I was working on a project at a client site today that involved gathering data in a computer room for a subsequent Visio drawing. In the past I'd sit down with my laptop, fire up Visio and start building the layout on the spot. If I was short on time or had limited access to the area I was documenting, I'd grab a legal pad and make a quick rough sketch to take with me for reference later.
Well, old habits die hard and I sat down today and started to do just that. I fired up Visio and started my drawing of the computer room I was in. At this point you'd think I would have gone, "Aha! I'm sitting here with a Tablet PC and using it like a laptop!". Nope, the brain cells were still out to lunch, evidenced by the fact that my first thought was, "It looks like it's going to take longer than I thought, I'd better grab some paper and do a quick drawing to take with me". The sad part is I actually grabbed a piece of paper and was about to start the process when it dawned on me what I was doing!!
At this point, I swung the screen around on my Tablet, pulled out the Pen and opened OneNote. I proceeded to create a series of hand drawings. One "aerial view" of the whole computer room and then individual "front views" of each rack showing the equipment inside. The beauty of this approach is not only did I have my quick drawing I needed for my Visio project, but I now had it all in an electronic format. This allowed me to forward a copy of all my hand drawings to my boss so he had something to reference right now, while I continued my work on the Visio side. In the past, I'd either have to find a copier and copy my paper notes or just say, "I'm working on it and will have a rough draft for you shortly".
It seems far to often we're patching, upgrading, or coming up with workarounds for our technology so when it all comes together like this it reminds me why I got into this field in the first place and why I enjoy all my gadgets most of the time ;-)