Ari's dashboard

I use different Outlook profiles - one for work and one for personal. If RT could differentiate between them, that would be awesome.

-- Barbara

I have a similar problem (mac os X v10.4.11: Intel Core 2 Duo w/ 2G RAM) - I have big gaps in my day where I RT shows no activity recorded. If I look in my data collector I see data upload errors near the missing times in question:

2008-03-05 13:00:11
Sending file: gmcd3-049:Users:jlchang:Library:RescueTime:Logs:Pending:rt_20080305-123004.yml
2008-03-05 13:00:12
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<hash>
<total-records>0</total-records>
<error>There was an unexpected error, some data may have been lost. syntax error on line 140, col -1: ` start_time: 2008-03-05 12:48:03
end_time: 2008-03-05 12:48:04
- os_username: gmcd3-049\jlchang
app_name: Safari
window_title: 'Found 41 tickets'
extended_info: 'https://help.broad.mit.edu/Search/Results.html?Order=ASC&Query=%20Owner%20%3D%20'jlchang'%20AND%20Status%20!%3D%20'resolved'&Rows=50&OrderBy=id&Page=1&Format='%20%20%20%3Cb%3E%3Ca%20href%3D%22%2FTicket%2FDisplay.html%3Fid%3D__id__%22%3E__id__%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fb%3E%2FTITLE%3A%23'%2C%0A'%3Cb%3E%3Ca%20href%3D%22%2FTicket%2FDisplay.html%3Fid%3D__id__%22%3E__Subject__%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fb%3E%2FTITLE%3ASubject'%2C%0A'__Status__'%2C%0A'__QueueName__'%2C%0A'__OwnerName__'%2C%0A'__NEWLINE__'%2C%0A''%2C%0A'%3Csmall%3E__Requestors__%3C%2Fsmall%3E'%2C%0A'%3Csmall%3E__CreatedRelative__%3C%2Fsmall%3E'%2C%0A'%3Csmall%3E__ToldRelative__%3C%2Fsmall%3E'%2C%0A'%3Csmall%3E__LastUpdatedRelative__%3C%2Fsmall%3E''
start_time: 2008-03-05 12:48:05
end_time: 2008-03-05 12:48:06
________________________________
I've truncated the info but will send the rest to you by e-mail.

Hope this helps - I'd love to see RT track more of my day!</error></hash>

Sounds great, Tony, but please pass on this intensive Outlook user's suggestion, consistent with 80/20 principles, that for many of us simply being able to log two different Outlook iterations as different activities (Iteration 1: Social. Iteration 2: Work) would be simpler AND better.

It actually would be MUCH more useful to me than being able to log how much time I spent composing, reading, scheduling, or even which person I spent how much time on.

I spend some time SOCIALLY with Brian, and some time working with Brian. I also sometimes compose SOCIAL emails. Sometimes I compose WORK emails. Etc. So, actually, NONE of the distinctions you mention would actually let me keep track of my work/play ratio in Outlook.

In sum, I suspet you guys could do a ton less programming, and wind up with a much niftier way to classify Outlook activity.

Just base it on which Outlook iteration was opened first/second on my desktop. First Outlook iteration = for work. Second Outlook iteration = for play.

That's ALL I'd need to be a happy camper...

Ari

Plumbing the depths of email and IM are both on the horizon. As you say, people spend gobs and gobs of time communicating and right now, it's a big black hole (about 15% of our user's time is spent there, if you're curious).

It certainly would be close to a dealbreaker for me. However, in my case I use hosted Gmail for work and plain ol' gmail for personal stuff. For a long time, RescueTime didn't differentiate the two and it was pretty annoying for me.

As you might notice on our web site, we're moving towards a business offering (we'll always have a free offering at least as good as what you see today). I've heard rumors that Outlook is pretty dominant in the biz world ( :-) ), so we're going to have to do this.

Right now, we're imagining the ability to see differentiated time spent composing, reading, and scheduling, and perhaps as deep as allowing you to categorize the top individuals you corrospond with. Heck, it might be cool enough for me to switch back to Outlook!

Keep your fingers crossed!

Thanks, Tony. You people are great and I'm sure I'll be back, when you're out of beta, as a paying customer... or possibly sooner if you figure out how to make Outlook work/play activity separable (see my other question du jour). Ari

That's peculiar that it's not in your uninstall list. It SHOULD be.

RescueTime doesn't do anything with your registry or anything funky like that. If you want to manually uninstall it, you basically need to delete two directories.

1) Delete the RescueTime program directory. Depends on where you installed it, but the default I believe is C:\Rescuetime\ . You'll need to quit RescueTime first by finding the red plus icon in your system tray, rightclicking on it, and selecting exit.

2) Delete your RescueTime folder in Documents and Settings. The path for this is:
C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Local Settings\Application Data\RescueTime.com

Sorry to see you go-- if you have any parting feedback, be sure to shoot it our way (team@ rescuetime.com)

Hi Tony,

Thanks. I'll keep using it -- it's somewhat motivating even if there's a large margin of error. But precision would be so much MORE motivating. In a moment I'll email you the errors from the debugging window. There are a bunch.

Heh-- well, we can't fault you for lack of courage.

Regardless-- it MIGHT be an isolated data weirdness that never manifests again... You might ponder using it for a week and looking at a broader body of data to see if it looks wonky. Either way, thanks for trying us out.

Cheers, -t

Sigh. Reading your reply, I'm afraid I'm not courageous enough to be a beta-tester after all. I can't spend much time to decode what you've said and implement it. It's all gobbledy-gook to me.

I'm glad to tell you what I know: Windows XP Professional running Word 2003 SP2.

You may not have RescueTime's babies. :-)

There are lots of possible alternate explanations! We have tens of thousands of RescueTime users who aren't reporting inaccurate data... My hope is that there is something wonky/unique about your experience/setup that we can track down and fix.

RescueTime will not accept bad/corrupt records-- If you had one big uninterrupted slice of time in MS-Word and the data somehow got corrupted, this might give you some lost time in your graphs.

So, here are ways you can help us, if you're game (you can respond here or drop the info to team@rescuetime.com):

1) Tell me if your total time for the hour(s) in question are low. To see, click on "today" on the dashboard and look at the hour by hour graph at the bottom. If you are on your machine, those bars should be 55-60 minutes (accounting for a little idle time). If your total time is not low for the hours in question, click around in your top apps/tags to see what app(s) are filling up the slice of time that SHOULD be taken up by ms-word.

2) Open the RT data collector (in your system tray), click the debug tab and scroll to the bottom. For any text there that is around the timeframe in question, do you see any failures? Non-failure state should look like: <failures type="integer">0</failures>. If you have any apps that are "ignored" in the system, they will correctly report as failures (as ignored apps aren't accepted by RT).

3) Go to your logs directory. It's at C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Local Settings\Application Data\RescueTime.com\logs (if you are on windows) or Macintosh HD:<username>:Library:RescueTime:Logs (if you are on a Mac). You can poke around and find the file in question by sorting by date and looking at the files (in a text editor) to see the actual data getting sent. If you'd like, you can zip 'em up and send 'em to us and we'll do the digging (please give us a timeframe you were using Word), or you can dig around yourself.

The question is: Is RescueTime artificially deciding that you are idle when you are not? Is there another application that you are alt-tabbing to that might be overreporting?

Bonus points if you tell us your OS type/version and your version of Word...

Thanks in advance for any help!

Cheers, -t</username>

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