After getting used to Gmail 3 years ago, I swore I'd stick to web-based email. With IMAP now available, I set it up last week in Apple's Mail client on my desktop to integrate better with offline storage, emailing links, etc, and found myself changing my ways.

The biggest part of my life lessons from Leslie concerned those kind of things one doesn't often consider, but which exist all around you every day. I tend to get up and shower and check email and eat a bagel and get a latte and so on and so forth, day in and day out, every day like clockwork. Repetition and expectation. Leslie was very good at listening to the gamut of my life's little disarrays and annoyances and nail the bigger picture to the wall, and usually her advice was completely obvious once you heard her say it out loud. It just took her perspective to bring it into focus for me.

I often wished she would write a book of her life lessons, and now I wish she had dictated them to me so I could write it, so I'll provide you with four of her broadest pieces of advice for instantly improving the quality of your life, and let you figure out the rest on your own.

• Where I Go [Chris Glass] - One of those old-school "home page" conventions that I miss most is the once-ubiquitous links page. In addition to being my personal muse on all things visual, Chris Glass also posts his highly clickable list of favorite sites. Need to make me one of these.
• helvetica - ThisNext - Casting about for gift ideas for the Helvetica lover in your life? Not a problem.
• Graphic Design and typography - Swiss Legacy - "...a collaborative blog focused on typography, swiss graphic design and grid." Grid pr0n, and that's okay by me. (seems to be down just now)
• My personal war against Crackberry - "Here at the office, we’ve begun to make most of our meetings 'topless' (i.e. no laptops allowed). I’ve gone a step further by trying to ban any form of networked communication from the working meetings I put together." Good on ya, Todd.
• And now it's all this: Shortened URLs with Quicksilver - Python script lets you build a fast Quicksilver trigger for generating (and copying) a shortened url based on the the front Safari window. Really useful. [via Daring Fireball]
• What are the most intellectually stimulating podcasts? | Ask MetaFilter - I'm so overwhelmed by podcasts these days that I've pared down to about five, most of which are mentioned here. My single "don't miss" right now is "Radio Lab," which is kinda like This American Life with more science and less Yo La Tengo.
• WiiHealthy - [via MeFi] - I wonder what kind of hideous freak I'm becoming by playing an hour of Wii Bowling each night while a 12-lb. baby is footballed over my non-dominant arm. That seems like the makings of a pretty odd workout when I think of it.

Last year, I stumbled upon a blog post about buying prescription eyeglasses online. It sounded too good to be true: you could get any frames you wanted quickly and cheaply, and the comments were filled with optometrists freaking out. Eventually, the author launched a dedicated blog for it called Glassy Eyes. When the site was recently mentioned on MetaFilter right around the time I was getting my 2-year exam, I decided to take the plunge myself and order some glasses online.

As of Leopard, I'm a transplant from Entourage to the Mail/Address Book/iCal/.mac combo. Over in Entourage for the past 7 years, I created a slick Zero Inbox system by using delayed reminders, using a cool combo of Applescripts that removed emails out of the Inbox until a time when I needed to deal with them. I haven't figured out a system yet in the Mail world.