Rules for travel...
1. Don't go overly wild scrubbing "extra" files off your travel drive. Having a video or two to watch would be a welcome alternative, particularly when 'net connectivity is sketchy at best.
2. Always bring along a small (say, 2 GB) thumb drive that you use to carry files to be handled by third parties, (e.g., the person behind the counter at Staples in charge of the printer). This way, there's no chance of inadvertently exposing other files to outsiders.
3. There is no percentage in carrying around an iPad and a Kindle. Sure, it's hard to read an iPad when it's sunny out while sitting beside a pool, but if it's sunny out and I'm beside a pool, I'm certainly not going to be reading. The iPad is also a superior "second screen" for work, especially with Quickoffice (just don't expect it to do wonders with 10-MB PowerPoint files).
4. The Magic Wand handheld scanner is useful (a) only when you remember to bring it along, and (b) must be used like a paint roller, in the sense that you must go over the same area to be scanned several times and from different directions. The unit is, in my opinion, definitely not suitable for making OCD-ready scans of documents or books on a large scale.
Apropos of point 3, I am reminded of all those ads I've seen over the years, featuring handsome young people using their laptops while basking on a tropical beach. My nearly instinctive reaction is to wonder, "Why the heck are these people using their computer on a beach?" (Get a room! With a table and a chair!)
Those ads, in my mind, are second (in idiocy) only to those old software ads that feature an up-and-coming ladder-climber who—having been given a week to finish some hellish, Stables-of-Augeas type of assignment for The Boss—breezes through the task with great efficiency (thanks to the advertised software), so much so that the work is completed a day early and Friday is spent playing golf! In my unfortunate experience, management's typical response to such behavior is to recalibrate and assign even more work next time!
It's been a long day. Work amounted to about 4,800 source words that I'll review tomorrow morning.
Cheers...
2. Always bring along a small (say, 2 GB) thumb drive that you use to carry files to be handled by third parties, (e.g., the person behind the counter at Staples in charge of the printer). This way, there's no chance of inadvertently exposing other files to outsiders.
3. There is no percentage in carrying around an iPad and a Kindle. Sure, it's hard to read an iPad when it's sunny out while sitting beside a pool, but if it's sunny out and I'm beside a pool, I'm certainly not going to be reading. The iPad is also a superior "second screen" for work, especially with Quickoffice (just don't expect it to do wonders with 10-MB PowerPoint files).
4. The Magic Wand handheld scanner is useful (a) only when you remember to bring it along, and (b) must be used like a paint roller, in the sense that you must go over the same area to be scanned several times and from different directions. The unit is, in my opinion, definitely not suitable for making OCD-ready scans of documents or books on a large scale.
Apropos of point 3, I am reminded of all those ads I've seen over the years, featuring handsome young people using their laptops while basking on a tropical beach. My nearly instinctive reaction is to wonder, "Why the heck are these people using their computer on a beach?" (Get a room! With a table and a chair!)
Those ads, in my mind, are second (in idiocy) only to those old software ads that feature an up-and-coming ladder-climber who—having been given a week to finish some hellish, Stables-of-Augeas type of assignment for The Boss—breezes through the task with great efficiency (thanks to the advertised software), so much so that the work is completed a day early and Friday is spent playing golf! In my unfortunate experience, management's typical response to such behavior is to recalibrate and assign even more work next time!
It's been a long day. Work amounted to about 4,800 source words that I'll review tomorrow morning.
Cheers...