3 Office Hacks that save you time!

Paul

We all Love to save time at the office.

It doesn’t take many people to release that there is so many things you can do if you had the time in the office.   We see people running around and trying to either be busy or look busy.   Nothing screams that then how you present yourself to your managers.   We can’t change our current circumstances but we can change how we deal with them and speed up those times.  I’m going to talk about 3 ways that I have figured out to save time at my current job.   Each one of these you could possibly do to help yourself in everything you do.   Nothing I’m going to say has probably already been thought of by other people but I figured it was about time to talk about them.

Automate As much as possible.

This is the first way to save time, from emails to phone calls.   If you use automation for everything you might need to do then you will obviously save time.   Even then it will vary from how much time you save.   One way I’ve found to make automation a part of my work is to have automatic replies to the most common problems.   Since I am in IT these problem seem to be stuff that usually come our way from “How do I . . . . ” TO “Can you fix my problem with . . .”.   Each one will get a reply on how they can accomplish their questions and try to help them.   It isn’t very hard to setup with Office365 but Most people don’t realize that you can do this.  It isn’t hard to use Outlook to create automate emails or even to have custom email templates.   You can also have custom hotkeys that you press to send reply emails when something that may need to be replied to.   You just have to look for ways to automate your response, even when we have so many emails coming in at any given time.

Learn Keyboard shortcuts As much as possible

This also goes without saying but people seem to forget that in Windows there are A LOT of keyboard shortcuts that help you speed up your time in front of the computer.   You can have shortcuts to load word or even open Edge Browser when it is needed.   There are even shortcuts to copy and paste and that isn’t just that.  You can even Lock or focus on a certain task when you need to.    I’ve learned all this over the last few months on my current job because you won’t believe how easy it was to use these shortcuts when I needed to.   It won’t help you save time if you don’t use them so why not use them.   I love these idea of using the shortcuts and saving time.

Know when to take a break

Another way to save time is to know when to step away and take a break.  We should not be around the computer all the time.  So it is best to learn to take some time away from the computer to make yourself more productive when the time is needed.  Some people never learn this lesson and you see them always at the computer either eating food and trying to complete their work but that doesn’t help your productivity, in fact it slows you down because you now have to worry about keyboard and your dirty hands.  So why eat at your desk when you could easily do that away from your computer and enjoy your meal, come back and be refreshed to do what is needed.   I think most people don’t understand this concept and thus are unaware how it slows them down.   I know I work really hard to go walk away when it is time for lunch and don’t come back until I am done with my food.  I also find my eyes aren’t as tired if I do this and that helps save me time with whatever I am reading or writing about.

What are some other office hacks that you found to help you save time and make your more productive?  Why not leave a comment and tell others what has helped your keep your speed and save you time in your office environment.   I would be curious to hear what others have done to help with saving time and being more productive in their jobs.

3 Portable Gaming Consoles that Make sense!

Paul

The Nintendo Switch

Amazon Price: $349.99

Is everyone saying this is the most seen item in the USA. You’d probably seen it at parks or on long car rides. This isn’t nothing new when it comes to keeping someone occupied when there’s nothing to do. It has also been the most Go-to gadget of the last 6 years. It came out March 3, 2017 and has been something people grab because of the price and portability of games that you can bring along with you. Nintendo has so many different varieties of games to choice that it can allow any gamer to find a game that they can play on the go. This isn’t one to say that the graphics or speed of the Switch is anything to do with the price.   It’s been a staple for Christmas gifts that you almost have to know that someone is bound to get it for Christmas.   You’d have a hard time not saying this isn’t a good gift for people always on the go or in airports, or those who are traveling.  The price alone makes it a very good gift for anyone who loves to game.   The only draw back I see from this is that it hasn’t changed much over the years and it could be said it isn’t the newest portable gaming.

Specs:

  • CPU/GPU — NVIDIA Custom Tegra processor

Storage:

  • 64 GB Users can easily expand storage space using microSDHC or microSDXC cards up to 2TB (sold separately)

Video Output:

  • Up to 1080p via HDMI in TV mode
  • Up to 720p via built-in screen in Tabletop mode and Handheld modes

Steam Deck

Steam Price: 399$ up to 649$

In My eyes, this seems the next thing to become better than the Nintendo switch.  However, this is just a theory of mine.  I think the Steam could make it even harder for competitors to just not innovate and this will definitely bring in more people to challenge the competition.  Now it goes without saying that this isn’t anywhere like the switch because the graphics looks to be way better and more .   Some of the more pressing questions we should ask are “Will we see more titles come to the Steam deck?”  If they can pull this off the steam could be a good Mid Level gaming  for those who like a good intense gaming sessions.  I don’t know about the anything other than what I’ve seen but I do think this will make it’s way into the public in due to time.   I would love to test this out and have reserved mine.  So only time will tell, it however looks to be very user friendly and allows you to fix your own without much help.

Specs:

  • AMD APU
  • CPU: Zen 2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5GHz (up to 448 GFlops FP32)
  • GPU: 8 RDNA 2 CUs, 1.0-1.6GHz (up to 1.6 TFlops FP32)
  • APU power: 4-15W
  • 16 GB LPDDR5 on-board RAM (5500 MT/s quad 32-bit channels)

Storage:

  • 64 GB eMMC (PCIe Gen 2 x1)
  • 256 GB NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2*)
  • 512 GB high-speed NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 3 x4 or PCIe Gen 3 x2*)

Software:

  • Operating System — SteamOS 3.0 (Arch-based)
  • Desktop — KDE Plasma

Logitech G Cloud Gaming Handheld

Amazon Price 349.99$

This one looks to require Wi-Fi but it still is a good idea and a good price.   It has a Nvidia gpu so that will make it even better with graphics.   I don’t know  about the small screen which is 7 inches and that is just the beginning.   The idea that you can go anywhere with a WIFI and be able to play your games seems a bit to constrained but maybe that’s just because most people aren’t always around some place that has Wi-Fi.  I just point this out that some people have said this is a weak gaming terminal, I tend to think they may be right but I at least wanted to bring to you a contender to the Nintendo Switch or even the Steam deck.   There are plenty of people talking about this but It at least comes with some interesting specs:

Specs: 

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 720G (SD720G)
  • Octa-core CPU up to 2.3GHz

Display

  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 FHD (16:9 ratio)
  • Type: IPS LCD
  • Brightness: 450 nits typical
  • Display Size: 7″ diagonal

OPERATING SYSTEM

  • Android™ 11, with Google Mobile Service

Which one are you likely to get and why?  Why not leave a comment and tell me your thoughts. I’d love to hear what people have to say which one is better or worse?   Got any idea’s of what I should talk about why not leave me a comment and tell me.

Some Good reads that I’ve been reading / Listening

Paul

*affiliate links :  all links in this page are affiliate links to Audible or to Amazon to allow you to easily find the books that I recommend on here.   I get a small commission for each time you buy a book when you click on my links.  Thank you for supporting my website.*

 

This is a continuation of the previous post that I did about what books on audible that I have been reading lately.  I thought I would share them with you in hopes that you might like these too.

Silver Ships Series


If you are like me and love to read some good novels that are well written, this is one of those that you should check out.  It all starts out with a young Alex Racine, an explorer-tug captain saves a lonely damaged silver ship.   This is just the beginning of the journey you will take in this series.   There’s comedy and gold nuggets of hints that show you where the author is going in this series.   The author takes you on a very interesting journey, and even then it is a masterpiece to begin with.   I started with Book 1 on Audible and already I’m now onto Book 12 on this 20 book series.  This is one of the most interesting books that have kept my attention in what would be an ongoing listening on audible.  You could can listen to several of the early books from Audible for free, you will however have to buy book 1 but there are like 7 books that are free, Book 2, book 3, Book 4, and Book 6 through Book 9.   Which is why I started listening to this series because one way I could binge my cravings for a Good Science Fiction book.   This is one of those that you must have in order to understand how good the author was at writing this series.   Truly the best series I’ve seen in a long time.

Time War last Forever Series

This is a 6 book series that I just loved because it was so compelling for the user to keep their attention on a good book.  I loved this book because of the space battles and how the aliens use time energy.   It was a great concept for me to think about how you could harness time and use it for your own purposes.   It’s one of the more interesting space fighting ideas.   The cast and crew of this series also keeps you from getting bored because they come up with some unique places in time.   It’s almost like a Doctor Who series because of how they use time to go forward or back in time.

Bobiverse Series

How Many Bob’s can there be?  That’s the real question, we may never really know but we find that after a while there are a lot more personalities that you would of expected.   Dennis Taylor, does a great storyline, it even has Star Wars and Star Trek references that you may or may not get.   I liked this series due to the understanding of what it would be like to be a BOB and how would people be able to do that in the future.   So many aspects of this book were really good and I thought it was high time to talk about these.  Ray Porter, the narrator does a good job at keep it interesting and makes you want to follow the journey.  It was one of those little books that made you smile as you did your daily activities.    It isn’t the best but it is one of those that kept you coming back to find out what happens next.   It’s a 4 book series and as such was nice to have but if you want something more than look at the other suggestions I have talked about this one went really quickly and left you wanting more.

I’ll have more later on but if you know of any good books that I should listen to on Audible, Let me know and I’ll check them out.  Have a good Wednesday.

Will Nvidia fail after EVGA announcement?

Paul

Is this end for Nvidia?

We can only assume that EVGA got away from Nvidia due to the strict rules set aside for all AIB (Add-In Board) companies.   I don’t say that lightly, Nvidia has said in the past what AIB could and couldn’t do.  They were so controlling, that most couldn’t even make enough money to the public.  It’s almost always a lost leader for most of the companies because they are told how much they can sell their Nvidia boards for weather it be for EVGA, MSI, or some third party such as Dell, and Alienware.  Then Nvidia could come along and under cut them by selling their own for much cheaper and easier.   Let’s not forget to mention that Nvidia would wait till the last minute to give AIB’s driver’s and even information about what the next version of the GPU will be like.

This is just a power move

There’s been talk about this being a power move by EVGA but I really do not think so.  They have stated many times that they will not go to AMD or intel, but people still think they will do that.  Others say that EVGA will be back in the GPU arena later on after everyone cools off.   I don’t know about that either because I can’t see EVGA coming back without some major reason that would give them the advantage they are looking for.   Either way, it doesn’t look good for EVGA for sure and sooner or later they will need to start laying people off.   You can’t have all those people doing nothing.

What’s next for Nvidia

I can only guess what will happen with this announcement.  Of course Nvidia did have stocks drop over the weekend and maybe that was too expected but I don’t see this as being a big issue with them.  They knew it would happen once EVGA announced it, they had to know.   The problem is what will Nvidia do to get customers to want to buy their stocks and keep them going.   Will the 4000 series be any better than 3000 series or will it just be a tiny bit better.  We will not know until people start looking at the 4000 series and doing their benchmarks for how it reacts to any given game.  In the meantime, if you have bought a EVGA card what’s your thoughts on this.  I know I bought a 3050 two months ago and now am a little worried if my card fails will I get another 3050 from EVGA or what will happen.

What’s your thoughts on the EVGA and NVidia debacle?   Will they join forces or stay apart?

It might be time to change your ethernet cords!

Paul1 Reply

Ethernet cords 101

Why would you need to change your ethernet cords?  You’re probably asking that because you’ve been using the ones in your hose for years without a problem.  This can seem quite different if you really consider the process of the network cords you have now.   Older houses are probably only using Cat5 or Cat5e cables.  The newer ones probably cat 6 but did you know there are more than that.  We’ve got Cat 1 ,2, 3 ,4, 5, 5e, 6, 6a,7,7a,8.  Each one of these is a much faster and more productive than the next.  Here’s a graphic to show you what I mean:

Those ethernet cables

Most of the time, those old ethernet cables are slowing you down.   If you are going to install ethernet cables into your house infrastructure you really should install the highest possible cat cable you can into your house.  This isn’t going to be  cheap but it will at least help with speed and it will also make it more useable in the future.  You might only have speeds of 10000mps down or up.  If you decide later on you want more speed you could easily upgrade your fiber speeds and be able to use the speeds without having to redo your ethernet cables in your house.  Gaming on ethernet cables would make it so much faster and less lag on the network than if you didn’t have those faster cables.

Network speeds to your Modem

If you don’t upgrade the cables from your modem to router if you have one of those then you will not be increasing the speeds of the network.  You’ll be bottlenecking all the speeds because of the cables you are using to the router to the modem.  You should consider buying a small cat8 cable and installing that into your router and connecting it to the modem.  This way the speeds will not be bottlenecked.  Also if you choice to use the highest speeds possible then will will allow you to get the most bandwidth from your ISP provider.  If you really do want the fast speeds possible, consider buying your modem and stop renting  your modem from the ISP.  This will help you in the future because the speed of the modem can be increased as the speed from the ISP.  ISP might be using some kind of throttling software in their modems to make it much slower for you for bandwidth.  This might be used or might not be used it just depends on the ISP.

Finally as you can see if you are like me, I use network cables in my house due to the saturation of the WIFI networks in my area.  This way I can get the most out of my ISP and not depend so much on my WIFI.  It can help with me to not have network interference from other WIFI broadcasting equipment.  I recently bought Cat 7 cables to help with my speeds on my modem since I can get 10gbps down and 5gbps down.  Which makes me having faster downloads and faster network speeds.   Don’t forget to check your cables from time to time for wear and tear and replace them from time to time.