The Many Faces of Mike McBride

Links for 2008-07-22 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-23T00:00:00-05:00

Understanding E-Discovery
CreativePro Office - Free Office Management Tools
Local adults using Facebook business networking
A good reason not to be blocking social media, I would think...
Portrait Photography’s Power Posing Part I: The Components
Hot IT specialty: E-discovery
Corporate Packrats Beware
MobileMe Sneaks Onto Windows Computers...And No One Cares?

Darned if you do...

2008-07-22T20:41:00.001-04:00

I couldn't help but nod my head reading Brett Trout's post about corporate packrats today.

Does your company still have "floppy" disks in storage? Is your company storing invoices from the 80�s? If so, it is time for a little spring cleaning. The cost of cleaning your electronic house is actually quite small compared with the cost of reading, searching, sorting and producing all of these "dead" files in event your company is ever sued.

My head nodding came from being involved in a few cases already where a client has tapes that they no longer have a compatible drive for, or database files on removable storage that they no longer have the database software for. Certainly our attorneys would try to make the case that retrieving this data is unduly burdensome, but there's always the chance that the court is going to find differently, so I can't help but wonder why they'd bother to keep this stuff.

Of course, just a few years ago, that was me. Working for a small company, with no document retention policy, and no budget to properly destroy old backup tapes. Back then, and still today, the fear was how much a data breach from improperly disposed of media would kill your tech career. Since there was no budget to pay someone to do it properly, and since there were about 10 more pressing issues, those tapes got tossed into a file cabinet drawer, locked and forgotten. No data breach worries there!

Of course, now it's 2008 and I work in the legal industry. I know full well there is a risk in that file cabinet. It may be small, but it is real, and very expensive! Had I known that then, I might have moved "disposing of backup tapes properly" up the priority list just a tad, not to mention "develop a retention policy", but I surely would have run into issues getting that paid for. Probably would have best just to take a hammer to the cartridge, and a razor to the tape. ;)

Technorati Tags: ediscovery, BackupTapes, DocumentRetention

Flickr Spam Referrers

2008-07-22T19:02:00.001-04:00

I knew it was just a matter of time. Today I saw a couple of weird referrers in my Flickr stats, a deal of the day tracker website, and a random hotel page from Expedia that I've never been to, let alone have photos of. A quick look showed me that there are, in fact, no links to any of my Flickr photos from those pages.

Much like every other referrer log, the spammers are starting to show up there too. Lovely....

Technorati Tags: Flickr, Referrers, Spam

Splitting PDF's

2008-07-21T20:54:00.000-04:00

Don't you just love it when a court will only accept PDF's of a certain file size and you have to split a file into various sections so that each is below that threshold? Someone on one of the ILTA mailing lists turned me on to A-PDF Size Splitter, and today, since someone was asking about getting this done, I decided to download a trial of it and see how it worked.

In my test, it worked great! It simplifies the whole process and let's you split a PDF into the proper sized parts in seconds, rather than having to guess where to break it up.

They've got a bunch of PDF utilities on their site which also look pretty useful.

Here's hoping someone I can convince someone to let me purcahse a license. :)

Links for 2008-07-21 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-22T00:00:00-05:00

Links for 2008-07-20 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-21T00:00:00-05:00

Things I learned at the Air Show

2008-07-20T20:39:00.001-04:00

For my birthday, Angela got us Photo Tour and Photo Pit passes for the Dayton Air Show this year. This was the first year they did this early morning tour, and it kinda showed. It wasn't the most organized event I've ever attended. But, it was a chance to hit the flight line to get up close with planes you normally don't get to, and see all the static display planes before anyone else, so we got up ridiculously early and made the drive over to Dayton Saturday morning.

The tour basically consisted of going in groups to each of the different areas and taking photos of the planes. I had hoped for an actual guided tour, with some information about the planes, maybe even a chance to chat with some of the crews, but the only information we got was that we would get in really, really big trouble if we took photos of the rear end of the F-22. Apparently, the engines are still classified. (Even the demo of the F-22 in flight, as impressive as it is, mentions that they can't show you everything it can do. As Angela said, "I'm glad we have that and not some other country..") As it was, they had inserted plugs into the engines, so we wind up being able to photograph it any way, we just couldn't get too close to it.

The Photo Pit wound up being a fenced off area near the end of the runway. It was not show-center by any means, but it was pretty cool to be able to get some shots of planes as they taxied and warmed up for flight. The area came complete with folding chairs. and free bottles of water all day, which we took much advantage of, since the heat was brutal! Which brings me to another recommendation, bring the sunblock in with you. The tour starts at 7, the show ended at 4, somewhere in between, our sunblock quit working as well as it should have. (Not to mention the spots I didn't get covered completely, and in turn baked to a bright red. OUCH!)

I did have some lens envy in the photo pit. There were some people there who obviously had, at minimum, 5-10 grand invested in their photo equipment, some much more! My little 200mm zoom just felt puny next to them. Oh well, I can't afford to drop that much cash on a hobby!

One last lesson, when your wife tells you to go ahead and walk over to get a t-shirt now, you won't miss anything, don't believe her! After spending much time "admiring" the male pilots, when the one female pilot of the FA-18 Super Hornet, Page Felini, call sign Pie, strolled by the photo pit area and said hello to some of the folks, I wasn't there. By my wife's own admission, she put to rest forever the thought that only the male pilots are hot.

Overall, the Photo Tour and Pit were pretty cool, once. I don't know if we'll do it again. I don't know what else would be worth it once you've had the one chance to get the photos this way.

The rest of the Photos are over at my Flickr, and Angela's are over on hers.

Technorati Tags: DaytonAirShow, Photography, Airplanes

Links for 2008-07-19 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-20T00:00:00-05:00

Teaching and sharing are an important part of any career

Links for 2008-07-18 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-19T00:00:00-05:00

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2008-07-18T00:00:00-05:00

Knowing Your Audience

2008-07-17T22:45:00.001-04:00

Today was the last scheduled Summation training class for this batch of training, and it proved to be one of the most interesting.

Breaking the training up into hour long segments, each focusing on an individual part of the Summation tool, was definitely the right way to go. Instead of trying to cram things into a shorter time, or putting more information into one training session than anyone was going to remember, this allowed me to go in depth into a specific area for a full hour, then give the attendees a week to digest that before getting into the next hour's worth of training.

Of course, the other thing it allowed people to do was pick and choose which areas they wanted to know more about, as well, as opposed to committing to all 4 weeks. That was the case with my students today. As luck would have it, yesterday the class was all folks who are really brand new to using Summation, and I had to spend quite a bit of time covering some very basic things when it comes to using the tagging features. That was ok, because really, even with the extra time to cover the basics, we finished in under an hour.

Today, my luck stayed good. All of the students today were folks who would not need to go over those very basic things, and, quite coincidentally, they were also folks who wanted to learn more about working with transcripts but had conflicts that caused them to miss last week's session over that topic.

You know where I'm going with this, don't you? Naturally, we managed to cover both sessions in the hour allotted for today. Because I knew these folks, and I knew what areas I could breeze through quickly with them, we were able to cover both class outlines, and even have some spare time to answer some random questions for them. It was a great lesson in being able to adapt your training to your audience so that they get the most out of it. (At least I think they got a lot out of it, they could just be lying to me...)

It also occurs to me that the next step in training is not just breaking the sessions down into different specific areas of the program, but also breaking it down by the audience. I had originally planned to cover the same material in both sessions this week, but wound up covering something quite a bit different because of the different audiences of each class. It might be good to keep it somewhat segregated by experience level in the future. At least it's worth considering.

Technorati Tags: Training, Audience

Blog Networks on Facebook

2008-07-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

If you're a Facebook member and want to connect with myself, and other readers of this here blog, you can do that now thanks to the Blog Networks App. you'll find the network for my blog here.

I'd love to "meet" regular readers of the blog, I'm hoping this helps do that!

Technorati Tags: Facebook, BlogNetworks

Links for 2008-07-16 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-17T00:00:00-05:00

Re-certified with a couple of weeks to spare

2008-07-15T22:00:00.002-04:00

I believe I've written before that with the release of a new version of Summation iBlaze, they were also requiring everyone who might market themselves as a trainer to pass another certification test, before Aug. 1 in order to not have to go through the whole process all over again.

Today, I completed that exam, with a passing grade. So I am all current on my certification up to version 2.9. I don't currently require it, since I'm only doing in house training, not marketing myself, but you never know what the future may hold, so I figured I'd get it while it was a simple re-certification process, as opposed to going through everything again!

The exam wasn't much different than part 1 of the 2.8 certification, just a few questions thrown into the mix covering the new features of 2.9 out of the 50 questions you need to answer. Obviously, if you've recently taken the exam, it won't seem all that much different.

Still, I'm glad it's behind me, until the next release. *L*

Indianapolis Zoo Photos

2008-07-14T22:53:00.001-04:00

I managed to do something that I rarely do, I stayed away from any computers all weekend. I was disconnected with the exception of my Blackberry, which means I really didn't do much on-line at all this weekend. We had plans with friends Friday night, and a trip to Indianapolis Saturday and Sunday to visit with Angela's brother, his wife and our little niece.

We all went to the Zoo on Sunday, a nice sunny day, as you can tell from the few photos I put up on Flickr. Naturally, we had the cameras out, of course, there was a little girl to play with first and foremost, so the cameras didn't get as many good shots as usual. However, there were still a few in the small set over on Flickr.

I hadn't had the camera out much lately, so it was good to get back in that grove, even if it was just a little bit.

Technorati Tags: IndianapolisZoo

Light Bulb Moments

2008-07-10T22:45:00.000-04:00

Today was a very good day. I had two training sessions scheduled, back to back, covering two very different topics. One was supposed to be a class, but turned into one attendee, on working with transcripts in Summation. The second one was a scheduled one-on-one training session on using an RSS reader.

In both sessions the student had that "light bulb moment", the moment where everything I was telling them clicked into understanding. The moment where they not only get what I'm telling them practically, but they understand what these things can do for them and what they could use them for.

You guys remember that moment don't you? The first time you really "got" RSS, and realized you could follow a bunch of sites, create search feeds, and just sit in Google Reader (Or whatever your feed reader of choice was back then) and let it all come to you. I got to witness someone else having that today, and it was pretty darn cool!

It's easy for us uber-techies to forget, as we move onto the next shiny thing, just how powerful some of this technology is and how much it really has changed the way we interact with the web. It's nice to get a reminder.

Technorati Tags: Training, RSS, Understanding

Changing face of Litigation Support?

2008-07-08T22:20:00.004-04:00

As I've mentioned before, in talking to various folks working in this industry it becomes apparent that the background of the litigation support people in any firm makes a huge difference in how they interact with the paralegals and attorneys.

I come from an IT background, and haven't really had to go on site for a trial. Our paralegals generally handle that part of the Litigation Support process. Other firms that I've come in contact with that have Lit Support folks from an IT background tend to have similar situations.

On the other hand, Lit Support folks who move from a paralegal background have been more likely to see on site trial work, vendor relations, etc. as part of the Litigation Support workload.

When I first made the move into Litigation Support, most of the information I read about it included a whole lot of work that I've never really been called on to do, because the paralegals in our firm have always been doing that work. While we are certainly capable, and should have the capability, to do that work, it's not really considered technical work, and Litigation Support is considered a technical specialty. (In fact, it's part of our IT department)

I wonder, as more Litigation Support folks come into the career from the IT side of things as opposed to the legal side (paralegals and attorneys), if we'll start to see the typical Litigation Support job description change a little to be more of a techie job, or if the handful of firms I've dealt with are the anomalies?

Interesting Management Critique

2008-07-06T22:34:00.004-04:00

I saw this post earlier this week and I've been meaning to point to it since then, but well, the long holiday (not to mention my 40th birthday) weekend kind of distracted me from it.

Anyway, here it is, from the Brazen Careerist Employers Mistakenly Reward Longevity When Aiming for Loyalty

Ultimately, it’s the small acts wherein you put your employer before yourself that make one loyal.

Employers: reward that. And if that happens to line up with someone who has been with your company for five, ten or twenty years, even better. But be careful about simply rewarding longevity — there’s nothing really difficult or impressive about sticking with a mid-level position, working in auto-pilot, for decades. And if Gen Y sees that that’s all you really value, you’re not giving them much of an incentive to show you any real loyalty.

It's an interesting observation. I've worked in enough places that don't act this way, promoting from within based simply on who had been there the longest, without realizing that in some cases, those people weren't so much loyal as they were unsuited to looking for and succeeding at another position. Is that really something to reward?

I think you'd be much better off recognizing and rewarding the truly loyal people, who do everything they can to get the job done, regardless how long they've been there.

Ping.fm

2008-07-05T23:06:00.001-04:00

OK, so obviously there are way too many microblogging services out there to keep track of (Twitter, Pownce, Identi.CA, etc.), and there are far too many social networking tools with status updates, to keep track of. I don't even try anymore to keep up with everyone everywhere. One thing that did catch my eye this weekend, however, was Ping.fm.

While it won't help you keep track of all your friends over all their many services, (Friendfeed is actually getting fairly close to useful for that for me), it will allow you to post to all the various services that you have accounts on, thus freeing your friends to follow you on their service of choice.

Who knows, maybe someone will finally get all this stuff figured out and we'll be able to follow each other without having to resort to all out microblogging tool warfare? Maybe...

By the way, if you need the beta code for Ping.fm, drop me an email.

Technorati Tags: Ping.fm, Friendfeed, Microblogging

Microphones and Cameras, they change people.

2008-07-03T23:44:00.001-04:00

One of the interesting things I heard about at PodCampOhio last weekend was in the session led by Robin Maiden. He talked about having tried to capture the stories pilot's tell one another as a podcast, but found that somehow, when he put them in front of a microphone, the stories just weren't the same. The microphone changed things.

I immediately thought of my experiences with photography, and understood exactly what he was saying. Being in front of a camera changes people. People I know who have the most sincere, expressive facial expressions, stiffen up into the most unnatural, and unhappy, looking model. I know that it's nerves, and a good photographer/interviewer should do everything they can to lessen those nerves, but some people never get over them.

Or is it that they don't want to get over them? I don't know all that many people who enjoy having their photo taken, much less spending a significant amount of time doing a portrait session. (Hence the reason that as much as I would love to do more portrait work and gain experience, I've done one session) I wonder how many people love talking, but not being recorded. There's definitely a difference, not unlike the difference between laughing and smiling with friends, and someone taking your photo. The act of it being recorded creates changes in behavior.

Of course, this truth creates interesting questions when it comes to living in a surveillance society. People act differently when they are aware of being recorded. If we become aware of the possibility of being recorded everywhere, will our behavior change, or will we accept it to the point where our behavior doesn't change? I have my doubts about changing human nature. I tend to think it's rather difficult, and I tend to think the You Tube generation is already seeing changes in behavior, because of the constant presence of video and photographic equipment. But that's a topic for another time...

Technorati Tags: PodcampOhio, Photography

You Need Backups Because Stuff Happens

2008-06-30T22:02:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend I had a chance to spend some time with a friend of ours, taking in the sights and sounds of Comfest. She was regaling me with the story of what happened to her apartment during one of the recent evenings of strong storms that we've had around here.

It seems that the apartment management company had brought is some roofers to redo the roof of her building. Unfortunately, said roofers did not properly seal off the roof, and thus when it stormed, and it rained a ton, she came home to find the carpet squishing beneath her feet!

Now, you might think that living on the highest floor of the building would allow her to keep her PC on the floor without threat of water, and in this case you'd be wrong. She had told me about this the day after it happened, and since the water was limited to the carpet, I assumed there was a good chance that just the bottom of the case had gotten wet, and advised her to be sure it dried before powering it on, but that it would probably be ok.

Little did I know, however, that a few days later, the apartment management folks would have someone in to repair the drywall in her apartment (the place where the water leaked in was right along the wall between two rooms), and they would do the dusty drywall work without covering anything up, including her PC!

So now you had moisture at the bottom of the case followed by who knows how much drywall dust finding it's way into the case and creating static charges, all without leaving the room it was located in!

Luckily, the only apparent damage was the video card, and the apartment complex had someone come in and fix that for her, but it could have easily been more serious, especially when you start talking about moisture and dust creating electrical surges.

It just goes to show, you never know what's going to happen to your machines, do you have a decent backup plan?

Technorati Tags: Backup, DisasterRecovery, WaterDamage

Blackberry Upgrade

2008-06-30T20:58:00.001-04:00

Yes, it's true, work upgraded from my junky old T-mobile 7730, to a brand new Verizon 8830 -Curve.

It's going to take some getting used to, I've had it for 5 hours and am still reflexively reaching for the trackwheel when I pick it up instead of using the trackball at the center, and even when I do locate that, pressing it in to get the menu instead of hitting the button just to the left of it, which is the menu button.

On the other hand, my memory problems and random lockups should be a thing of the past, mostly. Maybe I can even use Gtalk again without locking it up? ;)

Technorati Tags: Blackberry

The "Missing" Evernote Feature that Isn't

2008-06-29T18:53:00.001-04:00

Ever since I downloaded the beta of the new Evernote, I've thought there was one feature that would really make this more useful. While, I certainly understand the convenience of automatically syncing notes between the offline and online versions of the product (Giving me the best of OneNote and Google Notebook? Maybe..), my professional life does not take well to keeping some notes stored in the cloud. Kept private (which all of my notes are, if I want you to see them, I blog them) or not there are some work details that I simply cannot, and will not, store online.

As I poked around the Preferences for Evernote on my Macbook though, I saw only two options, sync your notebooks, or turn syncing off. I wanted to be able to sync some notes, but not others and didn't really see an option for that.

Lo and behold, yesterday at the start of Podcamp Ohio, I created a new notebook for my notes, and was presented with a question about whether I wanted this new notebook to be shared with the web service, or kept local. D'oh!

So, it is there, I just hadn't seen it until now. (Was it always there when creating a new notebook or has it been changed recently? I don't remember seeing it way back when I first started poking around.)

Still, it would be nice to be able to change my mind, taking a local notebook and syncing it, or a synched notebook and making it local, instead of only being given the option one time, when I create it. But it's better than not having the option to keep some things local at all.

Technorati Tags: Evernote

Random Podcamp Ohio Thoughts

2008-06-29T18:21:00.001-04:00

Those of you who follow me on Twitter could probably guess that yesterday was the first Podcamp Ohio "Unconference". I haven't actually been to a podcamp before, but I've certainly heard plenty about them from following tech folks online, so I was looking forward to the chance to attend one locally.

At first, I think there was a period of "getting used" to the Podcamp ethos. Maybe it's Midwestern politeness, but I got the impression that people were generally reluctant to interrupt a presenter to share their own ideas, or throw in a comment. As the day wore on though, I saw some more examples of being getting up from one session to attend another, and more interaction. Of course, that could be just an impression I got from the sessions I was in. Following along on Twitter, I can tell that some of the other sessions may have been different.

I do like the idea of podcamp, and being able to be more interactive than you normally can be at traditional conferences, where the speakers speak, and then answer questions. On the other hand, that makes it a bit difficult to determine what a session is really going to cover. You can go to a session that promises to be a sharing of tools that are used to do audio or video, or even blogging, and wind up spending the whole session talking about hosting options and code editors. Meh! Of course, on the third hand, you can feel free to get up and leave a session like that and hit another one. (I didn't leave in this case, for reasons that will become clear later..)

Some general thoughts abut the day:

Summize was a great tool to track the Twitter conversations going on from the different sessions. I got to read some various ideas without having to be in every session and found a bunch of new local folks to follow.

The portable power strip I picked up at Fry's a few weeks ago came in handy, as the session rooms had one or two outlets each. I got to share an outlet with someone in the afternoon as the Macbook was running low on juice. (The downside, you can't really leave a session when you're powering up, let alone sharing power.)

I spent more time using Evernote yesterday than I have since I first got it, and learned something I didn't know about it before. (More in another post) Given the interactive nature of Podcamp, I did not attempt to keep notes on the blog the way I did at ABA Techshow opting, instead, to jott random things down in Evernote to think more about later. Some of which will become blog post fodder during the week, as I let my thoughts ferment a bit.

The 2-hour lunch was a great idea. I got a chance to chat with someone new in line for the taco/burrito bar, sit and catch up a bit with someone I've known for awhile, and then also get to spend some time with a group of folks I've been following on Twitter, yet hadn't met in real life. All that without having to skip out on any sessions.

On the other hand, there were a handful of folks I wanted to meet up with, who I know were there but we never seemed to be in the same room at the same time. Since I had to run before even the last "closing" session due to other plans in the evening, and obviously couldn't hang around for the after-party, I didn't get the chance to say hello to them. Perhaps next year? :)

Of course, that also bring up the point that maybe the date could have been better. This weekend is a busy one around town, with Comfest, (where I was headed last night) the Pride festival/parade, and various other events scheduled. I'm not sure how much that interfered with others plans to be at Podcamp, but I'm sure it did hurt attendance, even if just a little. That being said, you do need to do something like this in a warm weather month, you don't want folks unable to come from around the state because of snow and ice, either. Still, the event was well attended, and definitely was a good time. I'm already looking forward to doing it again, and thinking about what kinds of things I'd like to see sessions covering, even if I have to moderate it myself!

Technorati Tags: PodcampOhio,Summize,Evernote,Twitter

SRO at podcamp Ohio

2008-06-28T09:35:00.002-04:00

SRO at podcamp Ohio
Originally uploaded by mikemac29

I'm not the only one with Trust Issues

2008-06-25T22:02:00.001-04:00

Last week I wrote about the message you send to employees when you block access to sites that might be helpful to them on a personal level, that they simply can't be trusted.

Today, over at Real Lawyers Have Blogs, I spotted Kevin's similar message about law firms who don't allow lawyers to blog, "We're too scared to let our lawyers blog", in which he links to Liz Strauss and her excellent article about letting your employees blog:

We let employees talk to customers daily - answering email, answering phone call, answering questions at exhibits, and answering letters at the office. We trust what they write on behalf of our company. We once worried in the same way about the telephone and email. Still today any of those customer conversations could be shared internationally or in a court of law.
It comes down to hiring and training employees who make good decisions.
If we trust our ability to choose the right employees and to let them know the values that we hold for our company and our customers, the question of whether we should let them blog falls away as an issue.

I couldn't agree more, and once more, this extends into the dreaded "time wasting" on the Internet as well. All employees are given a certain level of trust, to do their jobs properly, to interact with coworkers appropriately, to handle sensitive information about the organization, or it's customers ethically, all of those things require people who can make good, and proper, decisions. Yet when it comes to the Internet, apparently, all that goes right out the window.

It would be like protecting against possible sexual harassment claims by locking all employees in separate rooms and only letting members of the same sex interact with each other. At some point you have to just lay out the expectations, and trust that you've hired good people who will do the right thing, and get rid of those who cannot.

I'm somewhat lucky, I was already blogging about technology long before I started working for my current employer, and I made it a point to include links to it in my resume. I didn't want anyone to be caught by surprise about me being a blogger. It's a package deal. On the other hand, it's only been very recently that this site, and the firm I work for, have been connected in a few places. I managed to go 6 years without ever having that, until I went to the ABA Techshow as part of my job, complete with my full firm contact information, and blogged from there.

I don't begrudge that happening, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and I knew going in there was a good chance it would happen if I tried to be involved in the legal blogosphere instead of staying over on the tech side of things. It's no biggie, the domain is still under my name, I still make it pretty clear that this is my site, unrelated to the firm I happen to work for, and when I do talk about the work I do, I'm careful to make good decisions about what details I include, and which I leave out. Like I said, I've been doing this for almost 7 years now without incident when it comes to workplace problems, I'm pretty good at it.

That being said, I suppose the day will come at one future employer or another, when I have to write a formal disclaimer (or more likely, have one written for me) so that nothing I say here can be misinterpreted as representing my employer. Frankly, I think the fact that you're reading this from mikemcbrideonline.com makes it pretty clear that this is my site without a disclaimer, but you know how that goes. And when that happens, I'll wonder why it is that I can be trusted to do some very sensitive work and follow all of the legal ethics rules, but not write a few thoughts on a blog.

Technorati Tags: Trust, KevinOKeefe, LizStrauss, Employeeblogs

Wiki Advice

2008-06-24T22:49:00.001-04:00

If you were going to setup a Wiki for the purpose of showing off what a Wiki could do, in a secure section of your own website, which Wiki software would you use?

All suggestions welcome!