I’m writing this Friday evening in Cleveland at the hotel, relaxing after the speaker dinner and getting ready for SQLSaturday Cleveland tomorrow. They have a small table/desk, though calling it a desk is generous – no drawers and not a lot of surface 2 feet by 3 feet. It has a lamp that is useful […]
Read more "I Think I Need A Writing Table"I like a good status report. It may contain a few sentences or a page full of data and gauges, but done well it quickly and crisply tells the story of where we’re at on a project or task – the good, the bad, and the ugly! It seems like too often status reports are […]
Read more "Status Reports"My friend Steve Jones and I have talked every week for a long time, close to ten years now. On any given week we might talk about work, life, politics, woodworking, family, gardening, SQL Server, professional development, news about friends. Last week we were talking about some other stuff and Steve says to me that […]
Read more "Would You Listen To The Steve & Andy Radio Show?"I’ve been reading about wooden hand planes lately (as opposed to hand planes made of metal that plane wood) and decided to just do a quick experiment to see what I thought. I started with a square piece of rosewood about 2” thick, ripped a piece 2.5” wide, then ripped 1/4” slab from each side. […]
Read more "First Try at a Wooden Hand Plane"If you’re interested in woodworking, read on! I’ve been thinking of making a hand plane out of wood and was doing some reading, ran across a post titled Setting a Cap Iron recently and by itself it was interesting, but much more so when you look at the video below. A cap iron – also […]
Read more "Ever Want to See How a Hand Plane Works?"I took a break from work today to look in on an informal event a friend was hosting at his office. It was designed to get his team closer to his customers within the business, do some on site immediate assistance, and in general try to make sure they knew the team was there when […]
Read more "Fortune Cookie Marketing"Here are a few things I’ve found/had sent to me recently you may find interesting: Most Common GRE Words. 400 words in multiple choice format, care to test your vocabulary? Good stuff when you’ve got a few minutes to kill! What the Shuttle Booster Saw. HD video from the Space Shuttle, fun to watch, fun […]
Read more "Link List for July 12, 2012"I’ve thought about writing on this topic a couple times and was reminded of it again when I read a great post called Group Think and Risky Shift. It’s worth reading, twice. Let’s start with a definition, borrowed from Wikipedia: Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within groups of people. It is the mode […]
Read more "Group Think (or Groupthink)"A pattern I’ve seen over and over again at many different jobs is that some people are not held accountable for mistakes, inaction, or even lack of participation, and others seem to be held hyper-accountable. Why is that? Why would a manager not treat everyone equally? As you might guess, I’ve got a theory! It’s […]
Read more "Why Isn’t Everyone Accountable? A Work Conundrum"I avoid politics here, a discussion best done in other places, but hope you’ll enjoy some thoughts about a recent Saturday that involved voter registration. Last Saturday I went to the library, part of a leisurely weekend afternoon. It’s nice to browse for an hour and grab a stack of books, to have plenty of […]
Read more "A Fire Drill and Voter Registration"
SQLAndy 