Blog of the Gate 3 WorkClub

Sailing The Seas

I've just finished listening to Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian. This is the book that follows Master and Commander, which I was introduced to by a Smithsonian article. If you're unfamiliar with Captain Jack Aubrey and his sidekick Dr. Stephen Maturin, you're missing out: What a great series! Along with all other aspects of life aboard ship, Jack is responsible for the health care of his men, very ably provided by his friend Stephen.

As Masters of our ships, we are responsible for our own health care (and anyone else riding along with us). And if we're sick and not working, that may be billable time lost. And getting sick does not help keeping our work and life in balance -- down time usually results in business crunch time. The Web, of course is a rich vein of resources on staying healthy. Here are a few to get you started.

Your Disease Risk. From the Harvard Center for Cancer Protection. Find out your risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and osteoporosis. Your answers to a quick questionnaire will place you on a seven-level risk scale. The site then lists steps you should take to reduce your risk of the specific disease.

Headache Impact Test. Created by QualityMetric Inc., a company that creates and licenses health-care measurement tools.

Real Age. Based on the work of Dr. Michael Roizen, who has authored books on how to determine your real age based on exercise, what you eat, etc. This site has lots of nutrition and fitness information.

Med Info-Chip. This is a great tool, and a fantastic way to bring the power of USB technology to everyone. The Med Info-Chip holds your personal information, like your allergies, diseases, medications, past medical procedures, and emergency contacts. Your whole medical history is held on the 64 MB chip, or you can purchase the 128 MB model that will hold two medical histories. Slip it into your pocket, and you'll be covered.

Free legal and business documents

Sooner or later, conducting any sort of business requires legal contracts and forms - be they a business lease, a business plan, market survey, a personal financial statement, a confidentiality agreement or a partnership agreement. A quick search for these documents online yields several companies who would sell you the required documents, and many more. However, before actually paying for a template - why not check one free depository of such documents?

Letter from Findhorn: Work is Love in Action.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to work in the house-keeping department doing laundry and other household chores. This will be one of 3 mornings this week I’ll be doing this as part of the Findhorn Foundation’s (http://www.findhorn.com) family experience week in an idyllic setting on the east coast of the Scottish Highlands.

The Findhorn Foundation is a “center of spiritual education and personal and planetary transformation” that offers a “Family Experience Week” in which one can gain an insight into their special blend of the pragmatic and the divine through a week long immersion into daily life here. This blend is expressed in the promotional brochure for the program which states “It is primarily through the work programme that the community receives spiritual training”. And the oft repeated wisdom here that “Work is love in action”.

Vonage: Landline To Go

Vonage, “the broadband phone company”, is all over the web these days. All over the news, too, when last week it had suffered its first outage (in 18 months of operation). I, however, felt confident enough about the Internet broadband thingy - and perhaps I just wanted to get even with the big telcos. So I walked out of in Radio Shack with my Vonage box (US$ 30, awaiting a rebate). After some head scratching - the manual was written for novices, and my system is anything but - the box hooked up nicely between my DSL modem and my PC. Now I have a dirt-cheap, ultra-flexible telephone line. The monthly rates are very competitive, the tech breakthrough is interesting, the quality is not bad (and adjustable), the warm fuzzy feeling of evading telco overcharge is there - but let’s look at the bottom line and what it offers to freelancers.