Those long nights reading up on Ubuntu, paid off. Well I was in the middle of a Jolicould install and for some reason my netbook rebooted. Not a big problem, but when it came back up, I obtained a message of “error: unknow filesystem…grub rescue.” That is it, nothing more. After a reboot, I obtained the same message. Jumped on to the message boards and scouted for an answer. I was not happy with the results and the night looked longer and longer.

But wait, I have a ubuntu live usb drive and let me try and boot from that. So i did and this got me back into the ubuntu os, so i could look around as to what the true issue was. Looking at the ntfs partion I still had it for windows and the partion before c, to rescue the netbook also was still on the drive. Ok so all is not lost. After a little bit more reading up on the message and what i was able to dig up from reviewing the files all, i was dealing with was a corrupt bootloader. Not a big deal, I just reinstalled the Ubuntu partion, pretty quick and this restored my boot loader.

So, I am going to keep this thumb drive as a way to rescue the next pc crash. It provides a way to look at a system that has a failed boot or corrupt install.

I am looking forward to trying out any distro of an open source os, and peppermint ice is the next on my list. From what i see on the site is it going to have chromium as the the default brower, very nice and also a nice bundle of applications in the original download. As I use more online applications like google doc and hootsuite the need to install a bunch of application after install is almost nil. As I stated, I am looking forward to giving it a try, what do you think?

But I just can’t help but hear, ice ice baby in my heard every time I see the name.

Peppermint

Took a look over at the google voice blog today and noticed that they have improved the google voice application for the blackberry and android phone. As a very happy google voice user, back in the grand central days, they have improved the application and now this is my main number for all new contacts.

Take a look @Google Voice Blog

Meetings get a bad rap in business today and for good reason—very little gets accomplished in them. I can recall a Dilbert cartoon in which several people sat around a table while the meeting organizer said, “There is no specific agenda for this meeting. As usual, we’ll just make unrelated emotional statements about things which bother us…”

Read more from Businessweek.com

I am, what some people might call, a GTD kinda guy. But while I do not like to point out my imperfections, I have not always been this productive.

Let me quickly explain.

Looking at my email in box sometimes, ok almost all of the time, made my mind race and blood pressure rise. I would scan the first couple of emails and be reminded of meetings I need to attend, meetings I should have attended and also thing that need to get done…yesterday. I start to panic…and the day just started.

I found a better way that works for me, and might help you out. Every morning I take my in box to zero and here is how I do it.

As I scan my emails I move them into one of the 4 emails folders.

• Done – Any email that was a follow up and requires no further action.
• Todo – Something that requires an action.
• Follow up – I either drag an email to this folder or when sending an email, that requires follow up, I will bcc myself on the email. I have a rule in my email clients to move all bcc emails, from me, to this folder.
• Info – This could be announcement a date change to a meeting or something that I would like to find fast. I normally go to this folder and move older items to the done folder.

That is it, so simple it is crazy.

When I am scanning my email and moving them to the correct action folder there are 2 more things that I do:

• Take action on emails that take less than 2 minutes to complete.
• Delegate, before moving to the todo folder and bcc’ing myself for follow up.

It feels great to move something to the "done" folder.

I do want to point out these practices came from ideas I found in the GTD book and from the 43 folders blog.