How to Use a Condom - Do's and Don'ts

DO's:

• DO use only latex or polyurethane (plastic) condoms.
• DO keep condoms in a cool, dry place.
• DO put the condom on an erect (hard) penis before there is any contact with a partner's genitals.
• DO use plenty of water-based lubricant (like KY Jelly® or Astroglide®) with latex condoms. This reduces friction and helps prevent the condom from tearing.
• DO squeeze the air out of the tip of the condom when rolling it over the erect penis. This allows room for the semen (cum).
• DO hold the condom in place at the base of the penis before withdrawing (pulling out) after sex.
• DO throw the condom away after it's been used.

DON'Ts:

• DON'T use out of date condoms. Check the expiration date carefully. Old condoms can be dry, brittle or weakened and can break more easily.
• DON'T unroll the condom before putting it on the erect penis.
• DON'T leave condoms in hot places like your wallet or in your car.
• DON'T use oil-based products, like baby or cooking oils, hand lotion or petroleum jelly (like Vaseline®) as lubricants with latex condoms. The oil quickly weakens latex and can cause condoms to break.
• DON'T use your fingernails or teeth when opening a condom wrapper. It's very easy to tear the condom inside. If you do tear a condom while opening the wrapper, throw that condom away and get a new one.
• DON'T reuse a condom. Always use a new condom for each kind of sex you have.
• DON'T regularly use lubricants with spermicide called nonoxynol-9 ("N-9") as they may cause skin irritation or tiny abrasions that make the genital skin more susceptible to STDs.

How to Use Gmail as a Business Diary and More Tips

Turn Gmail into a Business Diary

Knowledge workers attend lots of meetings. We also have tons of loose bits of information that need collecting during the day. It all needs to be processed. To jog our memory, we take notes. Most of the time this is with pen and paper - unless your culture is laptop/Tablet PC friendly. Many aren't. I use David Allen's GTD system and now buckle it into Gmail as my sole collection bucket.

I long for a searchable record of my meetings and important notes. This has led me to experiment with numerous systems over the years. Ideally, I want my data available 24/7 from any computer or mobile device. Even better, I wanted it organized by date with a list of my meetings on top - e.g. like a paper-based business diary. If you combine an online calendar with Gmail, you can make this a snap.

We have an Exchange Server at work. I use it for group scheduling but I also keep it in sync with Google Calendar. GCal and other systems like it can send your daily agenda to you via email. Mine arrives precisely at 4:38 every morning, often just before I get up. Using Gmail's filters/labels I automatically have these tagged Diary.

Once the message arrives, I keep it in my inbox all day. Then, as take notes, I reply to the email, but change the address to my own. Then as the day goes on, I keep adding to the conversation thread with replies to myself. These all get threaded as a single conversation.

It gets better. If I am on the go, I will write down the notes in a Moleskine and then call my Jott or Callwave number in between meetings. These arrive in my inbox too (either as text or an audio file). Later, when I am back at my computer I append the note to another reply to me and archive the entire conversation thread. Finally, at week's end I go through all seven notes as part of my weekly review. (The fIgure below is from a weekend - when the review is conducted.)

Annotate Books as You Read Them

I buy a lot of books and audiobooks. Almost all of them are about business or sports. I draw lessons from every single one and I want a way to capture it all. Once again, Gmail is a lifesaver here. This technique builds on the one prior.

Using the Google Toolbar trick outlined in Gmail PNC Part I, I find the book on Amazon.com and send my self a snippet of the title, author and summary to steverubel+secretword@gmail.com. I automatically label these "booknotes" using Gmail's filters. Then as I go, I simply keep replying to myself with the notes I want to keep on the book. These all get archived as a conversation for later search/retrieval.

Get Critical Information When You Need It

Let's say there's a traffic jam on the highway you drive home everyday. Or worse, there's a tornado or even God-forbid a tsunami on the way. You'd want to know about it I bet. You can instantly by combining Gmail with GTalk, some RSS feeds and Feedcrier.

I have Gmail and thus the embedded Google Talk client open constantly when I am at my computer. When I am on the go, I run Google Talk and/or the Gmail for Mobile application (unless I am on a plane). However, I don't miss critical information thanks to Gmail/Gtalk. The key is that it needs to live in an RSS feed.

For example, I pump local severe weather alerts from the National Weather Service into Feedcrier, which sends pings through IM. The premium version of the service will even send these to you when you're offline. You can also do the same with Yahoo Traffic feeds or tsunami alerts.

Turn Gmail Into a Searchable River of News Reader

I use the Google RSS Reader. However, I check Gmail more frequently. Again, this is even more true when I am on the go running from meeting to meeting.

I keep a group of my favorite feeds in a GReader folder called "Faves." You can browse them here. This special aggregation page has its own RSS feed. I take that feed and run it into RSSfwd, which will send you feeds to your email account. Another good service is R-Mail.

As the feeds arrive, they get labeled "Feeds" and archived. However, RSSfwd has a handy threading feature that keeps all of these posts together as a single Gmail conversation. The result is a giant river of news in Gmail! Even better, if I drop and add feeds to my Faves group, I don't have to re-import them into RSSfwd plus they're completely searchable. This technique will also work if you share your feeds with Newsgator Online too.

What hacks work for you? Share them in the comments.

How to help someone use a computer

Computer people are fine human beings, but they do a lot of harm in the ways they "help" other people with their computer problems. Now that we're trying to get everyone online, I thought it might be helpful to write down everything I've been taught about helping people use computers.

First you have to tell yourself some things:

Nobody is born knowing this stuff.

You've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner.

If it's not obvious to them, it's not obvious.

A computer is a means to an end. The person you're helping probably cares mostly about the end. This is reasonable.

Their knowledge of the computer is grounded in what they can do and see -- "when I do this, it does that". They need to develop a deeper understanding, but this can only happen slowly -- and not through abstract theory but through the real, concrete situations they encounter in their work.

Beginners face a language problem: they can't ask questions because they don't know what the words mean, they can't know what the words mean until they can successfully use the system, and they can't successfully use the system because they can't ask questions.

You are the voice of authority. Your words can wound.

Computers often present their users with textual messages, but the users often don't read them.

By the time they ask you for help, they've probably tried several things. As a result, their computer might be in a strange state. This is natural.

They might be afraid that you're going to blame them for the problem.

The best way to learn is through apprenticeship -- that is, by doing some real task together with someone who has a different set of skills.

Your primary goal is not to solve their problem. Your primary goal is to help them become one notch more capable of solving their problem on their own. So it's okay if they take notes.

Most user interfaces are terrible. When people make mistakes it's usually the fault of the interface. You've forgotten how many ways you've learned to adapt to bad interfaces.

Knowledge lives in communities, not individuals. A computer user who's part of a community of computer users will have an easier time than one who isn't.

Having convinced yourself of these things, you are more likely to follow some important rules:

Don't take the keyboard. Let them do all the typing, even if it's slower that way, and even if you have to point them to every key they need to type. That's the only way they're going to learn from the interaction.

Find out what they're really trying to do. Is there another way to go about it?

Maybe they can't tell you what they've done or what happened. In this case you can ask them what they are trying to do and say, "Show me how you do that".

Attend to the symbolism of the interaction. Try to squat down so your eyes are just below the level of theirs. When they're looking at the computer, look at the computer. When they're looking at you, look back at them.

When they do something wrong, don't say "no" or "that's wrong". They'll often respond by doing something else that's wrong. Instead, just tell them what to do and why.

Try not to ask yes-or-no questions. Nobody wants to look foolish, so their answer is likely to be a guess. "Did you attach to the file server?" will get you less information than "What did you do after you turned the computer on?".

Explain your thinking. Don't make it mysterious. If something is true, show them how they can see it's true. When you don't know, say "I don't know". When you're guessing, say "let's try ... because ...". Resist the temptation to appear all-knowing. Help them learn to think the problem through.

Be aware of how abstract your language is. "Get into the editor" is abstract and "press this key" is concrete. Don't say anything unless you intend for them to understand it. Keep adjusting your language downward towards concrete units until they start to get it, then slowly adjust back up towards greater abstraction so long as they're following you. When formulating a take-home lesson ("when it does this and that, you should try such-and-such"), check once again that you're using language of the right degree of abstraction for this user right now.

Tell them to really read the messages, such as errors, that the computer generates.

Whenever they start to blame themselves, respond by blaming the computer. Then keep on blaming the computer, no matter how many times it takes, in a calm, authoritative tone of voice. If you need to show off, show off your ability to criticize bad design. When they get nailed by a false assumption about the computer's behavior, tell them their assumption was reasonable. Tell *yourself* that it was reasonable.

Take a long-term view. Who do users in this community get help from? If you focus on building that person's skills, the skills will diffuse to everyone else.

Never do something for someone that they are capable of doing for themselves.

Don't say "it's in the manual". (You knew that.)