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I’m pleased to announce that I have been selected to speak again at this year’s HDI National Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The conference runs from March 29-April 1 at the Venetian.

This year I will be doing a morning “brain bites” session entitled “Fired to Hired in 23 days“. I offer actionable advice how to be prepared and get results should the inevitable layoff happen to you. After 22 years at my former organization, it happened to me and thanks to great preparation, I was able to secure a new and exciting job in just a few weeks. While I cannot guarantee the same results, you’ll be able to take home many of the lessons learned and start using them immediately. It’s a lot of information to pack in to an hour so you want to ensure you get your morning coffee.

I will also be spending some time at the Serivce-now.com booth meeting customers/prospects and answering technical questions. If you can’t find me there, look around for the HDI officers and I won’t be far away.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Today I received a box full of books. Yes, THE books. It feels good to have that accomplishment behind. I find my brain starting to hint at what’s next.

With the book now available, Kreg and I are going to start focusing some energy on the companion podcast for the next few months. There is much to talk about that did not make it in the book and I suspect big WordPress news is coming out soon. Stay tuned! If you want to start a blog, or learn more about WordPress – we’ve got a book and a podcast that can help.

I just need to keep telling that little voice in my head that wants to write another book “wait”. Like Donna, I need to remind myself of the pain giving birth to the second child.

I recommend you capture all your ideas – you never know when they will come in handy. As a practitioner of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology, I know I am supposed to capture all kind of actions, but I sometimes forget to capture fleeting ideas that may come in useful later. Thanks to a recent inspiration by Douglas E. Welch at Career Opportunities, I am reminded to capture ALL my ideas – and trust me, I have some pretty bizarre ones sometimes.

Like many of you, I have many hats to wear including father, husband, new media producer, author, local chapter officer, local group organizer, Sunday School teacher, IT Manager, and a few others; so it isn’t surprising that some ideas for one facet hit at times when I’m out of context. If I don’t write these ideas down they’re likely lost to time; unless they have a strong emotional tie.

The key to this is having an easy way to capture those ideas and be able to reference them later. I prefer a small notebook that I keep in my computer bag. You may choose a PDA. Whatever the tool, make the practice simple.

I seem to be gathering quite a collection of geek humor and there is a section in my notebook for that. Just this past week we had a rather humorous conversation at lunch that I wanted to add to the collection. The conversation was completely spontaneous and inspired me to create a couple minutes of comedy sketch that might come in handy on a podcast or if I ever find myself on “open mic” night. Had I not written it down, it would have been lost. Is it comedy gold? Probably not. If I can brighten someone’s day with a humorous anecdote, that’s worth it to me.

Whether it’s an idea for a funny story, or an idea for an invention that might save the world, write it down. Let it bake. You can always refer to it when you get a chance or have a need. It only takes seconds.

And yes, the idea for this post came while I was in one of those “other modes” and I wrote it down.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): If you have an application that opens a data file automatically when it’s invoked, be sure you know EXACTLY where that file is located and back it up then double check the backup.

This afternoon I found myself faced with lost data. Not just one important file (my task list), but two (my password database.) OK, they weren’t lost, but the copies I thought I was writing to hadn’t been backed up in a couple weeks despite my weekly efforts to do so.

I use an SD card to keep my important files periodically (ex: resume, task list, password database, etc) Unforutnately putting the SD card in and out of the laptop slot all the time was starting to take a toll so I copied the important files to the laptop and back them up to the SD card weekly. The second factor in my problem was that I got sick of going to C:\Chuck to always get these frequent files so I moved them to a subfolder under My Documents (a story for another time.) Correction – I did not MOVE the files so much as COPY them. Had I moved them, this would not have been a problem. With critical files, I always err on the side of caution and make copies in case something doesn’t work out with the move, I still have the originals.

Now for the kicker, when I thought I was using these files out of My Documents, I finally went back and deleted them from C:\Chuck. Later in the day I went to open my task list and found it was empty. I went to File> Open and opened up the data file only to find out it was a couple weeks out of date. OY! I just updated all those projects and tasks this morning! “No Problem”, I thought, “I’ll just get them out of the recycle bin.” Woe is me, they weren’t there. I don’t know why, but they were gone. I searched the entire C: drive thinking I may have moved them to another folder rather than delete them… nope. I was screwed. The fates conspired against me.

I had to make up the data, do my weekly review again, and try and get as many passwords and accounts back in as I could. It’s pretty amazing how much information you can go through in a couple weeks when it’s lost!

I feel like such an idiot because I’ve nearly lost this information before when I misplaced the SD card (and it was the only source.) That’s why I started running off the laptop and copying back to the SD card, but without some kind of verification, it was all for naught.

Now I’ve added one more task to my regular manual backup process… check the modification dates on these critical files to ensure it agrees with when I think I modified them.

Be extra cautious when you have applications that open a default file when they start (as is the case with My Life Organized, and Keepass).

Hopefully you won’t suffer the same fate I did.

Next week is my birthday and Donna gave me license to get my own gift. On Tuesday I stopped by the local Apple dealer (no Apple Store in Appleton, yet) and picked up a 32GB iPod Touch. My 5th Gen iPod has been “well loved” over the past few years. Battery life is starting to fade and several rows of pixels on the screen have gone out so I figured it was time to step up.

I absolutely love this device. This is the most revolutionary device I’ve had in years. I thought the Windows SmartPhone was a good idea, I thought watching videos on the iPod 5G was cool. The iPod Touch brings together several technologies to make me more effective and actually reduce costs incurred with my mobile phone.

With WiFi, it means I don’t have to carry around my laptop to stay in touch. While typing an email on the touch isn’t quite as quick, I can keep up with newsfeeds (including the local paper which I haven’t read in years). Podcasts are still a staple of my diet and the Touch does just as well as the old device at keeping me informed.

Sadly, not all my devices are fully supported. The iHome radio in the bedroom does not charge or control the device, but it still plays the audio. That’s no biggie in my book. The Belkin TuneTalk has no effect, but I use the H2 for most of my recording these days. On the positive side, the Griffin iTrip and Belkin FM tuner work just fine.

One odd problem I had this past week was an issue with the time. It seemed every time I plugged in the touch to the (Windows) laptop, the time would “unsync”. I set the device to 5:01PM and connect the cable to find it jumps to 7:15AM before it even starts the sync. I visited the Apple website, tried a soft reset and a full device wipe (and restore) which took several hours and had no impact.

I called Apple support and they recommended the same steps, but I refused to do that again. We went in to msconfig and turned off all but the critical Apple services, rebooted and things were fine. We then turned everything back on and discovered that putting the laptop to sleep with iTunes running is a bad idea. Now before I dock the iPod Touch I have to remember to start iTunes “fresh” for best results or risk losing time on the device. How bizarre is that?

I commend Apple on their great support and helpful website for getting me through this odd incident.