Calvin and Hobbes

I have three books full of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons that my oldest daughter loves to look through. I would not have guessed that she’d like Calvin at her age (6) but she can’t get enough of him. She has all the books lined up next to her bed. Every night she asks me to read her a few pages worth which I love to do as it brings back a lot of good memories over the years.

As I read the comic below tonight she laughed and laughed and I wondered if kids her age enjoy identifying with a kid like Calvin who is always getting into trouble. Whatever it is she loves the cartoons and will spend hours looking through every book, page by page.

Maybe I’ll surprise her with one of the newer collections this Christmas.

Technorati Tags: Calvin and Hobbes, Comics

Life sucking meetings

I’ve worked for a number of companies ranging from startups to large companies with over 50,000 employees. If I’ve learned anything it’s this: The larger the company you work for, the more time you’ll spend in life sucking meetings.

When I worked for the Microsoft Office group, we’d have weekly meetings that included 40+ attendees. Even the smallest issues were debated ad nauseam until only the least risky ideas were given the green light. There’s just no way 40 people can agree on anything remotely daring or uncharted. I’m not exaggerating when I say some weeks included 25 hours worth of meetings. It was the most boring, least productive period of my career.

The worst type of meetings are recurring ones. These are scheduled and attended by those who have nothing to do except plan and attend meetings. Nothing gets done because any decision can be pushed off to next week’s scheduled meeting. It’s one, big, ongoing productivity suck. Avoid these like ~~Vista~~ the plague. If you can’t outright avoid them then schedule real work on top of them. Go visit your best client. Go visit a client who recently chose a competitor. It doesn’t matter what you do because even if you drive around the parking lot thinking of ways to improve your fantasy football team, it will be a better use of your time than spending it in a meeting that’s been on your calendar since the last Haley’s comet.

The next time you receive a meeting request in your inbox, consider declining it. I’m convinced that, like jury duty, participation leads to more invitations Decline a few and you might find yourself left off the next invite. This is EXACTLY what you want. Spend this time doing real work and you’ll be that much further ahead.

If you must attend a meeting, try to weed out those people who are just tagging along for the ride to avoid real work. Many of these people have nothing better to do than toss out phantom issues. They live to kill good ideas. They start every sentence with, “Yes, but I have some concerns with….” Basically, they like to hear themselves speak. Tell these people that you’ll take notes while they stay behind shopping on eBay. The fewer people in the meeting, the better chance you have of making it productive for everyone.

Never show up early for a meeting. You’re better off timing your entrance as close to the start time as possible. That way, you can make a quick drive-by and see if there are more than five people in the meeting. If you spot more than five keep on walking. A meeting with more than about five people is a waste of time. It will be very tough to gain consensus with more than five.

One of the best meetings I attended began with the meeting organizer going around the room asking everyone to state why they were there and what they hoped to gain. If someone didn’t have a reason beyond, “I dunno, I was just invited” he sent them out of the room. Our meeting of 15 was quickly whittled down to 4. That was 8 years ago and I still remember what we discussed. Can you say that about any meeting you’ve had this week?

Technorati Tags: Time sucking meetings, Microsoft

What is the best service to stream my music?

Say I have maybe 100 mp3s that I listen to at home in a playlist or two. What if I wanted to listen to those same songs at work without having to download them to my computer. Is there a service that will sync a list of songs or a couple of playlists so they are available to stream at work? Ideally, anytime I made a change to my playlist at home, it would also update my playlist elsewhere.

The only service I’ve tried so far is Locker from MP3Tunes and it works ok, but I wonder if there’s something else out there?

Technorati Tags: MP3, Music Locker, Stream music

Might be time for an upgrade

There’s a Friends episode where Phoebe goes to answer her phone and pulls a huge brick phone from her purse while her friends watch in amazement. I bring up this example because something similar happened today while at work.

My carpool partner is one of the biggest geeks I know. He’s an SDET at Microsoft who has six computers at home and is nerd enough to have written his own blogging software. He’s always hacking this or that and puts me to shame when it comes to technical matters. I mean, this is the type of guy that writes about “rendering controls” on his blog.

But today he messaged me in the afternoon asking if maybe we could leave work a little early. I said that’s cool and then he dropped the bomb:

My wife wants to go shopping before Prison Break starts since we don’t have a DVR

So much for his tech cred. It was gone in an instant. No DVR? You can always tell when someone is DVR-less when they know the day, time and channel of their favorite shows. He even has DirecTV installed. I told him to call DirecTV and tell them to send out a guy with a DVR…IMMEDIATELY.

I don’t know what to think. I wonder if Microsoft would have hired him if this would have come out during the interview loop. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised to see him bring along an original Walkman on our commute into work tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: DVR, Tivo, Walkman

What is your technical Achilles Heel?

If my life depended on getting at least one “frag” in a game of multiplayer Halo, I couldn’t do it. No matter how much I try, I can’t figure out the dang Xbox controller. The analog stick sits up too high for my short thumbs and the entire controller feels too big. It takes too much of my focus just to keep the thing in my hand that I can’t focus on the game. Even when I accidentally toss a grenade it’s usually against a wall that comes ricocheting back to to kill me. I’m really that bad.

My lack of Halo (or any other FPS on any console) skills is my technical Achilles heel. Maybe it would help if I actually owned an Xbox so I could practice but I doubt it. I’ve played with friends and we have many Xboxes work and I’m still no better than I was when the first Halo arrived.

I work with about three dozen younger guys, many of which have far too much time to play games like Halo. Sometimes they will invite me to play a game with them. Occasionally I’ll sense they are trying to let me win but I’m so unskilled that I lose even then.

What is your technical Achilles Heel?

Technorati Tags: Halo

How I keep my computer up-to-date

Every so often it’s not a bad practice to update your machine. Here’s my update to-do list in the order I prefer:

Windows Update – To ensure you have the latest security fixes from Microsoft. Seems like there’s always a few. I’ve not had much luck updating device drivers here.
Driver Agent – This is my preferred method for updating drivers. It’s not 100% correct but it covers most of the major devices.
AppSnap – Up until this week, I’ve not come across an application that checks for application updates that’s either worked well or was accurate enough to recommend. But I’ve been impressed with this free program. I’ve tested it on two machines and it’s found a number of applications to update and has worked well doing so.

Here’s a picture of AppSnap running on my computer. It found three applications to update but wasn’t sure about Picasa. I let it update Picasa anyway it worked just fine.