As my son Jarod eats, I scoop my just-synchronized Palm m505 from its cradle to check my schedule, pictured in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Today's schedule promises to be busy.

Today I'm both Dad-at-home and employed---I have to finish my review for PalmPower while watching my son, because my wife is at the office.

My Date Book may have fewer meetings than it used to, but it's just as full. That's because I use the built-in Date Book application for almost everything that has a date, relying on the Find function to help me stay organized. For example, I use the date entry Note field for meeting notes, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

Using the date entry Note field for meeting notes.

Meanwhile, I track the medications I may be taking using an unscheduled date entry, as shown in Figure C.

FIGURE C

I use the Date Book for recording information about a specific day.

Although sites such as PalmGear (at http://www.palmgear.com) have countless programs you can download to help you track your health, exercise, doctor's appointments, budget, and virtually everything else, I find it easier to name appointments consistently and use the Note field. Later I can use Find to find things I may have forgotten. Equally important, I'm assured that all of my time stamped notes make it to my desktop calendar, where I have a permanent record, because not all the third-party applications have conduits for the Macintosh.

After reviewing my schedule (with a sideways glance at Jarod, who has yet to reach the food-scattering phase) I skim my urgent email. I don't use my Palm handheld for all my email. Mail from a select few is forwarded to my device, as shown in Figure D. That way, I can read it when I'm away from my keyboard.

FIGURE D

Palm's Mail application let's me read my mail on-the-go.

There's any number of ways to do this. You can use Mail's built-in settings, shown in Figure E, to filter by sender or urgency, for example.

FIGURE E

You can use the Mail application settings.

For obscure reasons, my setup isn't that simple, but it works just as well. I use procmail on our mail server to do the forwarding and have a second email account that my device uses for both synchronized email with Palm's Mail application and anything I might receive on the road using MultiMail SE and my cell phone. At home, I use the Macintosh MultiMail conduit to get mail from this account to my Palm handheld.