<p>my husband doesn’t even have a paper day planner- he just doesn’t plan anything- why should he? he has a secretary!
( if he can’t remember it- he can’t be expected to do anything about it)
ooh- the holidays are definitely getting to me- I feel very snarky</p>
<p>I really don’t use my Palm as much as I could- but I do update it with my laptop- plus it is very handy at the video store to look up movies :)</p>
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<p>Hey, I’m not opposed to new technology. I have a Blackberry that I really like. But I’m just not about to trust my calendar to some fallible electronic system. If my calendar crashed, I’d look like an incompetent fool at work for weeks and weeks, missing meeting after meeting.</p>
<p>Count me as another wedded to my week-at-a-glance-planner. I was addicted to the Quo Vadis ones from Italy until I moved overseas (reuseable canvas jacket). For the past four years, I’ve used the $15 version from the stationary store but I’ve gone out on a limb to try another Italian one (with a reusable leather jacket) because I doodle while talking on the phone and the ink leaks throught the pages on the $15 version.</p>
<p>My high fallutin cell phone is my PDA of sorts but I take notes into my dairy while I talk on the phone. It is my legal record–and yeah, I have a shelf of them dating back to the late 1980’s. Kinda fun to look through but a bit scary too. have I really been that crazy busy all these years?</p>
<p>I keep mine but they’re not filed together…they’re in the large envelope with all the documentation for each year’s tax returns. </p>
<p>One thing where the PDA would be a <em>lot</em> easier would be the address book part. My 2002 planner isn’t with the taxes because it’s the last time I updated everything in the address section. </p>
<p>I suppose I could do it on the computer…nah. That would mean I’d have to be at the computer when I needed the address. Contrary to how things may look at this time of year, I don’t spend all my time at the computer.</p>
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<p>PDA all the way for me, although I just had a PDA failure and hadn’t been a good girl and hot synced for a little while. Luckily, I haven’t scheduled much for the new year. </p>
<p>I carry a very small purse and find that the PDA can fit my calendar, address book and to do lists in one pocket of the purse.</p>
<p>At one time, I kept a paper calendar book–I wrote each kid’s appointments and my own in different colors of ink. Looked pretty–but it was only a matter of time before I lost the pretty pens.</p>
<p>Female. Week at a glance; Filofax; nice battered leather cover; large size. </p>
<p>Once I went out on a limb and got pages with the the groovy european times, but I just never could process picking up kids at 15:30 or having dinner at 20:00, so I had to go back to good ol american one.</p>
<p>I like that I can scan my week without eyestrain. I like that it is too big to lose and valuable to nobody but me. I keep my old pages too. </p>
<p>My daily notes and phone messages & all the to do lists go on a spiral pad and I save those too (for biz reasons). They fit perfectly in the back flap of the Filofax.</p>
<p>Creature of habit? Yep.</p>
<p>PS I have a PDA for real estate (mls listings) and I never use it!</p>
<p>I’ve had problems three times with electronic PDAs:
[ol]
[<em>]The first time, the thing just died on me - died a horrible death and could not be resurrected. I was on a business trip and lost everything - where I was supposed to be, telephone numbers, times of meetings, AAAARGH!
[</em>]The second time was also on a business trip. I was using it at a pay phone, finished my call, stepped away from the phone for only a minute or so, then remembered I left the PDA by the phone. I turned around to retrieve it and it was gone. Same problems as before.
[li]And the last incident was just recently. Luckily I had things (mostly) synched with the computer and it happened at home. Just after I was laid off in June of 2004, the thing sat idle for a while, and then we went on an extended vacation. When I finally got home, I discovered that the little backup battery (that keeps everything in memory when your main battery dies) had itself died. When i recharged and turned the device on, everything was gone.[/li][/ol]
So now I keep everything on my laptop and print paper copies of my calendar to carry with me.</p>
<p>^^^Problems 1 and 3 will NEVER happen with a paper daytimer, and problem number 2 is very unlikely.</p>
<p>My willingness to embrace new technologies is inversely proportional to the seriousness of the consequences of a faliure of the technology.</p>
<p>Coureur, I had a writing teacher, Damon Knight, who said that the only way he would ever trust a Star Trek transporter was if the alternative were certain death. Interesting discussion as to whether stepping into the transporter constituted suicide, e.g., a reconstituted copy of a book is not the same as the original book. And when you look at instantaneous chemical and electrical states of the brain…</p>
<p>^^^ he lost me 
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<p>Re best way to keep a calendar: Paper all the way for me. Same kind for several years now. And I’m a female. (Sorry, jmmom.)</p>
<p>Re deeply-ingrained sartorial habits of men: BiggerTex (DH) has exactly two outfits that he wears, except for those rare days when he has a meeting that calls for a suit or blazer. On warmer days, he wears a midnight blue polo shirt and khakis. On cooler days, he wears a blue oxford-cloth shirt and khakis. He has worn Lands’ End brown socks almost every day for years. (Has black for the dressier days.) They recently changed their socks, and he doesn’t like them any more. We’ve shopped and shopped, and he’s tried several brands, but can’t find another sock that he’s happy with. So he keeps wearing the faded, pilled (but not yet worn through!) old Lands’ Ends.</p>
<p>Let me assure members of CC that I have personally witnessed TheMom and TheDaughter rolling their eyes at TheDad more than once.</p>
<p>TSDad, true. No one can ever accuse us of maintaining a placid, bucolic home life.</p>
<p>I use a “Fine Dairy” pocket planner…small but easy to fit into any pocket my wallet will go into, so I always have it with me. It has the same days and weeks and months as the larger calandars but I have learned to write in code to fit my appointments in.</p>
<p>TheDad congratulations on taking a walk on the wild side, I once bought a car that wasn’t blue. Merry Christmas to all.</p>
<p>One of our cars is blue. The other two are purple and orange…</p>
<p>Cheers, I used to use Quo Vadis too and I do miss it. It is so cool. I had a dark green leather jacket, then switched to a smaller size and had black leather. I too still have all my calendars from the 80s and 90s. I just can’t part with them.</p>
<p>I swore over and over that I would never switch to a PDA. I used to think all those people poking at those silly screens and writing in funny loops were ridiculous.</p>
<p>Finally, I decided to get one but ONLY so that I could have my whole Rolodex in the car with me (i.e., the PDA address book) so that I could call anyone I needed to at any time, since my other day job is as the Mom Taxi (although I am soon to lose that one, since the girls are almost 16). </p>
<p>Within 15 minutes of starting up my first Palm, the Quo Vadis calendars were a dearly loved memory. It was just so easy to have the PDA with a calendar that could span years, where I could keep all my lists permanently, have all names/phones/faxes/addresses/emails all together in one place and easily updatable when people move; and take notes too (I have notes on museum exhibits, good jazz recordings I have heard on the radio, my master Costco list, and similar useful stuff)…I just find it indispensable.</p>
<p>I am religious about hot synching at least once a week, have never lost the PDA, and have never lost power or data even though I have a great backup on the computer. OTOH, I have not been able to transition to a Treo or something similar to use as a combined cell phone and PDA–which is silly, I know, because it means I am always fishing in my purse for two items (cell phone and pda) instead of just one.</p>
<p>Of course this is not meant to convince anyone–it was just a surprise that my fervent belief that I would never switch to one, got wiped out in a matter of minutes…</p>