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.

Last Friday I got a couple of coupons from Dell. My day job participates in the Dell Employee Purchase Program so I also get a generous discount through that. Just for fun I configured a new computer. With the coupons and the Dell EPP discount I would save over $900 on a $2000 computer. I couldn’t build it that cheap! My wife has started helping me in my own business and we really need another desktop computer so I seriously considered ordering this. But then if I get another desktop, I thought, we will need another desk.

While I was still in that mindset, I spent that Friday night and early Saturday morning looking at office furniture catalogs and using CadStd Pro to layout different configurations of potential furniture in the room. Getting everything that I felt I needed to fit in a 10′ x 13′ office was a real challenge—and easily excluded several of my options. Finally I found something that I liked that would also give me what I felt I needed and allow me to do what I wanted to do with it.

I had been thinking that it would be nice to rip up the ugly mauve carpet in the room and replace it with a laminate wood floor. My wife and I visited a few flooring and home improvement stores last Saturday to see what was available and what was involved in a do-it-yourself installation. We found a specialty store (Floors Today) that had much lower prices than the others and decided that if we did this, we would buy from them. It seemed that the installation wouldn’t be all that bad either.

I don’t like the yellowish-beige paint that’s on the walls either. While we were at the home improvement store I decided to go ahead and pick up some color swatches—Ive found myself rather attracted to taupe colors over the past couple years.

After all this research, I was really pumped up about the project. Although it still wasn’t in the budget I had to ask myself, “Am I holding the business back my not investing in a proper and dedicated work environment?” The answer was a resounding, “Yes!” This left me with another question, “Am I serious about the income goals I set for 2006?” The answer to that was also, “Yes!” It seemed that the only wan I could be true to my self, my goals, and my business was to move forward with the momentum I had already created.

I had scheduled to take the last week of the year off from my day job. A small amount of time spend mind mapping revealed that I could do everything in 4 days. I made the definite decision to go ahead and make my home office remodel happen. Here is my current plan:

• Monday: Remove everything from the room. Tear off the baseboard. Prime the walls and trim.
• Tuesday: Paint the walls and trim.
• Wednesday: Rip up the carpet. Install the laminate wood floor and new baseboard. Office furniture will arrive.
• Thursday: Assemble new furniture and move everything back in that needs to be in there. Set up new dual-monitor computer.

Since the crews of HGTV shows like Mission Organization, Weekend Warriors, and reDesign are on holiday next week, I’ve decided to just blog about the experience and post pictures and comments at flickr.

Check out my “Home Office Remodel – Before” pictures and notes at flickr.

I’m reading Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morganstern. As you organize each area she suggests that you ask yourself a few questions. The first two of these are, “What’s working?” and “What’s not working?” In my notes at the flickr site, you’ll find my answers to each of these questions. If you aren’t interested in all that, here are the before pictures of each of the four walls. Everything looks cluttered but it is actually quite well organized.

Home Office North Wall – Before Remodel

Home Office East Wall – Before Remodel

Home Office South Wall – Before Remodel

Home Office West Wall – Before Remodel