Well it snowed again today, which is the fourth significant snow storm this year. The local TV news stations did their usual coverage of people buying milk, bread, rock salt and snow shovels. Milk and bread seamed to be in good supply but as the rock salt and snow shovels were hard to find as most places were out of stock.
Now it is understandable that the rock salt would be gone from the shelves but snow shovels. This is not news, it seams every storm drives people out to buy snow shovels. What I would like to know is what did they do with the shovels they used during the prior three storms, for that matter what about last year?
Maybe they take their frustration out on the shovel and beat it to death or it could be they leave them in the driveway and run over it with the car. Kids could be secretly using them to slide down the local hill or the neighbor decides to take back the one he let you borrow last year. Whatever the cause, being in the business of manufacturing new or finding lost snow shovels could make you rich!
Monday, February 28, 2005
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Adware/Spyware
Imagine it’s the mid 1950s and you open your front door (today’s browser), to get a breath of fresh air. You close the door and turn around and find that the walls are now papered with advertisements all over the house. What you don’t know is your phone has now been bugged and there is person hidden in the bushes next to a window watching every thing you do.
Would this be an allowable or acceptable practice back then, I think not. So why should the equivalent of this kind of action be an acceptable practice on your PC in today’s world!
For more information link to WindowsSecrets.com/050127 Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets Newsletter dated 1/27/05.
Would this be an allowable or acceptable practice back then, I think not. So why should the equivalent of this kind of action be an acceptable practice on your PC in today’s world!
For more information link to WindowsSecrets.com/050127 Brian Livingston's Windows Secrets Newsletter dated 1/27/05.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Blogging the Boss
Don’t look now but your boss could be reading your blog.
End result is you could be fired! As more than one unfortunate person found out the hard way when posting comments about their managers.
The trouble with managers is there are as many bad ones as there are good ones. I say this with experience having been in and out of management and technical positions too many times to count.
You start working for a company in technical capacity and you soon find out that you have little control of what goes on around you and or your job. This makes you think that the grass may be greener if you where a manager. You could make things change for the better, both for you and your fellow employees. Unfortunately is just doesn’t work that way, at least not all the time as you (the manager) discover that you also have a manager that you report to and his or her ideas/plans don’t necessarily agrees with yours.
Warning:
Any managers that may be reading this blog, then read the next part very carefully.
One of my first jobs started out as a tester on the production floor. About once a month the president of the company would tour the facility and take time to talk to some of the employees on an informal and one on one basis. The amazing thing was that he knew your name and the name of each of nearly 1000 employees. The company was sold and as time went by I eventually reached the Operations level of management, which in simple terms meant that on any given day I was responsible for the entire plant. I never forgot the simple but meaningful lesson of taking the time, no matter how busy things got, to talk to the people that worked at our location and other companies I work for over the years.
What makes a good or bad manager?
My experience tends to the ‘Leaders are born and not made’ theory. Far too often an individual who has demonstrated excellent technical knowledge and achievements time and time again finally receives a promotion to a management position. At this point they become like a fish out of water, floundering and jumping around on the beach in a desperate search for something that will save them and their project. Unfortunately no amount of management training will save them; it only serves to prolong the agony for them and everyone under them. In the end desperation settles in and they begin to take it out on the employees as a form of relief. Sometimes it can be so subtle that it hardly noticed by anyone except for the person in the center of the bulls eye. Other times it reaches the point of intimidation, threats, abusive language and on and on.
Now here this!
A good manager treats their employees as assets, just as valuable or more so than capital equipment. They help them when they need help, they provide training to sharpen or broaden their skills; thus making them more versatile. A good manager will reward them for doing a good job, even if the only thing they can do at the time is to say: thank you for a job well done. Most importantly they do everything possible to make an employee’s job rewarding and a success. You see if your employees succeed then you as a manager succeed.
A bad manager is one that takes their frustration out on their employees, belittles and berates, screams and threatens, makes unrealistic demands, offers no help when asked, spends more time trying to climb the ladder than manage the tasks given to them, is never available when you need them and always around making small talk to their pet employees totally oblivious to the rest of the team who feel like their in the dog house. They often arrive in your section or department offering great things for the future but seldom deliver, moving on to their next assignment and leaving behind a shambles.
Let me finish by leaving you with a real story.
It’s about a small group of engineers I was asked to manage. They where looked upon as I soon found out with extreme disgust by every other manager in the plant. Every Monday I would attend a meeting along with other managers, which was held by the plant manager for the purpose of reviewing the schedules and tasks given to them from the previous week. This person would take delight in running everyone up and down the flag pole for things that did not go as planned. At first I was an easy target and received more than my fair share of his foul language. Over time as I re-arranged the tasks assigned to my group to better match their skill set we were able to meet everything asked of us, thus I was no longer one of the poor slobs that had to endure the plant managers wrath.
One day after completing a particular hard set of tasks on time and in budget, I wanted to show my appreciation to the team, but had no money to give them as a bonus, or even a framed letter of appreciation. So I called everyone for a short meeting and thanked them for a job well done. After the meeting one employee approached me and said “Jim you are the first manager ever to say thank you”. Having known these engineers for a long time, even before I was there boss and had meetings over the years with each of their pervious managers, some of which I had held in high esteem, I was shocked in disbelief and said not even John (not his real name) and he said no, not ever.
Remember: it cost you nothing as a person to say thank you every once in a while!
End result is you could be fired! As more than one unfortunate person found out the hard way when posting comments about their managers.
The trouble with managers is there are as many bad ones as there are good ones. I say this with experience having been in and out of management and technical positions too many times to count.
You start working for a company in technical capacity and you soon find out that you have little control of what goes on around you and or your job. This makes you think that the grass may be greener if you where a manager. You could make things change for the better, both for you and your fellow employees. Unfortunately is just doesn’t work that way, at least not all the time as you (the manager) discover that you also have a manager that you report to and his or her ideas/plans don’t necessarily agrees with yours.
Warning:
Any managers that may be reading this blog, then read the next part very carefully.
One of my first jobs started out as a tester on the production floor. About once a month the president of the company would tour the facility and take time to talk to some of the employees on an informal and one on one basis. The amazing thing was that he knew your name and the name of each of nearly 1000 employees. The company was sold and as time went by I eventually reached the Operations level of management, which in simple terms meant that on any given day I was responsible for the entire plant. I never forgot the simple but meaningful lesson of taking the time, no matter how busy things got, to talk to the people that worked at our location and other companies I work for over the years.
What makes a good or bad manager?
My experience tends to the ‘Leaders are born and not made’ theory. Far too often an individual who has demonstrated excellent technical knowledge and achievements time and time again finally receives a promotion to a management position. At this point they become like a fish out of water, floundering and jumping around on the beach in a desperate search for something that will save them and their project. Unfortunately no amount of management training will save them; it only serves to prolong the agony for them and everyone under them. In the end desperation settles in and they begin to take it out on the employees as a form of relief. Sometimes it can be so subtle that it hardly noticed by anyone except for the person in the center of the bulls eye. Other times it reaches the point of intimidation, threats, abusive language and on and on.
Now here this!
A good manager treats their employees as assets, just as valuable or more so than capital equipment. They help them when they need help, they provide training to sharpen or broaden their skills; thus making them more versatile. A good manager will reward them for doing a good job, even if the only thing they can do at the time is to say: thank you for a job well done. Most importantly they do everything possible to make an employee’s job rewarding and a success. You see if your employees succeed then you as a manager succeed.
A bad manager is one that takes their frustration out on their employees, belittles and berates, screams and threatens, makes unrealistic demands, offers no help when asked, spends more time trying to climb the ladder than manage the tasks given to them, is never available when you need them and always around making small talk to their pet employees totally oblivious to the rest of the team who feel like their in the dog house. They often arrive in your section or department offering great things for the future but seldom deliver, moving on to their next assignment and leaving behind a shambles.
Let me finish by leaving you with a real story.
It’s about a small group of engineers I was asked to manage. They where looked upon as I soon found out with extreme disgust by every other manager in the plant. Every Monday I would attend a meeting along with other managers, which was held by the plant manager for the purpose of reviewing the schedules and tasks given to them from the previous week. This person would take delight in running everyone up and down the flag pole for things that did not go as planned. At first I was an easy target and received more than my fair share of his foul language. Over time as I re-arranged the tasks assigned to my group to better match their skill set we were able to meet everything asked of us, thus I was no longer one of the poor slobs that had to endure the plant managers wrath.
One day after completing a particular hard set of tasks on time and in budget, I wanted to show my appreciation to the team, but had no money to give them as a bonus, or even a framed letter of appreciation. So I called everyone for a short meeting and thanked them for a job well done. After the meeting one employee approached me and said “Jim you are the first manager ever to say thank you”. Having known these engineers for a long time, even before I was there boss and had meetings over the years with each of their pervious managers, some of which I had held in high esteem, I was shocked in disbelief and said not even John (not his real name) and he said no, not ever.
Remember: it cost you nothing as a person to say thank you every once in a while!
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
The Jack Rabbit
Just because you are 30 years old and have a fast car doesn’t mean your have good driving skills. Take for example the typical jack rabbit that all of us have seen buzzing down the highway at 80 to 90 MPH, weaving in and out of traffic, getting stuck multiple times behind a slow car because he or she made the wrong lane move. You see they don’t think four or five moves ahead like in a chess game but jump at the first opening they see. The end result for all their hard work is that they may have a ten second lead on the smarter drivers who pick their moves carefully.
After all that hard work the jack rabbit now takes the same exit ramp that you do, hits the brakes going into the first turn and now you know you got the rabbit, I guess the turn scares rabbits at the speed they are going. You know this exit; it’s a long S turn and you enter buy accelerating slightly and banking to the right, passing the jack rabbit. You accelerate more while going up the incline, jack rabbit is mad because you passed him, but rabbit is in the wrong gear and can’t catch up as you go up the hill. You set yourself up for the next part of the S which is a fairly sharp left hand turn. This turn has those orange night time reflectors imbedded in the road to mark the left hand edge of the lane. You enter the turn and hold the car just to the point were the left front tire just touches the edge of each reflector making a slight ticking sound. Nearing the end of turn you let the car drift out and across to the outside lane and enter a long down hill straight. About halfway down the straight you look in the rear view mirror and see the rabbit is just coming of the turn, a full 3 tenths of a mile behind you.
Now you enter onto another major 8 lane highway and rabbit is working his way back up. Ahead the road divides, go straight and you enter local traffic, keep left to take the high speed bypass. By now rabbit has passed you again and enters the bypass, which is a sweeping left, rabbit brakes again entering the turn, you speed up and try to pass rabbit on the outside lane in the turn. Rabbit isn’t going to have any of this again so rabbit guns it, but you know something rabbit doesn’t, so you keep the pressure on rabbit until just before the turn enters a long downhill straightaway. At the last second you back off with a smile on your face and let rabbit pass you like a bat out of hell. Rabbit who is now doing about 80 mile an hour suddenly discovers what you know; the state police car waiting at the end of the down hill. Flashing lights and a few seconds later it’s all over for rabbit who will be waiting for about 10 minutes to hear those famous words “Have a nice day”!
After all that hard work the jack rabbit now takes the same exit ramp that you do, hits the brakes going into the first turn and now you know you got the rabbit, I guess the turn scares rabbits at the speed they are going. You know this exit; it’s a long S turn and you enter buy accelerating slightly and banking to the right, passing the jack rabbit. You accelerate more while going up the incline, jack rabbit is mad because you passed him, but rabbit is in the wrong gear and can’t catch up as you go up the hill. You set yourself up for the next part of the S which is a fairly sharp left hand turn. This turn has those orange night time reflectors imbedded in the road to mark the left hand edge of the lane. You enter the turn and hold the car just to the point were the left front tire just touches the edge of each reflector making a slight ticking sound. Nearing the end of turn you let the car drift out and across to the outside lane and enter a long down hill straight. About halfway down the straight you look in the rear view mirror and see the rabbit is just coming of the turn, a full 3 tenths of a mile behind you.
Now you enter onto another major 8 lane highway and rabbit is working his way back up. Ahead the road divides, go straight and you enter local traffic, keep left to take the high speed bypass. By now rabbit has passed you again and enters the bypass, which is a sweeping left, rabbit brakes again entering the turn, you speed up and try to pass rabbit on the outside lane in the turn. Rabbit isn’t going to have any of this again so rabbit guns it, but you know something rabbit doesn’t, so you keep the pressure on rabbit until just before the turn enters a long downhill straightaway. At the last second you back off with a smile on your face and let rabbit pass you like a bat out of hell. Rabbit who is now doing about 80 mile an hour suddenly discovers what you know; the state police car waiting at the end of the down hill. Flashing lights and a few seconds later it’s all over for rabbit who will be waiting for about 10 minutes to hear those famous words “Have a nice day”!
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