We chose the Great American Woodies 5’ Cypress Mission Swing and the Cypress A-Frame (also by Great American Woodies) from our nearby Lowe’s Home Improvement store. My wife added a cushion on the bottom. So far we are both really happy with the swing.

The Problem and Proposed Solution

There was one thing that bugged me though. It was the same thing that bugged me about all the other swings we’ve had in years past. There was no good place to sit our drinks, phones, books, tablets, or anything else we might have taken out there with us. Sure, we could sit it in the swing seat, but that’s just an accident waiting to happen.

Being the hacker that I am, I decided to make end tables (or side tables) for the swing. I’m well pleased with how the hack turned out. Before I show you how to make your own, here is the swing with both end tables in place, so you have some idea of what I’ll be showing you how to build below.

Design Inspiration

My inspiration for how to attach the end tables came from the Side Table or Phone Shelf that is designed to fit over the guard rail of  OP Loftbed loft bed or bunk bed. If you’re interested in the plans for this, you’ll find them on the Free Loft Bed Plan Accessories page of the OP Loftbed web site. This table just sits over the guard rail and can be slid to any position or quickly removed entirely. It’s held in place by gravity and friction. This was designed by my good friend Charles Cranford, who also designed the OP Loftbed.

Materials

I knew that the two tables needed to be approximately 2-feet long since that’s about how long the cross piece is that would be supporting them. I also knew that I needed two table support support pieces to fit on either side of the cross piece. I bought one 1 x 8 x 8’ Kil-Dried Cedar board and one 1 x 3 x 8’ Kiln-dried Cedar Board (Note: this link is to the 1 x 2 Kiln-dried Cedar Board because they don’t have the 1 x 3 on their web site). I chose cedar because the color of the swing is really close to the color our building is stained, our building is cedar, and I still had some of the stain left; cedar also seems to be really similar to the cypress the rest of the swing is made from. I also bought a box of #6 x 1-1/2” Flat Head Phillips Wood Screws to assemble everything with. I think I had around $25 in all the materials combined.

Initial Measurements

There were only a couple important measurements to consider on the swing.

The first is the overall length I wanted the table to be. I decided to make them the same length as the top of the cross piece on the swing: 26-1/2”.

The second dimension to consider is how long to make the pieces that would support the table and fit on either side of the crosspiece—I decided to call these pieces “squeezers”. The opening at the top of the crosspiece is 20-1/8” long. I couldn’t make them this long because they had to be able to slide in from the top. The cedar 1 x 3 actually measures 3/4” x 2-1/2”. The cedar 1 x 8 measures 11/16” x 7-7/16”. This meant that I needed a width measurement about 3-1/2” above this. This measured around 18-1/2”, so I decided my squeezers should be about 18” long.

Cutting the Pieces

The cuts were all really easy to make.

For the squeezers, I just cut four 18” long pieces of the cedar 1 x 3. This gave me two sets of two. Here is a finished set. Note, this is after staining. I didn’t take pictures of anything until I was finished, then I took them apart for the pictures.

To make the table top, I first cut two 26-1/2” pieces of the cedar 1 x 8. The notches in the back measure 4-1/4” x 3/4” (the width of one of the squeezers and half of the overall length minus the length of the squeezer (26-1/2” – 18” = 8-1/2”; 8-1/2” / 2 = 4-1/4”)). The angles at the top are just 45° angles cut from the center of the width of the board (about 3-3/4” from one edge).

Here are the finished pieces for one side table without all the measurements on them.

Assembling the Tables

Note: I don’t have pictures of the assembly process, so you’ll have to use your imagination and I’ll try to make the narrative as clear as possible. If you do have any questions, just ask in the comments at the end.

I drilled three pilot holes in the table top, 3/8” from one edge (half the width of a 3/4” wide squeezer) at the center of the board and 6” off center. This spaced the two other holes at 3” from the end of the squeezer. After drilling the pilot holes, I used three #6 x 1-1/2” Wood Screws to fasten this one squeezer to the table top.

I wanted the squeezers to fit snugly on each side of the crosspiece. Rather than measure the thickness of the crosspiece and possibly have the tables fit a little loosely because of a 1/32” difference in measurement or something, I decided to fit the table in place, hold the second squeezer tight against the crosspiece and against the table, and draw a pencil mark along the outside top edge of the squeezer on the bottom of the tabletop piece.

On the bottom of the tabletop, I marked for the three screw holes using the the same linear positions and measurements as before, except these were 3/8” off the line I had just drawn (to be where the center line of the second squeezer would be). I drilled three pilot holes in the table top at these marks. I screwed three more screws into these pilot holes, but left the points just barely protruding.

To attach the second squeezer, I held everything in place again (just as I did before when I drew the line) and screwed the three remaining screws into the second squeezer board. At this point, I was done with one table and I repeated the process for the other one.

Here is what the finished end tables look like from the bottom.

Here is whatone looks like from the top.

Attaching the Table

Since the tables are just held on my gravity, no fasteners are needed. You just simply slide the notched edge of the tabletop between the frame supports and press down so the squeezers fit on each side of the crosspiece. This is the best picture I could get of putting one into place.

The Finished Product

Here is what itlooks like from the inside of the frame.

.

His what it looks like with a drink and my Xoom tablet on it. I think it’s the perfect size.

Once again, here is the the how the swing looks with both tables in place, just so you don’t have to scroll all the way back to the top to see it again.

Final Words

This entire project cost less than $25 and probably took less than an hour to make. I probably have another 15-minutes in staining them (which I did on a different day). I think it would also be quite easy to make tables like this for other models of swings as well. I didn’t spend a lot of time making sure that every cut was perfect, nor did I sand anything before I finished it. I’m not a really good wood worker, but I generally understand how power tools and wood engineering and design works. The swing and frame has a slightly rustic look to them and I think the tables compliment it well.

If you have any additional questions, just ask the in the comments section below. If this inspires you to do something similar, please post a comment to let me know and I would love to see some pictures of your finished work as well.

1. Click on the Date and Time area in the System Tray.
2. Click Change date and time settings…
3. Click the Change time zone… button.
4. Find my current time zone in the Time zone drop-down list and select it. This is the single most frustrating part.
5. Click the OK button on the Time Zone Settings dialog.
6. Click the OK button on the Date and Time dialog.

That doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re doing it a couple times a week it it get’s old. Here is what that looks like:

I’ve replaced this 6-click process with six BAT files that sit in a folder on my desktop. I double-click to open the folder and then double-click on the BAT file for the time zone I’m in. That’s two steps and I also don’t have to scroll through a lot of options to find the time zone I’m in. Here is what that this new process looks like:

The script code in each BAT file is very simple too. Here’s the code to switch to the Eastern Time Zone:
TZUTIL /s "Eastern Standard Time"

That’s it. That’s all. Just a single line in a a text file named TimeZone-1-Eastern.bat.

The only thing you have to know is the internal name Windows uses for the time zone. Here are the scripts for all the time zones in the United States:

TimeZone-1-Eastern.bat

TZUTIL /s "Eastern Standard Time"

TimeZone-2-Eastern-Indiana.bat

TZUTIL /s "US Eastern Standard Time"

TimeZone-3-Central.bat

TZUTIL /s "Central Standard Time"

TimeZone-4-Mountain.bat

TZUTIL /s "Mountain Standard Time"

TimeZone-5-Mountain-Arizona.bat

TZUTIL /s "US Mountain Standard Time"

TimeZone-6-Pacific.bat

TZUTIL /s "Pacific Standard Time"

If you need to figure out more of the time zone names, you can use the TZUTIL /l command and switch from a Command Prompt. You may also want to read the TechNet page for TZUTIL.

Happy travels!

Why Did I Do This?

I really enjoy a lot of the blog posts and articles at Psychology Today. There must be many thousands of articles in 776 individual blogs organized into 45 topics (as of today, assuming my counting is correct) and several dozen new ones are written each week.

The Psychology Today home page aggregates all the articles across all the topics and blogs and displays the 30 most recent items from across the site in the “The Latest” section.

I wanted to be able to easily stay updated on new content across the site. I could have subscribed to all 45 Topic feeds in Google Reader, but I really didn’t want to add 45 new feeds; I only wanted to add one single feed.

My Preliminary Research

First I searched around on the Psychology Today web site for an RSS feed like I wanted, but I couldn’t find one. Then I turned to Google to see if I could find one mentioned there, and I didn’t find anything. So I then turned to investigating the Psychology Today web site more closely. Here is what I discovered.

Each topic has an RSS feed for it, and each blog has an RSS feed for it as well. For example, you can view the most recent articles by the writers in the Procrastination topic at the Procrastination topic page at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/topics/procrastination/,
and access the Procrastination topic RSS feed at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/topics/procrastination/feed.
One of the blogs in the Procrastination topic is “Don’t Delay” by Timothy A. Pachyl. You can view the most recent posts on this blog at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay,
and access the Don’t Delay RSS feed at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-delay/feed.

If you look a those URLs, you’ll notice they use a very simple naming convention for the URL paths for the the topics and blogs. The RSS feed can then be accessed by simply appending /feed onto the end of the topic or blog URL.

Unfortunately, you’ll get a 404 error page if you just append /feed onto the root URL like so:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/feed. There also doesn’t seem to be a single RSS feed that aggregates all the content from the entire site.

Rolling My Own Psychology Today RSS Feed

At this point, I determined that if I wanted an RSS feed of all the items from the Psychology Today home page then I was going to have to do it myself. i thought about writing my own PHP script to periodically parse out their home page, but I decided that before I did this I would see if there was a good service that could do this more easily.

A quick search uncovered a few services that will create an RSS feed from the content on any site. I experimented with a few of these and none of them worked to my satisfaction. Then I discovered Feed43. This site let me essentially write a script that parses through the Psychology Today home page, extracts the content in the “The Latest” section, then I could mark up how that extracted content would get rendered in an RSS feed. In just a few minutes I had a working RSS feed of the Latest Items from the Psychology Today Home Page. Here is the results:
http://www.feed43.com/5658507871028441.xml.

Warnings and Limitations

I really do like the Feed43 service. One thing that you’ll need to keep in mind though is that they only scrape the home page and rebuild the feed once every six hours (they will scrape it once an hour for $29/year) but since this is currently the only site I’m using this for I can’t justify that expense. Another thing you’ll need to remember is that if they redesign their web site and the code on their home page changes then this feed may no longer work. As long as I’m interested in aggregating their content in this way, I’ll try to maintain this feed and keep it working, but I’m not making any promises.

Final Words

So, if you’re a psychology geek like I’ve become in the the past couple years, enjoy your new Psychology Today Home Page RSS Feed! If you find this useful, let me know in the comments. As for me, I’ve got some Sunday afternoon reading to do…

However, I do set goals for things I would like to achieve over the course of the year. In recent years, I’ve fallen short of several of my goals in several areas. I’ve met some of my goals, but I haven’t done nearly as well as I would have liked.

My Weekly Goals

Usually I’ll set a goal for things like a certain weight I would like to achieve or certain projects I would like to finish or other similar things. Since my diagnosis with Adult ADD (Attenion Defecit Disorder), I’ve been thinking about things in terms of the amount of attention I give them. This has led to a change in my goals for 2012 and how I track those goals.

I’ve given myself a set amount of attention I would like to apply to in certain areas on a weekly basis. Here are those areas:

• Work 5-hours on Mindful Worship
• Work 5-hours on Spears Technologies
• Work 5-hours on my college studies at West Coast Bible College
• Create something worth sharing
• Hike for 3-hours
• Eat high-protein/low-carbohydrate for 5-days
• Interact socially for 3-hours
• Encourage others 10-times

There are other areas of my life I want to work on, but these are the areas I’ve fallen short in the most over the past year and want to work on this year. I’ll probably add more areas later on, especially as I find better ways to quantify the amount of attention I invest in the area.

Why Have I Chosen A Weekly Break-Down of Attention Invested?

I’ve wanted to bring my goals down to an area where I feel like I have more control and I can invest more energy and attention. For example, you’ll notice that two of my goals are related to health and fitness (hike for 3-hours and eat high-protein/low-carbohydrate for 5-days). Ultimately, the results of this will be reflected in a decrease in my weight. However, if I set a goal to decrease my weight by a certain number of pounds, it’s easy to get discouraged if I do well and don’t see the decrease in weight (or as rapid a decrease as I would like). However, by doing these two things consistently on a weekly basis, I know I’m moving toward an over-arching goal of improved health and fitness.

Last year I set a goal to publish 25 new Mindful Worship meditations; I only published one and that was way back in January. I also set a goal to write a book in the area of Christian meditation and I didn’t do any work on it at all. Both of these things are too big for me to get my around fully and although I know they are achievable, they seem too big and it’s easy to get discouraged and sidetracked.

I’m Tracking My Goals with Grades

Each of these goals is an ideal. I realize that I’m not going to meet each of these goals every week—it’s just not possible. So, I’ve decided to give myself a letter grade in each area. Here is how those letter grades are calculated:

• Work 5-hours on Mindful Worship
  Grades: 5=A; 4=B; 3=C; 2=C; 1=D; <1=F
  
• Work 5-hours on Spears Technologies
  Grades: 5=A; 4=B; 3=C; 2=C; 1=D; <1=F
  
• Work 5-hours on my college studies at West Coast Bible College
  Grades: 5=A; 4=B; 3=C; 2=C; 1=D; <1=F
• Create something worth sharing
  Grades: Yes=A; No=F
• Hike for 3-hours
  3=A; 2=B; 1=C; .5=D; <.5=F
• Eat high-protein/low-carbohydrate for 5-days
  5=A; 4=B; 3=C; 2=C; 1=D; <1=F
• Interact socially for 3-hours
  3=A; 2=B; 1=C; .5=D; <.5=F
• Encourage others 10-times
  9-10=A; 7-8=B; 5-6=C; 3-4=C; 1-2=D; <1=F

Most weeks, I should be able to reach a satisfactory “C” level in most of these areas. In fact, I should be able to reach excellent “A” or great “B” grade in most of them. Some weeks I will find that I need improvement “D” or totally fail “F” in an area, and that’s OK and to be expected. No one is perfect. However, by investing a small amount of attention in each of these areas each week, I know that I’ll be moving in the direction I want to move in regarding these areas of my life. A lower grade just means I’m not moving as quickly as I would like while a higher grade means I’m moving along at a good clip.

The other nice thing about weekly grades is that I start with a fresh slate each week. I may get a “D” or “F” in an area one week and then get two or three “A”s in following weeks. By starting each new week with a clean slate, I’m motivated to do some work in that area the next week.

At this point, I do plan to calculate monthly and quarterly summaries.

Questions and Comments

I’ve read dozens of books on motivation, organization, and goal setting. I don’t recall reading about anyone else setting and tracking goals exactly this way, so you may have some questions. If you do, please ask them below. You may have questions about how I chose a particular goal or the details behind one. Ask that below too. You may have ideas for how to expand on this idea; if you do, please share those below for others’ benefit.

The original rules of Scrabble Slam! are pretty simple:
- Begin by using 4 of the cards to create a 4-letter word, such as PARK.
- Deal the remaining cards between the players equally. Note that there are 55 cards total.
- When the game begins, players change the word by changing one letter at a time. For example, PARK may be changed to MARK, then MARE, the CARE, then CORE, the BORE, etc…
– Each player plays as fast as they can, announcing each word as they make it.
- The winner is the first player to play all their cards.

We played one game by these rules and realized we didn’t like it. It was just too fast for us. It may have been more fun with 3 or 4 players, but we didn’t care for it with just the two of us. So, we were stuck with these 55 Scrabble Slam! cards. I thought about how we might be able to play a game with them that was slower paced and allowed the players to add some strategy to their play of the game. I was able to come up with a variation that has worked fairly well for us.

Here are the rules we play by now:
- Play begins by choosing a 4-letter word for a base and spelling that word with cards from the deck. This can be a mutually agreeable word, or you can take turns selecting the word. In this example, we’ll assume we begin with the word PARK again.
- The remaining cards are dealt and divided equally amongst the players. So, if there are 2 players playing, they each get 25 cards and the last card to be dealt is set to the side and will not be in play. If there are 3 players, they each get 17 cards. If there are 4 players, they each get 12 cards and the last three cards to be dealt are set to the side and will not be in play.
- The first player must change the first letter of the word to form another word. In our example, we’ll assume the player changes it the word to MARK.
- The second player must form a new word by changing the second letter of the word. If he can’t form a word by changing the second letter, then he loses his turn and the next player gets to try forming a word by changing the second letter. Let’s assume the next player forms the word MIRK. Yes, Mirk is a valid Scrabble word!
–  The next player has to form a word by changing the third letter. We’ll assume he changes it to MILK.
- The play continues with each player having to change the next letter of the word. Any player that can’t form a word with the cards in their hand by changing the next letter loses their turn. If all the players should be unable to play on a particular letter, then play will continue to the next letter. For example, if no player could change the K in MILK, then play would continue to the next letter, which also automatically rotates back to the beginning of the word.
- The first player to get rid of all his cards is the winner!
- A couple of important notes: Word can not be repeated. For example, you couldn’t play an S on the S in SILK to make SILK again. However, after SILK had been changed to  FILK, it could be changed to SILK again later. Also, the regular rules apply regarding acceptable words as in Scrabble. Words may be challenged. If a word is found to not be legitimate, then the last card played is removed and the player loses his turn. If it is found to be legitimate, then the player who challenged it will lose his next turn.

So, it’s still a pretty simple game, but it slowed it down enough to make it more enjoyable and to make us think a little more. It also allows you to use some strategy as you think about what words your opponents may, and may not, be able to play on.

If you have a deck of Scrabble Slam! cards laying around, give this variation a try and let me know what you think in the comments!

At this particular station, they also give you discounts on your fuel, depending on which type of wash you purchase:
- Ultra Wash costs $9 and you get a $.15/gallon discount
- Super Wash costs $8 and you get a $.10/gallon discount
- Basic Wash costs $7 and you get a $.05/gallon discount

I’m sure that a lot of customers are swayed by the cost per gallon savings. However, I know that is just a gimmick to get you purchase a car wash. Most people aren’t going to take the time to calculate what the car wash actually costs. Of course, I’m not like most people.

I usually fill up my truck when it is very close to empty–my wife hates that I do this, but it just makes the most sense to me to use as much fuel between fills as possible so I don’t waste any more time than necessary in the entire fueling process. Usually I can pump 16-gallons of gas into my trucks fuel tank when it is near empty. So here is my fuel savings for each of the different wash options:
-  $2.40 for Ultra Wash (16-gallons x $.15)
-  $1.60 for Super Wash (16-gallons x $.10)
-  $.80 for Basic Wash (16-gallons x $.05)

Remember that the gas savings is just a gimmick. However, you can deduct the fuel savings from the cost of the wash to calculate the actual cost of the wash like so:
-  $9 Ultra Wash – $2.40 fuel savings = $6.60
-  $8 Super Wash – $1.60 fuel savings = $6.40
-  $7 Basic Wash – $80 fuel savings = $6.20

So, if I’m going to pay $6.20 for a car wash anyway (the Basic Wash), it’s probably worth it to pay the extra 40-cents to get the extra benefits of the Ultra Wash. And if I was purchasing more than 20 gallons of gas then Super Wash becomes cheaper than the Basic Wash and the Ultra Wash becomes cheaper than the Super Wash. And if you happen to have a large truck, or want to fill up multiple vehicles at once, you can get an Ultra Wash for free with a 60-gallon fuel purchase. If you purchase more than 60-gallons of fuel, they will be saving money so it’s like they are paying you to get the wash!

Now, it’s up to each person to decide if it’s worth the cost of an automatic car wash to use it instead of just washing your car yourself with a garden hose, bucket, rag, and detergent, but at least now if you are going to use the automatic wash you know how to calculate the actual cost.

Remember, as my wife says, “A clean car is a happy car!”

My wife realized quickly that this thing is thirsty! It’s quite a hassle to fill a bottle with water, move the presents, crawl under the tree, fill up the reservoir, go to the kitchen to refill the bottle, add more water to the reservoir, and then rearrange the presents like they were before we started. Ok, it’s a 2-minute task total, but do that once-a-day every-day for a month and you’ve just spent an hour watering the Christmas tree and moving packages around. I knew there had to be a better way.

As I thought about the problem, I realized that a siphon was the solution to my problem. However, I knew that a bucket of water and a hose under the Christmas tree was just a little too redneck for my wife. So, I had to come up with some way to disguise it.

This afternoon I made a trip to the local hardware store, came home and built my Hidden Christmas Tree Watering System. It works great and didn’t take long at all to put together. It took much longer to write the Instructable, but I’m glad I had that experience. I may write more in the future now that I know how their system works.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you would check it out and let me know what you think in the comments below or on the Instructables site. I have another question too, would you prefer that I put projects like this on Instructables or just post the pictures and instructions here on my blog. I’m trying to figure out the advantages and disadvantages of each way.

Update (11/13/2008): A couple hours after I posted this Instructable, I received the following email from the Instructables Robot saying it had been chosen as a “Feature”. Cool! Thanks, Instructables!

Your Instructable “Make a Hidden Christmas Tree Watering System” was just featured by one of our editors!

Look for it on the Instructables homepage within the next 30 minutes. Being featured means we think you are awesome.  Keep up the great work!

-Eric

Update (11/15/2008): I just noticed that Lifehacker has picked this up and posted a link to it. There is lot’s of good conversation there. Thanks everyone!

Greg,

I discovered your Ceiling Fan Questions and Answers blog while researching a particular question. I read your articles on ceiling fan efficiency, but still haven’t found an answer to my question, so I thought this might be a good question for your blog.

We have several ceiling fans in our home. If I remember correctly, they have all specified that we are to use 60-watt or less bulbs. This is both the 3-bulb and 4-bulb models of fans. I find that 60-watt bulbs In the bedrooms are fine. However, in my office I want more light than this provides. I just replaced the four 60-watt incandescent bulbs with four 23-watt compact fluorescent bulbs (equivalent light of four 100-watt incandescent bulbs). This is the kind of light I like in my office! My guess is that the manufacturers specify 60-watt bulbs or less because of the heat generated, but I don’t know that for certain. I’m wondering if my use of four 23-watt compact fluorescent bulbs will damage the fan or cause some other safety issue since they provide the equivalent light of four 100-watt incandescent bulbs. If so, must I stick with four 15-watt compact fluorescent bulbs (equivalent light output of 60-watt incandescent bulbs) or is there something else I can do to safely increase the amount of light in my office without installing new fixtures or stand-alone lamps.

Thank you for your time. I’m sure I can’t be the only person looking for an answer to this question. Great job on the blog too!

Within just a few minutes, I received the following response from Greg:

Great question…and yes, we should address this on our site.

Actually, the maximum wattage for the sockets is based on 2 things: the heat generated by the bulbs and the wattage they consume. The compact fluorescent bulbs will consume less wattage and burn cooler, so they are better in both aspects. You can certainly use the 23 watt bulbs. You could potentially use 60 watt CFLs if they made them.

Wow! I’m guessing that a 60-watt CFL would be like equivalent to a 240-watt incandescent. With four of them that would be like having nearly 1000-watts of incandescent light in my office! I could probably tan while I worked!

If you have questions about ceiling fans, I suggest you send Greg an email–and of course, check out their store too.

• Office Stuffer
• The Daily Saint
• Yanko Design
• My Personal Organizing Tools Review
• Laura Stack

Most of the reviewers gave it an overwhelmingly positive review. This made me want to try on out, but it wasn’t yet for sale. So I decided to make my own. I bought a 4″x6″ clear acrylic picture frame from my local Wal-Mart–they didn’t have a 8-1/2″x11″ frame, but I like the idea of having something that doesn’t take up a lot of desktop real estate. The piece of acrylic that usually serves as the bottom when it is in picture frame mode makes a good stand to keep it at the perfect angle for writing while it is in writeboard mode.

The Jot-It comes  with a fine point dry-erase marker that has n eraser on one end. I already had a fine-point dry erase marker (without a built-in eraser), so I decided to use that instead.

The Jot-It comes with several cool templates to help you write down your task list, organize projects, and to assist with other notes. I decided to design and print my own template for it.

I’m well pleased with the way it turned out, and you can’t beat it for the price. I’ll admit that it’s not as sexy as the Cocoa Writeboard, but it’s a nice way to see if the Cocoa Writeboard is a good fit for how you work. If this simple and cheap one works well for you, then you can always buy one of the sleek looking ones from Cocoa later.

If you’re a practitioner of Leo Babauta’s Zen to Done system, this is a great tool on which to write your 3 Most Important Tasks each day. It is also a great way to collect thoughts that come into your mind while at your desk for later processing–of course, it does limit how much you can collect before you have to process it all and erase it. Most of all, writing on a small-size board like this is fun–which means that it’s a productivity tool that you’ll probably actually use.

Perhaps the best use for a tool like this is for frequently used checklists. Create templates for your morning pre-flight checklist, evening post-flight checklist, weekly review checklist, travel checklist, or other checklists that you use. Just put them in the frame, work your way down the checklist, then erase your check marks when you’re done. I used to laminate some of my checklists so that I could use a dry-erase marker to check things off each time. The Writeboard method makes it much easier to update the list if things change; just make changes to the electronic master of your list and print it out–no need to laminate.

I just visited the Cocoa web site and I see that their Desktop Writeboard is now avalable at Target.com for $24.99 (plus shipping and state sales tax, where applicable). It isn’t yet available in the Target retail stores. According to their web site, they are planning to produce a smaller version. I like my 4″x6″ so well that I’ll probably wait for that until I buy one. Until then, my Poor Man’s Desktop Writeboard is working just fine.If you decide to make one of these, let me know how it works for you in the comments.

I was traveling out of town this past week and realized that I had used up all my deodorant. I knew that the hotel had complimentary toiletries for travelers that forgot to pack something, so I asked them if they had deodorant. They gave me a trial size of Speed Stick® Regular scent Deodorant. I’m pretty picky about some products and I normally only use Speed Stick Unscented Antiperspirant Deodorant. I knew that I could tolerate it for a couple days though, and I was sure that it would allow those that were close to me to tolerate me much better than if I used nothing at all.

When I travel, I like to pack as lightly as possible. I have never been able to find the Speed Stick Unscented Antiperspirant Deodorant in a trial size (0.5 oz.), so I’ve always traveled with the full size (3 oz.) container. When I applied my deodorant this morning, I noticed that I was nearing the end. I decided to see if the cartridge would fit in the trial size container. I was amazed that it did fit! Now I have a trial size of my preferred scent–or rather unscented.

If you have been unable to find your favorite Speed Stick scent in a trial size, try this:

1. Purchase a Speed Stick Regular Scent Trial Size.
2. When your current container less than one third full, turn the dial at the bottom of the container until the cartridge is totally loose.
3. Do the same thing for the trial size container.
4. Reinstall the cartridges on the opposite containers by turning the dial until the cartridge is seated well.
5. Switch the colored caps to match the scent that is actually in the container.

The pictures below explain it pretty well.