February 2006

I love you Boca Java, I love you muchly. Not just because they make three of life’s necessities - coffee, cocoa and tea. And not just because they make these necessities as well as they’ve ever been made before. Not that those wouldn’t be grounds enough for love, mind you, but there’s more to them than that.

Boca Java is a huge supporter of something more important and more valuable than my liquid addictions - they support the men and women of our armed forces, and in my book, that puts them on page one. Since 2003, Boca Java has been sending coffee to our troops. Their words: “They are doing a great job for us and we want to provide them with a little taste of home!” My words: “I just found a new coffee bean supplier.”

In addition to coffee beans, cocoa, and teas (which I look forward to sampling one by one), they have the coolest coffee mugs and teapots you’ve ever seen. I don’t know where to start - it reminds me of walking into a bakery, I’m overwhelmed with where to begin. Frankly, even if their stuff wasn’t outstanding, I’d throw them business just because of the way they honor our troops. Luckily for me, they’re a lot like the men and women who serve our country - the essence of quality.

Boca Java is having a special campaign called “Operation Million Cup” which is pretty exciting because it gives us a chance to get in on the giving and the gratitude.

I hope you’ll make your way over to their website and wax all kinds of wonderful.
- Joi

I’m nocturnal and I’m not lucky enough to be able to set my own schedule and I’m still a far cry from striking out on my own. My energy level starts picking up around 7pm and I really get into my groove between 9pm and 2am. Before I become a 8-5 stiff I worked mostly night jobs and I’d get off at 10pm and come home and work until 4 or 5 in the morning. I got so much more done in those days. I’ve been working 8-5 for over 15 years now and I can say without a doubt that it has absolutely nothing to do with conditioning. I’m hands down a night person. Most of my family members are night people. It’s just in the blood.

That said, I have a hard time getting to sleep which means I have an even harder time getting up in the morning. I have to change my alarm clock regularly because get used to the sound and it will no longer wake me up. I took a look at the Progression Wake Up Clock and it looks awesome, but the Neverlate 7-day Alarm Clock might be more my style. The thing I like most about it is that it can have a different alarm style (sound) and different time for every day of the week. Adjusting the time the alarm goes off in a given 30 minute window and having different sounds would keep me from every truly getting used to it. Like Joi, I think the very first piece of office equipment starts with the device that gets you going in the morning. Some may argue that their coffee machine is that device, but for me I need a good alarm clock and this may just be it. So until I’m “free” of the man I think I’m going to order me one of these and see how I do.

Over at Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra has written a wonderful post about cubicle life and death. It’s called Brain Death By Dull Cubicle and I want you to click thru and read it. It’s that good and you will thank me later.

I just added another blog to out Friends of The Freaks Blogroll. ePublishing Daily, a blog that’s going to take eBooks to a new level, was recently launched by our good friend Martin Neumann.

Martin just completed the changeover from Home Office Voice to ePublishing Daily and I am really excited about the new blog, because we have so many ebooks that are in one stage or another and I believe Martin is going to be part of the reason we get them done.

It’ll take ” Action ” on our part and we can’t blame Martin if we don’t exhibit any of that.

Click thru and let Martin know you’re there and subscribe to his RSS feed while you’re there.

There’s a new ebook sherrif in town !

At the risk of looking like I have a chair mat fixation, I brought some pretty snazzy ones for show and tell. These aren’t your typical plastic variety, (which would explain the price tag I suppose). These are Snapmats and are available only at Snapmat.com.

From their website:

Introducing SnapMat, the new stylish and functional chair mat with a difference. Our patent-pending design comes in a variety of finishes to match your furniture and decor. Your chair will roll smoothly and comfortably over SnapMat’s tough laminate surface. It’s like having a small, portable hardwood floor custom installed in front of your desk….

….SnapMat chair mats offer an elegant touch of class to any modern or traditional office environment and they are guaranteed to outlast any standard vinyl or other plastic mat making it the best value on the market.

SnapMat chair mats are the finest and most advanced chair mats in the world. Some people pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a high-quality desk chair. Doesn’t your chair deserve something better than a $15 piece of plastic?

I like that last part, pulling on my chair heart strings. Thing is, I didn’t pay thousands - nor would I pay thousands - for my chair. I’m also not totally certain I’d pay what they want for these wooden mats. At any rate(s), the snapmats are great looking and a pretty nice idea. I’m a Murphy’s Oil fanatic, so at least I’d have another thing to clean. Of course, that would probably make our chairs roll too fast and too far, causing way too much drama for our cat who likes to take running jumps at the chairs as she catapults onto the desks.

Better stick with the plastic.

The husband normally gets to shop for unglamorous things in life - like duct tape, mailboxes, tacks, tools, lawnmowers, etc. Chair mats fall into his realm as well, though they’re certainly a tier or twenty up from duct tape. Our chair mats had gotten kind of crummy and needed to be replaced, so it called for a trip to Mecca, a.k.a. Office Depot.

I went along with him for his chair mat “shopping” (I say “shopping” instead of shopping because what a lot of men do isn’t really even shopping, it’s retrieving. They go for the one thing, get the one thing and take the one thing home. No extras, no frills, no bonuses, no surprises. Not a very sporting way to go about it. ).

Although I kept getting sidetracked by Office Depot’s sexy desks and chairs, the chair mat retrieving was actually interesting. I guess I’d never given chair mats much thought, but they’re actually pretty cool. Here are a few things I picked up on, when I wasn’t getting all touchy feely with the desks:

CHAIRMAT BENEFITS:

• Protect floor.
• Protect carpet.
• Improve chair mobility.
• Reduce leg and back strain.

HOW TO CHOOSE A CHAIR MAT:

• 1. Straighten a paper clip and sink the tip into your carpet until it touches the floor and your finger and thumb touch the top of the carpet. Measure paper clip length from tip to fingers.
• 2. Measure your chair rolling area.
• 3. Determine which style you’ll want: Lip, Contour, Utility (Rectangle) or Workstation.

Well, la-di-da, according to two new studies, workplace romance is no longer thought of as taboo.

A poll conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management and CareerJournal.com found that 40% of employees reported being involved in such a romance at some point in their careers.

Another study found that 54% of single men and 40% of single women said they would be open to dating a co-worker. While I’m giving my percent sign the workout of its life, I’ll tell you that 72% of companies don’t have a policy about employees dating. Good thing, I guess, because if the chemistry’s just right - policy schmolicy.

Like everything in life, I think it comes down to the individuals. People who have their acts together make it work, those who don’t….don’t.

Double damn. I just noticed that my people don’t have faces. I had gotten past his do, but the Amish doll look is weirding me right out.

By the way, have you ever seen the website I linked to above, CareerJournal.com? It’s The Wall Street Journal’s online career site and it’s pretty slick. You have to look around and uncover the good stuff, but it’s there. Unlike certain facial features on a certain couple….

I saw a cartoon in a magazine I was reading last week that made me think. Not so much as chuckle, but at least think. The lady in the ‘toon was sharpening pencil after pencil in her electric pencil sharpener trying to drown out the Chatty Cathy or Blabbering Bob in the cubicle next to her.

Since I work from home I can pretty much control the noise around me, so I can only imagine how maddening it must be when people around you won’t just shut up. And I’m sure it makes you want to go 8 kinds of crazy when you’re working, trying to concentrate and the people around you are socializing, gossiping and laughing.

Like I said, this isn’t something I have personal experience with (My cat isn’t a gossip. Senile, yes. But a gossip, no.). I had to ask and look around for solutions to this possible puzzle. I’m a softy, so I’m excluding the one about rolling a roll of duct tape into the culprit’s office.

Here are the more subtle approaches:

• Use headphones if your office allows it and it doesn’t interfere with your job.
• Go to the person and tell them that you’re in the middle of something very important. Ask if they’ll help you out by being really quiet for a while. More likely than not they’ll get the hint that they’re making more noise than they realized.
• If you’re bold enough, go to them face to face and say, “I really hate to say anything, but these walls are thin and when I’m working, I get distracted by noise….”
• If you’re sneakier than you are bold, say, “I’ve been meaning to tell you, if I ever make too much noise talking on the phone or to co-workers, just tell me. I try to whisper, out of courtesy, and keep my personal phone calls on my own time, but if I ever mess up….”

The consensus is that the next to the last thing to do is to stay quiet and hope the offending chatterbox stops chattering.

Apparently the last thing to do is to rat them out to the boss. Everyone hates a snitch. Maybe even worse than Cathy and Bob.

Have any of you ever tackled this problem?

Also, what do you think would be the next step if you asked them to keep it down but they didn’t? Would it still be bad form to take it to a higher power?

I took my own sage advice from the bottom of the last post….I looked around at the other chairs in the Office Depot collection. It wasn’t long before I found, in the words of vintage INXS, A New Sensation! I realize that back to back posts about similar products is probably breaking some sort of blog code, but I’ll take my chances.

Check out this sexy beast: The Leather Massage Chair from Office Depot, like the last chair I blogged, also falls under the Moderate Category (for those who are at their desks for 3 - 5 hours each day).

I love the mission statement from this chair, “Ease away your aches and pains.” Sign me up!

It also features a padded headrest like I talked about in the last post. A lack of support for the head and neck leads to incredibly stiff necks at the end of the day. Not a lot of fun.

Other features include:

• Leather seating surfaces
• Tilt controls for ideal positioning
• One-touch seat-height adjustment for perfect posture
• Lumbar cushioning to support your back
• Steel frame construction

Now for the real beauty of the (sexy) beast….

This chair features five massage motors that target key areas in your back to help reduce muscle strain — two for thighs, two for lower lumbar region and one for the upper back. Included electronic controller provides three pre-programmed massage modes with three intensity levels.

Fine Print: Four-hour rechargeable battery included. Pressure sensors in the seat cushion preserve the battery when chair is not in use. Plus, you can still enjoy the massage function while the battery is charging! AC adapter also included for convenient use.

I’m so worked up I have to go eat something.