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While Messenger 6.0 still rox, one thing I am noticing tonight that I like better about using the Mac version is that I can set it to prompt me after every conversation whether I want to archive or not. I also like the timestamping ability too.
How about big flashes of it in the sky on the first night of my holidays. Good thing we didn’t go camping. Apparently we are going to be having thundershowers for next couple of days. Ahh well at least I get to spend some quality time with the man and get lots of reading in.
Speaking of camping, careful when you go out in the woods, you never know what could be sneaking up on your in the background.
I was reading my comments on my “Why I love Microsoft” Post and was directed to a discussion board where an interesting question was raised:
-snip-
“One of us, after posting some negative quotes about Microsoft, asked: So I have one question. Why keep buying their products?
To which I replied: Let me answer your question, with a question:
You have an organization of tens, hundreds, or even more individuals.
You need to provide them with (at the least) a spreadsheet, a word-processing, an email, a personal information manager, and a presentation program – along with the “environment” to run them.
These programs must all be able to interact with each other easily (your non-techie employees will be “doing” the bulk of the interacting).
And, in order to be cost effective (the organization is a vocation, not an avocation) these programs need to meet certain standard – they must:
- All must be recognized industry standards;
- All produce data files that can be easily exchanged internally and externally with both individuals known to you, and new to you;
- Have a large enough installed basis so you and your employees can easily obtain help, both on an incident basis and for IT employees to hire;
- And, since much of your employee’s training will be on-the-job, there must be enough books available on all the products to satisfy all levels of technological needs.
You also decide to use no MS products.
With the above as background I then asked: You would then buy what products? ”
-/snip-
Shane just sent me this. I am still laughing!!
DO YOU FALL ASLEEP DURING MEETINGS OR SEMINARS?
Do you keep falling asleep in meetings and seminars? Here’s a way to
change all that.
1. Before your next meeting, seminar, or conference call, prepare
yourself by drawing a square. I find that 5″x 5″ is a good size.
Divide the card into columns – five across and five down. That will
give you 25 one-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
* synergy
* strategic fit
* core competencies
* best practice
* bottom line
* revisit
* take that off-line
* 24/7
* out of the loop
* benchmark
* value-added
* proactive
* win-win
* think outside the box
* fast track
* result-driven
* empower (or empowerment)
* knowledge base
* at the end of the day
* touch base
* mind set
* incentive
* realign
* game plan
* leverage
3. With your square neatly prepared, get ready to play “BULLSHIT BINGO”.
Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases
spoken by the speaker.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally,
stand up and shout…”BULLSHIT!”
I asked Shane to hook me up with a desktop background since he is always doing cool stuff for other people and meanwhile my desktop still had the default windows background from my last install.
He said he would do me some custom designs for the tablet so that I can really show off with style. When he gets them done I will post here to share with anyone who wants one.
I thought I had lost my latest opml file. I was doing some power cleaning on my main desktop after doing a fresh install. When I went to import the file I couldn’t find it so I started to panic thinking of all the shift-del combos I had just done. But alas all is well, I saved it in the root of one of my storage drives for easy access. Apparently I was expecting myself to be a bonehead.
It got me to thinking though that more people should share their lists. It would certainly help the blogging community grow if these files were floating around more freely.
Imagine having Bill Gate’s opml file?
Wired 11.09: PowerPoint Is Evil
I read this article after being directed to it via Scoble’s blog. It bought back many terrible memories of Powerpoint presentations that lurked in my past. My University days alone were enough to haunt thy esthetic soul.
Perhaps I too was amazed at how cool it was to watch text zoom across the screen the first time I learned to use the animations and text effects. But once any self-respecting speaker has sat through 20 consecutive presentations on the same subject where the only thing that changed was the direction and colour of poorly formatted text, they would vow to never do that to their audience as long as they lived.
The problem isn’t any particular piece of software. Think of the millions of websites that still exist to this day with “under construction” animated gifs, MIDIs and marquee tags. It?s not the fault of the language surely.
Even in the non-technical world there are many demonstrations of people who have completely different tastes than the rest of us. Maybe it?s the house on the corner with so many lawn ornaments that you can’t see any grass. Or the Dodge Shadow down the street painted at least 30 different colours…on purpose. Different strokes for different folks right.
I respect people for having their own unique tastes even if I don’t get it. The problem is that you need to keep your own flare and style separate from the needs of your audience.
What does your audience need? Surely it depends on the situation. But more than likely they are looking for relevant information, clarity and way to keep from dosing off too often in the middle of your presentation. And at least if they do fall asleep, give them some kind of quick aid when they wake up to tell them where you are.
Core Microsoft Office System Products Are Complete, Released to Manufacturers
Oh Christmas is coming early this year. I can’t wait! Sharepoint, Infopath & One Note here I come!
Well actually no, here you come….I’ll just wait here.
What kind of person get a cold/flu in the middle of the summer?? I must be getting old. I seem to have caught some form of a cold that has had me sidelined for a couple of days. The good news is I didn’t suffer too much. We can thank Mr. Buckley for that. A couple of teaspoons and I am out for 3-4 hours.
The other good news is that I did get lots of sooking from my boy. What a guy!!
Keep you chin on our chest and hope for the best!!
Aaron has posted a log of his Para course.
They just finished showing one of my favorite commercials on TV. Got me thinking to what my fave current commercials are:
Top 5 Favorite Commercials:
1. Any VW Ad but in particular the one where the guy licks the door handle.
2. The Bud Light one where the guy gets attacked by a crab.
3. Most Mitsubish ads – gotta like the tunes
4. The pager commerical where the girl gets in car before her boyfriend, and lets something go before realizing there are people in the back.
5. The Bud commercial where the guy dresses as a mascott
Some others include Apple commercials, The I AM Canadian Series, Xbox, and some of the new Coors Light commericals.
I miss the Adcritic, I used to go there all the time but its not the same now.
I would just like to make it public that I womped Shane in hockey Friday night on the Xbox. 5 games to nothing. Yes that is right. 5 games to nothing.
Apparently his 15 years of playing the real game are no match for my l33t talents.
Muhahahahhahaha.
Of course he beat me bad in Project Gotham racing but that in no way compares to seeing his face as I win game #5 in a row at the sport he holds precious. He even had to change controllers since he thought I was after rigging the controls.
Aaron (my brother) is finally coming home today. I went to look up his flight to see if it was running on schedule and I get this message:
Our web site has moved. If you have bookmarked this page, please note the new location: www.stjohnsairport.com
Good enough. But rather than redirecting me there it waits for me to click the link. (annoyance) And then I get:
The page cannot be displayed
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
Blah. I guess I will resort to calling the airport *shudder*
That statement threw me off since I consider Quebec our largest province. Then I realized that it was referring to population since indeed Ontario is the most populated province in our country.
Using that logic however, that would that make China the world’s largest country. I would answer Russia by considering actual physical land mass.
Hmm I guess that means size matters to me. *snicker*
Steve writes “Security A Problem for Windows Only?”
And no I am not referring to a Ben Affleck movie but instead most likely the next Murphy boy to be jumping out of a plane.
This week my big bro was in town with his family. We went to the park on Monday evening. Arnold had a HUGE amount of fun running around the park and going on each of the 10 different slides (about 25 times each). He wasn’t too fussy on the swing or sandbox.
After about an hour of zooming down the slide, my 18 month old nephew decides that its more fun if you slide headfirst on your stomach. Sometimes he is a little TOO much like his uncle Aaron.
Well after 6 weeks of long and brutal training, my brother aaron earned his wings. He has done 5 jumps in past couple of days. One was yesterday morning at 2am with complete combats, gear and a rifle. A little nerve wrecking for us at home but we had a good support system going.
We are all extremely proud of him. He has been training for the past 12 months and has really worked his butt off. Now he is Mr. Airborne. I can’t wait to see him on Sunday when he gets home.
Next weekend, will be the first annual Murphy (and 1 Perran) campout. A good chance for us all to catch up and have a bit of fun.
Scary!
Described not to be related to terrorism. Let’s hope all of this doesn’t turn out to be anything more than an inconvenience. And people thought the blaster virus was a pain in the butt.
Something that hits home to me personally since my boyfriend is a designer who often finds his works emulated and copied by others. Most times he can laugh it off since it is part of the biz, but other times it can really get under his skin….and mine. Especially in a business where individuality and creativity is one’s competitive edge.
Its Regatta Day here in the city. A holiday and probably one of the more social events of the year. Its held on the first Wednesday in August (weather permitting) and is North America?s oldest continuing sporting event. The Regatta began officially in 1825 and has run the first Wednesday in August every since.
Why am I at home then curled up with a tablet pc and reading The Killing Hour? Frankly because a day away from the office seems better spent for me this year with my feet up spending time with my family, than catching sun stroke in the beer tent with a few thousand of my closest friends. Not that I would have always made that choice mind you.
Maybe later this evening we will pop down to watch championship race.
Well I guess love is a word I should just reserve for my boyfriend, family and close friends. But there is a definite appreciation within me of how Microsoft products have improved my ability to do what I do best.
In the workplace, I am a person who likes to be involved in all the new projects and experience new technologies. I love coming up with outlines, plans, and documents to support our new products. But only once. Once I get something to a level of completion once, I do not want to go back and do it again for something else. This is where I rely on products such as Microsoft Office, Sharepoint, Project, Visio, and Infopath to help me out. Not to mention OneNote and Windows Journal for the tablet.
Some people like to paint Microsoft as an evil empire that threatens the existence of all small companies. But in actual fact, for a company with limited resources and a talented group of people who need to wear many different hats, Microsoft can be their best friend.
A competitive company today is an efficient company. By using tools that help to automate tasks and increase information flow, an efficient small company of 40 can become as strong as a company with a staff of 100 or more. Quite easily in fact. The key is collaboration and automation.
By documenting workflow and processes using tools such as Project and Visio, a manager can identify areas that act as bottlenecks or that can be automated. Sometimes a simple form or document template can save an employee a great deal of time as well as improve quality of information that is shared. Bottleneck areas are very important to identify since they can usually be improved by a shift in resource allocation or improvements to the process leading up to the bottleneck. The problem doesn?t always lie at the bottleneck so effective workflow documentation can be very useful and pretty easy.
Team or project websites are a great way to collaborate and share information on a project. The document control functionality of Sharepoint Portal Server 2001 was superb. But I have to say after using version 2 I doubt I could ever go back. All the benefits of Sharepoint Portal Server 2001 and Team services have been combined and expanded on to create a platform that empowers people like me to create lists and libraries of information that is both easy to update and accessible to everyone. In the past when I wanted to have information collected and updated in such a way, I would have to ask for the services of a coder to help me out. This is not always convenient or cost effective. Now I am empowered to create lists and organize information that is beneficial to the team and that reduces the amount of time required for reporting and data sharing.
But what is even better is that once I create a list or site that contains all the information about a project or task that I want, I can then save it as a template and share with other managers and teams. An example of this would be a development project website containing a lists, document libraries, forms and web parts that when combined make tracking a project a breeze. Once I got this to a level that everyone on the team was comfortable with, I saved it as a template and now the entire site can be deployed in seconds whenever a new project of the same type is made. This would normally be a bottleneck that has now been eliminated.
Efficient collaboration makes it easier for project managers and team members alike to access and report status. In our company I know that some of us often found weekly project status reporting a long and mind-numbing process. But now that we have adopted better tools, a simple quick weekly meeting is all that is necessary to address pressing issues.
I have even created a special to-do list on my own Sharepoint site that ranks priority of tasks and deadlines and tell me what I should do each day. As well as I complete tasks I fill out the record for each tasks and consequently have my time tracking and own status reporting available to me through the use of different views. Thus shaving off even more time that I used to spend each week at redundant non-revenue generating tasks. Plus by having all these tools available to me, I can feel better about the work I am getting done since things are less likely to fall through the cracks.
So while there may be plenty of companies out there coming out with software that does what Microsoft software does, it doesn?t change the fact that I now have a large suite of software available to me that work great together and makes my life a lot easier and more productive. For that I say thanks Bill and friends!! I just can?t wait for Longhorn now.
This is a long weekend for me so I am going to try and not spend too much time in front of the screen. Just long enough to keep up with my mail and read a few blogs. Which gets me to thinking about how cool it would be if Outlook and blog posting and an RSS aggregator built in for blog feeds. I think it would be sweet.
