Cooking with gas … or maybe not!

Been asked to evaluate a BlackBerry with Lotus Notes. Seemed a good idea at first, then the keyboard eccentricities kicked-in; found I hadn’t got signal at home – not surprising really it was the same for my mobile phone; and I found I hadn’t got my contacts in the device.

Now to me, the only real value for a PDA-type thingie is to have your Contacts with you. The calendar and email access are of course what the BB is all about, but no out of the box way of getting my Local Contacts from Notes through the BES server – big drawback.

So … I find myself scouring CDs, RiM websites, manuals, etc. and doing downloads just to get what I consider basic functionality added to a device that is meant to make my life easier! I really am becoming a grumpy old man.

I’ll try and document any other experiences – hoping for an improvement soon.

What I do is, what I do

Something I’ve been pondering for a while now is how to redress the balance between what I do in work, for work and what I do at home – again for work. What I ask myself do I do for myself at work? Should I have a life in work, or should I strive to get the work out of my life at home!

Now, I do know the answer – but it’s not the one either I, nor work, would wish. I actually enjoy my work. It gives me huge satisfaction and when it’s going well – which is pretty much most of the time – it gives me the sort of buzz that I don’t want to back-off from. But still that niggle runs around my brain – what is it that I’m missing?

It is of course the social interaction with friends, colleagues and family that is increasingly being squashed into “spare time”, which is itself getting really squeezed. So, how do I redress this balance – I think you know the answer. The attitude towards using social networking software, conducting personal business and generally using the work time and resource for personal use must change. It’s only fair! At home, I’m paying for the electricity, the broadband connection, possibly the computer and of course providing my time – to do work!! The very least that work should allow me to do is to allow me to spend sometime doing this sort of thing!