Another week, another barrage of interesting and helpful items on the web. I hope you enjoy today’s selections!
Getting Warmed Up: Employees Walk While They Work (Call it innovation in the staff wellness/insurance premium reduction program arena.)
This next resource comes with a “R” rating, because it gives you the word of the day and it covers everything! If you want to know what current lingo means, this is the place to find it. Remember, I warned you!
Have you ever thought about having volunteers at your facility? Volunteers might be just be what you need! Read about volunteers here.
And now for something green, read this article to learn about saving paper, toner, shredding service, time and trees!
I’m off to the MGMA meeting in San Diego, then off for a few days of vacation with hubby where we will attempt to “unplug” from all things electronic. When there’s no Monday Special next week, think of me somewhere with blue water and very expensive roaming charges.
Have you ever discovered a new software shortcut you can use that improves your efficiency? Or someone is working with you and shows you a faster way to do something? What a great moment and a great feeling of success that is – it’s almost like winning a prize!
Sometimes I’ll be working with Excel and just KNOW there’s an easier way to do something, but don’t have the time, the energy, or the patience to find out what it is. Not that going to Help is that hard or time-consuming, but it’s a mindset that I will find out some other time how to do it faster. That “other time” never comes.
We’re getting ready to have Brown Bag Training classes (30 minutes, during lunch, staff bring their lunch, not mandatory) at my practice to bring staff up to speed on some basics. I’m sure we’ll give them some great tips, and I’m sure we’ll learn a lot too. The point is to get everyone together and build our group knowledge by sharing what everyone knows.
In preparing our handouts for the classes, we’ll use the great article by David Pogue, a tech writer for the NY Times. The article has 1228 comments full of tips from readers! Here a few to whet your appetite:
- You can enlarge the text on almost any Web page. In Windows, press Ctrl and the plus or minus keys (for bigger or smaller fonts); on the Mac, its the Command key and plus or minus.
- Instead of the painstaking task of highlighting a whole document or web page with the mouse cursor, hit Control + A to select all.
- You can tap the Space bar to scroll down on a Web page one screenful. Add the Shift key to scroll back up.
- If you are having a problem in Windows and need to ask somebody for advice, try this: in Windows, use the Print-Screen button on your keyboard to take a picture of whats on your computer screen. You can then paste that (CTRL-V) into a Microsoft Word document. Double click on it in Word and you will get options to crop it and resize it. Then email it. Showing somebody the problem you are having is a lot easier than trying to describe it.
What’s your favorite tip or trick?
Okay, this is a big one! This one website is like a big gift box that has another box inside and another box inside, and so on. The health100.com site has links to over 800 of the top English-language health blogs. You can search on site names or search on content. There are clinical blogs, research blogs, hospital blogs, and management blogs. You can find information, opinions, news, webcasts, and podcasts. You can find lawyers, doctors, nurses and patients. And pretty soon, you’ll be able to find me!
Happy hunting, and let me know what you find.
LifeHacker had a great post today that I thought was worth sharing. It’s about using the change of seasons as a catalyst to get yourself reconoitered and back on track. The article advises you to:
- De-clutter your computer
- Empty your Inbox – he uses the trusted trio of Followup, Archive and Hold. I like Followup, and Do Not Delete and Archive.
- Reorganize your paper filing cabinet
- Teach yourself keyboard shortcuts (*My son taught me Ctrl+C (copy) and Ctrl+V (paste) not too long ago and I have no idea how I ever did anything without these two friends – try them instead of using right click or tool bar icons and you might be surprised how automatic it becomes and how fast it is)
- Consolidate your email addresses, phone numbers, and calendars
Here are my additions to the list:
- Learn three things about Excel that you continue to do the long/hard way because you’re too busy to learn the shortcut (yes, I’m talking to myself here.) Try this site, or this one.
- Catch up on your shredding (at home I have a box of to-do shredding, and a to-be shredded drawer that needs emptied – yes, I’m talking to myself again.)
- Reorganize your online filing cabinet – here’s a great beginner article about files and folders, and here’s a short video tutorial from Expert Village on organizing files in Windows.
- Delete unneeded email or understand archiving – here’s a website with information on using AutoArchive in Outlook (me again.)
What’s your secret weapon to getting/staying organized and ahead of the information deluge?
Twenty years ago we bought our son a Nintendo. That was the last time I felt up-to-date on the game system world.
Today gaming isn’t just for kids anymore. It’s for kids and adults of all ages; it’s for fitness, eye-hand coordination, relaxation, sports improvement, strategy-development, cooking and much more. I recently asked my 21-year old daughter to give me some insight into the current world of gaming. Here are her descriptions of the three competing gaming companies and her comments on each.
Nintendo:
- Japanese Company
- Translated from Japanese to English, Nintendo means “leave luck to heaven.” (Potential Jeopardy question.)
- Product evolution is Nintendo (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES), Nintendo 64, GameCube (GCE), Nintendo Wii (pronounced “we”) which was introduced in 2007 as the world’s first interactive gaming system.
- Handheld players evolved from Gameboy, Gameboy Color, GameBoy Advanced, GameBoy SP, to Nintendo DS (Dual Screen.)
- Least expensive systems.
- Most famous game of all time from any company is made by Nintendo: the Mario series.
- Add-ons include the cross-bow and the steering wheel.
- Comments: More family-oriented; games are colorful and happy. The Wii took the company from competing on graphics to competing on interactivity. My favorite games because there’s never been much blood.
Sony:
- Japanese Company
- Product evolution is PlayStation 1, PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, introduced in 2006.
- Widely recognized as the gaming system with the best graphics.
- More premium systems can play older version games.
- PlayStation 3 has a Blu-ray high definition DVD player.
- The handheld player is the PSP (PlayStation Portable.)
- Comments: I never had a strong attachment to this player; I watched my brother play but never wanted to play myself. I think the games available are limited.
Microsoft:
- US Company
- Product evolution is XBox and the XBox 360 introduced in 2006.
- The XBox 360 has a DVD player and an HD DVD player can be added.
- Music can be uploaded from CDs and can be listened to regularly or instead of game music.
- MS introduced the Halo series, which is a first-person shooter game and is one of the best-selling games of all time.
- The system allows play by Internet with players around the world.
- No handheld is currently available.
- Comments: Cool that you can play your music through it, but I despise Halo because of its violence.
Now go impress your kids, your grandkids, your neighbors’ kids, and that new doctor you just hired.
