Monthly Archives: September 2009

less paper, and no regrets, part 1

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Last year, our office bought a document scanner. Unlike every other scanner I had purchased or used, this thing was tiny. Its footprint on a desk is smaller than a piece of paper. It is designed specifically for turning pieces of paper into PDF documents. I had to try it. It scanned both sides of my paper in 3 seconds. One pass, both sides!

Such a gadget is very exciting because I have a lot of paper. I’m not a compulsive hoarder, but I do keep financial records longer than the minimum 7 years. Combine that with the documents retention required for our business and before long we had two 4-drawer file cabinets of documents. And a couple desk drawers. And the pile on Jen’s desk. And the pile in my hutch.

The prospect of making all that paper disappear helped me get over the resistance I had to parting with $400. So I purchased the SnapScan S510M (since replaced by the S1500M). While waiting for it to arrive, I started thinking about how I was going to organize the thousands of PDF files that would soon be residing on my hard drive.

I had nightmares of the days before iTunes when I had to painstakingly tag all my music by hand, and then organize the music files into directories so I had a slight chance of finding what I was looking for. I needed an iTunes equivalent for PDF documents. Google led me to ReceiptWallet, which has since become Mariner Paperless. It promised to be iTunes for documents, so I bought it. Instantly.

The SnapScan comes with several software packages: Adobe Acrobat Pro 8, CardIris, Abbyy FineReader OCR, and the SnapScan drivers.  With a large bucket of tools in place, it was time to do some planning.

To be continued…

Twitt

On matters of life and death

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While living in Texas, one of the few things I admired about the state was their use of the death penalty. One of the most powerful arguments for the death penalty is that ‘the system’ has fail safes in place and ‘no innocent person has ever been executed.’ Texas has shed innocent blood. The man’s fatal crime was being too poor to afford competent legal counsel. Can someone remind me why we still have the death penalty?

Twitt

light in the tunnel

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Mid-summer, when the economy was sitting in the doldrums, there was a tempest in a teapot regarding the economic stimulus. One side argued that a second stimulus was called for. The other had buyers remorse, wishing we hadn’t done the first one. I argued that we had done enough and the only missing ingredient was time.

Some time has passed, and things are looking up. It appears that Bush and Paulson’s $700 billion TARP program may actually turn a profit. And it’s not just TARP; the Fannie-Freddie rescue could turn a profit too. The good news doesn’t end there.

A friend recently asked, “Is it just me, or are other people also seeing a lot more job offers lately?” Apparently it’s not just our industry that’s perking up: “A monthly gauge of U.S. online labor demand soared in August at its fastest pace in four years, indicating steadier footing for nationwide labor demand…”

A recovery in the job market typically trails a recession by 18 months. And there’s still plenty of hurt left in the housing market, but it sure seems like the worst of it is behind us.

Twitt