Charles's Conventions

Terminology

• WorkTop A portmanteau of the words “work” and “laptop,” with some BiCapitalization thrown in for good measure. The laptop I’m issued by my employer.
  • Whatever laptop I have for my own use is either just “the laptop,” its model (currently “MacBook”), or its hostname (kingswood).
• Daily Arsenal A tracker in my Work Notebook of the primary pen/ink combination I use on a day-to-day basis.
  • Older pages get migrated to the Notebook Archive.
  • A lot of my journals have something that looks similar, where one of the first pages has samples from a variety of pens and inks. Usually, this is in a new brand/style of journal, to test the paper. Unlike the Daily Arsenal, it’s undated.
• I tend to spell out names of cities, states, months, and days of the week, unless the formatting or space does not allow it. I personally think it looks better, and does not require that much extra effort.
• Abbreviating “Cincinnati”
  • I tend to prefer “Cin’ti,” as it’s traditional. The appostrophe, in particular, is pretty old school. It was pointed out to me in a tweet, and noticed at least three of my John Holland fountain pens use it.
  • I’ll use “Cincy,” though I tend to say it that way more than write it.
• FWP Ferris Wheel Press, a manufactuer of inks.
• FPR Fountain Pen Revolution, a manufactuer of inks and pens
• STIMS Snarky Think I Might Say. A timestamped note of something I have the urge to say or type into chat that might get me into trouble. Writing it in the journal would be a “release valve.”
  • It may wind up context-free, if I don’t get a chance to circle back.
  • My hope is that it will get it out of my system and I won’t feel the need to actually say it. It may be possible that, as a first draft, I decide some variation needs to get out there.
• SPitR Smartest Person in the Room. Discripter for a tendancy I’ve noticed among some people in leadership positons. The opposit of “a leader is one who achieves results through others.”
• NMFwYA Not Moving Forward with Your Application. Common language from recruiters when declining a job opportunity. Absent something more specific, I’m going to treat most declines as such. I’ll also use this as a stand-in for “they turned me down”/I expect they’ll turn me down
• Level 7 or simply 7 My level when I was at Accenture. It was a "manager" when I was promoted to it, the start of the executive ranks. 1 was the highest level. It was not necessarily a people manager, but spoke to a certain scope of responsbility, control, and authority. My subsequent job felt effectively like a 6; the one after that, 8 on a good day.
• UMoLM Use Me or Lose Me. Current job philosophy. If, after my saying I'm underutilized no action is taken, I'll find other was to be utilized.

Formatting Conventions

• ISO 8601 for short dates, file lists, etc.
• “Long dates” are spelled out (“October 3,” not “Oct 3”)
• 24-hour times in personal notes and logs are favored, but I admit I’m not consistent

Formated Text

• First choice is Markdown in a flat file.
• Second choice is Microsoft Word Let’s face it, that’s the world’s standard.

References and Links

Paper Notes with Virtual References

• <> in Notebooks This represents a shortened link related to what is written. If the text written is <foo>, going to l.mrguilt.com/foo will take you to the related material. The text is case sensitive, so I underline capital letters.
• [] in Notbebooks Similar to <>, but “raw Bitly.” [foo] would be bit.ly/foo.
• {} in Notebooks For tx0, SDF’s shortener. {foo} would be tx0.org/foo. Handy, as no authentication is required.

what3words

///word.word.word—location/

Where:

• word.word.word are the three words from what3words
• location is a human-readable higher level location (city, name of the park, etc.)

Soft Documents with Physical References

Functionally simlar to the section above. The style of brackets will detail the notebook in question. Inside the brackets will either be a date reference (<2022-04-13>), a page number (<p13>, desiganted with a p), or a descriptor ([Personal Tracking, 2022 Calendar]). The tag will be highlighted in some fashion, depending on what the format supports (color and bold if supported, a bold Markdown tag (**<2022-04-13>**) if not).

• <> in Documents This refers to my journal. Mostly likely a date reference.
• [] in Documents This refers to my Work Notebook. Again, mostly likely a date reference, though occassionaly a descriptor.
• {} in Documents A different notebook, to be written in the brackets and seperated from an index by a slash ({NDBN/2022-04-13}). These will be less common, so a dedicated tag doesn’t make sense.

See “Paper Notebooks” below.

Cross-Referencing Among Notebooks

• There may be cases where I want to use this to “hyperlink” one notebook to another. The conventions above will be used. There was an earlier convention to add an asterisk at the front of the reference, but that was depreciated.
• The pocket notebooks may have things to capture in one of the other notebooks. Once this transfer is complete, a small slash of a highlighter will "check it off." Typically, it will be orange.

Data Locations

Paper Notebooks

• Work Notebook A disc-bound notebook I take to work. Letter/A4 hybrid in size, with a vinyl covers (the front one is translucent). Mostly holds work notes or some related reference, but some personal tracking and reference lives there as well.
• Notbook Archive A disc-bound notebook I keep on the bottom bookshelf of my desk. It has blue plastic rings and a cardstock cover. It retains older notes from my work notebook.
• Journals A5 (or US equivalent) notebooks I write random thoughts in. Sometimes describing things that happen. More often whining about something. I find it a bit theraputic to get my thoughts on to paper. They also serve as a convient place to write personal information.
  • These typically have some form of pocket in them, in which I will keep some supplies (stamps, etc.) along with momentos aquired while the journal is “primary.”
  • Occassionally, bits of paper or printups of things I want to keep are pasted into the pages.
  • Starting in 2021-09, I moved to soft cover notebooks, kept in a permanent journal cover. This allows persistance between journals for supplies (almost an extension of my wallet), as well as protection for the soft cover journals. It may lead to of-the era momentos being pasted in somehow.
• Nice Disc-Bound Notebook (NDBN) A disc-bound notebook with leather-like covers. Heavy, but super-nice. I tend to take this for personal meetings, interviews, etc.
• Planner An IKEA notebook which I use calendar-esque (though more showing what I’ve done rather than plans). Replaced the techo.
• Thinking/Writing/Plotting (TWP) Notebook I use to gather notes for projects I’m working on.
• IDEA The Idea book from my Techo. Holds long-term reference items, like my “top 5 favorite songs” or my bike commuting break-even tracker.
• “AWS Config & Testing” A composition-style notebook with lots of notes for various computer setup I’ve done. Originally for AWS, has expanded for mail systems, etc.
• Pocket Notebooks Small notebooks, such as a Field Notes notebook, that can be stuff into a pocket. It is meant as a bidirectional transient space. I'll write down throughts (or the beginnings of thoughts) I want to put into other notebooks. A typical example would be the beginning of a journal entry or even a blog post. I'll also put information into it, such as diminsions of something I need to shop for, so I have it with me. The current convention is to number them seqnetially ("Pocket Notebook #2", etc.). These will be abbreciated "PNn" (where n is the number of notebook (i.e. "Pocket Notebook #2" would be "PN2")

Online

Notetaking

• SimpleNote Primary place for notes. Plays well with Markdown and EMACS
• OneNote

Cloud File Stores

• My NextCloud
• Box
• OneDrive
• Google Drive Pretty much everyone winds up with a Google Drive. I stash some stuff their, but nothing I regard as critical.
• SDF NextCloud

Trackers

Excludes online trackers like MyFitnessPal and Strava.