WARNING:  Mishmash ahead.
Haven’t yet packed, which means this is the perfect time to procrastinate with a blog entry.  Or something like that.

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for a two-week work-related trip.  See details of that trip, plus enjoy some of my phone, camera, T-Mobile, and other musings below.

This last week or so has been—as usual—filled with craziness, happiness, stress, and adventure.

Let’s start with one of the stranger moments.

The scene:  I’m walking from my car to one of my favorite weekly swing dance events (The 9:20 Special in San Francisco).  Suddenly, an attractive woman I don’t recognize is driving down the street yelling something at me.

I got a free ticket to go see the movie Da Vinci Code and while it won’t say it was worth what I paid for it… well, it wasn’t worth a lot more than that, either.

The movie in a word:  Joyless.

I can count the number of times the characters smiled on one hand.
I can count the number of times I smiled on probably one or two fingers.

I haven’t read the book, but judging from my reactions to this movie and the 7th-grade-level writing abilities I slogged through in one of Dan Brown’s other books, I can’t say I’ll be clamoring to read the Da Vinci Code anytime soon.

Things I *did* like about the movie:

As I’ve written in other entries, I’ve become buried in e-mail, and so my “unsubscribe trigger-finger” has become a bit more itchy.

Often times, I do the (unsubscribe) deed with little remorse.  Hasta la vista, baby!

Other times, though, it’s more of a frustrating decision.  Take Vistaprint, for instance.  They offer well-made products such as business cards and address labels at generally reasonable prices.  My customer service experiences have been pretty decent with them, too.  I’d like to get email updates from companies like this, within reason.

But when it comes to VistaPrint’s email list, they’re like that attractive but thoughtless jerk on the subway who talks your ear off about nothing important every five minutes. 

Okay, let me give some more specifics…

A couple of months ago, I became a Googler.  Since my boss—Matt Cutts—has already so kindly introduced me on his blog, I feel this is probably a good time to say a few words about my new job

The short version:  I’m honored, humbled, a bit nervous, and yes, very happy.  As a lifelong geek who’s been excited about search and Google in particular for many years, it’s hugely fascinating to be experiencing new adventures from the “inside.”

Okay, now for the longer version!

Every day when I drive home from work, I see a painfully intelligence-insulting billboard ad put up by some bank (it’s rather interesting that I can’t even remember which bank, isn’t it?).  It reads something like this: “3 cents back on every debit card purchase?  Just give ‘em a toaster and be done with it!”

So let’s think about this for a moment, shall we, with a few assumptions:

- A typical person makes *at least* 10 payments totalling $100 a week, not including rent or mortgage payments.
- This person could probably get *some* cash-back or rewards non-debit (credit) card.
- Such a card would easily pay 1% in cash or rewards (for instance, on my cards, I get a free round trip airfare for a spend of $25,000, a reward of at least 1.2%).

Given this scenario, practically anyone could make the same purchases on one of the rewards cards and in a year, make (from a *very* conservative estimate) $52 as opposed to $15.60 with the crappy debit card.  Not to mention enjoy far more consumer protections.  And the hypothetical $25 toaster that the ad makes fun of?  It would take 834 purchases on the debit card to earn the equivalent of that toaster. 

*  *  *

But the latest promotion I just got in my inbox even tops the lameness of the debit card “deal.”  Here’s the copy:

I was suitably inspired by this commentary on “keeping up.”

And so I’ll ask you what I asked myself over the last few weeks:
How many undealt-with messages do you have in your inbox?
How many paper magazines or newspapers do you get regularly?
How many RSS feeds do you subscribe to?
How many “must see” pages do you have bookmarked in your Web browser?

How many of these items make you happy, provide you with essential information, truly help you have a better life?

I’ll tell you where I stood a few weeks ago. 4,000+ e-mails in my inbox.  Over 100 e-mails coming in daily (and no, that doesn’t include mails at work).  Many thousands of unread blog items. Nearly a thousand to-do items.

Now I’m making progress. My inbox is down to fewer than 100 mails.  I’ve begun trimming my RSS feeds.  I decided not to renew two of my magazine subscriptions.  And I cleaned up my browser bookmarks.

Here are some of the cleaning techniques I’ve used; perhaps you’ll find some of them helpful.