[stylist] Essential Office Tools

[BDM]

Joe,

These are my few essential items:

1. File Management: I'm not afraid to create folders on my computer, 
and  try to maintain them in a very organized manner.
. I find the need to clean house once and a while  when in a hurry 
creating and though it takes a little time, I take it.

2. Digital Recorder: A super help is a digital recorder, my 
electronic brain, my notepad of sourts.  I have two of these. One 
cheaper one I bought for like $40 which is an Olympus model and is 
easy to use with no speech menus. I use it to keep numbers on the 
fly, notes about my business on the fly, I use it like an inventory 
sheet in my business marking down what I need where, I use it for 
anything I don't wish to forget or need to mark down in a hurry. I'll 
use it to mark down song titles, lines, melodies, etc. as well on the 
fly. The other one I have is a more expensive Olympus one that 
records in WAV format if you wish. I use it as both a computer 
microphone at times as well to note songs I'm working on, record 
conferences, live song evaluations, and etc.  I couldn't live without 
one these days. A note that if you have a Victor Stream you can also 
use it for audio recorded notes too. I've also used the Stream to 
serve as note promptors when doing a class on songwriting. I made a 
txt file  of my notes and put it on the Stream and covertly used a 
ear bud as a promptor. I similarly use my digital recorder as my set 
list promptor on long gigs of two hours or more. Everyone thinks its 
a sound system ear monitor :).

3. Day Timer: Probably one of my biggest things is my day 
timer.  Anytime I need to be reminded of something, an appointment, a 
special day or To Do item, I'll enter it in there, have it remind me 
ahead of time and even send me an email as well pop an alert on my 
screen. It keeps my contacts, notes and details for my address book 
or To Do items and everything else. It has calendar, address book, 
expense view, glances or views by day, week, month, year and other 
stuff, some not accessible but I don't use them anyway so that's 
cool.  The program is one that use to be supported by Jaws, no longer 
formally is but it still works if you have  the old scripts. It is 
Anytime Organizer. I will say the latest version I had tried, version 
13, did not agree with my system and I am running version 12 which 
works great and I will probably not change unless major tweaks are 
made  from my version. Though I've found their customer service to be 
atrocious, I still love the program and it is one of which that has 
kept me from converting to a Mac, which I am yet seriously 
considering. I just need to find  a Mac anser to this and be open 
minded to a different, yet free screen reader :). I also occasionally 
use a free and fairly accessible program called Alarm Clock By Terry. 
It serves as a countdown timer as well an alarm clock on board. It is 
pretty accessible. I looked forever to find one that wasn't totally 
graphical and it wasnt' easy. This one has a couple buttons not 
labeled but other than that its fine.

4. Braille Tags: I am not a big Braille reader, I have trouble 
falling asleep trying to read it for any length of time , but I do 
use it around the office. I use old business cards I have and make 
notes to print papered items if I just need to file or otherwise deal 
with them.

5. Clips: One last thing I'll mention since I use to use this and it 
worked great the way I was running my business/office then. I 
bought  some of those  paper clips that  from a profile view are 
shaped like a triangle and have two foldable wire handles on them. 
You can  afix Braille dymo tape numbers to them. I'd have my reader 
go through and read  a certain mail item or papered item on to a 
digital recorder starting off "Item #1:" and proceed to read it. This 
way I could go and file or attend to it later when I had time and not 
pay someone to do that for me.


Hope that helps.

Brad





At 09:16 AM 10/10/2010, Joe Orozco wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>I'm curious about what people think are the essential office tools for
>writers who are blind.  Our sighted counterparts keep notepads, paper files,
>bulletin boards and all manner of things to keep things organized and spread
>out through their office.  Last year when I switched jobs and took one where
>I have the luxury of working from home, I was a little pleased and somewhat
>disappointed to realize that the two main information storage devices I
>needed was a laptop and an external hard drive.  I recently invested in an
>embosser for those times when I'd like to be able to read hard copy, but I
>somehow don't see pasting Braille stickies on a board as all that
>productive, out of sight is out of mind and so forth.  The trouble with
>working primarily from home is that the work is always there.  Similarly,
>working out of a single laptop makes it seem as though my work has never
>really disappeared after 6:00 PM.  I suppose I should accepted when my
>office tried to buy me a Mac.  It's not too late, but I'm not ready to
>explore a new operating system.  So what do you use to keep things
>compartmentalized and organized in your office?  Any tips and tricks would
>be appreciated.  I'm reading this time-management book and want to see if
>there's a different way of arranging my information to boost general
>productivity.  Thanks much in advance.
>
>Best,
>
>Joe
>
>"Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves,
>some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all."--Sam Ewing
>
>
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Brad Dunse

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