Work life balance - check ✓

We all want that perfect patchwork of personal and professional activity, but how do we get it, and more importantly, how do we know it's happened?

Broken Heart by David Goehring (CarbonNYC)

As of this morning I'm there. How? Finishing preschool Valentines and attending kids' Valentine tea have equal footing on my schedule with conference calls, research, writing, and presentation prep. (The laundry bridge remains to be crossed when we come to it.)

[Update:] My office just received a very special delivery.

My fear of junk mail (and what I did about it)

As Dvorak might say, I get no junk mail.

Rural mailbox by Matt McGee (Matt McGee)

Our real world spam filters for our real world mailboxes are woefully inadequate. It's no great surprise then that it's taken a year and the determination to harangue those who've persisted in mailing, stealth flyer depositing, and driveway dumping of un-asked for publications, but the flood became a trickle and then...just about completely gone. Junk mail eradication. Worth every repetitive phone call. Should you care to join me in the land of the highly selective, often lonely mailbox (doorknob and driveway to boot), instructions are here. Come on over to the mailbox-zero side.

Where did you love going as a kid? Where do you like taking yours now? #kidplace

Building damns
Originally uploaded by tomeppy

I think all parents re-live their childhoods a bit in the process of raising their kids. One way I do it time and again is by tracking down and revisiting places I remember loving as a youngster. Since I'm sure I'm not the only one who enjoys reminiscing in this way, I'm starting a Twitter hashtag: #kidplace. Add #kidplace to your tweets about where you went back then, or where you like taking your little ones now, and perhaps we'll wind up with a nice, tagged set of suggestions for activities around the English-speaking world.

The Short List: what Web services will they have to pry from your cold, carpally decimated hands?

Funny Bug
Originally uploaded by Mackenzie McArdle

I'm giving a talk later this month to the IADC (Int'l Ass'n of Defense Counsel; a.k.a. a passel of lawyers), at which I'm to be folks' "guide to the Live Web, demonstrating how online tools connect communities of interest in the legal world and beyond." (Yeah, guilty, I believe I penned that mouthful.) I'm planning to cover prevailing communication tools, from zero- to low-latency models (twitter/friendfeed/laconica, video+real-time chat), to mid-latency (blogging, social networking/news/bookmarks), to high latency (static Web pages that may or may not incorporate or embrace more immediate methods), as well as some of the related legal and sociocultural (that one's for you of course, Ernie) considerations.

I know what's on my short list — friendfeed, twitter, laconica, the myriad of blogging alternatives, ustream/stickam-type tools, del.icio.us-type tools, flickr-type tools, Gmail-type tools, Google Docs-type tools, wikis, business management tools, and, dwindlingly, Google Reader-type tools — but I'd love to know what's on yours. I know I'm missing things people swear by but I just don't use. Please help me understand the universe of indispensable.

Well Socialized

Bear in mind we don't live in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, or even a remotely proximate area code.

Mouthing off by borrowed time | demi-brooke

My son — who's five — and I happened to sit down next to John Remy the other day at the yogurt shop. John (who writes a very thoughtful blog) was on his laptop, on Twitter (@johnremy), which my son apparently/instantly recognized. His opening conversational salvo? "Do you know my mom on Facebook?"



It's possible we should get out more.