Rossotron.com

Mood Ring

Mood rings were once touted (erroneously) as a way to find out through a quick visual inspection of an object whether the person wearing one was feeling angry, sad, calm, stressed, or any one of a number of other moods, depending on how inventive the manufacturer was at assigning moods to colors (which, by the way, the rings NEVER seemed able to achieve).

I've got my own, naturally occurring mood ring, of a sort.  My fingernails.  (But not in color – they don't turn green when I'm angry, [FINGERNAIL SMASH!!])

The length of my fingernails is directly related to how relaxed (not stressed) I am.  I don't bite my nails, normally.  But as I become more and more stressed, I start picking up nervous habits and nail-biting is one of the first that rears its ugly head.  I'm not happy with the habit, but it only seems to pop up when I'm stressed, which means that trying to kick the habit only causes a feedback loop of more stress.  Vicious cycles are ugly.

When I'm under a big project load with a deadline fast-approaching, my fingers are bitten to the quick.  When I come back from a couple weeks of vacation (like I just did), my fingers are more apt to resemble talons and I have to be careful when changing the baby's diaper¹.

Anyway, I only bring this up now because this morning I noticed that my nails have all been doing pretty well and are looking pretty good.  The only problem is I noticed this just as I caught myself about to gnaw on a nail.

My current work setup – Multitasking is fun

I give it a week before I'm back to ugly, chewed-off nails.

¹Yes, I do cut my nails.  No, they do not actually resemble talons.  No, I never put my daughter in harm's way by placing sharp objects of any kind near her skin. 

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I love having shortcuts on my computer.  I've got folders in all kinds of weird and obscure hierarchies, to match how I think things should be filed.  Hence, you'll find a directory with code snippets related to websites under C:Documents and SettingsrossgMy DocumentsPersonalstuffcodewebsitestuff , while I might keep my work's time sheet backup in C:Documents and SettingsrossgMy DocumentsWorkIn_ProgressTIMESHEET .

This is all well and good, and works great for me for when I want to find something, but it takes A LOT of clicking to navigate there sometimes.  So usually, I set up a shortcut to a often-used folder and just use that link off my quick-launch bar or desktop.  The only problem with that is the shortcut goes only to the folder without the default explorer file tree in the left-hand pane, which is VITAL if I need to move up or down a couple of directories quickly without doing a whole lot more clicking.

Well, I finally decided to use my google skills to search for a way to make it so my shortcuts have the file tree, and found it in this article by Tony Bradley.  It's actually so simple I'm kicking myself for not doing this earlier.  All you do is put an e after the path to the folder name in the field within the shortcut properties, and Voila! You have an explorer-like window, directed to just the folder you were looking for.

This won't save me a whole lot of time or energy, but it's little efficiency improvements like this that bring a smile to my face and brighten my day, if only a little.  So give a cheer for customization with me, and now I'll go home and enjoy the extra daylight that is going to let me play with my daughter outside, and bring an even BIGGER smile to my face.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend