Goals: Be Specific / Set Dates !

Today I have looked again at my list of goals. I have gone through each of them and applied a date. The psychological effect of this was immediate. Each goal has now taken on a focus that never existed before. This simple act has make the biggest difference and changed both my focus and my mood. I have a much clearer direction than I had previously. Who would have thought? Thanks again to Steve Pavlina for the advice ☺

Mr. Burns: Quick Smithers. Bring the mind eraser device!
Smithers: You mean the revolver, sir?
Mr. Burns: Precisely.

Strengths Finder

I recently did the StrengthsFinder test online via Gallup. What is StrengthsFinder? The Internet-based StrengthsFinder Profile is the product of a 25-year, multi-million dollar effort to identify the most prevalent human strengths. The program introduces 34 dominant "themes" with thousands of possible combinations, and reveals how they can best be translated into personal and career success. In developing this program, Gallup has conducted psychological profiles with more than two million individuals to help you learn how to focus and perfect these themes.

My top 5 main “themes” are shown below:

Command

Significance

Intellection

Maximizer

Achiever

Having read the full explanations for each of these, I consider them quite accurate. I have passed them on to a couple of colleagues for feedback as to whether they also think they are accurate. So far it seems to me that this quick and cheap test could be useful to do when hiring certain employees. It at least appears to give an insight into their personalities in a way that will not necessarily come over in an interview.

“English - Who needs that? I’m never going to England!” - Homer Simpson

Courage

I was reading an article just recently on the Steve Pavlina Personal Development website which struck a chord and I found very interesting. In the article he talks about courage and the article features the following quotes:

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain

and my personal favourite:

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne

The article discusses the nature of courage and how the amount of fear that you have about something is nothing to do with whether you are courageous or not, fear is necessary and courage can exist despite fear. A courageous person is just as afraid as everybody else, it’s just that they have decided that fear will not conquer them or control them.

Here is the full link to the article by Steve.

“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.” - Home Simpson

Steve Pavlina

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff just recently from a website called http://www.stevepavlina.com. Steve is a former Games Developer turned Personal Development Guru. Since first discovering his site I have come close twice to deleting his feed from my RSS aggregator, this was for two reasons, namely, his posts are sometimes long and he sometimes talks about his spiritual and supernatural beliefs very openly.

I initially dismissed him as some kind of new age preacher nutcase (Steve, if you ever read this .. Sorry !) but for some reason kept looking at his blog entries and articles. The more I looked, the more I realised that this guy is 100% serious and an incredibly knowledgeable and intelligent individual to boot. Only a small percentage of his articles talk about things that I am not totally comfortable with, and why shouldn’t he? It’s his blog and I can stop reading whenever I choose.

This guy writes very well and also produces audio recordings of some of his articles, which are equally professional. So much of what he says makes sense and I think I can use some of his teachings in my own life. This is not for me a spiritual trip, it is about growing as a person using tools such as defining your life’s purpose, setting your goals and thinking positive thoughts. It’s about using your own brain and your own subconscious to bring clarity, discipline, meaning and happiness to your existence.

He site is well worth looking at, whatever your take on Personal Development.

“You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.” - Marge Simpson

Complexities

Why is it that as I am putting considerable effort into achieving a simpler and more organised life, the universe is conspiring against me and trying it’s very best to make things more complicated. I guess this is one of those ‘tests’ that life throws at us occasionally just to try and keep us on our toes.

I am good at dealing with problems. Most of the time I am at my best under pressure, reacting in a calm and capable manner and I firmly believe that problems are there to be solved and sorted, and that we learn and grow from the experience.

Occasionally though, something will test me in a manner in which I am not easily capable of dealing with. Normal rules do not always apply and it is easy for us to confuse matters by inventing our own logical explanation in an attempt to deal with the situation. Logic is most certainly in the eye of the beholder.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place ? Yes, at the moment, I guess I am.

“It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.” - Homer Simpson

MacDrive 6

If you own one of the latest Intel Macs you have (almost) the best of both worlds, a Mac that dual boots into either MacOSX or Windows XP. The downside is that to have a shared area that both operating systems can read from and write to, you need to format the PC partition as FAT32. This has repercussions for size of partition, speed and security.

Alternatively, you can format your PC partition as NTFS (with all the advantages that implies) and then install a product called Macdrive6 on your NTFS partition. This will then give you access to the Mac partition from the XP partition. An excellent solution and a real killer application.

You are rapidly running out of reasons not to have a Macbook Pro ☺

Marge: Homer, is this how you pictured married life?
Homer: Yeah, pretty much, except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.

Google Daterange Operator

It is possible to get Google to search for pages that were indexed within a certain range of dates. It is a bit clunky but quite useful. The syntax used is the Google daterange: operator and the parameters are a pair of dates separated by a dash. So far so good … The downside is that Google needs the dates to be formatted as Julian dates, ie: The number of days that have passed since January 1st 4713BC (on the Julian Calendar).

In addition Google does not officially support the daterange operator, so potentially it could be withdrawn at any time.

For conversion between our date format and Julian dates, see here:
http://www.24hourtranslations.co.uk/dates.htm

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it." - Edith Wharton

Google Ranking / Results

Here is a link to a Google webpage that discusses how the search results are ranked.

"Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses." - Confucius

ASP.NET : Web Service

Connecting an ASP.NET Webpage to an Existing Web Service


Create a new ASP.NET Web Application from Visual Studio.

Name the Application appropriately.

Add a Web Reference to the project and name it appropriately e.g.:
                        URL:        http://192.168.10.169/tcardserver/tcardserver.asmx
                        Name:        TcardService


Setup a variable to refer to this service e.g.:
                        Dim pxy As New TcardService.TcardService

Setup a button and label to allow testing of whether the service is available. Use the following code:
                        lblStatus.Text = pxy.online.ToString

To populate a datagrid, use code similar to the following:
                        dg1.DataSource = pxy.GetTcards
                        dg1.DataBind()

"Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger." - Francis Quarles

Lean IT

Introduction to Lean

When we talk about Lean within the context of the Enterprise, we are usually referring to Lean Production or Lean Manufacturing as it is commonly called. I have shown below the 10 Rules of Lean Production that define the concept.

1.        Eliminate Waste
2.        Minimise Inventory
3.        Maximise Flow
4.        Pull Production from Customer Demand
5.        Meet Customer Requirements
6.        Do it Right, First Time
7.        Empower Workers
8.        Design for Rapid Changeover
9.        Partner with Suppliers
10.        Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

An interesting set of rules, and not many of them are applicable to just Production or Manufacturing. Most could be useful when applied to other areas of the organisation.

In this document I intend to demonstrate how many of these rules, and the concept of Lean, can be applied to my own area of expertise: Information Technology.

Specifically IT as it is applied and used within the Enterprise.


Lean IT

Lean IT was first mentioned in a paper by AMR Research. They discussed Lean IT in the context of a Microsoft Business Solutions Strategy, I think however the concept can be applied much more generically across Information Technology within the Enterprise and it applies to far more than just integrated software, although an integrated software system plays a big part in helping achieve the benefits of Lean IT.

If we simplify the rules of Lean and make them more generic, then we could end up with the following five rules:

1.        Eliminate Non Value Added
2.        Review how Products are Provided and Delivered
3.        Improve efficiencies by reviewing ‘Flow’
4.        Produce Products as the Customer Demands
5.        Seek Perfection


How Lean IT Applies to The Enterprise

If we take each of these simplified rules in turn and look at how these may apply to the Enterprise:

Rule 1
Non Value Added can be thought of as the processes that we all deem necessary to the essential running of the business, and yet within themselves they add no value to what we provide. Within the Lean IT premise we can see that these processes could include paper based invoicing, paper based purchase orders etc.

Rule 2
From the perspective of the IT department, our products are effectively the services that we apply to our Customers, our customers being the Staff, Shopfloor Workers, Managers and Directors within the organisation. We need to look at how we provide those products so that we are supplying what is needed rather than what is asked for. More often that not, two entirely different things. The correct information needs to be put in the hands of the correct person at the correct time.

Rule 3
This involves the reviewing and streamlining of our existing business processes, the idea being to increase productivity and cut costs across the organisation.

Rule 4
Developing better relationships with all departments within the enterprise, enabling us to meet the needs of the user faster and better. An important issue.

Rule 5
We need to ensure that the users are actually using the products and services that we supply in the correct and most efficient way. Continually looking to refine and enhance processes across the organisation. Wherever possible we need to give the users a familiar environment in which to work. Constant refinement and excellent training is necessary to ensure that our services provide the best possible solution to the customer.

“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.” - Homer Simpson