Monday, April 14, 2008

Setting up the workspace

One of the first things you are told to do is to setup your workspace. A big deal is also made of having your own personal workspace. Sharing is not encouraged, not even between husband and wife.

Our game room is our central control. We have a particle board computer desk that fits in the corner. I have not enjoyed working at this desk for a while because there are just mountains of stuff piled and tucked all over. Lori did some research and decided that she would like an IKEA EXPEDIT bookshelf with the attached desk . For economic reasons, I decided to stick with our original desk, but without the hutch. Between our desks I placed our little two drawer filing cabinate.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The label maker cost

In the chapter about getting your supplies and workspace setup, we are told to get a label maker. It is suggested we get a Brother label maker that plugs into the wall. (You don't want to be caught needing to make a label and find that your batteries are dead).

I asked my wife to do a little research to find out what would be most cost effective. The current label maker we are considering is the Brother TL-1280. We are having a hard time finding a local store to purchase one because everyone was out.

We did some research online to see what the cost of the labels will be. For 26' we figure that you get 130 labels or so. (We read that the label maker "wastes" 1" to 2" during each print.) The average cost is $18. We found that you can get them from Costco online for $11 or from EBay 2 for $20. So for full price, you are paying about 14 cents per label. At deal price you are paying about 8 cents per label.

Starting out

I belong to a book club where we try and read a book having to do with topics of managment, leadership and development (yahoo group: abcmanagement Austin Book Club - Management). It was my turn to pick, so I picked David Allen's book Getting Things Done. I like to plan and prioritize and try and use my time effectively. I felt it was time to revisit how I go about planning and prioritizing. We read the book during the month of March and reviewed it today, April 10th. During the meeting I told the guys that the book was too difficult to read if you were not implementing it. It was suggested that I document my experiences.