David C. Morris

  • New temperature screening devices at my work. They work pretty well. I’ve been laying outside and doing burpees right before going through to see if I can get my temp above 101F so I can be sent home :)

  • It has been almost two weeks since we put our 15 year old lab Sara down. This was one of the last pictures I took of her. We received her ashes from the Vet a couple of days about. She was a good dog and she will be missed greatly.

    Thursday

  • Why I like using Dropbox Paper to capture my notes at work.

    I recently switched to using Dropbox Paper to capture my work notes. Instead of creating folders, I add a category to the heading title and the subject of the note. For example, 1-on-1: Person’s Name, or Recurring: Name of Standing Meeting, or Project: Name of Project.

    Here is why I like using Dropbox Paper to capture my work notes: - Cross Platform: I can access and takes notes from my work computer, IPad, or IPhone (although cannot use any of the / “slash” features in IOS.
    - Write in Markdown. - Create tasks in notes and then use “Show to-dos” to pull tasks from all documents.

    This last feature, “Show to-dos” is the best. When I take notes, I don’t do a lot of formatting. I tend to just use bullets. I don’t like to create sections to capture to-dos. Instead, I just add the to-do brackets “[ ]” whenever I need to capture a to-do and not worry about the placement. During a break or at the end of the day, I click on the Show to-dos and transfer (manually unfortunately) to Todoist.

  • Been gone for a while. Traded in my MacBook Air for the IPad Pro. Looking for best way to publish posts from IPad. Was using Mars Edit. Any suggestions?

  • My AirPods Pro Review

    I was a late comer to the first gen of AirPods.  I bought them in summer 2019.  I liked them well enough.  Decent sound quality and battery life.  Fit in my ear well enough (Apple’s earbuds have always fit my ear well).  My only complaint would be I thought the stems were a little long and people wearing them look a little silly.

    Then on a visit to my local Apple store last November, they had the Air Pods Pro in stock and although I had didn’t need them, I had a gift card balance burning a hole in my Apple Wallet which took the sting out of the $250 price tag.  I’ve been using them everyday since November and here is what I like about them (even a new feature I just discovered today at the airport):

    1.  Looks better than first gen

    2. Sound quality good

    3.  Noise cancelling is great for an in ear headphone

    4.  The power charge notification you get when you have your phone out and you open the case (this is the feature I just discovered.  I noticed it show up on my phone, but I didn’t put the two together).

    My gripes:

    I don’t really have any.  The only thing of a minor annoyance, but is probably a safety feature if I cared to look up, is I get a weird electrical interference noise if I have them in my ear and I lay my ear against the pillow causing the earbud to get pushed into my ear.

    I haven’t gotten this much enjoyment out of a personal sound device since probably the first iPod I purchased or my Sony Personal Sony Disc Player back in the day.

    My favorite use case for them are phone calls and especially Skype calls which I can forward the number to my phone and then tget up and walk around the office on long business calls.

  • Push vs. Pull

    For the past week I have unsubscribed from every advertisement, notification, update, newsletter that I receive in my gmail inbox.  I found myself spending several minutes a day just deleting this stuff from my inbox.  Except for a few newsletters (I unsubscribed to those too), none of the other content provides any real value.  Instead of receiving push notifications, I’m setting everything that I am interested in reading/keeping up-to-date on as a pull.  That is, I’ll go out and seek the web site or newsletter at a scheduled time that I set.

    I’ve already done this with LinkedIn.  I’ve signed out of my account.  I use a password manager so I cannot easily sign in without opening that first.  I’ve set a reminder for Sunday to login and catch up on LinkedIn notifications.  1X per week is enough.  I plan to do the same with catching up on news and reading stuff I’m generally interested in.  I’m going to limit these two activities to 1X per week too.

    The rest of my ‘online time’ will be either learning (taking courses, not watching YouTube which is another account I need to log out of and schedule a viewing time), reading books, writing, or working on projects.

  • Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets

    I am currently reading Mindset by Carol Deck on Kindle while on a business trip (otherwise I watch episodes of Ridiculousness until 3 AM). Over the summer, my training team and I marketed a three part series in our Learn Something New series at work. I'm only on chapter 3, but as I read I was reminded of when in my life I made decisions using a "fixed mindset" and when I used a "growth mindset". If you don't know the difference, look it up or read the book.

    Fixed Mindset

    • Quitting band in the 6th grade because I was terrible and the only trumpet player left.
    • Not showing up for the 6th grade spelling he because I had won in the 4th grade but lost at the regional bee and was embarrassed. To be fair, I told my teacher I didn't want to do it before I won the class qualifier. I thought good spelling (and penmanship for that matter) were not that important in the grand scheme of things.
    • Dropping out of Algebra II in the 11th grade because I didn't want to get a bad grade.

    Growth Mindset

    • On my BMX everyday at the local track until I could complete the whole track series without skipping or crashing.
    • When I went to college, I changed my attitude from "I have to study" to "I get to learn new things”.
    • Taking an out-of-state job transfer to work under a person with the reputation of being a mean boss in order to gain valuable experience that would make me marketable for a wider variety of jobs.

    These are just a few and I find myself slipping in between both mindsets. However, when I become aware of when I'm using fixed, I can often reframe into a growth mindset quite easily.

  • Apple Notes and Business Trips

    I’m on the road for work on a 10 day trip.  I’m using Apple Notes as my ‘one-stop-shop’ to capture everything that is important in once convenient place. Some of the info that I am tracking are:

    • Boarding Pass
    • Receipts (I used to use Scanbot Pro which was great, but why when I can have all in one place)
    • Rental Car License Plate
    • Hotel Room Number
    • Little notes on recommendations for places to eat, etc.  

    I like having it all in one place.  My only complaint is that I found that I have deleted my note 2X since on my trip.  Although I can easily retrieve and restore from the trash bin, it is a little annoying.  Especially the first time I tried to show my boarding pass to TSA.  I find that if the note stays open, it is most likely going to get ‘butt-dialed’ into the trash bin.  

    A small inconvenience for a great app.

  • Why I left Twitter in 2020

    I cancelled my account last week.  I left Twitter for two reasons:  1) Engagement - The only likes or replies I would ever get were from the same four people.  These people are very close to me in my personal life and I can just text them when I want to; and 2) The annoying adds that popped into my feed.  The biggest thing I will miss is my username:  davidcmorris.  I know I won’t be able to get that back.

    I left FB almost two years ago.  I didn’t miss it at all because I was already sick of their service (and company, leadership, etc.).  Not the same with Twitter.  I do miss it a bit.  Especially the News.  However, I can get that elsewhere and since I’ve deleted my account, I find myself reading from my Kindle app more and taking Spanish lessons on Duo Lingo.

    So, I’m almost entirely off of Social Media.  I have a LinkedIn Account if that counts.  I think that platform has so much potential, but currently is quite terrible.  Engagement and interaction there is just as bad as FB.  However, I do like to see my more distant friends and colleagues get new or change jobs.  And I tend to hire a lot of folks, so I like to endorse and market our current job openings.

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