There are times when I really, really hate the auto-sleep feature on my computers. Because having a machine lock itself when I am monitoring something is a major pain in the patootie. So I came up with a way to keep the machine awake and unlocked.

I’m not sure how many people have this problem. I find that it is an issue for me both at home and at work. Here are the scenarios:

• Home: I was trying to copy files from my old laptop to my new. But the old laptop would go to sleep after 30 minutes, and the copy would stall.
• Work: I was running something on my desktop machine while working on my laptop. The desktop machine would lock itself after 3 minutes, meaning I had to put my password in each time I wanted to check on the progress.

Autolocking and Sleep are Good

I understand why it is good to let my home laptop go to sleep after 30 minutes. It doesn’t need to be turned on all the time, and heaven knows I would never shut it off.

I understand why my client auto-locks machines after 3 minutes of inactivity. There is less chance of someone unauthorized finding an unlocked machine and working at it.

But given that I am doing something active at home, and literally sitting next to the machine at work, these restrictions are frustrating.

So I Made A Solution

I’m a programmer, and since these problems are on computers, it was easy to make a solution.

It’s a PowerShell script, and it simply simulates a key press every 60 seconds. The script runs for 10 hours.

Here is the code:

param($minutes = 600)

$myshell = New-Object -com "Wscript.Shell"

for ($i = 0; $i -lt $minutes; $i++) {
	Start-Sleep -Seconds 60
	$myshell.sendkeys("{F13}")
}

Explanation

The first line sets the number of minutes that the script will execute. In this case 10 hours (600 minutes)

Every 60 seconds, the script will send the F13 key to the computer. You may be asking “what is the F13 key?” It doesn’t exist. But the computer doesn’t know that. ?

Using the Script

To use the script:

1. Copy the above code into a new Notepad document.
2. Save the file with a PS1 extension. I called mine KeepLive.ps1
3. Right-click on the saved file and choose “Run with PowerShell”

Disclaimers

Of course, only use this if it is eligible to be used under your company’s policies. Always understand code that you run from the Internet. I cannot confirm that this script can make Microsoft teams think you are at your desk and available. Use this script at your own risk. I and my blog cannot be held responsible for the use of the script.

I looked into switching from my paper habit tracker to apps in October. After evaluating three of them for a few weeks, I have finally made my habit tracker choice.

Except there are two that “won.”

My Usage

I have two sets of habits that I wanted to track. The first is my daily morning routine. My morning routine keeps me on track and allows me to carve out time for activities I feel are necessary to a serene and balanced day.

The second set of “habits” was to track when I work on my projects. There are long-term projects, like learning German and learning percussion, both of which require daily practice. There are also projects that come from my yearly goals as well as those that pop up in the course of my life. These contain things like writing my fiction book (yearly goal) to repotting all of the indoor plants (pop up project).

My Findings From The Trial

I wanted a habit tracker that would track both positive habits as well as help me eliminate negative habits. It had to have an easy to use interface and allow me to see streaks.

I evaluated three apps: Habit Tracker, Habitica and HabitKit.

Habitica: Nope.

I honestly thought, going in, that this would be the clear winner. Gamifying sounds fun, and it could do the positive and negative.

I found that the interface was slow to respond, and once I had selected something, there was no possibility for an “undo”. Since I had clicked on something multiple times because the app wasn’t responsive, I ended up having a day where it looked like it took my medications 5 times.

As cute as this was, I didn’t see the point of the app. I’m not going to take my character and go on quests. That is one more distraction in my life I don’t need.

So Habitica is on the shelf.

Habit Tracker: Win #1

I really liked the way that I can set up units in this application. It allows me to do partial completion, like putting in the number of steps I did take, even if it didn’t reach my goal.

I also really liked the completion wheel that shows me how I am doing on a rolling seven-day basis – right at the top of the entry screen. And the overall stats both in calendar form and by habit is a big plus. It also allows habits to be skipped without affecting the streaks.

The price is amazing – they offer an outright purchase in addition to the yearly subscription. The outright purchase is only $5.99.

This app is what I will be using to track my morning routine. It gives me all the visibility that my paper circle tracker did, both with tracking by habit and by day.

Atomic Habits – HabitKit: Win #2

Habit Kit shows me the habits by blocking out a box on a grid. It shows more than one month at a time on the grid, so you can see your streaks.

I like the way that I can see the habits broken out by habit – tracking streaks is the main focus of this.

With the paid app, you can see advanced statistics, both by individual habit as well as overall.

This app also offered an outright purchase as well as the subscription model. The lifetime price is $14.99 – still very reasonable for an app.

This app is what I will be using to track my project work. It gives me an overview of what I have neglected in one place.

Daily Update

One of the things that made me look at apps versus my paper tracking is that I check my phone right before bed, and updating the apps is going to be easier than hauling out the bullet journal, turning on the light, and updating it.

Switching to apps is going to give me an easy way to track how I am doing with both habits and project work.

Do you know how well you do on actually completing the things you consider habits? Do you use a habit tracker? I’m a big believer in tracking habits so that I have the hard-and-fast numbers to show me, eliminating my mind’s bias in how well I do.

As I started a new bullet journal this month, I took a look at how I was planning and tracking – and what was and wasn’t working. One of my main sticking points was how I track habits and the work I do on projects. I wasn’t updating the bullet journal before I went to bed, and so I ended up having to try and recall days worth of progress. Relying on my memory is even worse than believing I completed all my habits without proof, so I knew I needed to change things up.

My Old Tracker

I had two separate trackers in my bullet journal for each month. One was for my morning routine habits, and the other for tracking how often I worked on projects and long-term goals.

The morning routine I put into a circular tracker that showed me along tracks of the circle how I was doing on that habit, but then as the day moving toward the center, how I was doing on the day. (Example below)

For the project tracker, I wanted to be able to see if I was neglecting projects for weeks on end, and so I chose a grid tracker. I’ve tried one like shown below, but it had morphed into day number across the top and the project down the side.

Neither one of these was working because I wasn’t keeping up with updating it on a daily basis.

Using An App?

My daughter, a recent convert to bullet journaling, was telling me that she moved some of her habits into an app. She told me that the one she really wanted she couldn’t get on her phone (Android) but that I should check it out.

I wondered if switching to an app would make it easier to track habits and projects, so I decided to experiment.

Habit Tracker Apps I Tried

Disclaimer: I just want to point out that I have an iPhone, so I looked at iOS apps only. My goal was to find something that worked for me, rather than to present a broad look at a bunch of apps.

I wanted an app that was going to do the following:

• Track streaks so I could see where I was having issues
• Be easy to navigate
• Be reasonably priced: I prefer paying once to paying on a subscription model, but any cost has to be reasonable for the value received
• Some way to track those habits I am trying to break as well as those I am trying to establish.

I downloaded and installed all these apps and took each out for a spin. The app was either removed immediately, or evaluated for a few weeks.

Fabulous

This app is very scientific and reminds me of the Noom diet app with coaching and lessons. It makes challenges for you. I found it impossible to get past the constant upgrade screen to get a good look at what it does. I’m not interested in how to build, I just want to track. Verdict: removed.

Focus Habit

This seemed like a gamified habit tracker? But I couldn’t figure out how to use it out of the box. Verdict: removed.

Habit Rabbit

This is a gamified habit tracker that allows you to clothe and house a rabbit. It is adorable. But there is no negative habits and no pause. The tutorial was sparse and I found the interface confusing. Verdict: removed.

Habit Tracker

Habit Tracker allows for negative habits as well as partial completion. It has lots of units for tracking the habits, instead of the usual yes/no. For instance, you can have a habit of 10000 steps and it will give you credit for doing 8000. It also gives you a choice to be notified of habits, and a vacation/pause mode. Verdict: try for a few weeks.

Habitica

Another gamified habit tracker, this one is along the lines of D&D. It’s got cute little pixel graphics and rewards for completing your habits. Verdict: try for a few weeks.

HabitKit

This app is designed to show streaks, very much like I did manually in the bullet journal. It was easy to use, but there was no way to track negative habits. The Pro version unlocks the graphs. Verdict: try for a few weeks.

(Not Boring) Habits

This has a really nice interface and has reminders. It is also science-backed but doesn’t spoon feed it. I liked the promise that it wouldn’t nag me. The problem of this for me is that all of the habits were on different screens, and I had a really tough time figuring out how to navigate the app. Verdict: removed.

NoteCircle

This was the app my daughter wanted me to look at. It is more of a task manager and calendar with the ability to split out routines. For routines, it jumps back and forth between routines and tasks – a very tedious process. Streaks are a paid feature. No negative habits. Verdict: removed.

Sparkle: Self-Care Checklist

This app’s title said what I wanted. But it also included the need to ask how I felt with the habits. Honestly I don’t need to analyze my emotional state with flossing. It just need to be done. There were week rolling streaks, but no way to see progress longer than that. Verdict: removed.

Streaking: Streak Your Habits

This is a social media platform for habit building and sharing, working either alone or with a team. You can see what others are doing. It shows streaks by day/week/month. It allows you to put your habits in folders. I’m not interested in doing this process with other people. Verdict: removed.

After looking at the apps, I was left with three to evaluate: Habitica, Habit Kit and Habit Tracker. I will publish my results in a few weeks.

Microsoft Excel, which is a spreadsheet meant for crunching numbers, may be the tool of accountants. But I rely on it heavily to help me with text. I generate text using Excel in order to feed data cleanly into systems.

It occurred to me that people might get some benefit from learning how to do this, so here is my method:

The Data

Usually when I am assembling chunks of text, the data has come to me with bits of it in columns, and I may have to add in other text. Since I don’t want to geek out on you here, I’ll use an example with putting together addresses.

Let’s say we have a spreadsheet with 6 columns: First Name, Last Name, Address, City, State and ZIP. We want to transform those into three columns: Name, Address, CityStateZIP. Here is what the data would look like to start with:

Basic Text Formulas and Operators

There are a few things you need to know about working with text. Here is the summary:

All formulas start with “=”. The equals sign tells Excel it is going to do a “calculation”, even if it is on text.

Reference cells by their location. Excel has columns that are labeled with letters and rows that are labeled with numbers. To reference a particular cell (or “box”), use the column letter followed by the row number.

Know that Excel uses Relative Referencing by default. Excel formulas reference things relative to the position from where you are. So if you are in column G, row 2 and you reference column A, row 1, Excel sees this as “go to the left of where I am 5 columns and up 1 row”. Be careful with this, or it can lead to unexpected results.

All text that doesn’t change goes in double quotes. If you want to add something that doesn’t change into a text string, you put it in double quotes (“). For example, if you wanted the text to start out saying “The Grand High Exalted Muckity Muck”, the formula would be

="The Grand High Exalted Muckity Muck".

Concatenate with &. To put two chunks of text together in Excel, you need to use concatenation, which is the ampersand (&). The plus sign (+) is for adding numbers.

Example: to put John and Doe together, without a space in between, it would become

="John" & "Doe"

Trim off the spaces. Nothing can throw off putting text together than extra spaces. Trim off the extra spaces in your text by using TRIM(). If you wanted to format the name in the example above, the formula would become as follows. This translates to “trim the spaces off either end of the text in cell A2, then add a blank space, then add the text of B2, which has also had the spaces removed from both ends.

=TRIM(A2) & " " & TRIM(B2)

Pad ZIP codes with 0s. ZI{codes can be a bear. They are numbers that are treated as text, but sometimes Excel doesn’t see them that way. You can fix this with some padding. We use the REPT function to generate a string of zeroes, then add the ZIP code to the right of this, and take the rightmost five characters. (It sounds more complicated than it is).

=RIGHT(REPT("0",5) & F2,5)

You can add new lines to the text. If you need the text to appear on multiple lines (say for address labels) you can do that by inserting a CHR(10).

=C2 & CHR(10) & D2

Extend the formula with copying. To get the formula where you need it to be, copy the cell with your original formula into the cells that need it.

The Results

Below you can see the formulas and the results:

Since I released my video on my OneNote work planning system, I have gotten questions about how to personalize the notebook. This video is about how to save time and effort by using templates to customize a OneNote notebook.

I had to recently switch from paper to electronic notes for work due to the need to do fast searches. Searching through five notebooks that were haphazardly backlinked was almost impossible. I made the switch to OneNote, and have worked hard to get a simple but workable system. This is a tour of how I use OneNote for work.

I dislike wasted effort. And since I spend most of my days (and nights) on a computer, typing the same thing over and over again is wasted effort. Breevy saves me that effort.

I’ve had long experience with text replacers over the past five years. I started with ShortKeys, tinkered with AutoHotkey, and looked at many others over the years. Most didn’t even last a full day on my computer. AutoHotkey was too much like work (literally, since I’m a programmer). And ShortKeys has no shortage of quirks.

In 2010, Breevy entered my life. I have never looked back. It’s a program that has taken the best of the other programs without any annoyances.

The Basics of Breevy

Breevy is an auto-text expander. It not only allows you to expand text as you type, but you can also launch programs and websites using it.

The program itself is written in a non-Microsoft dependent format. This means when Microsoft randomly forces an update of your operating system on you, it is not likely to break because of a dependency on Microsoft code. It is also very light on memory (3748K on my machine), registering at less than half what ShortKeys takes up (12,740K).

Breevy can also be run in portable mode, meaning that if you are working in a place that does not allow you to install software, you can use is without an installer.

The Breevy Interface

The left side of the Breevy screen contains a list of folders. These folders can be used to group your abbreviations together — something I find very handy. I have split mine into work, email, HTML and others. You can change folders by clicking on the folder, or see everything by clicking on the top level. You can even nest folders more than one level, allowing for a great deal of organization.

The right side of the screen contains the list of abbreviations in the folder. You can change how they are sorted, making it very easy to find the one you are looking for.

Clicking on an abbreviation brings up the modification area at the bottom of the screen. You can set your abbreviation key, the case-sensitivity, replacement text, and the description. All of these columns show in the abbreviation area and can be sorted by.

Breevy Abbreviation Options

One of the strengths of Breevy is the ability to control, by abbreviation, the case-sensitivity of the output, and when the text is replaced.

Case Sensitivity

Each abbreviation comes with three casing options: case insensitive, case sensitive, and “adapt replacement case to case of typed abbreviation.”

The first option allows you to use your abbreviations regardless of case. For instance, if you had an abbreviation called “l8r” that expanded to “later”, you could type any one of L8R, L8r, l8R, l8r to have it expand.

The case sensitive option allows you to have multiple expansions for a given set of letters. Thus, you could have replacements called L8R and l8r expand to two different things.

Feature alert: Breevy is smart enough to catch possibly conflicts between case-sensitive and case-insensitive abbreviations, and warns you that there might be a possible conflict.

The third feature, which I’ve never seen in a text expander before, adjusts the text to match the case you typed in. So if you have an abbreviation “cc” that expands to “camel case”, you would get the following:

• cc — camel case
• CC — CAMEL CASE
• Cc — Camel case

Text Replacement Options

Most text replacers allow for a global text replacement option. You need to trigger the replacer by either prefixing or suffixing the text you type in with a sequence of characters. Breevy allows you to set this by abbreviation. You can have the text trigger immediately when you type in a sequence, when you press a “word-ending character” (fully customizable in the settings) or by pressing a trigger key after the sequence.

Having the text replace when you have matched the sequence is great when you have special characters. For instance, when I type in “/H1”, I want the expander to put out HTML H1 codes. This customization means I can put in a prefix of my own without worrying I will accidentally insert them into a letter.

Having a replacement trigger on a word-ending character is the type of thing you see in replacers within word processors. This fixes errors as you type. Great for common typos.

Having the trigger key (customizable) allows you to use a key to force the program to put the text in. I find this is good for codes I may want to put in that may actually be words that stand on their own.

Breevy Features

Here are the things I really like about Breevy:

• Folders for organization. As mentioned above, this is an important feature for me. My ShortKeys list had 500+ entries in it. I rarely found anything. Breevy has allowed me to split out the abbreviations into functional areas.
• Program launch. Although I use Launchy, it was difficult for me to get specific websites set up to launch on command. Breevy does it with little effort.
• Imports Word Autocorrections. Yes, it will import the entire Word autocorrection file in, giving you the same sort of spelling replacement in other programs.
• Include clipboard. You can tell the abbreviation to include the contents of the clipboard in the replacement. This is great if you routinely wrap clipboard text with something else (in my case, with HTML).
• Special symbols. Breevy can handle special symbols, like © and non-English letters, like umlauts and accents.
• One screen editing. I really dislike programs that have screens everywhere for editing. Breevy’s interface is one-stop shopping, all on screen. The screen also doesn’t vanish when you switch to another program, like ShortKeys does.
• Cursor positioning. You can include the cursor position in your replacement text. This allows you to put your cursor at the place you would start typing without having to move the arrows or mouse.
• Variable date insertion. You can use Breevy to insert dates and date parts into your text. For example, for my work comments, I have it put the date in a YYYYMMDD format. Breevy handles this with no problems.
• Access to Alt, Control and Shift keys. This means I can string together lots of keyboard commands and have it do complex sequences.
• Long sequences. My most used Breevy shortcuts at work include standardized code headers as well as entire code sequences that I use frequently to check statuses of various jobs. I have also used the feature to do up to 50 repetitions of the same code when the alternative was long and tedious manual action

Conclusion

I am LOVE Breevy. I use it every day, both personally and professionally. It is the first thing I install on any new computer, and is the piece of software I use hands-down the most.

Since buying Breevy entitles you to lifetime free upgrades as well as protection by a 30-day money-back guarantee, I suggest you give it a try. You will be very surprised how much it improves your time on the computer.

Disclosure:

Note: I was provided with a free full working copy of Breevy to evaluate and write this review from. I have no other affiliation with 16 Software.

When I really need to blast through a lot of work, but really don’t want to, I use the (10+2)*5 method invented by Merlin Mann. To help me, I use a tiny application called Instant Boss.

It’s a modified Pomodoro method, but instead of 20 minute work sessions followed by a 5 minute break, it shortens both work and break times. I prefer (10+2)*5 to Pomodoro because the 10 minute start seems do-able, whereas the 20 minute block often seems insurmountable.

This method uses a timer, and you work for 10 minutes, followed by 2 minutes of anything you wish. Repeated 5 times, this gives you 50 minutes of sold work time every hour. (You may think that you get more work done every hour without this method, but trust me, you’ll be surprised).

I went looking for a PC timer program to use at work. I already had a basic timer on my machine, but I wanted the ability to set intervals. I couldn’t use the traditional timer because I would disturb my co-workers. I stumbled across a great application called Instant Boss over at the Donation Coder forum. It did exactly what I was looking for.

Instant Boss: (10+2)*5 Timer

• Name: Instant Boss
• Author: App103 (“That scary taskbar girl”)
• Platform: Windows (tested on XP Pro)
• Download Location: https://appsapps.info/download/instant-boss/

What it does. The application starts up with a straight-forward interface. You set the working time, the break time and the number of repeats, then press Work.

If you leave the screen up, you will see the countdown start.

If you minimize it, Instant boss puts an icon in your taskbar area.

When your working time is over, a screen pops up and tells you to take a break. You can “snooze” it, or switch.

Review

This little application is a great piece of software. It is small, easy to use, and solid. It does exactly what it is supposed to do with little fuss or extra foobahs. The only thing it lacks is the ability to make me focus on what I should be working on.

One of the most powerful things about Gmail is that you can add a “+tag” to your email address, turning your single email address into an infinite amount of addresses. These modified plus addresses can then be used to filter email with great precision.

Microsoft finally is getting on board with this, setting the Plus addressing as a default as of April 22, 2022. It can still be overridden by system administrators, but hopefully most people will take the default.

Simply put, you will be able to use the “+tag” on your Outlook email address and take advantage of the built-in filtering to quickly sort your mail.

Using the +Tag

For instance: mork@outlook.com would be the base address. This could be expanded to:

• Mork+newsletter@outlook.com
• Mork+taxes@outlook.com
• Mork+oranges@outlook.com
• Mork+mindy@outlook.com

All of these email address will end up in the regular inbox, but each with have a

different To address.

Why Use Plus Addresses?

The power of the plus addresses lies in where you give it out. If you choose to use a

“+newsletter” address for every email list you sign up for, you will be able to

immediately distinguish all of your mailing list emails.

Using Plus To Find Who Is Selling Your Email

You can also use it to find out who is selling your email address.

For instance, I gave my address on an order to a garden tool supply company using a

“+garden” modifier. All my email from them comes to that address. What I noticed

about three months later was that the “+garden” address was being used from

businesses who sold plants, and then later by businesses who sold fundraising, and

then later by businesses who sold magazines.

With that level of email address sale going on, I was able to create a filter for that

address and send everything right to trash. And I made sure never to buy anything

from that original company again.

How I Use This At Work

At work, I have two systems: test and production. Each system generates emails for the following types of tasks:

• File imports
• Vendor file processing
• Operational Data Store processing
• Data Warehouse processing
• Internal extract
• Vendor extracts

The structure of the emails, particularly for the imports, file processing and extracts, are not consistent. It depends on which company is doing the imports, processing and extracts and is not something my team has control over.

We get upwards of 400 emails a day from these systems.

Setting up a “+tag” address will make it easy to filter these. We start with “datagroup+test” and “datagroup+production” as the base and go from there, expanding it to “datagroup+testimports” and “datagroup+productionimports” for example.

This will give us a much more solid way to filter than to pick out unique phrases from the bodies of the email in question. Instead of moving an email based on “from ‘testserver’ sent to ‘DataGroup’ and with ‘file import’ in the subject line and with ‘error’ or ‘fail’ or ‘abort’ in the body” this would become “sent to ‘DataGroup+testfail’”

Conclusion

Using the + address is a powerful way to categorize your email as it comes into the inbox. Take advantage of it – your email will never be the same again!

These shortcuts speed up my work at the computer because I don’t have to take my hand off the keyboard to use the mouse.

I thought I would present a list of other shortcut keys that can make things easier. This list is based on the Microsoft Article.

You can also set up your own shortcuts by choosing Properties from the right-click context menu of any program in the start menu, and choose a shortcut key.