Archive
8 Ways to Achieve Success in 2008
Life hack has a nice article on achieving success in 2008
- Set SMART goals
I started hating ‘SMART Goals’ after my brief stint @ a chip major. Still its more of common sense.
- Make a plan.
"Plans are useless, Planning is inevitable." 🙂
- Commit to a due date.
- Make it public.
- Find a support group.
- Accept failure graciously — and move on.
- Change yourself, not the things around you.
This one is the most important, especially if you are so very different from the rest.
- Silence you inner critic.
Worth reading. Read here.
What Project Managers Need To Know About Testing
Don’t get fooled by the title, It is useful for everyone. Johanna doesn’t use any of the managementese and its a non intrusive read :-).
Employee Engagement
The Employee Factor has a nice video on Employee Engagement. Via Be Excellent. I Wish the Corporates have ears 🙂
Switching from Slickrun to Launchy
I have started the switch from Slickrun to Launchy.
I have pointed Launchy be my knowledge base folder and it has indexed a bunch of stuff (more than thousand presentations, articles etc…). Now I can get to an item in my kb within a couple of seconds. I thought Launchy is good in discovery mode and bad in control mode (I am control freak yep, I want precise control over what should be my keywords and what should not be). Contrary to that belief of mine, Launchy has a plug-in called Runner (thanks to Prakash S) which is just like Slickrun inside of Launchy.
But one pain point still persists. My problem with Launchy is that I do not like the additional items in Launchy’s auto-complete when I want to fire an application say Firefox. What happens is that Suppose I have an article in my kb with file name as Firefox rocks, Launchy picks that up too. It will be really great if can fire Launchy in two modes 1) Discover Mode 2) Runner/Control mode (It will just list Firefox and not the Firefox rocks.pdf). Till that I will probably use both of Launchy and Slickrun. Launchy for all the search stuff like looking into my kb, music etc. Slickrun for firing an application like visual studio, live writer etc.
That’s why this is ‘I have started the switch from Slickrun to Launchy‘, instead of ‘I have switched from Slickrun to Launchy‘. Special thanks to Sidu for giving an idea, to use Launchy for indexing my kb (I gleaned this idea from yesterday’s session).
I have been tagged by Thiru
Thiru tagged me. So here are the answers.
1. Name one person who made you laugh last night?
My little daughter
2. What were you doing at 0800?
Having a haircut
3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Playing with my daughter
4. What happened to you in 2006?
Had some testing times in my last company
5. What was the last thing you said out loud?
My daughter’s name.
6. How many beverages did you have today?
A coke
7. What color is your hairbrush?
I don’t have one
8. What was the last thing you paid for?
A rick for my trip back from the restaurant.
9.Where were you last night?
@Home
10.What color is your front door?
White
11.Where do you keep your change?
In a separate pouch in my wallet.
12.What’s the weather like today?
It’s very good weather today.
13.What’s the best ice-cream flavor?
Butter-scotch, Yummy.
14. What excites you?
Serene beauty of Nature
15. Do you want to cut your hair?
Nope, Not till another 4 weeks. I Just happened to do it today.
16. Are you over the age of 25?
Yup.
17. Do you talk a lot?
It depends on who I am with.
18. Do you watch the O.C.?
I don’t know what that is.
19.Do you know anyone named Steven?
Nope.
20.Do you make up your own words?
Yes especially technical
21.Are you a jealous person?
Sometimes.
22.Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A’.
Arun
23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’.
Karthik
24.Who’s the first person on your received call list?
My Wife.
25.What does the last text message you received say?
My Salary debit message.
26. Do you chew on your straw?
Nope
27.Do you have curly hair?
Nope
28.Where’s the next place you’re going to?
Some hill station or a beach probably.
29.Who’s the rudest person in your life?
An Indian Client I had back in a previous job.
30.What was the last thing you ate?
Rava Upma
31.Will you get married in the future?
I am already married 😉
32.What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?
Die Hard, I can watch this many times over and over again without getting bored.
33.Is there anyone you like right now?
Of Course Yes.
34.When was the last time you did the dishes?
When my wife and parents were away, My wife was expecting our kid then.
35.Are you currently depressed?
Nope.
36.Did you cry today?
Nope. Thank God.
37.Why did you answer and post this?
Just For fun.
38.5 people you tag next?
Prakash, My Friend (To make his day, I will call him my manager :-))
Sreedhar, My Colleague
And now some of my colleagues who don’t update their blogs often
Difference between focusing on problems and focusing on solutions
Case 1 :
When NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn’t work at zero gravity (ink won’t flow down to the writing surface). To solve this problem, it took them one decade and $12 million. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, underwater, in practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C. And what did the Russians do…?? They used a pencil.
Case 2 :
One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soapbox, which happened in one of Japan’s biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soapbox that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soapbox went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with
high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soapboxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent a whoopee amount to do so.Â
But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc., but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soapbox passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.
The above 2 cases might be good examples for Root Cause Analysis(Find & remediate the root cause instead of addressing the symptoms)
Proteans is hiring
Hi Friends, My company is hiring. In case you are interested please get in touch with Preejith.
Company’s Profile:Â Proteans (www.Proteans.com) is a CAMO group company that is publicly held (Oslo Stock Exchange) and headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The group has global delivery centers in Bangalore, Woodbridge (New Jersey), Atlanta (Georgia), Waterloo (Iowa) and Oslo (Norway) and is around 600 people strong. Proteans is focused on Outsourced Product Development (OPD) using Microsoft Technologies.
Job Title: Senior Software Engineer/Software Engineer
Location: Bangalore
Skill Sets Required: ASP.NET,C# with SQL Server
Experience: 2 – 5 years,        Educational Background: B.Tech,B.E,MCA
Contact Details: preejith.shashi at proteans dot com or call me(Preejith) at 66186513
Paper on Breakthrough projects
Scott Berkun links to a nice paper on break-through projects, An interesting read.
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2007/the-best-innovation-paper-youve-never-read/
Found via Arjan’s World
ALT.NET Conference Yahoo Group
It might be good it might be the best, but it simply is way too much of activity for me to keep an eye on. Even the digests are too much for me to handle. I subscribed to it day before yesterday and I have unsubscribed today.
Sendhil's Cyber Home 