October 2006
Monthly Archive
Sun 29 Oct 2006
It’s hard not to love an interviewing guide that starts off like this:
A motley gang of anarchists, free-love advocates, and banana-rights agitators have hijacked The Love Boat out of Puerto Vallarta and are threatening to sink it in 7 days with all 616 passengers and 327 crew members unless their demands are met.
Julie, Gopher, Doc and the hardest working bartender in the business, Issac are going down with the ship unless we do something about it. Do we have people on our team that can really perform? If we haven’t taken our hiring seriously, the chances of rescuing our beloved crew (and the passengers) from these free-love/banana-rights people is slim.
Everyone says they take their hiring seriously, but do they really? Joel on Software’s Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing, version 3 puts forth some solid strategies for selecting technical candidates that possess two all important qualities: They are smart and get things done. The technology will change, quickly, are these people going to be able to learn and adapt? If your candidates can learn and adapt, you just might have a chance at getting the Love Boat back to Puerto Vallarta.
Sat 28 Oct 2006
In honor of the release of Firefox 2.0, Lifehacker has a few good tips on customizing it for a better browsing experience:
Also, the configuration changes used to speed up downloads in Firefox 1.x are still applicable in 2.0.
Thu 26 Oct 2006
This is the first in a series about Getting Things Done with Outlook.
I spend a lot less time in my Inbox these days, but while dealing with mail, the Inbox is generally the focus of my attention. There are several inbox time savers described in a previous post. In addition to those changes, I’ve turned off the preview pane, I find that it is too much of a temptation to pick and choose messages when the preview pane is on. I also sort my Inbox messages by receipt time in ascending order. When I process email, I go to the most recent message and open it up in its own window. Once I’ve done what I need to do (read and reply/forward etc.), 8 out of 10 times, I delete the message. Given the amount of email I delete, I set my email options so that when I delete an open message, it opens the previous item. This pops up the next message without me having to open it. I’ve found that this setup allows me to fly through email.
A key component of my mail setup that really prevents things from falling through the cracks is the @Waiting folder. When I send, forward or reply to a message that I expect a response on, I simply include myself in the BCC field. When the message comes back to my inbox, the waiting rule moves it to the @Waiting folder. When I do my weekly review, I go through these messages, forwarding anything that I have not seen a reply on to the original recipient (BCCing myself again of course). Many of these emails represent fairly low priority things, but things that should not be forgotten nonetheless. This might seem a tad irritating, but a couple of people have actually told me they appreciate the reminders. They could be simply humoring me, but I choose to believe otherwise.
Admittedly, my archive configuration could use a little work. At the top level it is quite basic. I have two PST files: Personal Folders and Archive. Both reside on my laptop. The Personal Folders file is where I file everything away for longer term storage. I have Outlook’s Auto-archive feature set up to automatically move older items from Personal Folders to the Archive. Old sent items, calendar entries and tasks are also auto-archived to the Archive file. There are two things that can be improved with my archive configuration: I’ve got way too many subfolders in my Personal Folders and I really think I might be able to do away with the Archive file altogether. I would recommend making one’s folder structure as flat as possible. Things like Google Desktop Search and Lookout make searching much faster and easier than filing into a load of folders.
If you take anything away from this post, it should be the inbox management bits. These are the things that will make you most effective in dealing with email. The @Waiting and Archive folders may or may not be all that important to you, it really depends on your environment. If you are not going to pay attention to any of this mail management stuff, at least learn some shortcut keys, your mouse could use the break.
Thu 26 Oct 2006
As I close in on a year of using Getting Things Done, I feel the need to impart some unsolicited wisdom. GTD does not require one to use any sort of electronic gewgaw, however, I decided to put the tools I had available to work. In my case, these tools are Outlook and a Treo. There is a free PDF available at davidco.com that describes how David Allen uses his Palm organizer. My use of the Treo mimics this. However, most of my organizational time is spent in Outlook, so I have refined my methods and setup over time.
As a rule, I generally try not to customize things too much. I just try to learn how to live with it the way it is. This makes it much easier to deal with the inevitable upgrade or new computer. Outlook, in its default configuration, needs a few tweaks to make it more effective though. In addition to these minor configuration changes, I highly, highly recommend learning a few shortcut keys for Outlook. The three I use most are CTRL + D to delete, ALT + S to save & close or send (email) and CTRL + K to open a new task from anywhere in Outlook. Print the list of shortcut keys from Outlook’s help file and keep them close at hand for a while. Learning a few of these will save a lot of time by keeping your fingers off the mouse.
Since these posts tend to be somewhat long, I’ll post them separately as I write them:
Good Luck!
Thu 26 Oct 2006
This week’s installment of On the House deals with a subject near and dear to my heart: Televisions in restaurants and bars. It is good to see that someone else has taken exception to the additional TVs that have been cropping up around town. It’s even better to hear that they are going to do something about it:
It’s not too late to save New York though. TV’s are but inanimate objects that can be turned off or removed altogether. Vote with your feet. I won’t eat anywhere that has a TV playing…
Hear, hear! I think I’ll follow Mr. Tigertt’s lead.
A note to restaurant and bar owners: Please, if there is nothing worth watching on, which is most of the time, turn off the damn televisions. There are times when having a TV around is a good thing, but just leaving them on for the sake of leaving them on is indeed quite distracting and really serves no purpose.
Tue 24 Oct 2006
Sometimes, the search criteria people are using to get to a site is is downright puzzling. For instance, well over 20% of the people that clicked through to this site in October from a search engine were looking for “halloween costume ideas”.
So, for those of you who arrived here looking for some costume ideas, you should know that I have a hard time coming up with a reasonable costume for myself. So, I really have no ideas to spare, sorry. I will point out the solitary post on this site that will give you an idea or two. Good luck!
Mon 23 Oct 2006
A while back, I pointed to a story about a program used by some Vancouver night spots to help keep known troublemakers out of their clubs. Now, it seems that some publicans are doing the same in the UK. Pub Watch records fingerprints in an effort to reduce alcohol related misbehavior. This effort has been successful enough that the system will be instituted across the country.
Cheers…
via slashdot
Mon 23 Oct 2006
Dead simple schedule help: Doodle.
This cool little site allows one to throw out some dates and/or times for a meeting and let one or more people respond with what times will work best for them. All of this without the ugly email threads that usually occur when more than two people are trying to get together at the same time. Kind of like sending a meeting request in Outlook, without Outlook.
via 43 Folders
Mon 23 Oct 2006
Many people I talk to have become slaves to their email. When the subject comes up, I’ve become more irritating than the ex-smoker that just can’t stop extolling the virtues of kicking the habit. Unfortunately, my advice on cleaning up one’s inbox is heeded just about as much the above mentioned ex-smoker’s advice on smoking cessation. Therefore, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut the next time someone complains about the 300+ emails they receive daily and gently point them to this post. By the way, talking about email overload in social situations is generally frowned upon anyway.
(more…)
Tue 10 Oct 2006
It looks like the city will introduce some pedicab regulation next year. The proposed regulation seems quite moderate, so it is probably a good thing. Thankfully, there is no mention of a pedicab ban in Midtown anymore.
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