It’s been almost a month since my last update, too long! I’ve put up separate posts on my unplanned and off the cuff voting booth project, trying to give PASS a better solution for voting this year than we had last year. A good 10 hour project to get a minimal solution done, now just […]
Read more "PASS Update #33"As the owner of a meeting/discussion you have two options on how to drive the conversation, and which you use depends on the answer you want. Sound cynical? Perhaps, but read on! Technique one is to say ‘this is what I’m thinking about as a plan/direction’ and invite comment. That typically frames the conversation so […]
Read more "Leaders in Meetings"Another recent editorial I wrote for SQLServerCentral talks about whether you would be happy doing your hobby for living. For years I considered computers and software a hobby, but for the past ten years or so it’s been a job and as such, less fun than when it was just for fun. I like working, […]
Read more "Would You Do Your Hobby For a Living?"For years, ever since I was first required to be on call, I’ve made it a habit to check my email each morning when I get up, seeing if there are problems to solve. Not a bad habit, could even call it diligent, since it’s not a good idea to wait until you walk in […]
Read more "Building Better (Different) Habits"I struggled with the title for this one. One of the thoughts I had was that I believe in being a man of my word. If I can say I’m going to do something, I most likely will, and if I shake hands on it, for me that’s as binding as any contract I’ll ever […]
Read more "Rules to Live By: Be Worthy of Trust"A friend is moving into a leadership role for the first time and we talked some about making that transition. Here’s a guy with tons of skills and life experience, taking on a new challenge and totally out of his comfort zone, what advice to offer? Here’s my try at it. There are a lot […]
Read more "Thoughts on Leadership"Ran across this while doing some other reading, SSD Tweaker lets you change a few settings that are supposed to boost (or at least not degrade) performance on an SSD drive. No install, just download and run the exe. Tried it on my laptop and it turned off a few things via the ‘Auto Tweak’, […]
Read more "Review: SSD Tweaker"A couple weeks ago I wrote about testing the LinkedIn polling capability, putting up this poll: The response rate wasn’t great, only 34 responses, but none of them valued technical competence as the most important attribute. That feels right, and it’s powerful statement to managers; be a manager, not the alpha geek. But it’s also […]
Read more "Follow Up: LinkedIn Poll"I can’t say I stick to this one 100 percent of the time, but it’s definitely a deeply held belief. Given two tasks, I prefer to do the one that sucks first. It’s easy to do the fun one, spend time on stuff that is fun but doesn’t really matter, and then wind up way […]
Read more "Rules to Live By: Do the Hard Things First"Most of us have some general rules we live by, and I’ve often thought it would be a lot easier to get along with people if we had them printed and shared with everyone we met! I think we could do worse than to just live by the Golden Rule, but in real life it’s […]
Read more "Rules to Live By – The Intro"
SQLAndy 