December 21, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Your life is the average of your peers

Henry Ford: surround yourself with smarter people.
Any sport: play against better players to get better.
The Framingham heart study: you’re as fat as your friends (and you smoke as much as they do, too).

Everybody says it, but not everybody does it. Parents worry about the effects of their children’s friends on their children, but do they worry about the effect of their own friends on their life anywhere near as much? It’s just as important.

When people are initially laid off from long-term jobs, they find comfort and support in attending job clubs and classes. However some find that, should they stay unemployed for a longer time than expected, they may be better to move into groups where people are creating new work and new jobs for themselves.

Change which you can. You may not be able to stop smoking, or start exercising, just yet. You may not be able to not eat junk food. But maybe it’s possible to adjust the amount of time you spend with people who practice the behavior and enjoy the success you want. It can rub off.

Filed Under: Process 153
November 20, 2009 By 1 Comment

There’s always a goat

I came home from teaching a course about the tools that office workers need to be productive to an open calendar and three or four blog posts waiting to get out of my head onto the screen. As I settled in to work, I noticed that my big dog was barking his “something needs my attention” bark; a bark that didn’t stop and didn’t shift as it would if he were following someone moving on the street. I went out to see what had his attention.

One of my neighbor’s goats had died.

Farm, or even backyard-farm, life is often not pretty. One thing I know for sure is that once there’s a problem, it won’t get any better on its own. We had a similar situation earlier that year.  When you find a dead possum on your porch in July, you will have to take action long before you can wait until the problem solves itself.

I called the goat’s owner. We talked about what to do with the body, and fortunately, I thought of the tigers. The Carolina Tiger Rescue facility was happy to take her, but they couldn’t come and pick her up.   I loaded her into the bed of my truck and delivered her. By the time I came home, the afternoon was gone and the evening’s schedule called.

It is in the nature of goats to disrupt schedules and plans, but it is also in the nature of schedules and plans to be disrupted. Your life may never cross paths with a real live goat, or even a dead one. Count yourself lucky. But every life has its own goat-equivalent. Most of the time, schedules are disrupted with the addition of “something else, more, additional.” We don’t even think of it as “disruptive” when we discover a chunk of the plan doesn’t have to be completed, although it’s as much of a change as finding out we have a new responsibility.

There’s always a goat, even if sometimes, the goat is a possum, or a kitten.

When I don’t want to think about goats, I use a phrase provided by a friend who works at the Animal Shelter:  “Kittens do not take zero minutes.”

Filed Under: Project management 658.4
October 30, 2009 By Leave a Comment

USB Chargers & Gold Paint Pens

Once more, I carefully set one of my devices to charge overnight, only to find it dead as a doornail in the morning. Why? because the mini-USB connector fits both ways, AND, because the logo for the “wall” end of the charger is on THE BOTTOM of the connector.

Why would anyone do this? Once day, I’ll ask the nice people at Blue Ant. For today, I’ll get out my gold paint pen and mark the top side of the connector.

For the record, all of my other connectors are marked this way. I saw the logo on the blue tooth charger and (silly me!) thought that the logo alone would serve to mark the top. Ha! I will never remember that in this case alone, the logo marks the bottom.

Younger readers with good eyesight may well be able to distinguish the tree-like symbol that means “top” on a USB connection, from the “arrow” on the bottom, in all kinds of light. People who buy reading glasses by the dozen will understand why it might help to mark the top. White paint would work as well as gold, I suppose, but gold marks feel a bit more luxurious, for the same price. You can buy the pens at art supply stores.

Filed Under: How to 680
September 17, 2009 By 1 Comment

ICE Entries and, Your address book is a database

ICE = In Case of Emergency.  First responders are learning to find the cell phone of an unconscious person and look for an ICE = In Case of Emergency entry.  The numbers in that entry are to people who would be useful or should be notified that the cell phone owner needs help.  Help the EMT help you by creating the entry, and by making sure your friends and family members create ICE entries for their own phones.

Along the same lines, consider that most phone address books can hold more than phone numbers, especially for “smart” phones that sync to a PC and have a “notes” field for each contact entry.

I wish I could remember how the subject came up.  Someone asked when I had my most recent tetanus shot.  I pulled out my cell phone and went to “T” in the address book.  I had the answer.  My friend was astounded. (A friend recently needed an emergency tetanus shot, and went to the emergency room on a Saturday night. The total bill was $426, with only $27 of that being for the injection itself and the remainder for ancillary ER services.)

My dogs each have entries in my phone, with their microchip information and date of last rabies shot.

For that matter, the date of my own rabies series is filed under “R,” but that’s a long and different story.  (Make CERTAIN the administering nurse codes the injection as “treatment for exposure,” not “prophylaxis.”)

I know a woman who keeps her son’s preference in beer in his entry’s Notes field.  When he visits, she knows what to buy.  (I suppose, if one had enough sons with different preferences, it might be easier to create a “beer” entry, but that’s not the case in this particular family.)

I have the rental rates and minimum head counts for my favorite meeting space in the Notes field of its entry.

I’m usually pretty well prepared for planned medical visits, and I can assemble the relevant records a day or two before.  However, “tetanus” (in particular; there are others that have a similar unexpected quality) is one medical outcome that is often unexpected, the result of an unplanned trip to the ER or urgent care clinic.  I will almost always have my phone with me on that kind of visit.  Common sense note:  the notes I make are somewhat cryptic, and I don’t keep my entire medical history on a device that can be pickpocketed out of my purse.  However, I’d rather a thief find out my tetanus history than get a shot I don’t really need because it hasn’t been very long since the last one.

Filed Under: Backups 005.8, How to 680, Process 153
September 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Cell phone, phone home!

If you lost your cell phone and an honest and helpful person found it, could they get it back to you? If you’ve filled out the owner information, and if your cell is not password-protected, probably yes. If your phone is protected, though, the finder might not be able to get to the owner information. The same logic applies to cameras, calendars, paper-based address books, and planners. A phone number on the inside cover, or inside battery cover (Sharpie), is usually accessible to anyone who would take the trouble to find an owner.

Don’t use your cell number on your cell phone.*

I found a well-used planner in the exit lane of our office parking lot once, where it had fallen after its person had placed it on the roof of the car and forgot it. It had six weeks of future appointments and no owner information. Because it was clear it belonged to a Realtor®, I left it at the front desk of (one of) the attorneys’ offices in the building, in hopes that the owner had a) been at a closing and b) would remember the last stop. Never heard.

A return address label in the front, along with a cell phone number, would have solved that problem much faster. One of my friends adds a “reward for return” note next to her phone number.

*I have a friend who locked the keys to a padlock ON the hasp of the padlock… For sure, he never lost the keys.

20091109 Update:  In the process of packing up my PC to carry it to a convention, I wondered how many other people might have the same model (few, but this is a theoretical thought).  Then I realized I had no identifying information ON my PC itself!  Oops!  Added an address label with my phone number on the bottom of the case, and another inside the battery pack, and one in the laptop sleeve, and on the charger.  I’m certain I’ve missed something, but I’ve covered what I can think of at the moment.

Filed Under: Backups 005.8
July 31, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Are you on top of your credit report?

A friend received a solicitation from a credit monitoring agency that offered to keep on top of her credit report for $300 / year.  Although I’m as sensitive to the risk of identity theft as anyone outside the ranks of security professionals, I also know there’s a lot of fun to be had for $300 a year.  That’s almost the annual cost of a cat!

In the ensuing conversation, it became obvious that my friend was not aware she could get a free credit report from each of the three monitoring agencies every year.  The website that provides this service is: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp (You have to order the free reports from this site; you will be charged for reports from the individual reporting bureaus’ websites. You also have to pay to see your actual credit score, rather than just your account information, total debt ratio, and payment history.)  What you do about what you see in your report is outside my skill set.  However, I can help you stay on top of the situation without too much remembering.

The trick to getting cheaper-than-$300 year-round coverage is to order one report from one agency every four months.  Four months later, order a report from the next agency, and so on, and you’ll never be too far from having looked at what the agencies know about you.

Either a paper-tickler file reminder or a repeating Task (Outlook), scheduled to recur every four months, can be used as a reminder to go out to the site and look.  Because the site tracks your visits, it can be helpful to note the actual date of your report in the Task’s Note field (or on your 3×5 card) so that you wait 366 days for the next one from that agency.

Filed Under: Backups 005.8, Income 331.2 Tagged With:
July 28, 2009 By Leave a Comment

On-line backups / flood insurance

The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The next best time is now.

One of my external hard drives is dying. On the way to the store to buy a replacement, I thought that perhaps I should price on-line backup first. If I am willing to spend $80 on a piece of hardware that offers more of the same protection I already have, I should be willing to spend at least that much for a different type of protection altogether. Gina Tripani’s Upgrade Your Life recommends mozy.com; $5 / month buys backup for unlimited amounts of data. Discounts apply when you prepay for two years at a time.

I forked over my credit card number, downloaded and installed the application, and clicked the “backup now” button. The application did its thing and came back to tell me that it would take five days to back up my hard drive at my current connection speed, a little less if I could accept some performance degradation in my system.

Wow. Five days’ of data? (15G, BTW) Five days to PROTECT my data? Good thing my (internal) hard drive isn’t already making funny noises!  At the end of the first 24 hours, the system reports that 5.1G have been backed up, so perhaps they’ve overestimated.  (The FAQ tell me that if I have to disconnect, Mozy will pick up where we left off.)  Future backups will be incremental and take much less time.

It was at this point that I thought about flood insurance, a useful policy to consider for people who live in the path of hurricanes (among other forces that make water cross property lines).  Flood insurance is sold with a 30-day delay.  You can’t wake up one rainy morning and buy coverage that will be in effect by nightfall.  You have to decide that floods are a possible risk for your home and take action long before it is possible to know that any given rainfall will threaten your property.

For almost all of my readers, the relative risk of hard drive failure: flood damage is 1:0.  Unless you have a much faster connection, or less data on your hard drive, than I do, the time between deciding to back up online and BEING backed up online is measured in days.  Get that tree planted now.

Filed Under: Backups 005.8
July 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Social Networking in 15 Minutes a Day

  1. If you have to, set a timer.
  2. Create folders for the emails you’ll receive from Facebook and LinkedIn, and then create rules that automatically direct any incoming mail into these folders. Open these folders no more than once a day.

Facebook (Personal)

  1. For the first four or six weeks, Facebook can be worse than kudzu. Most people get past this phase. Some do not.
  2. Use lists to organize your friends. Go to Friends / All Friends / Create new list. Friends and Family. Business. High School. Co-workers. College. Neighbors. Clients. (Friends can appear in more than one list, so the high school friends who are active in your life today can appear in “friends and family” as well as “high school.”) You will quickly find that some FB users have TMFT (too much free time). Put these users in a list of their own, so their numerous posts don’t “crowd out” the important but less frequent posts from other people you want to follow.
  3. Once a day, look over the postings from people on the lists you care the most about. Some lists won’t change very often.
  4. If someone has posted something that resonates with you, add a comment.
  5. Notice that you can turn OFF any particularly inane “games” or “applications” that fall into the category of TMFT. You can also turn off posts from individual users, but putting them in their own list serves the same purpose.
  6. You can use privacy settings to limit who sees which of your posts, or you can decide to post comments you’re happy for your entire community to see. Your personality will determine which option works better for you.

Facebook (business)

If you own or represent a business or non-profit entity, consider creating a profile page for that business. You can use the business page to post information directly relevant to the business. Facebook members can become “fans” of that page and receive updates about the business separate from any updates you may want to make about your own life or work.

Linkedin

  1. Create your profile. Customize your public profile URL.
  2. Connect to people you know.
  3. Join groups that appeal to you, that your connections belong to, that strike your fancy. Be sure to set the email notification to “weekly” (the default is daily).
  4. Consider whether any of the applications suit your life and your online image. Voracious readers may want to consider adding the “Reading List” application.
  5. Update your “working on” status regularly, or never. Once a week is a good target.
  6. At the very least, read the weekly LinkedIn update email that contains a synopsis of what your contacts have been doing in Linkedin. Within a few weeks, you’ll learn which of the group emails are worth reading in detail, and which can be skimmed or deleted.
  7. If you have any extra time, consider answering questions in your area of expertise.
  8. One very useful time to use LI is before attending an event where it’s possible to know who else will be attending, such as events managed through Meetup or EventBrite. Review the attendees list and look up a few of the profiles in LI. When you attend the meeting, you’ll know something about some of the people who will be present.

About Twitter

  1. If you’re reading this article because you’re new to social networking and concerned about the amount of time it can take, and if your business operates in a reasonably stable world (i.e., NOT financially dependent on up-to-the-minute breaking news), you can focus on Linkedin and Facebook first.
  2. You might want to open a Twitter account now if you have a particular user name you want to claim.
Filed Under: Networking 658.8, Social media 658.87
June 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

And now, a word from your hard drive

I miss corporate IT; people who ran incremental backups nightly and could restore files across servers after hard drives started making funny noises and screens turned blue. I have to solve these problems mostly myself now. Agreed, there are excellent private tech support people in the area who can help. But backing up my hard drive is my problem.

Stephane Grenier, of Landlord Max, wrote about testing backups yesterday. I’ve pondered this problem. It’s a partial solution to dutifully kick off a complete backup to an external hard drive once a week or so. But if I never test the restore, I don’t really know for certain that I’ve done much good. I have at least looked at the files on the hard drive, although I still have to take them to a (trusted) friend’s PC and see if I can get what I need on a different system. I admit I have not tested the backup that puts selected files on the internet automatically. Emails appear the next morning saying the backup ran and XZ MB of data was copied… but it could be garbage. Next action: Check this.

When I had an office outside my house, I would regularly copy off highly-important files to CDs and kept those CDs in my cube, figuring that it was unlikely that both locations would be hit by a fire on the same night (less so for a hurricane strike, however…). One local photographer mails external hard drive backups to her parents in another state.

As with any property insurance, I need to consider the amount of money at risk against what I would spend to protect it. In this case, the “money” is both cash (hard drive recovery starts in the lower thousands) and time. The unknown-to-me variables are those of house fire or catastrophic storm (or errant dog, or diet drink), and hard drive failure. The outlay is the cost of an online backup service, and perhaps a second external hard drive (maybe a thumb drive?), stored at a friend’s house and updated regularly (which carries its own additional time cost).

When it comes to keeping paper records, David Allen has two suggestions: If in doubt, throw it out, and, If in doubt, keep it. If you’re not backing up your hard drive regularly, sooner or later, you will have selected the first option for your digital data.

Filed Under: Backups 005.8 Tagged With:
May 23, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Book Design Matters

I finished War in the Boardroom, by Al & Laura Ries, last night. In the reading, I noticed that I found the book a bit more compelling than its content warranted, given that I am not now and will never be a “marketer,” per se. But I kept reading, long past when I should have been asleep. When I logged War into my reading list this morning, I noticed

Designed by Renato Stanisic

on the copyright page. Hmm. You don’t usually see designer credits on the copyright page. I googled Renato, found a Linkedin page, a Facebook page, and then a shout-out from The Waiter (Waiter Rant, vastly entertaining).

That makes two books in three days that I simply flew through, engaged, entertained, and informed, both designed by the same person. Now, I can’t argue that both books had excellent content. But LOTS of books have excellent content. What I know is that I’m reading a dozen books at any one time, and these two drew me in to FINISH. In contrast, I have to WORK to face a book about organizing that crammed far too much content into far too few pages and resorted to 6-point type to make the page count. My eyes hurt every time I see another pull-out quote in that book.

Design matters, even, or perhaps especially? when it comes to book content. I have self-published myself, and many people in the consulting fields are turning to self-publishing, and IMO, they could do well to give a bit more consideration to design than some of them are doing. I know the field is in disarray, with e-books and kindle shaking up the formats. However, I don’t believe an author can “give up” the points that accrue to good design. I don’t know what Mr. Stanisic makes to design a book; it’s not enough and it’s still more than most POD authors can afford. However, a badly designed book will simply NOT garner the same quality of review as something that reads well.

Most of us give a thought to our appearance before we go to a networking event. We should give the presentation of our thoughts the equivalent amount of attention.

See also: Richard Hendel, On Book Design, Yale University Press, 1998.

PS: I wrote a note of fan mail to Renato via Facebook; he replied and provided a list of the books he had designed. I think I’ve read a few.  Since then, I’ve added “designer” to the list of data elements I keep in my “Books Read” list.  More and more books identify the designer on the data page after the Title page.

Filed Under: Design 745.4 Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Malcare WordPress Security