Tap My Mind - Professional

Use the Right Tool

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:06:00 -0700

My whole life I've heard, "Use the right tool for the job," and I am a big proponent of that and tell people all the time. But there are times that something is low-risk, and it's easier to try to use whatever is on hand than going to get the right tool. So you take a calculated risk and move on with your life. Sometimes, though, you're wrong. You mess things up with the wrong tool and end up having to try to patch it, taking more time and effort that it would have taken to do it right in the first place.

This especially sucks when the "right tool" is your electric beard trimmer and the "wrong tool" is the safety razor you thought you could use to touch up your moustache.

My Ideal Job

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:01:00 -0700

Eighteen months ago, I sat down and wrote out a description in bullet points of what my ideal job would be like. I described my position, the company, and my co-workers. My previous job had many of those qualities. It was a good job at a good company, but it wasn't everything I wanted. I wanted to change things, but they weren't mine to change.

I've been at SafeNet for about 7 weeks now. I realize that's not that long, but so far it seems like every single bullet point on my description of an ideal job has been satisfied. Here's my list from June 2010.

My Position

I want to be irreplaceable (see what I mean by "irreplaceable" here).

I want to focus on building relationships, both co-workers and customers.

I want to be able to mentor someone.

I want to be able to learn and be mentored.

I want to be challenged without being overworked.

I want to be expected to do things I don't know how to do.

I want to design and deliver important solutions.

My Company

Must be a place that outsiders get excited about when they see how we do things.

Must be known for its technology as well as for its business -- for execution as well as ideas.

Must be full of irreplaceable people.

Must be full of passionate people.

My Teammates

Must care.

Must have an opinion more often than they don't.

Must share their opinions.

Must debate.

Must be irreplaceable.

Must be passionate.

Must treat their work as a craft or art.

Must give "something" (intangible) more than their work..

Must have insight and understanding.

Must be able to troubleshoot.

Must act like they work for themselves.

Must be empowered.

Must be respected internally and externally.

Must be compensated enough to not worry about compensation.

I didn't realize until tonight when I came across that 18 month old list just how ideal this job is for me.

Do you have a description of your ideal job? If your ideal job is more like my ideal job than it is your real job, we should talk.

The First One

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 20:35:00 -0700

If it wasn't for dominoes, we wouldn't have the "domino effect".

Dominoes alone aren't enough, though. You also need someone to design what it should look like in the end, and you need someone to carefully place each domino where the design says it belongs.

But before you can stand back and watch the show, you need that first one to tip.

The first one has tipped. I'm excited to see what happens next.

(Image source)

Vizualize Me - A Visual Resume

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:55:00 -0700

The other day I signed up for Vizualize.me. Once I got over the fact that they misspelled "visualize", it looks like a pretty nifty little service. They make a graphical resume for you, like the one to the right. I'd always wanted my very own personal infographic, and now I have one.

If you are a LinkedIn member, they can optionally pull your work history, education, recommendations, skills, etc. from there so you don't have to enter all of that again. This was the choice I made and it had the additional benefit of making me update my LinkedIn profile so that there was good data to pull.

They have a number of different themes available, and you can customize colors and fonts, too. You can include a bunch of different data, such as work experience, education, LinkedIn recommendations and various personal statistics.

Do you have a visual resume to share?

Evolving .NET

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:52:00 -0700

Jason Bock will be speaking at this week's WI .NET Users Group meeting.

Evolutionary programming and computation have been used in the past to produce amazing and unexpected designs, yet a lot people don't know how powerful these concepts are. This session will describe these principles and show how you can use them as you develop .NET code by using LINQ expressions.

The meeting is on a special night this week: Thursday, August 11. More info and registration is at the link above.

What Would Happen

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 23:24:00 -0700

So I was wondering something tonight.

What would happen if the worst 10% of people in any given profession found a new line of work? Would there suddenly be a shortage of programmers, for example, if the worst 10% of all programmers quit their jobs? Perhaps, but I'd bet that most would not be replaced.

So what would happen if the best 10% of people in any given profession mentored someone?

Visual Studio Command Prompt Here

Mon, 24 May 2010 15:12:10 -0700

I'm rebuilding my computer after a hard drive failure, and I keep running into issues where things I've taken for granted are missing – things such as the "VS Command Prompt Here" Windows Explorer context menu items.

Years ago, Scott Hanselman posted INF files to add VS 2005 to the context menu. Using that as inspiration, I've created a version of the file for VS 2008 and another for VS 2010. For what it's worth, I tweaked his VS 2005 file because my copy of VS is installed in "Program Files (x86)" and on older versions of Windows, such as when he posted, it wasn't.

So enough with the intro; here are the download links:

Right-click to save your file of choice, then right-click on the saved file and choose Install.

Disclaimer-ish stuff: These modify your registry. You should open the files in Notepad first to understand what is happening. Use at your own risk. I'm sure you're not reading this part anyway.

Good luck.

RTLB #5: Do Not Withhold Good to Spite Evil

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:20:00 -0700

This is the fifth in my "Rules to Live By" series. Like every other professional, in every other field, over the years I've picked up a lot of things that make my life easier, or better, both professionally and personally. Most of these things can be summarized in a sentence or two, and I've decided to call them "Rules to Live By". As much as any other reason, they are here to remind myself of things that I've decided to believe in, even if I don't feel like it one day.

RTLB #5:

Do not withhold good to spite evil.

This is a tough one -- for me at least. Have you ever had someone be rude to you? Or had a conversation with someone in a bad mood? Or found out that someone said something about you behind your back? Or conspired against you? No doubt you have had all of these things happen to you.

I don't know about you but my instinct is to pop off and say something sarcastic in return or to be a smart aleck. Clearly this will rarely calm the situation.

I think everyone knows, though, deep down, that you should not return "evil" for "evil". Sure, there are times that I must take a stand on something, and even be aggressive, but rarely should that be my instinct. This is a hard struggle for me personally, especially regarding people with whom I have a history. I struggle with it weekly, if not daily.

But I think I should be taking it even a step further.

Have you ever been just about to compliment someone when they said something rude? Have you ever started to slow down to let another driver merge only to have him cut you off and give you the finger? Have you ever approached an employee of a store and politely started with "Excuse me, ma'am" and received rude service in response? Did it make you want to give that compliment, be courteous to another driver or say "thank you" to the clerk? Probably not. But that is probably exactly what we should do in those situations.

It is one of my personal goals to make sure I do not withhold good to spite evil. It's so easy to let one interaction change who I am. If I have made a commitment to myself to be a kind person -- a commitment I feel everyone should make -- what does it say about me that another person has enough control over me to cause me to fail at this? Am I not in control of my own actions?

No. I am in control of my own actions and that means that I am capable of giving good even if I have received only evil.

I'm working on this everyday and have found that the more I remember to be kind (which is different than acting kind, but that's an entirely different conversation, but is possibly the single most important thing to note in everything I have said) the more I find myself wanting to be kind. To everybody. To family. To friends. To strangers. Even to the person who hurt me.

My challenge to you is the same as my personal challenge to myself. Give good in return for bad. Be kind first, and then act kindly. Remember that the person on the other side of the evil is a person and they may be struggling with the same thing, acting badly because they themselves have been offended.

Give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

Twitter

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:20:28 -0700

In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t been a very faithful blogger over the last several months. I wouldn’t say that I’ve abandoned it, because I haven’t, but other things have definitely taken priority.

Aside from the typical “family and work distractions”, one thing in particular that has disrupted my blogging is Twitter. I am much more active on Twitter, and you should follow me there.

In the meantime, don’t unsubscribe from the blog just yet. I have a few posts in mind for the next several weeks. :)

Meeting Cost Calculator

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 22:07:00 -0700

Have you ever been in one of those meetings where it seems that everyone in the company is there, even though they don’t need to be? I think everyone has and it is especially frustrating when you are one of the ones that doesn’t really need to be there.

Well, based on a web site I saw a few weeks ago (the link escapes me at the moment), I wrote a little Windows Mobile app that will calculate just how much any given meeting is costing you and your clients.

It’s a pretty simple application. You press Start, the dollars add up. You press Stop, and they stop adding up. You can specify the number of attendees at any given meeting. You can also specify the default estimated billing rate and estimated cost to your company (for example, estimated average wage + benefits).

You can toggle back and forth between the client cost and the cost to your own company by either clicking on the appropriate region (current is highlighted) or by using the context menu on the Total Cost. You can also reset the calculator from the context menu of the Total Cost.

Here are a few more screenshots.

You can download this directly to your Windows Mobile phone by going to one of the following links:

http://www.tapmymind.com/uploads/MeetingCostCalculator/MeetingCostCalculator.CAB
http://tinyurl.com/mtgcalc – This is the same link as above, but shortened for easier entry on your phone.

I am running WM6 with a touch screen, but it should work on WM5 and later. I have only tested this on my phone, so your mileage may vary. Download and run at your own risk. Feel free to report any issues, comments or suggestions via the contact form below.

Update 1: This program requires the Microsoft .NET Compact Framework version 3.5.

Update 2: I've uploaded a new version with the following changes:

FIXED: Bug in highlighting currently selected cost
FIXED: Bug that always shows total for default number of attendees instead of currently selected number of attendees
CHANGED: Continues to run even if device is put into suspended mode
CHANGED: Configuration screen allows for higher ($500/hour) and more precise ($5 increments) for cost fields