I was working with a co-worker on their GTD implementation. They had a question on reviewing their list and how to best incorporate new tasks into their running list. We sat down over lunch and I asked to see their lists. After a few minutes of talking it was apparent the problem wasn’t how to incorporate tasks, but how to decipher incomplete task descriptions. For example:

Look at summary statement in details report.

Call about overage on cost estimate.

Follow up with Bob on his call about his question.

These were actions they knew they needed to do when they did their weekly review, and in the moment they captured the action the task made sense, but now a few days later the task foreign. The task had no definition on what the final outcome should be, it had no relation to back to the parent project or task list, and it gave no context on what action needed to be taken.

Look at summary statement in details report.

What report should be looked at?
What problem with the report needs to be looked at?
When this task is done, what should have happened?

I suggested that the task look more like this:

Verify that Monthly Expense Report summarizes the number of expenses items incurred during the month next to the monthly cost total.

Tip: Make sure you take just a few seconds to review what you wrote down when you capture a new task so you can make sure you can understand it days later.

Apple released their new iBook authoring software and demonstrated some exciting new ideas for school textbooks. I haven’t played with the authoring software yet, but the new textbooks intrigued me, so I downloaded a copy. The text books are amazing. The pages move with same fluid grace as you’d expect from Apple. The books are also interactive with additional sub-pages and informative help on topics. If textbook publishers truly embrace this medium, you can say good bye to stuffed book bags and used text book stores.

While I was browsing I found this in one of the first simple pages of a geometry text book.

Holy crap! This is the kind of stuff I’m going to have help my kids with in a couple years? I’m an engineer and even I forget about most of that stuff. Here’s hoping that my wife has brushed up on her English and spelling skills, because I’ll have my hands full with the math and science.

In case you missed it, but I turned off the lights for the past 24 hours on all my sites.  The reason? There is legislation currently going through the House of Representatives (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA). While each bill has subtle differences, the goal for both pieces of legislation is to give additional means for authorities to protect an owner’s intellectual property – music, movies, songs, photographs, etc. While on the surface this seems to make sense, and it does, but the legislation also broadens the terms in which someone can make a claim for copyright infringement. Simply claiming copyright infringement can get a website access restricted.  It’s a case of shoot first and maybe we’ll ask questions later.

Please take a few minutes to contact your representative to show your opposition to these bills: Contact Your Representative.

I admit it, I’m a Windows guy at heart. I use Windows at work everyday, I help friends and family with their Windows woes, heck, this post was written in a Windows application (Windows Live Writer). But my main computer for home is a Mac… and I love it, almost. When looking for files or sorting through larger folders, Finder.app does one crazy little thing I can’t stand – it sorts everything without regard to folder vs file. By default, Windows Explorer will treat folders and file records separately. Here are the steps to getting Finder.app in Lion OS X to behave a little more like Windows Explorer.

To do the following steps, you will need an application that can read and edit Plist files. The out of the box TextEdit in OS X will not work. Applications that will work are Apple’s Xcode, TextWrangler, or BBEdit.

1. Open Finder and use the Go –> Go To Folder command to open the folder to location the Finder.app file.

2. In the dialog box, enter “/System/Library/Coreservices” and click ‘Ok’.

3. This will open the folder the Finder.app is located in.  Once the folder is open, right click on the Finder.app file and click on ‘Show Package Contents’. The package contents of the Finder.app will open like it was a folder and show additional folders and files that make up the Finder.app application.

4. Once the package contents are opened, navigate to “Contents/Resources/English.lproj”

5. Locate the file “InfoPlist.strings” file.  This is the file that contains the structure on how Finder.app sorts records.

6. Verify that you have write access to the “InfoPlist.strings” first. Right click the file and select “Get Info”.  This will show if you have access to change the file. Change your access to “Read/Write” and save the changes. The easiest way to do this is change the ‘Everybody’ group to ‘Read/Write’ access.

7. Open the “InfoPlist.strings” file in one of the editors listed above. If you happen to use one that is not setup for editing a Plist string file, you’ll most likely end up with an error message when attempting to open it.

8. Locate the “Folder” entry in the “InfoPlist.strings” file and simple add a space to the following line (note the space has been added):

<string> Folder</string>

9. In case the “Folder” string is not listed, add the following to your “InfoPlist.strings” file.

<key>Folder</key>
<string> Folder</string>

10. Save the changes to the “InfoPlist.strings” file.

11. Do another ‘Get Info’ on the “InfoPlist.strings” to remove your ‘Read/Write’ authority and save the file again.

12. Open a Terminal and run the following command:

sudo killall Finder

Now open the Finder app and look at how your folders and files are sorted by clicking on ‘Kind’. All of you folders should now be listed first, in alphabetical order, followed by the kind of file in alphabetical order.

How often does this happen:  You need to set up a group meeting to review some information with five or six co-workers. So you fire up Outlook to schedule a meeting with the group by looking for a time where everyone is free. You find a day and time that works and then send out the meeting invitations. An hour later you get back five acceptance notices and one decline. Huh? When you open the decline notice you get a quick note that says they can’t make the meeting that day because they’ll be out that afternoon, they include an apology that it wasn’t marked down on their calendar, and then ask if there is another time the meeting can be rescheduled. Arrggghh. Isn’t that what a calendar is for, to let you know when someone may not be available?

In the age of smartphones, the line between home and work is getting more and more blurred. People now deal with a crisis or critical email at just about any waking hour. At the core of our work life is our calendar, it’s the runway to know what we are going to be doing in the foreseeable future. Your calendar is also your way to communicate with your co-workers on your availability for meetings or other work related activities. Most professionals do a great job making sure all their work events are kept up to date. They keep their calendar completely up to date with all their business appointments and commitments. But what about the reverse?

Do you mark out time on your calendar when you know you’ll be tied up with personal items? Are you marked ‘out of office’ for those couple of days of vacation? Did you show you’re not available next Tuesday afternoon because of a dentist appointment? Why not? The professional way to handle your calendar is to let people know when you’ll be unavailable, regardless if it’s personal or professional. You don’t need to list why you’re unavailable, but at least having it marked down on your calendar means your being responsible for communicating to others of your availability. It’s also a subtle reminder to yourself of your own availability. If you can be reminded that you’ll be out of the office next Tuesday for that dentist appoint, you can give better feedback on timelines or project commitments.

Marking down your personal activities on your professional calendar will make you a better communicator, not only with your co-workers, but yourself too.

You finally responded to that cold call from a recruiter and it’s landed you an interview with a company. Now what? Now you begin the interview dance between you and and your potentially new employer. The first interview is where you need to impress them – no way around that. But the second interview is where your potential employer should try to impress you. Working for a company is a two way street. If you’re not content with how your new employer conducts its business, how productive do you think you’ll feel when you have to spend a majority of your week there?

Here’s ten things that you should look into when you go to your second interview. These are topics that usually are skirted around, or worse, not even addressed in the second interview, but each of these topics will have a direct impact how you will need to do your job.

1. Ask for a tour: Seems simple doesn’t, let me see where I’m going to spend 50-60 hours a week at.  Because let’s face it, if you’re working in a manufacturing plant, there is no such thing as a 40 hour work week anymore. What condition is the facility in? Does it appear that on going maintenance is occurring? Are you going to be working with equipment you’re unfamiliar with?

2. Ask to talk to your future peers: Another must do item before accepting a job. These are the people you’re going to be spending most of your waking hours with, wouldn’t like to get some insight on how they tick? How long have they been working for the company? Why are they still with the company or what has kept them from looking elsewhere? Ask them about other topics on the list – continuing education, safety training, budgeting, etc.

3. Ask about training or continuing education: The technology that an engineer or maintenance professional has to manage is ever changing, so a continuing education is an absolute must. How does your new employer plan to help you keep your skills fresh? Do they have a training budget? Is there an in-house training staff? Do they support CEU credits to maintain professional accredidation? Are professional accreditations something that the company aspires for employees to attain?

4. Ask about a recent audit or inspection: Nearly every industry has some level of responsibility of compliance to a set of standards or other authorized body. This could be as simple as asking about when/how the last OSHA inspection went? In the food industry, ask about the latest AIB, NSF, BRC, or customer audit. See what kind of feedback and openness there is in discussing how these went. If a company is willing to discuss them, then they more than likely have a pro-active attitude in managing audit compliance. Anything else means there could be a skeleton or two in their closet.

5. Ask to see their safety manual: The golden rule of any OSHA safety manual is that it has to be accessible by employees.  While you’re ‘technically’ not an employee yet, the attitude of how a company responds to this will give you insight to their attitude towards safety in general. Is it actually accessible? Does it appear up to date? For the given industry you’ll be working in, are there any missing programs? Does the company appear to take an active role in assuring employee safety?

6. Ask about capital and annual budgeting: Most companies have an annual expenditure budget that they must meet for capital project and O&M maintenance costs.  ’How’ that budget is generated says a lot about the work environment you may be entering. Is the budget openly reviewed by staff – input on ideas, help formulate priorities, give feedback on previous experience, assist in cost estimating, etc. If not, how are these budgets generated and how well informed are staff at your level to what is/is not included in the current year’s budget?

7. Ask about collateral duties: You’ll more than likely know about the primary goals and responsibilities you’ll have with the new position, but what collateral duties are you expected to complete? This leads in and out of question #2 very nicely. You meet your new co-workers, ask them about some of the other tasks they are working on.

8. Ask about what’s the next step after this: The new job is everything you hoped you could find, but do you have aspirations to do more? If so, are those available at your new employer? Ask what became of the person whose role you’re going to be filling – is this a new position, did the person get promoted, or where they let go? Does the company typically try to promote within or look for skill sets outside the company?

9. Ask about where you’ll be sitting: This goes a little bit back to #2. Where you’ll be doing most of your work has direct relationship on how effective you’ll be in getting that work done. If you’re leaving a job where you had an office and find out that the company your interviewing with believes in cubicles, what do you? Or the reverse, you’re in an open office now and you find out that you’ll get a private office at the new company. Does that offset any negative information you’ve discovered so far in your second interview?

10. Ask yourself if it’s worth it: After asking all these questions, and the answers you may or may not have been given, is the move really worth it? If this is your chance to get back to work because you were laid off from your last job, then this might be a pretty easy question. But what if this involves moving your family too? Are you leaving a support network of extended family? Are your hobbies and life style going to work in your new location?

Bonus Item: Either before you go to your second interview or when you get back home to start to really think things over, check out how well the facility really has been doing with OSHA and environmental compliance.  You can review OSHA inspection records from the web – OSHA Statistics & Data. Most state environmental agencies will either have a web search tool available to review permit compliance and/or inspection. If all else fails, Google the company name and include terms like ‘safety’, ‘environmental’, ‘compliance’, ‘lawsuit’, ‘litigation’.

When you look at the entire line of software and hardware that Steve (aka Apple) has brought to us over the years, I really wonder if it’s really the best stuff out there.  The hard truth is that most of the time I’d have to say no. Take a look at the three main lines that Apple has -  computers, operating system, and mobile devices – and see if Steve really brought the best to the market.

When you look at Apple’s computer line, a consumer sees they are beautifully designed, very well built, and of course very well priced. You don’t get a ‘basic’ or an ‘economy’ computer from Apple, you get some of the latest and greatest hardware that Intel and component manufacturers have to offer. Unless you buy Apple’s professional line of desktop computer, the Mac Pro. Then you get last season’s hardware with few options to upgrade. The most inexpensive computer you can get from Apple, the Mac Mini at $599, requires you to buy the mouse, keyboard and display separately. So in the end, you’ll still probably spend around $900 to $1000 to get a ‘basic’ Apple computer.

Next we get to Apple’s software, which is primarily the operating system itself, Mac OS X, and their iTunes media manager. OS X is based on the Unix operating system, which is a rock solid underlying operating system. The problem is the OS X user experience that’s built on top of it. Unless your handy with C++ or Apple’s internal programming (aka AppleScript), then you’re at the mercy of living with how Apple expects you to use your Mac.  Or you can hope that some programmer thinks like you do and writes a nifty little application to fix your annoyance.  The other half of the equation is the media manager Apples has given us, iTunes.  iTunes is a kludgy and memory intensive application.  That being said, it could be a good media manager if Apple allowed other devices to be managed. But alas, no one other than Apple is allowed to connect to iTunes to manage a device. Just ask Palm, err HP, and WebOS.

Last on the list are Apple’s mobile (iOS) devices.  The iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and AppleTV. These are predecessors to the original iPod that vaulted Apple into the limelight.  These little devices, packed with all the magic that Apple could muster, are also the culmination of some of the distractions to what Apple has offered over the years. The software is closed, the device is designed to what Apple wants, and the longevity of devices has sometimes been questioned. Yes you can jailbreak your iOS device, but the term itself shows you have ‘break’ into your device to do what you want it to do.

So with all the slight imperfections in Apple’s line up, do you think I’d ever buy another one?

You bet.

What Apple did, with the vision and guidance from Steve Jobs, was create the ultimate user experience.  Period.  When you put these devices together – iTunes, running on OS X, on your Mac, syncing to your iOS device – you create a combination that’s greater than the sum of its parts. And no one knew how to do that better than Steve Jobs. Steve was able to take bits and parts and make them into something bigger and better than before – NeXT, Pixar, and of course Apple. The creative and design genius that was lost today is unfathomable. 

RIP Steve. You made a very big dent in my universe.

Parallels has released an updated version to their Parallels Desktop for Mac software.  The latest version, Parallels Desktop 7, now allows Mac users to run another copy of Lion OS X in a virtual machine (VM) on their Mac computer.  However the default method to installing an OS X VM is through the recover partition on your Mac’s hard drive. 

Some users, including myself, have run into issues when using this option.  When you select the Recovery Partition installation option, you will sometimes be left with the install thinking it needs to re-download the entire Lion install package – as seen below. 

But there’s another way to install OS X Lion with your local copy of the Lion OS X install package. 

First, extract the actual installation image.  To do this, right click on the installation download from the Mac App Store and click on ‘Show Package Contents’.  This will open the install package file itself.  Navigate to the ‘SharedSupport’ folder and open it.  There you will find a file called ‘InstallESD.dmg’.  Copy this file to another folder.  This is the actual installation image used to install Max OS X Lion. 

Keep a copy of this file safe, it can be used to create a DVD or USB boot copy of Lion OS X.  Bonus tip.

Once the file has been extracted, startup Parallels 7 and click on the ‘Install Windows’ option from the New Virtual Machine menu items. 

If you look closely it also states “… or image file”.  Since OS X can treat certain .DMG files like an image, we can use the ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file to install OS X Lion.  With the “Install Windows from DVD or image file” highlighted, click ‘Continue’ to proceed with the installation.

The default will be to install from the Mac’s DVD drive, but from the drop down list you can select an image file of your choice.  Locate ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file and click ‘Open’

With the ‘InstallESD.dmg’ file selected, click ‘Continue’ to proceed with the installation process.

Next give your VM a name and click ‘Continue’.

Parallels will now start a VM to proceed with the installation.  After a quick start of the VM you’ll see a typical Apple boot logo.   After a little wait you’ll then be presented with a typical new installation screen.  Continue with the installation as normal.

When the installation gets to step to actually copy over the image to the VM, you’ll now get a much more pleasing time left for install.  This is because the image is now being copied from a local folder from the Lion installation image that was extracted previously.

After the image installation is complete, you’ll now have a fully functional copy of OS X Lion running inside OS X Lion.

Enjoy.

One of the more controversial topics you can discuss within maintenance/reliability circles is the use of daily work orders (ok… maybe there are more, but it’s a hot one for me).  The idea is that a new work order is issued everyday to document a set of tasks that a mechanic or operator completes each day.  This could be an inspection checklist, repetitive tasks completed each day, or any other list of activities the individual needs to do each day.

So why would a plant site want to add this type of work load to their maintenance support staff?  Here’s 3 main reasons why plants shouldn’t do daily work orders.

1. Job Duly Noted: There’s a break point where an activity changes from a recurring task to part of a person’s normal job duties.  If a work order needs to be issued everyday to document an activity, you’ve crossed from task descriptions to normal job duty activities.  The list of activities should be moved over to a recurring checklist that the mechanic or operator just fills out as part of their day.  Can you imagine giving a receptionist a work order everyday to ‘greet customers and ‘answer the telephone’? 
2. Screws Up Scheduling: Most plant sites are either on a 5 day or 7 day maintenance schedule.  So if a plant site is issuing out daily work orders for activities in the plant, it means they are needing handle 260 to 364 work orders, each year, for each daily activity that is being tracked.  Multiply that by 8 or 9 daily work order activities and you’ve now grown your additional scheduling load to 2080 to 3276 work order per year.  Wow! 
3. Messes Up Metrics:  Using the previous numbers, let’s say a plant site has 2200 ‘daily work orders’ issued each year and those work orders are classified as ‘inspections’.  Fast forward 12 months and the plant’s reliability team starts to look at ways they can improve the plant’s productivity.  If the plant has an annual work order out put of 15,000 work orders, the daily work orders account for almost 15% of the total work load count.  Now factor in that the daily work orders most likely fell under a predictive/preventative category, compared to a reactive or corrective category, and now the plant will seem to be doing even a better job.  But they’re not…

If you don’t agree, leave a comment.  If you agree, leave a comment too.  Tell me why daily work orders have a place in a maintenance organization. 

For a while I was a photography snob.  I don’t mean ‘Ohhhh, you only have a <insert expensive camera>.  I guess that’s okay compared to a <insert godawful expensive camera>.’ kind of snob.  I mean the kind that looks at an opportunity to take a picture but says ‘I’d like to take a picture, but I don’t have my <insert better camera that’s at home>.’  Yeah, that was me.  Key word… was.

I’m becoming a bigger and bigger proponent of using whatever camera I have with me.  Yes, yes, I know there a whole site dedicated to this idea – thebestcamera.com.  But sometimes you have to experience something first hand before you believe it – like opera or ice fishing.  Case in point below.

This panorama was shot with 5 different pictures on my iPhone.  I then stitched the shots together with an iPhone app called Autostitch Panorama.  No other corrections were made to the photo after the pano was stitched together.

This is another picture from my iPhone.  Probably the break through picture for me.  I was out walking the dog and saw this gorgeous sunset.  Click.  Come home and make some minor color and contrast  corrections in iPhoto then cropped it for effect.  Amazing.

It’s a shame it took me so long to come around and open myself back up to capturing the moment instead of worrying about trying to capture the perfect moment.  So do yourself a favor and stop worrying about getting the perfect picture.  Collecting a photo of the moment, any photo, is going to be better than not getting anything at all.

It’s hard to look back on an empty photo album.