stop drinking soda? Diabetes and tooth decay are the primary drivers, but I also believe I need to drink way more water than I do and stopping the liquid sugar train can only help me drink more H2O.
2. Control Eating Portions and Food Quality. In the past year I’ve made large strides in the quality of food I eat, but the one thing I still have a hard time controlling is my eating portions. The drinking of more water should help this as well, but primarily I need to eat slower and dish/order smaller portions so that I can recognize I’m full before I eat more than I should. I also plan to snack more regularly (healthy snacks like nuts, fruits, and vegetables) which should help spur my metabolism and help me not be in “OMG I’M STARVING” mode when I go to eat a meal.
3. Exercise Regularly. Whether it is actually going to the gym or hiking/walking I need to be physically active at least once a day. This isn’t as much of a problem in the summer being I can hike, but I also need to make sure I go to the gym or do physical activity in between summer activities.
4. Get more sleep. I’ve lived off about 5-6 hours of sleep since High School and while I can function fine on that much sleep I think that getting more (and getting into a regular sleeping regiment) will give me more energy throughout the day. I tend to try and get less sleep because I want to do things, but I also think that getting more sleep will help me be more productive during the hours I am awake, so hopefully my net productivity will increase.

So I am asking for YOU both my friends in the flesh and friends via the internet to help me be more healthy! How can you do this? By encouraging me as much as possible and reminding me of my commitments when you see me slipping. I’ve been very encouraged by LeVar Burton‘s progress with quitting smoking using the internet so I need your help! I am a firm believer in personal accountability and transparency so I’m hoping you folks will hold me accountable for my actions and maybe even find strength to make better health commitments yourself. So ask me how I am doing via Twitter or write on my Facebook wall to yell at me for eating unhealthy.

Thanks for your help and interest! I hope to post status updates here on my blog and on my various social networks so stay tuned!

Posted in Daily Life | 9 Comments »

Ordered a Drobo!

After one of my hard drives failed (resulting in us losing our high quality wedding photos) Amber and I decided we needed to get a Drobo. It should be coming in this week and Mark Sanborn and I have fun ideas about using a friend as an off site backup so stay tuned!

Tags: drobo, Mark
Posted in Daily Life | 3 Comments »

Meeting Tip: Tear Down the Wall of Laptops

All to often when we go to meetings we bring our laptops with us, this isn’t inherently bad because hey can be a very useful tool for a meeting. This is all well and good, but even a 12 or 13 inch laptop (the smaller form factor of regular laptops) can create what I like to call the wall of laptops.

The Wall of Laptops

The wall of laptops is simply when EVERYONE at a meeting has a laptop sitting in front of them. This can do several things to your meeting:

1. Allow Distractions – The wall of laptops allows the meeting attendees to disconnect from the meeting by either doing work, IMing, or even surfing the web.
2. Discouraging Participation – Not only do larger laptops create a physical barrier to participation they also create an emotional one as well. The classic signs of participation (leaning in to show interest, hand and arm movement) are all cut off from the rest of the participants.

Break Down These Walls

There are a couple easy ways to break down the wall of laptops:

1. Ban Laptops at Your Meeting – If you are the organizer of the meeting let it be known that laptops are not allowed at the meeting unless you are presenting to the meeting group and need a computer or are going to be taking meeting notes (and hold whoever volunteers to this promise!).
2. Encourage the Use of Netbooks – Netbooks are the new class of super small laptops that are cheap and underpowered. They are perfect for this situation because of their small profile and underpowered components. These laptops are designed for light-weight applications and therefore are PERFECT for taking notes. Their small form factor also allows encourages participation because they don’t have a large screen to hide behind and when an attendee is actually doing something on their netbook it will be obvious to all the participants.

Hopefully these tips can help bothy our meeting schedulers AND attendees get more out of their meetings, because we all know meetings are expensive in more way than one and the better we can make them the better off EVERYONE is.

Tags: laptops, Meetings, netbook
Posted in Meetings | 1 Comment »