At Home

53 lbs Kettlebell

I recently responded to a reader on my preference whether to keep a gym membership or cut the cord and begin working out at home.  I dropped my gym membership and my 53 lbs kettlebell had a lot to do with the easy transition to being gym-membership-free.

With this kettlebell, I am able to work nearly every muscle in my body (sans chest) in only a couple of minutes.  The bonus is that it especially targets my lower back, upper shoulders and, because I opted for the thick-handle kettle bell, it destroys my forearms.

Get one of your own, use it and you will not be disappointed with the cardio workout or the bulk-building, posture-improving results.

My kettlebell workout:  1 set of 115+ double-arm swings, once per week.

Note:  I started at 75 reps and have increased 1 rep per week (with no end in site…)

At Work

Skitch

Anyone working for an organization that either has employees or customers across international borders (and those of us that have both), likely, have spent our time kicking the tires of many screenshot/screen capture utilities to combat the language barrier.

I’d standardized on TechSmith’s SnagIt for many years until I crossed paths with Evernote’s Skitch.  I’m a big fan of Evernote’s note taking/recording/syncing tool and have nothing but good things to say about Skitch as well.  I have no doubt you’ll feel the same.

Just give it a try (especially before you consider renewing that SnagIt license).

At Home and Work

SSDs

Solid State Drives aren’t just for us techies anymore.  We’ve all wanted a faster computer at home and at work and, up until these past 24 months, our primary options were to 1) buy a new computer, 2) upgrade our existing workstation’s CPU or 3) upgrade our existing workstation’s RAM.  Unless the new computer comes with an internal SSD, all three options still left one wishing for something faster.

Fortunately, any computer with a SATA (very likely) or SAS (less likely) interface is capable of supporting an SSD which comes with DRAMATICALLY better performance.

Case in point, imagine having to reboot your workstation, having it reboot and waiting for you with a login prompt in less time than it takes to sing the alphabet song.  (Yes, it’s true!)  Now how’s that for productivity?