Today, I’ll be driving from Pleasant Grove, UT to Coeur d’Alene, ID to attend my uncle’s funeral. His funeral isn’t until Friday, but it takes a while to drive there, about ten hours. It’s a little over 700 miles. It’s far enough that it would be quicker to fly. But, that’s not always. the case.
In a previous job, I had to go to Las Vegas a couple times per year for conferences. I was working in Salt Lake City at the time. And after the first couple of trips where I flew, I realized that my car was faster than an airplane.
It’s 420 miles from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. Most airplanes travel at about 500 mph. Obviously, it’s a short flight. Even in Utah, the land of 80 mph posted speed limits, most cars are nowhere near that fast. The Bonneville Salt Flats are located in Utah and they are the site of the land speed record where a car went 763 MPH. That’s faster than the speed of sound. I don’t have one of those cars. And they don’t turn well anyway.
So, how can I possibly claim that my car can go faster than a plane?
Because flying somewhere is an entire package, not just the time in the air. Here’s how a plane trip from my house in PLeasant Grove, UT to Vegas works.
- 8:00am Leave my house and head to airport
- 9:00am arrive at Salt Lake City Airport off-site parking
- 9:30 Arrive at Salt Lake City Airport
- 11:00am flight leaves
- 11:45am flight arrives in Vegas
- 12:30am finally get luggage, wait for and finally catch a shuttle to hotel
Here’s how a driving trip from my house in Pleasant Grove, UT to Vegas works.
- 8:00am Leave my house and head for Vegas
- 1:00pm Arrive in Las Vegas
Okay, maybe the plane beat me by a half hour. Because I live an hour south of the Salt Lake airport, and Las Vegas is South of me, I pick up two hours of travel time on the round trip. And once I arrive in Vegas, I have the added benefit of having a car. Sure, you’d think I could get a rental car, but remember, I was going to Vegas for a convention. Depending on the time of year, it’s often easier, if you are flying, to take an airport shuttle. And having your own car has distinct advantages at a trade show.
If you’ve ever been to a computer trade show, or convention, you’ve probably enjoyed walking the vendor floor. It’s like a carnival midway without having to pay. There are people with all sorts of games and giveaways that are trying to get you to listen to their product pitch. I’ve won everything from t-shirts to video iPods at trade shows. The really nice prizes are things like big screen TVs, XBox system and Harley Davidson motorcycles. But, they wait to give those big prizes away until the end of the show. . .on the last day. . .the day you are trying to catch your flight.
If you fly, you are constantly watching the clock to see how soon you need to bug out to get to the airport on time.
If you drive, you have it much easier. You check out of the hotel in the morning, put all your stuff in your car and then have it valet parked. When, the last of the big prizes have been given away (and you didn’t win, but hey, at least you were “present”) you simply hand the valet your ticket, climb in your car and head north. No lines, no security checks, no “How do I get all these free t-shirts into my luggage” worries.
If you’re close enough, a car is definitely faster than a plane.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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A friend mentioned what a great way of keeping a journal this blog must be. I kind of laughed. As many of you know, I often change certain details of the stories to avoid telling other people’s stories. Someone culling through these scribblings and trying to reconstruct my life or career would be hard pressed to identify all of the various characters I talk about.
Occasionally, I use someone’s real name. Today is one of those days.
I started this blog years ago to share business lessons that I’ve learned. And while I do still use it for that, I’ve found myself sharing more and more personal stories as well. (In case you didn’t realize I kind of enjoy camping and fishing in Utah’s great outdoors. Not sure if that came through in the dozens of blog entries I’ve written on hiking and camping.)
This week will some of that. Not camping, but personal stories.
My uncle died last week. I might write about him over the next few days. I’ve been asked to speak at his funeral on Friday. I’m now trying to comb through 50 years of my memories and 74 years of his life to find ten minutes or so that will give people a feel for who he was.
His name was Ted Graff, although I always called him Uncle Tandy. He was 74 years old and he died in the most impressive fashion I can think of. He went for a ride on his Harley and never came back.
The first image that comes to mind is of a terrible crash and that was my first thought too. But, he actually died of a heart attack. He’d had several over the years and it was not a surprise that is the way he eventually went. He must have felt it coming on because he managed to get his bike to the side of the road. The bike fell over and he was attempting to pick it back up. The highway patrol found him slumped over his bike.
He was more than my uncle. He was my friend. As adults, the 23 year age difference wasn’t as dramatic as it was when I was a kid when I met him and he was already “old,” easily in his 20’s or maybe even 30’s.
He had a full life and I like to think he died happy. I miss him. But, when it’s my time to go, I hope, like him, I can live to the very last moment of my life doing something I love.
If family and friends reading this are interested, his funeral is on Friday November 18 starting at 9:00am in Coeur d’Alene, ID. The burial is Saturday at noon in Tekoa, WA.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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You might have heard we had a big moon this month. No, I mean a REALLY big moon. Biggest in 70 years. It was in all the papers.
I love looking at the sky. I’m a sucker for a science story. The Hubble telescope is one of the coolest things I think NASA has ever done. Maybe it’s my love of science fiction and science fact. I’m a sucker for any sort of science link on my newsfeed.
New information on the formation of the moon Titan
Mysterious shiny spot on Ceres explained
New test might detect Dark Matter for the first time
Those are fascinating stories. And, like most celestial events, they can’t be detected with the naked eye. In fact, very few heavenly events can be seen without the help of a telescope. That’s what made the following headline so crazy sounding
How to watch tonight’s Supermoon
But, maybe they were pitching a live stream? Maybe they wanted to let you know if you live in Antarctica or someplace, how you could see it?
Nope
The body of the article actually explained,
Where to watch the November supermoon
The moon will be easy to spot in any place with clear skies across the northern hemisphere.
How to watch the November supermoon
With the moon appearing larger than it has in over 70 years, astronomy fans will simply need to look up to the skies to spot the supermoon.
There will be no need for telescopes or any other specialist equipment.
Think about that. Not the moon, we’ll get to that in a minute. But, think about the fact that some journalist got paid to tell you how to look at the moon. And their copy is written in such a way that it almost sounds like the moon is normally not visible, but because it’s going to be so extra big this month, you will finally be able see it.
I get it if they were talking about a solar exclipse. You need instructions for how to watch a solar exclipse. Do it wrong and you might go blind. Or even a lunar exclipse which you can watch with your naked eye, they might want to write a story telling you when to watch. It’s over in just a few hours and you might miss it.
But, a full moon? It’s kind of hard to miss. And while it’s good to know that it’s going to be at its absolute fullest “fullness” at 1:52pm GMT, do we really care? Did anyone happen to get outside at 1:55pm GMT and say, “Oh man, I missed the fullest!”?
As someone who creates content on a daily basis, I know how tempting it can be to write a post about the great big full moon. Trust me, I understand that temptation. But, an article about how to view the full moon seems like the author is simply trying just a little too hard.
BTW, here’s what the full moon looks like on a cell phone camera.
Seriously, that’s the best it will do. Not sure the flash helped.
Go out tonight and look at the moon. It’s that big round white thing in the sky.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Sometimes my sons surprise me. Today was one of those days. I’m typically the first one up at my house. I shower and get dressed as quietly as possible and slip out before anyone else is up. I catch a 6:08am train and am typically at my desk by 7:00.
So, it was surprising this morning as I headed out a little before six to see my sons coming back in from outside.
Whatcha doin, guys?
Flags
And with that they trooped off to get ready for school. Out scout troop does a fund raiser every year involving flags. For a $25 donation, the troop will put a flag up on your lawn on six holidays per year. My boys, without being prompted, had gotten up extra early to fulfill their duty. The flags go up on the following holidays,
- New Years Day
- Memorial Day
- Flag Day
- Independence Day
- Memorial Day
- Veterans Day
The flag code says that if a flag is unlit it should only be displayed during daylight hours. My boys were out well before sunrise, but I’m not sure anyone was going to complain to waking up to a flag in their yard. I certainly wasn’t going to object to them getting an early jump on the day. Of the list above only New Years and Veterans Day are holidays that are also celebrated outside the United States.
Veterans Day is also the only day that has a unique time specified.
November 11, 11:11am
That was the day and time when The Great War ended. In two years we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the end of what was called at the time, the “War to End All Wars.”
Sadly, the name was inaccurate. In fact, we had to start numbering them to keep track. So long as we must fight wars, I’m grateful for the men and women in this country and countries all around the world who willingly put themselves in harms way to protect our way of life and the freedoms we enjoy.
To the veterans, we salute you.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Franklin was a technologist. He was the Steve Jobs of his day, creating innovative tools that people didn’t know they needed until they got them. Things like bifocal glasses, improved stoves, electricity. (Okay, that last one is probably suspect.) He was also, of course, one of country’s our founding fathers. He was asked when coming out of the Constitutional Convention,
Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?
A republic, if you can keep it.
With a slight tweak, Franklin’s quote on liberty can be applied to Information Technology, specifically security.
Those who would give up essential security to purchase a little temporary accessibility, deserve neither security nor accessibility.
Okay, it’s not going to stick in anyone’s memory, but still it’s a good point. Computer system security is a constant trade-off between ease-of-use and securing systems. Think about your password. You probably picked something memorable. Does your company have a password policy? Most are something like this:
- Must be at least 8 characters long (longer passwords are harder to guess, but interestingly also easier to crack in some ways
- Must include a combination of letters, numbers, special characters and at least one capital and one lower case letter
- Cannot match any of your previous passwords (Typically the last 25)
- Cannot be changed more than once every three days
- Will lock you out if you get it wrong three times in a row
- Cannot include numbers or letters in sequence (123 or ABC for example)
- Cannot include any part of your name or userid
- Cannot be a word found in the dictionary
- Must be changed regularly (Typically every 30 or 90 days)
These rules are important. They are designed to prevent someone else from accessing your company resources. Unfortunately, get too strict on your password policy and you prevent the people who need access to the system from getting in. We all know that you shouldn’t write your password down. And yet, if your password were
hY4#bnfq&Ilio0z
let’s face it, you are going to write it down. Your need for accessibility trumps your company’s desire for security. And the danger for the company is that they lose both. Users cannot easily get into the system, but because they write their passwords down, they also make it possible for hackers to get in.
The solution is a balance, of course. And there are entire IT disciplines devoted to finding the right balance and implementing it. I’m not going to go into the details of a robust security policy. However, I’ll share a couple of hacks that might make your life just a little easier.
Write it Down
Let’s suppose you just absolutely must write down a password, or a credit card number or a social security number? Never happens, you say? I was talking to my friend Dave when his neighbor wandered over. The neighbor was a mortgage agent. I was thinking about buying a house, but wasn’t sure my credit was good enough. He offered to check my credit score for me, but he needed my social security number. He’s not going to remember it. I didn’t have a phone. So, I wrote it down
3449073641387
You might think that is too many numbers. You’re right. I wrote that out and then told him, ignore the first two and the last two numbers. If that paper gets into someone else’s hands, It’s worthless to them. You can do the same thing with passwords, or bank account numbers or birthdays.
Keep The Same Password
I have the same password that I’ve had for ages. And yet, it meets my company password policies. My password has a pattern like this
Fredwasabear22
Each time I have to update my password, I add aad one to the number at the end. If I am logging into a system I haven’t used in a while and my password doesn’t work, I just start rolling back the numbers that I try
- Fredwasabear21
- Fredwasabear20
- Fredwasabear19
Next time I have to change my password, My password will be Fredwasabear23.
Ah, but suppose your company won’t let you add numbers?
- Fredwasabeartwenty-two
- Fredwasabeartwenty-three
I think Mr Franklin would agree. It makes it acessible for me and secure for my company. Just make sure you don’t tell anyone your. . .oops.
Please don’t tell anyone about this.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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Glad that’s over.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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“Whatever I don’t understand must be simple.”
– Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss
You are stuck in a castle. You have a sword and shield and you need to fight your way past the guards, also armed with swords and shields. You have a choice of which route to make your escape. The two choices are in the picture above. Which stairwell will you use?
- A – because it’s in a roughly triangular shape
- B – because it’s not in a roughly triangular shape
- C – it doesn’t matter. Both are equally good/bad
- D – depends on whether you are fighting UP the stairs or DOWN
There’s an actual answer to this question: A correct answer. If you are a skilled test taker, you might be tempted to pick D because it’s the longest answer. Or, if you don’t know the answer, you might be tempted to pick C, because C is most often the right answer.
I used to tell my employees that everything I learned about management I learned from Dilbert’s pointy haired boss. (Did you know the boss has no name? He’s simply the PHB.) One of my favorite quotes is the above. It’s easy to think that if I don’t understand a concept, it must be simple.
You might think this is counter-intuitive. After all, if I don’t understand a concept, doesn’t that mean it’s potentially hard to understand? Not really. We all assume we are smarter than average. (Half of us are correct.) I spend much of my time on outage phone conferences or bridges. During an outage bridge there are often long periods where no one is talking. Typically these are the times when people are researching or testing or gathering additional information. I’m rarely in the same room with my agents. I have to ask for not only the things I need, but also for status updates.
How tough would it be for you to find out the answer to a question if you got to ask a person in the same room with you? I’m guessing it would be pretty quick. You turn to the person next to you and ask,
“If you had to fight your way out of a castle using a sword and shield which stairwell would you take?”
If I was on the phone and waiting on that answer it might be easy for me to assume the answer should take a certain amount of time. A short period of time. But, there are lots of things I don’t know. Perhaps the person you ask is doing research. Perhaps they don’t have a chance to look at the picture right now.
When we are waiting on others, or asking others, it’s easy to assume they should be getting their answers quicker. And yet, when it’s turned around the other way, we don’t understand why the person asking us questions keeps pestering us. Don’t they understand that it takes a while to get their answers?
“Don’t rush a miracle man, sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.”
– Miracle Max from Princess Bride
Looking at the picture above, it might be easy to assume that since I don’t know the answer, it must be simple. It doesn’t really matter what stairwell I choose, does it? I don’t know why it would make a difference so it must not be important.
Actually, the answer is D. (Yeah, I tried to not make it the longest, but oh well.) If you are fighting DOWN the stairs then you want to choose Stairwell A. If you are fighting UP the stairs (for example, you were stuck in the dungeon) you should pick Stairwell B.
That’s stupid Rodney. What possible difference could it make?
Imagine you are armed with your sword and shield. Hold you sword up above your head. Ninety percent of you have your right hand above your head. That means your shield is in your left hand. Look at Stairwell A. As you walk down the stairs, your shield is next to the wall. You have the open space to your right to swing your sword. Your opponent, on the other hand is reversed. His sword arm is next to the wall. While you pin your shield to the wall to protect your left side, he has to expose both his left and right sides.
Now, look at Stairwell B. As you move UP the stairs, again, you get to put your sheild against the concrete wall and swing your sword in the open space to the right. Your opponent is again at a disadvantage as he has to try to swing without hitting the wall.
Does this make a difference? It did to people who built castles. They built their interior stairs so that the defenders always had the wall to their left. The attackers were always at a disadvantage.
Just because I don’t understand something doesn’t mean there isn’t a really good reason for it.
(BTW, theves are the stairwells in my building. I always go UP Stairwell B and come DOWN Stairwell A. . .just in case I’m ever attacked in the stairwell. . .with a sword.)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I was getting frustrated. Once again, Milan had taken off work an hour early. I think I’m a reasonable manager. I gave him the freedom to pretty much run his job the way he felt he needed to. His clients weren’t complaining, and others in the company seemed to genuinely enjoy working with him. He was one of those kind of bland “nice guys” to have in an office.
Unfortunately, he had one really annoying habit and it seemed to be getting worse. It was hard to pin him down to his desk. I was a middle manager in a large non-profit and our policy was that we kept office hours. Exactly when you came in or left was pretty much up to you so long as you were. Available between 10:00am and 4:00pm. It was important that people be able to get in touch with you during the “typical” business day.
And here it was, a Friday afternoon and Milan had headed out the door at 3:00pm. I called him into my office first thing Monday morning.
So, what happened on Friday?
What do you mean?
You took off at 3:00.
Yeah, I was trying to beat the traffic. I needed to get a group of scouts headed to a campout at 4:00.
We’ve talked about this. I need you available between 10-4.
I was available.
How do you figure?
Did you try to call me?
No.
Text?
No.
Email?
Well, no. But, you weren’t at your desk.
What makes my desk so special that it’s the only place people can contact me? On the drive home I took two client calls. I also used speech to text to respond to a client question about next week’s shipment. When I got home there was an email from Frank asking for a copy of the updated spreadsheet that I then sent. Exactly how do YOU define “available?”
It was a bit of a shock to realize that Milan had a point. Not only did he have some of our most demanding (and profitable) clients, he regularly was called on weekends and evening. He’d been up late on client implementation calls for two nights that week and while he had been camping on Saturday, I knew that one of his clients had called him at least once while he was hiking.
I had to decide how important it was that he be physically in the office. Was he mostly working with people in our Seattle home office, or was he mostly working with people at our suppliers and client sites around the country? Was that 3:00 Friday departure robbing the company of an hour or were we getting more than we paid for with his time?
On the other hand, not everyone serviced their clients and suppliers like Milan did. If I let him have a looser schedule, would I end up paying for it because other employees, who didn’t give up personal time to work with clients would demand similar accommodations?
As Milan filed out of my office, I had to think, was I risking losing one of my most productive employees by not letting him do the job the way he wanted? Did it really matter?
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2016 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Did you know that accidents go down the day after we turn the clocks back for Day Light Savings time? There are fewer fatal accidents on the Monday after we make the change in the Fall. The theory is that lack of sleep contributes to fatal accidents. In the Fall we all get that extra hour of sleep and as a result we have just a few less fatal accidents.
It’s probably a good thing that I take the train to work on Mondays.
I used my phone a lot on Saturday. I use my phone a lot on most days. So much so that I regularly carry one of these.
That’s a batter pack, capable of recharging my phone multiple times. It’s saved me multiple times when it’s get late in the evening and I still have work calls. Saturday, I didn’t worry about it. I was mostly surfing the web on my phone as the power indicator switched from green to red. Finally, about 11:45pm it finally quit. I should have probably plugged it in, but I was planning to head to bed in a few minutes and figured I’d plug it in as I was getting ready for bed.
About 20 minutes later as I plugged it in, it turned back on and announced that I had three new voicemails. Three voicemails in 20 minutes is a bad sign. I sighed and dialed into voicemail. Yep. Something at work was broken. Instead of crawling into my bed, I drug myself down to my basement office. It’s my own fault for waiting until I was tired to head for bed. Or something like that. One message was from my call center. The other two were from my client. (Both my office phone and my cell phone go to the same voicemail.)
My Lawrenceville office operates 24 hours per day. They were not able to get logged into their computers to help callers. I called the client back on one phone and called my call center on the other phone.
Here we go.
It was definitely an issue with something happening on the network. The on-duty supervisor at my call center said it had occured at about 1:05am Eastern Time.
Well, the second 1:05am.
What do you mean?
Well, it was right after we turned back the clocks.
No matter how much you might hate Day Light Savings time changes, computers hate them worse. Your phone probably rolled back the clock just fine. Maybe your computer might have sent you a notice telling you that it had switched the time back. But, if you don’t work in the computer industry, you probably don’t give it much thought.
Computers hate the time change. Scheduling and calendaring programs have to have exceptions written for that crazy lost hour. Logging programs have to be able to distinguish the “first 1:00am” from the “second 1:00am.” It’s a pain to work with and most computer profeesionals would be thrilled if we all took the Arizona model and just refused to switch the clocks.
I called the client and let them know the start time.
Yeah, that makes sense. We were doing some maintenance at that time.
Doing maintenance during a time change definitely does not make sense. My contact was no more happy to be up in the middle night than I was. He wasn’t the one who had scheduled the maintenance.
Three hours later the client had finally backed out the change. Another half hour of testing and updating records and I could finally head back toward my bed. It was either 1:30 or 2:30am, I’m not entirely sure.
Pro Tip: Don’t schedule maintenance during the first weekend of November.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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The email was both unexpected and long awaited.
Rodney, I noticed your review of Primal Leadership. My new book targets the same audience. Would you consider reviewing my book?
Writers write. It’s what we do. After running away from the title of “writer” for a long time, I finally embraced it about three years ago when I committed to scribble down a few words every day and throwing them out into the void. You always wonder if people are listening. You hope that they are. My blog posts to Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter and of course goes out to those of you who have signed up for my email list.
Feedback is the reward for putting in the work. I’ve had people violently disagree with me. I’ve had people wholeheartedly agree with me. Often I’ve had posts that garnered a few likes but mostly just went their way without eliciting a response from anyone.
This email was the ultimate feedback. Someone was saying, “I’ve seen what you do and I’d like you to do more.” If not “arriving” it at least symbolized that I was on the right path. It also gave me pause.
I understand what the author is doing. (And I’m intentionally not mentioning the author or the book at this point. Look for a review in January.) In the age of the Interent, we are all self publishers and self promoters. The author was going out to find people who might be interested in reviewing his book. He will provide my review to his readers, thereby potentially expanding my audience and I will share my review with all of you and you might be interested in becoming a fan of his.
It’s a perfectly reasonable business model. There is nothing in the least questionable, or even unsightly about it. And yet. . .I have a nagging question. What if I don’t like the book?
I’ve reviewed many books over the years. Mostly, I pick books that I already have read. I “review” them, but the reason I’m reading them is because I already know I like them. Occasionally, I’ll find a book that I don’t like as much. Two examples are “The 4 Hour Workweek.” I hated it. The author, in my opinion, was advocating the worst kind of anti-social behavior and fraud. I also didn’t enjoy the “The Traveler’s Gift.” It was overly simplistic. I can think of a couple more popular business books that I didn’t like when I read them, but I haven’t actually reviewed. (“Who Moved My Cheese” and “Leadership and Self Deception.”)
The point is that I don’t like every book I read. I’m sure none of us do. When I’m buying and reading the books myself I feel no compulsion to point my review one way or the other. But, this is a new experience. The author is now a real person. And he’s a real person that has asked me for a favor. Of course, he wants an honest review. He also thinks his book has valuable information for his readers. But, so did the author of “The 4 Hour Workweek” and “The Traveler’s Gift.”
If I disagree with his content, will I have the courage to be honest? Will I be able to resist the urge to spare his feelings? If I don’t deliver a “good” review, do I risk not getting future requests from writers?
I don’t know.
As a member of Toastmasters, I get plenty of experience writing and delivering speeches. But, equally important, Toastmasters gives me the chance to practice evaluating speeches given by others. During the evaluation portion of the meeting, the evaluator gets 2 minutes to provide helpful feedback, but also point out areas the speaker could have improved. It’s a stressful role. No one wants to offer negative criticism. We’ve become adept at “softening the blow.” And yet, the times that I have been most effective as an evaluator, and times the feedback has been most valuable for my own speeches, it has been direct, specific and succinct.
I hope this will be a valuable book that I can recommend to you without reservation. More likely it will be a book that has valuable insights that also includes areas I think can be improved. Hopefully, the author will respect the fact that I’ll do my best to be honest, unswayed by the fact that he sought me out for a review.
In any event, it was certainly a honor to be asked.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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