John Borwick’s blog

ISP Sports is moving in across the street from us. You can see a blurb in a Winston-Salem Journal article:

In other business last night, the council gave final approval for the sale of a building owned by the city on North Trade Street.

The building is occupied by four small-business owners who have rented the space for years. They will be forced out of the building once the city sells the property for $248,400 to the Chapman Co., a developer.

Chapman plans to tear down the building and replace it with a five-story building with both commercial and residential tenants.

The major tenant will be ISP Sports, a local company that markets college sports teams, including Wake Forest University and Virginia Tech, and runs a radio network with more than 300 affiliates.

The city will use the money from the sale to help the four business owners move out of the building, which is between 524 and 546 N. Trade St.

I just finished reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done, a book about how to manage your time. I found about the system from del.icio.us’s common “gtd” tag.

Basically, David’s premise is that our minds spend too much time worrying about what we have to do. With a system you can trust, you can both relieve your mind from worrying about what you might have to do, and figure out what the next thing you need to work on is.

GTD recommends at least four categories for keeping track of things:
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I just revoked my old john_borwick@pobox.com GPG key and created a new one. For now, check out MIT’s PGP keyserver to get the new key.

What does this mean? If you get a special program (GnuPG or PGP), then you can send me secret messages. You can also verify that I actually sent email to you by verifying the email “signature” I attach to most of my messages.

Every few years, however, I change my key, so that if something happened that I don’t know about (and someone got the old key or found a way to hack my old key), I’m not too exposed.
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We now have a Starbucks coffeeshop downtown, in the Embassy Suites hotel (formerly Addam’s Mark). I think it opened about two weeks ago.

This Starbucks is in an ideal Starbucks location: in a hotel, facing the convention center. It’s a bad location for people interested in the community, because it’s not close to where Winston-Salem residents go, but it’s perfect for transients who want their brand of coffee.

Good things about the Starbucks: it’s open on Sunday (8 AM-4 PM). Via Embassy Suites, it provides free wireless. My espresso is drinkable.

Bad things about the Starbucks: it currently can’t take credit cards or Starbucks gift cards. It closes at 6 PM Monday-Saturday. Most of the staff (at least right now) appear to be new to the business, so there are flip-charts everywhere with directions for how to make various things. Businesses like Sin’s and Chelsee’s are going to have to give up getting visitors’ business.