Tool of the Trade

Tech Fun: Slightly Geeky Things to Keep at the Office

by Kat on 10/24/2011 · 88 comments

in Office Supplies, Organization, Tech, Tool of the Trade

Not only do I consider myself a bit of a tech geek, but I specialize in a weird subset of tech geekiness: tech for the office. These are my top techy things to keep at the office — readers, what do you keep? (Check out our prior discussions on clothes to keep at the office, as well as food to keep at the office.)

Gadgets

1. Refrigerator — This was one of my all-time favorite tech purchases for my office (and it lasted forever). I bought a super, super small fridge for my office — so small it could barely fit a six-pack of Coke. I kept water and soda chilled, as well as cheese sticks, lemon juice, cheese, salad dressing — even leftover food. You can find them for around $50 (look up “mini refrigerator,” “portable refrigerator,” “travel refrigerator”) and up.

2. Extra chargers for your phone, Blackberry, and any other personal gadgets. I’ve never regretted the $40 or so the extra cord cost me.

3. Speakers for your iPod or iPhone. This doesn’t need a lot of explanation, but you may want to brush up on the etiquette of listening to music at the office, particularly when other people can hear it. For my own $.02, I think it’s fine to quietly listen to music if it’s after working hours, but “quietly” is the key — the person in the neighboring office should never have to come over and ask you to turn it down.

4. Phone headset. If you log lots of time on the phone — on conference calls or in meetings — a good headset might be worth an investment.

5. USB heated gloves (pictured above). If you have poor circulation and are always freezing, you may want to prepare for those long stretches in front of the computer by purchasing these USB-heated gloves. They plug into your computer and warm your hands as you type and click your way through the day.

Download

6. Leechblock. I’ve written before of my affection for Leechblock to help keep you focused.

7. RescueTime. Seriously consider signing up for this service if you’re wasting a lot of time and wonder where it went — it logs every online activity.

8. Consider installing a bookmarklet for ShoppingNotes — if you see an item of clothing that you wish were on sale, you click the bookmarklet, and the free service monitors the price for any adjustment. I’ve gotten some sick deals by using this service!

9. LogMeIn. Talk with your boss about this, but LogMeIn lets you log into your office computer from home (or your home computer from your office).

10. XMarks. As someone who alternates between multiple computers, I love XMarks — it syncs my bookmarks across all of my computers (and browsers). This is handy for me, both because I have a crazy folder/filing system for some bookmarks, but also because I now don’t need to remember what device I originally found a new website. If you upgrade to the premium (paid) version of Xmarks, it will even sync your bookmarks to your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry.

Software

Most businesses supply you with all the software you need. Still, I’ve had great success with a few programs and had to recommend them.

11. PDF Factory (or something similar). This program is hugely helpful if you sit far from the printer, if you want more control over picking up your printouts, or if you email a lot of PDF’d documents. (For the lawyers out there, it’s very helpful if you frequently review documents in .tif format, as well as if you print cases from Lexis or Westlaw.) Basically, when you click “print” you can choose to print to PDF Factory. The program opens a new window on your computer, and begins to compile a PDF. When you’ve finished printing, you can save the PDF to your hard drive, e-mail it to a coworker, and/or print it to your local printer.

12. Microsoft OneNote 2010 (or Evernote, if you’re comfortable with the cloud). This allows you to create “notebooks” that will be word searchable, printable, e-mailable, and so forth. I primarily find OneNote helpful in working on a project — planning a vacation or a wedding, decorating an apartment — but it’s also helpful in keeping track of restaurant reviews, recipes, articles full of gift ideas, and more. (I also find it useful on an organizational and environmental standpoint, because we now have a single place to put all those articles we used to just print out and leave in various places in our apartments.) (I prefer OneNote, but I know a lot of folks out there prefer Evernote for this kind of thing.)

13. Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This is pricier than the others, but this software is extremely helpful for those of you who practice the lost art of dictation. Dictating is a great skill to pick up for a variety of reasons — it’s much easier to summarize notes from all-day meetings via dictation, or to make sense of documents as you review them without constantly toggling between screens to be sure you’ve gotten the numbers and quotations exactly correct.

Readers, share your tech must-haves for the office!

{ 88 comments }

The Busy Woman’s Guide to Freezing Food

by Kat on 09/28/2011 · 143 comments

in Food, Kat, Lifestyle, No Time, Organization, Tool of the Trade, Weight Control

When you’re a busy woman, taking the time to cook for yourself can be a luxury. It’s better from a health perspective — you know exactly what’s in the dish, as well as how fresh/healthy the ingredients are– and you can much more easily accommodate special desires (low calorie, low sodium, low fat, low carb) by cooking for yourself. Furthermore, frequently it’s far cheaper than eating out. The easiest way that I’ve found, when I get time to cook for myself, is to cook large batches — but then the problem becomes that my schedule is so unpredictable that half of the batch (or more) goes to waste. Not to mention you get “food fatigue” from eating the same dish so many days in a row.

My personal answer has been to cook large batches and then freeze them with a fairly, um, elaborate system. (I’m a bit crazy, but we all knew that.) A friend came to visit a while ago and was fascinated by my system, so she encouraged me to share it here. When I was single, I used this system ALL the time for pasta sauce — I hated opening a jar of sauce, then seeing the jar in the fridge a week and a half later and throwing it out 3/4ths full because I hadn’t had time to make myself more pasta.

1. Get good quality freezer bags. I like to buy Ziploc bags that are designed for the freezer — when I’ve used no-name brands or non-freezer bags I’ve had problems (leaky bags, freezer bite, etc). I prefer to buy quart-size because I’ve found that those tend to hold two servings — the perfect amount for me and my husband.

2. Cook a bunch of food. I’m a big fan of the crockpot, so a lot of what I cook for myself and the hubs are things like stews and soups. I also will freeze a lot of raw chicken and raw beef, as well as things like leftover tomato sauce. I haven’t had a lot of luck freezing fresh vegetables or fish, but your mileage may vary. Two things to note about the food: It’s going to be easier to fill the bags when the food is not piping hot — either lukewarm or chilled is preferable. Second, when possible I try to freeze my food as soon after cooking it as possible (rather than waiting 3-4 days) — I’m not sure if it’s right or not but my perception is that as the ingredients (like veggies) age, they loose some of their health factor. That said, freezing will kill a multitude of bacteria (I think), so you shouldn’t be too shy about freezing food at the tail end of the time when you would be eating it.

3. Label your bags before putting any food inside; this way the writing is neater. I like to include the name of the dish, the date I made it, and occasionally the amount (1lb chicken) or the Weight Watchers Points value per serving.

4. Next, get tall glasses (or sometimes even a vase if it’s a gallon-sized bag) to help my Ziploc bags “stand up.” This is hard to describe, so hopefully the picture helps — you push the bag inside the glass and then open them up.

5. Ladle the soup or stew inside. You’ll find that the Ziploc-inside-the-glass gets full faster than the Ziploc will, so after a while you have to remove the glass from the equation and let the Ziploc stand by itself.

6. Continue to fill the bag(s) until all of the soup is ladled out. If there’s some spillage on the bag, wipe it down. Next, you may want to weigh the bags using a digital scale — I really do use mine frequently and it has been a great investment for the kitchen. If there’s any huge inequity between the bags, you can take this opportunity to balance it out; otherwise you can just eyeball the bags and close ‘em up.

7. A note on closing the bags: there should be as LITTLE AIR IN THE BAG as possible. Air causes freezer burn, and no one wants that.

8. Next, get out a plastic cutting board (or other smooth, flat surface). This is key to a neat freezing process — even if you’re just freezing chicken breasts or something simple like that. Layer your Ziploc bags on the bag — it’s okay if they overlap a bit — and then slide the plastic cutting board into the freezer.

9. Then, let it sit for 4-24 hours. The bags freeze nice and flat, at which point you can remove them. If you like an organized freezer you’ll find that the flat quart-sized bags even fit in a shoebox, pictured at the very top of the post. (I bought a box of 20 clear shoe boxes from The Container Store when I was changing up my shoe storage system, and have found that they come in ridiculously handy in a lot of places, including the freezer.) Here’s one bag after it’s been frozen.

10. Voila! Healthy, homemade dinners (or lunches) for the next 3-6 months, depending on ingredients. If you’re heading off to work in the morning and want some of the leftovers for lunch, it’s easy enough to grab one of the frozen Ziploc bags and chuck it in your purse — it should stay frozen for your commute, and should defrost (either in the freezer or under a watchful eye just on your desk) enough to get it out of the bag before heating it up for lunch. I’m also a fan of taking out a Ziploc bag in the morning and putting it on a plate (or in a large bowl) to defrost in the fridge during the day, meaning all my husband or I have to do at night is to heat it up. Personally, I prefer to let the food defrost entirely so I can transfer it to a proper bowl or pot to reheat it — I like to avoid putting plastics in the microwave whenever possible (both because it is never pretty when you overcook plastic, and because I’ve heard rumblings that plastic in the microwave may not be so safe for you).

OK, readers, that’s my insane little system for freezing food. What tricks do you use when you cook? Any favorite recipes that work particularly well for the freezer?

(L-1)

{ 143 comments }

Open Thread: The Best Notebooks

by Kat on 08/03/2011 · 98 comments

in Office Decor, Office Supplies, Organization, Tool of the Trade

When we talked about the best pens a few weeks ago (which I’m still in the process of trying out — many of the ones mentioned by the readers were subsequently sent to me by Jet Pens, so thank you! — others I’ve bought myself) some of the readers noted that we should also talk about notebooks. This took me a wee bit by surprise, I realized, because I feel so strongly about my notebook choice — so I’m really curious to hear what the other ones that people love.

My favorite notebook is your simple, cheap, Mead Composition notebook, at least for use at my personal desk. I like how the pages stay together no matter what, and how the book can take a beating and still hold up. I’ve spilled coffee on these notebooks, doodled on them, ripped out pages, photocopied them — and they still hold up incredibly well. I’ve used them for years to keep track of personal things — I still have the notebook containing my budget from back in my lean days, right out of college! — but when I switched jobs from a big firm to a small not-for-profit I rediscovered my love for this kind of notebook because I think it’s great for when you have multiple small projects going on and you just want everything in one place. I tend to only have one notebook at a time — the front part of the book (at least the first page going forward) is for business stuff, and the last page going backwards is for personal things. I’m also incredibly ADD when I get on phone calls, whether for business or personal matters, and I find that it helps me to focus if I’m “taking notes” during the call, even if it’s something as simple as arranging a furniture delivery.

I’ve used the Mead notebook for professional purposes as well — taking notes at some small meetings and big conferences — but I’m undecided on whether they look “professional” enough to actually be used for this purpose. For example, I remember taking my battered Mead notebook with me to a big Style Coalition/Elle meeting last year and feeling like my notebook was somehow too shabby and out of place among all the sleek, lovely notebooks the other bloggers had. To be honest, I would probably just grab a clean pad of paper the next time I had to go to such a meeting (if I knew there would be too many notes to take them on my phone).

Other systems I’ve used over the years:
- In college and law school (although I got a laptop by January of my 1L year), I preferred to use looseleaf paper, which I would eventually bind in one of those slim folders with binder clips in the middle(usually at the end of each day, but at least once a week). I just carried around a clipboard full of about 50 sheets of loose papers, and when I finished a class or seminar move the pages I’d filled to the back of the clipboard. This saved me from having to take notes for Class X in Class Y’s notebook (let alone notes for Club Z — the horror! can you imagine?) and also allowed me to start drafting homework assignments, letters, and even some creative writing attempts without impinging on anything else’s space.

- At the law firm, I found that I preferred to have one legal pad per case. I would take notes from reading the papers and filings in the notepad, grab it to go with me to meetings, and file it with my other case notes and research. This turned out to be helpful a few times when a major case would “die,” only to rear its ugly head a few months later (long after I’d expunged all thoughts of it from my head). For a while I tried to adopt a system where I had a nice leather-bound “Trapper Keeper” kind of thing that I took with me to longer meetings (particularly handy because I could “stock it” with Post-It Notes, tape flags, business cards, and even lip gloss), but ultimately I just preferred the simple yellow legal pad system.

- For my personal diary or journal, I’ve always tried to buy pretty books that have meaning to me; they’re usually cloth or leather-bound. I’ve bought them anywhere from museum shops to open-air markets to specialty stationery shops. I like how they’re all different.

I’ve tried other brands and systems — such as keeping a Moleskine in my purse for on-the-fly notes — but I’m just never impressed with how they hold up, so I prefer to take on-the-fly notes in my phone (such as during my recent fun with 5 sessions of a Lamaze class) usually either synced through my calendar or with my new “notes” application, B-Folders. (I know a lot of readers sing the praises of Evernote, but I prefer to keep personal things out of the cloud if I can.) Spiral bound notebooks I have completely forsaken — I hate the way the pages get harder to turn as you fill up the notebook, I hate the way the spiral doesn’t hold up (and frequently gets pokey in a mean, aggressive way), and I hate the way they don’t pack flat (and “dent” other papers, folders, and books) if you’re packing them away in boxes.

Readers, what are your favorite notebooks? How do you use them differently?

(L-#)

{ 98 comments }

Open Thread: What’s Your Favorite Pen?

by Kat on 07/13/2011 · 170 comments

in Accessories, Office Decor, Office Supplies, Tool of the Trade

When I was a kid, I loooooved going back to school shopping. New pens! New folders! All that crisp, white, lined paper… It seemed like everything had possibility and promise. (Yes, I was a dork.) These days, I still love getting new supplies, but it seems like too many of them let me down — I’ve literally thrown about 5 different brands of pens across the room because they work inconsistently, or stop working. And a good pen is really important. To be clear, all I want is something that I can pick up from my pencil cup or my desk, and use it for something simple like signing my name or writing a brief note, WITHOUT having to scribble somewhere else to make sure the ink is flowing. Is that really too much to ask? (Let’s not even get into something more arduous, like taking notes for an extended period or writing a letter… sigh.)

So I thought we’d have an open thread: what is your favorite pen? (Pictured: Ball point pens by Caran d’Ache, available at Plastica for $23 — they also seem to be available at Amazon for a bit cheaper, though. Hat tip to Daily Candy.)

My favorite used to be the Pilot Precise V7 Fine Point Blue Rolling Ball. I liked the bright blue color (more royal than navy, but still “plain blue ink”), I liked that you could buy them in bulk for a reasonable price, and I liked that you could see how much ink is left. Maybe it’s just my bad luck, but it seems like every pen in the last pack I got was a dud.

Next, I really really liked the DIVOGA retractable gel pens, which I received for review from the company — they wrote fantastically, beautifully smooth, AND they looked pretty? Sign me up. Perhaps my ink supply is getting low on all of my pens, but it seems like I spend half my time drawing circles on scratch paper, trying to get a steady flow of ink — but it seems a bit suspicious that all 3 died at once.

I’ve had inconsistent luck with the Pilot G2 (but it’s currently my go-to pen that I keep in my purse). I also was really excited to try the Sharpie Liquid Mechanical Pencils, which promised to write like a mechanical pencil but turn to a permanent ink after 24 hours — and found that it just works like every erasable pen I’ve tried (which is to say, poorly).

So readers: what are your favorite pens? Which brands do you swear by?

Update: It looks like the top pens recommended by the most readers are:
- uni-ball Vision Elite
- Pilot Precise V-5 Retractable
- Pilot G2
- Le Pen

I’m going to try them out and will try to do a follow up report. :)

(L-#)

{ 170 comments }

Tool of the Trade: ShoppingNotes

by Kat on 06/08/2011 · 87 comments

in Sales, Tech, Tool of the Trade

Do you ever find yourself seeing a dress (or top, or bag, or pair of shoes, or…) online and then saying, “Cute, but not at that price?” Of course, sometimes the item is cute enough to just buy outright, but sometimes you’d rather take the chance and wait for a sale. ShoppingNotes is a new-to-me service that tracks the price of an item, and will send you an e-mail alert when the price decreases.

The program, which is still in beta, is pretty easy to use: You see an item, copy the URL, and then go to ShoppingNotes.com, sign in, and paste the URL. There’s even a bookmark (which is now on my toolbar) that you can install so you can just see an item and click the bookmark to get set up. You can set price alerts — I usually just have it set to “alert me to any price change,” but you can change it to “alert me if it drops below price X.” All of the alerts expire after 30 days, but there’s a single button that you can use to renew them all for another 30 days.

I’ve also used Savvy Circle in the past, as well as ShopStyle (for price drops for specific brands) and ShopItToMe (for price drops for brands and stores for items in my sizes). A few years ago there was a way to set it up so your RSS feed would run an Amazon search daily (say “waterford lismore” or “garnet platinum”) and alert you if there were any new items with a price drop — but it stopped working a while ago and I haven’t found a replacement.

Readers, which online services do you use to watch for price drops?

(L-2)

{ 87 comments }

Open Thread: Which Tools/Programs/Tricks Are Your Current Favorites?

by Kat on 03/16/2011 · 78 comments

in Tool of the Trade

In a semi-regular feature here on Corporette, we’ve talked about “Tools of the Trade” — ways to make a busy woman’s life easier, either in terms of scheduling programs, tricks to make things go faster or help you remember, and even the multitude of uses for a scarf/wrap. Do you have a newly discovered favorite trick, tool, program, or other — what need does it fill, and why do you love that particular program, tool, or trick?