Archive for January, 2004

Halo 2: Fall 2004 Well I guess this is pretty official. I know that I personally am dying to get my hands on this game but I feel pretty confident it will be worth the wait when its all said and done. By the way, great screenshot here of multiplayer play. I almost shorted out my keyboard from drooling when I looked at this. Thanks John for link.

Some other cool tidbits available here from Mary Jo Foley.

Chris_Pratley’s WebLog is officially on my must watch list. Not bad after only 4 posts.

This fills a community information void that I have been experiencing for one of my fave new products from the Office system, OneNote. I hope he keeps the posts coming. According to the comments on his site, I am not the only one.

Speaking of annoying email messages – this cracked me up!

Almost as good as the security patches I receive each day from “Microsoft” OR that nice man that keeps emailing me with that exciting investment opportunity.

Executable attachments can be bad, mmmkay? from KC Lemson. Yet another one of those really cool MS gals.

This new virus is already turning out to be a major pain in the butt for us. While noone at our office has gotten it specifically, our inboxes are getting hammered with massive numbers of these infested messages. Plus as an ISP with thousands of subscribers we can always count on a rough couple of weeks whenever things like this break out. Whoppee with a side dish of sarcasm!!!

And children don’t forget, a little protection and prevention can go a long way in the world of Internet Security.

My little bro’s write up on his experience at para training this past summer. This is one case where I can’t say he is much like his big sis.

Since my Canadian ass is speaking hockey, I figure I may as well link to a story on a player I have enjoyed tremendously over the past 20 years.THIS guy knows how to be a leader!

Capitals agree to send Jagr to Rangers To quote my nephew…”Ohhhhh Man!” Not a big Jagr fan but then again that’s probably why Sather never calls for my opinion on this stuff. I can grow to like anyone that puts points on the board I guess.

A very special “Wow thank-you very much” to Laura John for her lovely compliment yesterday on her blog.

Laura is another one of those really cool Microsoft employees that seems to love her job. I love seeing that. But what I admire most is that she does a great job at sharing valuable product information with her readers (Sharepoint, WSS and Infopath). Not the “buy here now for the low low price of $XX? information but rather the “hey I bet this is something you really wanted to know to make your experience better” kind of information. I dig that. I dig that a lot.

Good Job Laura!!!

Xbox closes in on 14 million mark Proud to be a part of that statistic.

Workplace happiness and “jerk bosses” are topics I see popping up on a number of blogs lately. The Fast Company crew had some more great guest hosts in last week to discuss such topics (I really like how they do that) and many readers posted some interesting experiences.

I have been fairly lucky throughout my short career. I started out with a boss that not only served as a great teacher but also became a great friend. My current boss is someone who I both trust and respect tremendously. These are the two metrics I consider most relevant in relationship building. Steve lets me work on projects that challenge me, listens and always makes sure there is never a shortage of cool new things for me to play with. He is probably the only person I know that reads more than I do. He is also the person that is most responsible for my decision to start a weblog. He started his and suggested that it might be something I would enjoy. He was right.

There are a multitude of factors and experiences that affect how one feels about his or her job. Far too many people work jobs that they hate – just because they need the money or never had the opportunity to follow their true passion. Other people may love their job but have a difficult time tolerating office environmental factors such as stress, politics, or mismanagement.

A large part of what discourages employees and makes them hate their jobs can be avoided by effective leadership and management. Management that builds an environment that facilitates communication, growth and relationships.

I have known first hand that a less than perfect job can be made a lot more enjoyable when coupled with great management. The first job I had was by many measurements “less than perfect” but the owner was someone who to this day has taught me more about business and relationships than a text book ever could. I have also witnessed employees hate a job that they have always wanted because of poor management and difficult relationships.

I believe that great leaders are born not bred. (maybe with a few exceptions) Just as I feel there are certain personalities that are made for management – there are those others that should really know to step back. That being said, for those who are in management positions but are seeking ways to improve their effectiveness in their role, I offer this advice:

Lead By Example

Employees respect a leader that not only follows the rules but defines them. A leader that can be seen constantly seeking self improvement and growth is one that will inspire his / her team to do the same. A leader that is seen as the weaker link in the chain will over time, drag down the performance and moral of those around him/her. By leading by example, a leader will in fact raise the bar and set a standard for performance that all team members will respect.

Follow Through on Promises

Gain a reputation for following through on promises and deliverables. Treat team members with the same level of respect as your clients. If you can’t deliver “X” by a certain date, don’t promise that you will. Failure to deliver on promises will not only diminish your team’s respect for you but will also erode their trust. This is dangerous for any organization. Create an atmosphere of honesty and realism. Goals will become easier to attain as a team, when everyone knows where there REAL finish line is.

Be Honest

Honesty is a critical characteristic for any human being in my book but especially in an environment where people need to work together and depend on each other. If you develop a reputation for lying, your team will never respect or trust you. Even worse, some might consider it to be an acceptable behaviour. A team that is operating on a platform of distrust and deception will self-destruct. But probably not before they cause destruction in all other areas of your business.

Build Relationships with People Not Groups

Understand the people you work with. Don’t feel content that you get along ok with the team as a whole. Find out who they really are. Recognize their strengths so that you are better able to use them. Understand weaknesses, not to criticize but to make sure that each team member is operating in an environment in which they feel comfortable and confident. Learn what it takes to motivate each person on your team. What works for one person, may not for another. People are different and therefore have different ways of communicating, responding and growing. Make sure you understand what these are.

Empower and Delegate

These aren’t just trendy words – they are major building blocks in an effective organization. A team should be built out of individuals that are great at what they do and meet a specific mix of requirements to perform a job. If this isn’t the case then you may have a human resources issue that needs to be resolved. More often than not however, employees fail not because of their own competency levels but because they were not given the direction or permission they needed to do their job effectively. When this happens – it is a gross example of mismanagement. Great managers hire people that are smarter than them and teach these people to be better at their job than they are.

Encourage Growth & Learning

Understand what each team member’s long term goals are and help them gain the training and experience they need to achieve them. Remember the more you facilitate their growth and learning, the higher their level of satisfaction will be – thus reducing the likelihood of them seeking the equivalent experience elsewhere.

There are a lot more things that affect relationship building and leadership in an organization. But if you work on the above things, much of the others will come a little more naturally since you will have created an environment full of opportunity for both you and your team members. However if you continuously close the doors of communication and fail to build these critical relationships with your employees – perhaps you should consider alternate positions in your company.

Found this on Joi Ito’s blog. Great article – I will definitely try and be more aware since I know I am guilty of a few of these at times.

Ok I have been slowly fading into a pit of misery for past two days but I am giving in now. I came home from work and crawled directly into bed (not without my laptop mind you). I’m burning up with a fever, aching from head to toe and I’m pretty sure that someone broke into our house last night and kicked me repeatedly in the head and back with a steel toed boot. At least my man is sweet enough to bring me cold drinks and popscicles to help cool me down. He’s the best. Too bad I am too wiped and cranky to go thank him. Maybe I will just send him an IM. You have to love a good geek relationship.

Just listened to the latest DotNetRocks. It featured Rory Blyth. That guy seems just as funny live (well kinda live) as he does in his blog. He has some pretty cool stuff to say about .NET and the coding community too.

I really enjoy this show – its features interesting members of the tech community and has great conversations on development practices and technology without going so deep that a non-coder like myself feels out of place listening.

I have discussed these before so I won’t repeat myself. But in short, if you use Newsgator, search folders can really help you filter your entire subscription list (mine is growing and growing) to give you quick access to preferred subjects and topics. However I was reconfiguring a bunch tonight for my news posts and I noticed a couple of very obvious things.

First I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people are finally opening up and blogging about the new Office system components such as Sharepoint, Infopath, OneNote etc… Our company embraced the new Office System as soon as it was released in Beta (actually embraced is far too gentle a word – mauled would probably be more accurate). It filled so many of the needs a Small Company (less than 50) like ours has plus it represented a massive opportunity for us to solve problems that our clients were telling us every day they faced.

Secondly there just aren’t enough bloggers that talk about Xbox and gaming on my subscription list. This is something I plan to change over the next few weeks. I know they are out there because Google tells me so. Its time to tracking down some RSS feeds that can start filling up my Xbox search folder.

By the way, if you are running Outlook 2003 with Newsgator and aren’t quite sure what I am talking about. Scroll down through your list of folders on the left-hand panel of Outlook (if you have the folders list enabled).

Then I drag the search folders into my favorites window to give me instant and easy access to posts about the items that interest me most. Great for when you are taking a quick break and don’t have time to scan through 100 new posts.

Newsgator 2.0 was released today. The good news is that thoses of us that purchased version 1.3 get to upgrade for free. Free upgrades are always nice.

Tonight I was preparing a list of interview questions for a fairly large integration project that we have starting up in the next few weeks. I usually like to plan these things out well in advance so that A) we can make better use of our client’s valuable time and B) we can walk away with a complete picture of our client’s environment, practices and requirements. Once I have a proven template that I have successfully used myself a few times, I have something that I can pass onto account managers / sales team with confidence.

To start the process off, I grabbed some files from previous projects by visiting a few of our internal Sharepoint sites. I then visited the MS Partner site to get some additional product specific materials (oh how I love that site). Since I had been doing all my information gathering for this project in OneNote, it made sense to drop all the information from the document into a new section within the project folder. Then I started going through and selecting information and questions that I thought might be applicable to this deployment. Using custom note flags I was able to categorize questions by user type (i.e. admin user vs business user) and data by type (existing environment, requirements, users etc..) by simply clicking the appropriate icon.

When done, I loaded up a note flag summary page and voila, here was all my information separated and categorized and ready for editing. This method was extremely easy and all took place while I was simply reading through the data for the first time. Another great example of how the new office 2003 system has improved my productivity.

What is this world of ours coming to?? Last week it was announced that women are gaming. This week the world finds out that we are buying electronics too. Amazing however that I still get treated like I have the IQ of lemon Jello whenever I walk into an electronics department / store…probably a reason I buy so much stuff online. Actually no I am lying – I buy stuff online because shopping malls make me queezy.

Imagine yourself walking into a store – it’s filled with shelves and shelves of items that interest and excite you. Now if you are like me, you probably can not afford to purchase every single item. Even if you could, it is unlikely that you would since it would just be impractical – you would never have enough time to use each item and it would be a chore to get every item home. Plus where would you store it all when you did get home? Bottom line, no matter how attractive something looks, your resources are too limited to be unselective.

In business we are faced with opportunities every day (hopefully). However not all of these are worth pursuing. The more scarce your resources, the more selective you have to be. Seems logical enough but unfortunately too often employees are sent on wild goose chases tracking down leads that are neither strategic, profitable nor even possible.

These hopeless opportunities are what I call SODs. Some of you may know a sod to be a small rectangular block of grass. On its own it looks rather small and insignificant, but depending on how many of them you collect, you can fill an entire field with them. Hmm large grassy field eh? How can that be wrong?

Well when I speak of SOD I am not referring to anything grassy. I am alluding to what is usually left over when you chase down these hopeless opportunities. Sunk Costs, Opportunity Costs, and Disappointment. Similar to its grassy namesake, individually they seem harmless. However the more you collect, the greater the mass of unrecoverable costs, lost resource time and depleted morale to soil your company.

Effective decision making is the key here. Decision making based on business intelligence and shared strategic vision. There are many methods for evaluating the future value of an initiative that we all learned in business school. As well, there are all kinds of analytical processing systems that can be deployed that will supply teams with data to aid their decision making abilities. However what matters is that the system you use works for you. So if a whiteboard is all your team needs to make good decisions – roll with it.

I used to use an Excel spreadsheet that listed opportunities and calculated a score based on items such as:

strategic value

resource availability

expected profit

expected revenue

competition

probability of success

These days I can store all of this information in a cross departmental list on a Sharepoint site so that team members and leaders can view what matters to them whenever they want to. As well I can make this information a lot more useful by using it as a launch point for some other processes.

Those are just some variables one could consider when evaluating opportunities, and each can have a different weight depending on how important they are to your company. By calculating a score, it becomes easier to be selective on which opportunities should be pursued by employees. As well, by considering items such as probability of success, competition and profit, you may notice yourself with a lot less SODs lying around – and that’s good for every company!

So the moral of the story – if you go to the opportunity shop make sure you take a list. It can be as technology rich (or poor) as you want. The important thing is that you use a system that makes better use of scarce resources and reduces the number of SODs you see if the run of a week.

When I first read the news from MacWorld, I was impressed with the new smaller colourful ipod minis. But then I read a little deeper and saw that they were only 4gbs. Now don’t get me wrong, I have had a 6gb mp3 player for the past 2 years and haven’t come close to filling it up (I am not that much of a music fiend).

But strictly from a price point perspective, I can’t see why someone would pay $249 for a 4gb player when they can get a 15gb for just $50 more. Plus let’s face it, they aren’t really THAT much smaller and the ipod is a fairly sweet size anyways.

Of course, I am a gadget junkie so who knows what will happen when I get one of those babies in my hand. But from a distance, I can’t see myself buying one of these anytime soon.

I just flattened and reinstalled Windows on my Tablet PC. Pretty brainless process with the recovery cd. Definitely drives home that I really need to start using Ghost for our other machines. In the meantime, while I wait for the updates to finish I figured I may as well catch up on some blogging which I have been neglecting to do for a while.

The only lame thing is that half of the buttons for the web control panel for my blog don’t show up on Safari (I’m on an ibook) or IE. Doh! I think I am only missing formatting ones anyways so probably no big deal.

OK that’s it!! I have to declare that I am living in the wrong place. This winter has by far been a fabulous one for here due to the lack of major snowfall. However that doesn’t change the misery I have experienced this week one bit. We have had a handful of snowfalls since the new year and each time we do it?s the same thing. Virtually non-existent snow clearing by our lovely municipal clown council and a bunch of drivers that should NOT be allowed on the road. Seriously, I almost got clipped about 20 times on my way to work today by people who don’t know how to drive. Then there are those that will drive under 20 as soon as the first snow flake hits the ground thus backing traffic up for miles.

Now don’t get me wrong. You might have just categorized my mini-rage as the product of someone who might be an aggressive driver. I am quite the opposite actually. My boyfriend calls me Miss Daisy on a fairly regular basis. But what is up with it taking me over an hour (an hour and a half today) to get to work when I live 12 minutes from the office. I need to install an espresso machine in my car – I am sure there is a mod-site on the web that could show me how.

I know I should be grateful that we haven’t been getting dumped on like we have over the past few years. But I can’t help but wonder how nice it would be to complain about the sand filling up in my sandals as I walked down the beach to work each day.

By far…without a doubt the best golf game made for the Xbox to date. The first golf game I purchased was Outlaw Golf. It is a little unconventional but the game play isn’t bad. However the courses were not overly challenging so after playing for a while, it got boring. Perhaps some Xbox Live! support would have changed that but who knows.

I rented Tiger Woods Golf and while the graphics were good, I found the game WAY too easy. My first shot ever was a hole-in-one. Cool initially until everyone else started getting them…I mean where is the fun in that??? Perhaps the 2004 version is better but based on my experience with 2003 I am in no huge rush to run out and get it.

I purchased Links 2004 just before Christmas when it came out. I was looking forward to its release since the PC version was such a success. After playing it for a while I have to say I am really blown away by the game play. Very nice. The courses are great too. Reasonable yet not too easy. This game is also great in both single player and multiplayer mode which makes it even more valuable.

One significant thing I have noticed while playing this game on Xbox Live! is that the other players are usually pretty cool and calm compared to other Xbox games I have played online. I guess it has something to do with the type of game it is and the personality of the people drawn to it. Not much trash talk but some good competition. I am personally a fan of the Quick Stroke Matches. You play an entire round each hole on a time limit and don’t have to watch the other players shoot. You can however still chat with other players while you are playing. Depending on the level of interactivity you want, this can be a pretty cool game.

Another cool thing about the way this game is designed for Xbox Live! is that you are categorized when you start so you can only play those on your level. It’s pretty exciting this way since you can move up in rank fast (fewer players) and it?s pretty easy and quick to get a match going. I usually don’t have to wait much longer than 15 seconds before my room fills up.

I was thinking it would be cool to organize a bloggers golf tourney. Kinda like the ones we all get invited to in real life except virtually (I might stand a chance like that). Plus it would be a fun to combat the winter blues hanging out on “the greens”.

I just updated my version of Movable Type to 2.65. If you notice anything weird please let me know. I also read on their site that Six Apart are launching a version 3.0 in the new year and that they have grown from a 2 man shop to 7+ now. Great for them!!!

Rory Blyth’s RSS for Charity concept is really really cool. I really appreciate the fact that he has taken some of his own time / energy to improving the life of someone else. An excellent inspiration for us all. If you want to link to his RSS For Charity page insert the following into your blog:

<a href=”http://www.neopoleon.com/blog/rssLink.aspx?url=YourAddress”><img
src=”http://www.neopoleon.com/blog/images/rssLogo.gif” border=”0″></a>

Gonna try and scrub my Tablet this weekend since the amount of junk on it is getting out of hand (I went a little nuts with the app testing when I first got it) and I have noticed a significant performance decrease over the past month or so. Depending on how things go I may finally get around to picking up a new mobo for my primary pc and getting that back up and running.

Checking out the new MSN. It’s pretty nice. Doubt I will keep it set as my homepage (usually have my sharepoint site as that) but who knows what the weekend will bring.

One thing I did a lot of this holiday season was play our Xbox. After getting a boatload of new games for the holidays it was the least I could do. Man what a load of great new games have come out this season!! The awesome game play for many of these games is completely complimented by Xbox Live!

So far my favorite game this season has been Project Gotham Racing 2. It was a tough battle between that, Amped 2, Links 2004 and Counter-Strike but I think overall PGR2 is my winner. The new version of the game is loaded with new content (tonnes of new cars and tracks) and the graphics are just absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed the first version of this game but I really can’t see me going back. Even Sam and Arnold have been bitten by the bug. Arnold isn’t so great with the steering but Sam is a real speed demon.

If I could change a few things about the Live! options for this game I would introduce the concept of “rooms” or “categories” that could separate newbies from the hard core gamers. For example, a newbie could be anyone that has a Kudos rank of 2 or lower – there could be intermediate levels as well. This would improve the gameplay for both groups and allow for a “graduation” effect from level to level. There could also be open lobbies that would allow for all levels to compete against each other if that was preferred. Quite often in the online gaming world, newbies get discouraged or ganged up on when they are just starting up since they aren’t following a certain code or are slowing down the others. Since “experience” is such a key element of a person’s enjoyment or commitment of a service – I think it?s always a good area to focus on for improvements – for all levels of gamers.

Kudos could be given out according to level or category as well – thus making it less appealing for more experienced players to compete in these lower lobbies. By letting new players start out in a newbie class, they can slowly build their skills and experience without getting turned off by the unacceptance of others. As well, more experienced gamers could receive extra benefits for winning in the more advanced lobbies and enjoy their gaming experience even more. Just a thought of course.

I would also change some of the “views” of the search results for lobbies to make them more useful. If I search for a race type, I would like to see the status of each race (in lobby, lap 2 of 3 etc?) so that I can determine which I want to check out. Also a bird?s eye view of the skill level of the other racers would be nice from results screen as well. This would be covered off from the categorization concept.

Of course that stuff is extremely minor. The gameplay offered on Live! is superb and I recommend that anyone who hasn’t tried it to sign up. A free trial for new accounts comes with just about every game you buy now so it won’t even cost anything to try it out. If you do like it – I recommend picking up the 12 month subscription that comes with the Live Communicator. This is really fun for competing against friends and people you know.

My brother and I have already started a nasty battle of rank for Project Gotham Racing 2 that I know will continue on for a long time. I tried to use my holidays to get a jump start on him (snicker). The next big thing will have to be a LAN party. We have done them plenty of times before with pcs but I think it would be fun to have one with just the Xbox.

If you are online and looking for a game you can add me to your friends by doing a search on “PunchingBoot”. It was a system generated name that came up when all my choices were already taken and it cracked me up so I kept it.