Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Starting a business is difficult. While there was a pre-existing business in place, it was just one woman doing her thing. While she does have an office that is set up and a billing person, neither the office nor the billing structures are set up for me. More importantly, there is not a large group of people sitting outside said office asking for my services. Nope, I have to go find those myself. The woman I work with has been AMAZING regarding marketing. She has new ideas every day. I get these cute emails all the time. She thinks she’s annoying me with them, but honestly, I couldn’t be happier about them. She’s thinking about the part of a business that, for whatever reason, my mind doesn’t think about on its own. So I’m happily (at least usually) entering back into the world of professionalism - reading the latest research/information about ADHD (since I presume to know something about it and am now a bit behind), making lists, and generally “Getting Things Done.”

I’d pulled out my old PDA again and was starting to use it for listmaking, but all the software for it is pretty outdated. Since it was upgrade time for me with Verizon, I opted for - drum roll, please - a Blackberry (aka Crackberry). I love that I can just throw tasks, ideas, and appointments in there with only a couple of clicks, and it’s all sync’d up with my online stuff. MAGIC!

Crack

There are now two phones in my purse at all times: one for work calls and the other which contains pretty much everything I need to do my job: calendar, address book, email, even MP3’s to listen to. I even went so far as to download some free online talks about ADHD to get my mind back in the right mode of thinking. It’s HARD when you’re out of the game for a while. I’m SO glad I did that, because what I learned from listening to it a few days really caught me up so much, so that today, when I met with a psychiatrist who will hopefully be sending referrals my way, I sounded as if I had been thinking about all of these things all the time for the last year, rather than about things like getting a job and the licensure exam.

Your future self will thank you if you get this program. It’s free today only. You have to install and activate it today. I just used it to back up my Windows drivers (Select all -> Backup). I then zipped them all up into one file and emailed them to myself. I have spent several days “upgrading” from Vista to XP, and finding all the correct drivers is a matching game of the highest order. By doing this, I know that if I ever need to reinstall an operating system on this laptop again, I will have a MUCH easier time of it. This was found on Giveaway of the Day. I don’t download programs from there very often, but this one has gotten really good reviews, and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

Download here: Driver Magician

Don’t forget that you must install and activate TODAY! It’s a tiny program, so it only takes a minute to do this. l After unzipping (which can be done just by double clicking), install the program. Select Register Later. Then double click on the orange Activate button. Voila!

For many of you who read this blog, you won’t need to watch this, because you’re already VERY aware of what Twitter is. For those of you still in the dark, here’s a cute little video for people still wondering what that Twitter thing is in my sidebar.

I have learned the most delightful and helpful thing. I was tired of being sent invitations for apps I knew I’d never add, so I sent Facebook support a message about it.

Here’s what you do. Instead of just clicking Ignore, click over to the main page of the application to which you’ve been invited. It should be hyperlinked. Once you’re on the main page for the app, look over on the right side of the page. There’s a “Block This Application” link. Since learning this last week, my Facebook life has gotten much more manageable, much more peaceful.

So to review: Block the application AND click Ignore, and you will never get another invitation for that application ever again.

So there is a new feature with Google Reader wherein you can share your favorite items with your “friends,” only these are not people you specifically select in. No, Google just uses your chat contact list and automatically shares the feeds you share with those people. The only way to keep people from seeing your shared items is to delete them from your contact list. I noticed this when I saw that I had shared items from my only ex with whom I don’t have good relations. I’m sure he didn’t mean to share those with me, and I’m sure I don’t want him to see things I share. In order to keep him from seeing what I share, I’m supposed to delete him from my contact list. I don’t think that’s ideal, because what if there is a reason I need to have his email address? So I went in to do that anyway, and I saw that I had already deleted him. So he’s in the share list no matter what. I can’t tell why, and it’s pretty hard to get Google to respond to one individual’s issue. I think the upshot is that I won’t be using this sharing feature. I’ll keep my sharing limited to the blog, Twitter, and sometimes Facebook. To me, I don’t have enough control over this feature for it to feel secure enough for me to use it. Perhaps they will eventually make it where I can deselect all then add in only those people I would actually want to allow access to my shared links.