That used to be called a 'seagull manager' - one who flies in, sh*ts on everything and flies away.

This works on HN and most other sites:

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Maybe it's the fact that we all realize our mortality, and the benefit that it has on a species. Nature has built into us a few limiters to over-flourishing, like it has for many other species: a short life-span with expendable body components - we've overcome that with medicine and other life-extending tech. A disinterest in procreation - we're trending in that direction but the procreators are probably gonna win that battle. Limited resources - science is finding ways to exploit new resources while diminishing the quality of life for all.

I'm a drinker and proud of the contributions I still make to society, but also that I won't hang on for too long past my invitation to stay on this rock. There are people better than me who should occupy it.

I used to work at a company that had dozens of SQL tables for similar data - if there was a selection box in their app there was a table to represent it. I had a very productive meeting with the young (CSLA-trained) programmers on my way out, saying that we could have a single table for all lookup values. The schema went from a giant, whiteboard-covering diagram to a neat 8.5x11 single sheet diagram, resulting in a lot of reused code and data. Maybe there's more than Things and Data in real life, but there is a pretty good medium between "new table for each thing" and "each thing is just another thing row"

Edward Tufte was an inspiration for me.

A modern version of Vern Buerg's List.com. I used that tool in DOS days and almost always had it running.

When I'm complimented by a client verbally, I politely give them my manager's email address and ask them to forward that information on. I find that I've gotten a number of compliments that I compile for my yearly performance review. I like my client and my manager, and while it may not affect my compensation (I get regular, small increases), it seems to keep negative micro-management from affecting my day-to-day work, and feeds the cycle of positive feedback that allows me to do interesting work, instead of defending how my hours are spent.

I'd encourage positive communication between clients and managers. My dad had a lot of good things to say about his military service. One of them was cultural: tell the guy what he could do better. Tell his superior what he's done well.

Asked before, years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14604454

Also Lolo for NES was similar.

I also use OneNote at work for capturing anything worth remembering in a meeting, and screen grabs from a webex. It captures the text in images and indexes it for searching later, which I do frequently. I don't mix personal notes and tasks into this notebook.

For several years I've used Google Tasks for organizing my personal notes because it's cross platform and works like my brain. I have a small list of things to do today, that rotates frequently, a well-organized larger "Backlog" that I pull from after I've emptied the "Today" list. There are other topical lists like "Music" for notes and tasks that don't usually get flagged as done. Some bookmarks get into Tasks, if I'm pretty sure I'll use them again. But mainly I save stories in Newsblur if I think they're worth revisiting.

> It captures the text in images and indexes it for searching

Funny thing, that happens to be one of Evernote's selling abilities—I guess MS is really thorough in replicating the feature set. From seeing the screenshots and the description for the first time, I knew it's basically ‘MS Evernote’.