My favorite Facebook group has “Water cooler Mondays.” We talk about what we did over the weekend.
Tuesdays are “Promotion Tuesdays.” Tell us something that you are doing, or you’re proud of.
Wednesday’s are my favorite. It’s “Pet Peeve Wednesdays.” Post about a gripe or a pet peeve.
Thursday is all about the plans for the weekend.
What interesting about this particular Facebook group, is that many of us have become good friends. And we’ve never met each other. We are all fans of a professional comedian. He set up the group.
A common interest brought us together, but, it’s not enough to sustain a community. It’s the shared experiiences. The causual banter that has made us a part of one another’s lives.
We know that Rachel teaches music at a community college. Enoch recently lost his father and is struggling to get through it. Robert works in IT.
No one asked Rachel if she was a teacher. It just came up in conversation. We all certainly offered our condolances to Enoch on the death of his father. But, it didn’t come up during Pet Peeve Wednesday, or Promote Yourself Tuesday. But, during our conversations.
Honestly, I don’t even know where Enoch lives. The comedian tours all over the world. But, I know I can talk to Enoch about my day and he’ll be interested. And he can talk to me about the recent anniversary of my father’s passing.
If your work team is like mine, you are probably all working from home. No more Wednesday lunches. No more birthday cakes in the break room. No more chats at the copier. So, how do you get your team to pull together like that?
You need to let your team chat, make small talk. You need to look for opportunities to talk without there being an agenda.
We had a team meeting today. Our team is scattered all over the world, India, California, New York. The managers were five minutes late. So the team member did what team members do when they are waiting for the meeting to get started. They talked. We talked about the latest news. We talked about the virus. (But, not a lot. We’ve all heard plenty.) We asked about each other’s families. What we were doing for the long holiday weekend.
And after five minutes the managers showed up, apologized for being late and the meeting started.
But, for five minutes, a “wasted” five minutes, we were a team interested in each other’s lives
Stay safe
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Are you still up?
Yeah, why?
I’m thinking that putting that antenna up is going to be a lot cooler tonight than tomorrow during the day.
Sure, let me grab a flashlight and I’ll meet you outside.
Saturday is the fourth of July, America’s Independence day. That’s a big deal in my little town of Pleasant Grove. Many of the events surrounding Independence have been cancelled or cut back.
But, the biggest 4th of July event is going on as planned. I volunteer with an organization called Follow The Flag. The organization does a lot of good work.
But, the organization really exists for the Fourth of July. Every Fourth of July for the past several years, the Follow The Flag organization has strung a Kevlar line across Grove Creek Canyon and unfurled the world’s largest free flying American Flag. It will fly there for a week.
There are three flags that the organization owns. The original flag was called Big Betsy. Then, the Ogden chapter bought a flag and named it The Major, in honor of Brent Taylor, the mayor of North Ogden who was a major in the National Guard and was killed in Afghanistan.
Last year, Big Betsy was damaged in a micro-burst. So, she’s been retired from flying. Instead a new flag will fly over Grove Creek Canyon this year. It’s name is Lady Liberty. She’s about 150 feet by 75 feet.
The thing about Follow The Flag, is that everyone is a volunteer. We don’t even get t-shirts for free. My small part is a radio transmitter. My neighbor and I set up a small radio station at the mouth of the canyon that will broadcast patriot music on a loop.
The thing is, we also have jobs, so it’s not unusual to be out at 10:00 at night doing setup. As we were installing our antenna and radio I happened to glance up at the imposing mountain silver and black in the light of the waxing moon. There about half way up, just where the canyon wall jutted out I saw flashlights bobbing.
The riggers were getting the lines strung. More people working late into the night for free.
Stay safe
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Getting Things Done
the art of stress-free productivity
by David Allen
I wanted to like this book. I wanted to like it a lot. Because, it’s a really good book. The reviews are all true. The information in the Getting Things Done (GTD) method are amazing. And they, no doubt could lead to amazing levels of productivity.
Have you ever wanted to learn to play the violin? I don’t know anything about playing the violin, but my sister plays wonderfully. But, imagine that you want to learn to play the violin. So, you find a really good violin teacher. And that really good violin teacher writes a book on how to play the violin.
That’s what GTD was. The information was wonderful. And I could see in reading it that if you put it into use, it would be amazing. But, when I got done, I really wasn’t much better at playing the violin, or the art of stress-free productivity.
I’d picked up some pieces I’d learned some vocabulary. Mastering your workflow, the five phases of project planning and capturing habit. It’s good info. But, hard to put into practice.
David Allen even acknowledges this when he says is describing “The Path of GTD Mastery,”
GTD is actually a lifelon practice with multiple levels of mastery. It is very similar to playing an instrument like the violin. . .”
There is a corresponding training course that goes along with the Getting Things Done book. And I’m sure that if I had a chance to attend a training, I would be much better at playing the violin when I got done.
What I Liked
The material really is written well. The examples are relevant and useful. You don’t have to adopt the entire GTD system to find value in parts of it. And if you were to go through the material in detail, working on it page by page, I would imagine that you could eventually master the violin. Well, probably not master, but at least learn to play Farmer In The Dell.
What I Didn’t
There was a lot here. I’m a fast reader. This book took me six months to read. And I only finished it because. . .well, it’s hard to write a book review if you don’t actually finish reading the book. The material doesn’t seem to translate well to the written page.
Rather than trying to present the entire GTD system, it might have been more useful to focus on smaller, more useful exercises to practice the topics. I also would have liked to see scenarios. Show how someone started with a manual system and then in ten pages or so show us how they used the GTD method to organize their life.
I’m not even sure that would solve it.
What It Means To You
If you have the training, this book is a great refresher. Or, if you are a learner who does well with the written word, you could find value. And there are certainly nuggets of value, but it took a lot of time and effort to find them. And by the time I did, I didn’t care.
My Rating
2 out of 4 stars. I really wanted to like this more
Stay Safe
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Just a note to my friends and family. I will help you work on your car or truck for free if you buy the parts.
If you buy a PT Cruiser I will block you on Facebook and disown you.
It was a joke on Facebook. It wasn’t even about fixing cars. It was really about how terrible PT Cruisers are to work on. In fact, the comments filled up with people equally as frustrated with PT Cruisers.
We got a daughter a PT Cruiser. – LOL – I understand.
Thumbs up
You have obviously never tried to put a car stereo in a 1984 SAAB 900…
But, then I got a Voicemail,
Rodney, this is Micha. Were you serious about helping your friends with car repairs? I need a mirror put on my Scout-mobile.
Was I serious? Was I really willing to help friends and family work on their cars for free?
I wasn’t always a car guy. For a long time I was the guy who paid his mechanic enough to put his kids through college. . .a lot of kids.
But, a few years ago a friend gave me an old 1996 Lexus. It wasn’t running and needed a lot of work. Like “rebuild the engine” work. And “swap out multiple body panels” work.
He knew how to do it. I didn’t. But, he was willing to teach me. We spent hours and hours rebuilding it. And then. Eventually we got it to run. And then, he handed me the keys and walked back across the street.
His philosophy has always been, “If you buy the parts, I’ll help you work on your car.” He’s a very spiritual man. He believes that if he allows people to reward him on earth, he will have fewer rewards from God. It works for him. He’ll help anyone who asks.
That was my mentor. How could I betray that?
Sure, Micha. I’d be happy to help. Bring your car over on Saturday at 10:00 and we’ll work on it. Shouldn’t take too long.
So, Saturday morning I was out in my driveway pulling an old broken mirror off of Micha’s car and putting on the one she bought from eBay.
So, yes, I’ll help you work on your car or truck for free if you’ll buy the parts.
Just don’t ask me to help you work on a PT Cruiser.
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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LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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WAHA: Work At Home Agent
I broke a company rule today. But, it’s okay. . .mostly.
Six months ago my client had zero WAHA agents. Everyone worked in one of our call centers across the United States. And then COVID-19 turned our lives upside down.
And it sent a lot of our agents home. Not just home. Home loaded down with a company computer, a couple of monitors, keyboard, mouse, and headset.
When we designed our agent infrastructure we intentionally designed it to be as secure as possible. We were locking it down from both a physical and a network standpoint.
When we were asked to figure out how to send people to work from home, we weren’t even sure if it would work at first. There are multiple layers of security protections. We had to try to keep the security in place, while also allowing our agents the ability to do their jobs from home using their own local internet service provider.
When we first started testing our WAHA strategy, we did testing in the center. After we got it working in the center, we handed the computers to the agents and sent them home.
And it worked. . .mostly. But, there were a couple that didn’t. Over the phone, we worked through as much as we could. We tried all of our typical troublshooting steps. Not just me, I had our senior desktop engineers on the call too. We couldn’t get it working.
I requested permission to allow our engineer to go to the agent’s house. I mean, it worked in the center, there had to be something about the home setup that was making it not work. I got a very clear response from our Senior Vice President over desktops.
We do not send engineers to agents houses under any circumstances.
Imagine my surprise today as I found myself at an agent’s house helping set up her WAHA computer. We managed to get it setup correctly but she had a problem logging in. She called into her helpdesk and they reset her account. At that point, she could successfully log in and take calls.
I knew how to resolve her network issues because I built her network. And she didn’t call my service desk. She called her service desk. She works for a different company than I do. But, I know her really well. I’m happy to help her out.
You see, my daughter started working from home today. And lucky for her she has live in tech support.
Stay safe
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.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
Tell your friends about this!
WAHA: Work At Home Agent
I broke a company rule today. But, it’s okay. . .mostly.
Six months ago my client had zero WAHA agents. Everyone worked in one of our call centers across the United States. And then COVID-19 turned our lives upside down.
And it sent a lot of our agents home. Not just home. Home loaded down with a company computer, a couple of monitors, keyboard, mouse, and headset.
When we designed our agent infrastructure we intentionally designed it to be as secure as possible. We were locking it down from both a physical and a network standpoint.
When we were asked to figure out how to send people to work from home, we weren’t even sure if it would work at first. There are multiple layers of security protections. We had to try to keep the security in place, while also allowing our agents the ability to do their jobs from home using their own local internet service provider.
When we first started testing our WAHA strategy, we did testing in the center. After we got it working in the center, we handed the computers to the agents and sent them home.
And it worked. . .mostly. But, there were a couple that didn’t. Over the phone, we worked through as much as we could. We tried all of our typical troublshooting steps. Not just me, I had our senior desktop engineers on the call too. We couldn’t get it working.
I requested permission to allow our engineer to go to the agent’s house. I mean, it worked in the center, there had to be something about the home setup that was making it not work. I got a very clear response from our Senior Vice President over desktops.
We do not send engineers to agents houses under any circumstances.
Imagine my surprise today as I found myself at an agent’s house helping set up her WAHA computer. We managed to get it setup correctly but she had a problem logging in. She called into her helpdesk and they reset her account. At that point, she could successfully log in and take calls.
I knew how to resolve her network issues because I built her network. And she didn’t call my service desk. She called her service desk. She works for a different company than I do. But, I know her really well. I’m happy to help her out.
You see, my daughter started working from home today. And lucky for her she has live in tech support.
Stay safe
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.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Do you like cowboy movies?
I like cowboy movies.
Did you know cowboy movies are a lie?
Just about every single one.
You know one that is more true than most?
Blazing Saddles. Seriously. Mel Brooks’ western spoof had more truth than many classic John Wayne movies.
If you haven’t seen it, Blazing Saddles stars Cleavon Little and Gene Wilder. Cleavon is black and Wilder is white. That’s part of the joke. And it’s hilarious. When Cleavon takes himself hostage and threatens to kill himself if the townspeople don’t stop trying to take him prisoner.
Trust me, it works.
Blazing saddles is also the movie that has a group of mexicans saying the line,
Badges? We don’t need no stinking badges
So, Brooks mixed whites, blacks and latinos all mixing it up in the Wild West.
Crazy right?
Not so much. In fact, it’s a better representation than John Wayne leading a troop of white cavalry troopers.
Despite what Hollywood showed us for years, cowboys were a very diverse bunch. They were about one third white. One third black and a third latino.
Django Unchained with Jamie Foxx? Yeah, that was not an uncommon sceanrio. Of course, his sunglasses were still out of place.
But, white cowboys weren’t the only lies that John Wayne told us. What’s more “wild west” than the bad guys robbing the bank? It shows up in all types of westerns; comedies, dramas, rom-coms (there’s probably at least a couple.)
How many banks would you guess were robbed in the “Wild West”? Let’s call the Wild West as the second half the 19th century. From 1859 through 1900.
I can tell you right now, your guess is too high. Pick a lower number.
You are still too high. Lower still.
Probably still kind of high, but you’re at least closer.
Less than ten.
Butch Cassidy robbed a few. He took $20,000 from a bank in Telluride, Colorado. Later he got $7,000 from a bank in Montpelier, Idaho. The robbed some more banks in South Dakota, New Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming.
Lots, right?
Not so much. The Wild Bunch (Cassidy’s gang) was unusually successful.
But, not as many others. Why?
Think about it. The West was full of ex soldiers, Confederate and Union. Everyone was armed. And towns were small. Strangers were noticed and the townspeople weren’t afraid to shoot at people who attempted to walk into their bank and steal their money. And the townspeople shooting at those bank robbers were black, white and brown.
Not exactly the story that Hollywood and John Wayne gave us at the movies.
It’s never a good idea to base your understanding of history on a movie. Unless maybe it’s “Blazing Saddles.”
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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There are 26 letters in the English alphabet. You can combine those letters into words, of course. How many words exist?
The Oxford English Dictionary is viewed as the definitive source for English words. It’s not your normal dictionary you have on your desk. In fact, the OED wouldn’t fit on your desk. Unless you had a very large desk. It’s a 20 volume set. The OED has 171,476 word definitions. Plus another 47,156 obsolete words. And another 9,500 derivative words.
Those words can be combined into books, of course. The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It has 170 million books. (Probably not exactly 170,000,000, but somewhere in the neighborhood.
Google is a lot more exact. According to the Google advanced algorith 129,864,880 books have been published in all of modern history.
Maybe it’s like the OED and those 47,156 obsolete words. In any case there are over 4500 self published books every day. That’s in addition to the books published by the traditional publishing house. Then, you can think about how many copies of each book are printed.
- 26 letters
- 171,476 words
- 170,000,000 books (I trust Library of Congress more than Google.)
Writing is the ultimate example of making big ones out of small ones.
We are expanding the patio in our backyard. Originally we thoguht about buying pavers. We don’t want another concrete slab. For one it’s not as pretty and we want to do the work ourselves.
First, we tried a 2’x3′ form. It had space for 6 various shaped bricks. But, there was almost an inch of space between each brick. We wanted more like a quarter of an inch.
So, instead we built our own form. Instead of six small bricks, we used 8′ long 2x4s and spacers to build a grid of sixteen 2’x2′ forms. We figure it will take about 35 squares to cover the area we need.
Did you know there’s a difference between cement and concrete? Cement comes in bags. Concrete is what you walk on. Cement is actually just one ingredient in concrete. You mix cement with sand and gravel. Then, you add water and air and if the mixture is just right, it hardens into concrete.
Sand. Gravel. Water. Air? You can’t get much smaller than that. And yet, from those small things, we get 2’x2′ squares, or sidewalks, or skyscrapers, or bridges that span canyons.
Like writing, it’s a matter of making big ones out of small ones.
Stay safe
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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I was part of a team that developed training materials at Microsoft. Microsoft was all about shipping products. They coin of the realm at Microsoft was shipping. People who shipped products did well.
Microsoft awarded a Ship It award to the programming team when they shipped a product. Once you had an award, you were awarded an additional brass plate to commemorate each additional product you shipped.
Ship it awards were the stock and trade of programmers, testers and program managers. Unfortunately, those who wrote training manuals were eligable.
My training department created their own Ship It Award. It wasn’t quite as elaborate as the one the product teams got, but it was still a marble plaque and you got a new bronze plate for each additional course you shipped.
And it worked. Once a month, at a team meeting, the awards with be given out. Some people were uncomfortable being recognized in front of the group. We were a bunch of writers, after all. Others, enjoyed it. And pretty much everyone displayed theirs on a shelf in their office.
And then, one month, there were no awards. Instead we were informed that the team had implemented a new recognition program. The new recognization program was an award. Each month, one team member would be recognized and given a $50 gift certificate.
Why did we change the program?
We figured everyone already had a Ship It Award so they didn’t really mean anything anymore.
Who chooses the award winner?
The managers do.
What was do bad about the new program? After all, isn’t the chance of getting fifty bucks better than a granite slab and some bits of brass?
No, not even close. The new program was a disaster compared to the old program. Here are just a few of the reasons.
First, the old program rewarded every team member. The old idea of “we rise together, we fall together.” The new program singled out an individual. Sure, you’re happy for your teammates. . .Sure you are. . .mostly.
Also, the old program rewarded members for their work. The new program rewarded people for managers’ opinions of them.
Writing is a lonely business. Often the only people to have any idea if a tech writer is any good are the editor and the proofreader. It’s difficult for managers of other groups to understand the contribution of an individual writer.
So, who won the “managers’ award”? Exactly the wrong people. People who instead of filling their role, writer, editor, tester, in their own group spend more time working on projects that have a high profile to the managers on the team.
Money, is a terrible motivator. It’s been years: over twenty years since I worked for that team. I don’t remember if I won one of the gift cards or not. In fact, I would guess I didn’t. I wasn’t particularly well liked by the managers.
But, sitting on top of a shelf in my dining room are two Ship It awards, one for work I did on the product team, and one for courseware I’ve written. 
I made millions of dollars at Microsoft, much of it never existed, except on paper. But, those dollars are long gone. Some were spent (much on adoptions.) Some was lost in the failing housing market. Still more was lost in the market downturn.
Back when I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, an extra $50 was not enough to even make a slight difference.
But, an award? Something that says, “Hey, you built something and we appreciate it”? That means something.
I saw guys who were worth millions, who only worked because they enjoyed the challenge, keep track of their Ship It awards. They had them proudly displayed in their offices.
People are motivated by many things. Some want power. Some want fame. Some want anonymity. Some want money. But, everyone wants recognition. And when you have enough money, enough fame, enough enough. Recognition stays with us.
How do you get an elephant to move?
You just have to find the right motivation.
Then, he wants to move.
Stay safe.
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.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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Fathers Day was always a difficult holiday for me. I’ve had many fathers in my life. That was part of my problem with Fathers Day, I think.
My birth father and my mother split up when I was just a baby. Too young to even remember. We visited him on a regular basis, but the relationship was strained. I know he loved me in his way. When I was 16 I was adopted by my step father.
He was a reserved man, not given to displays of affection. But, he was a good father. I never heard him say he loved me, but I knew he did in his way. He was my father for about 30 years. He passed away on June 12, 2009. Hard to believe it’s been 11 years.
You might think having him pass away so close to Fathers Day would make it a bittersweet holiday. However, my relationship was such that Fathers Day became much easier to handle after he passed away. No more awkward phone calls, both obligatory and dreaded.
I’ve been a father for longer than I knew my dad. It’s strange to consider. He was always old, and yet I’m much older than he was when he married my mother.
As my signature block points out, I’m a father many times over. Some of my children are birth children. Others were adopted. The thought is not lost on me that my sons are the adopted sons of an adopted son.
In addition to sons by birth and adoption, I also have sons by marriage. My sons-in-law and daughters’ boy friends are as much a part of our family as if they had been born, or adopted into it.
They have given me beautiful grandchildren, boys and girls. I enjoy being a father, but being a grandfather is even better.
On Sunday, we had our first large family gathering since the COVID pandemic began. Ten of my children and four grandchildren made their way to my house to be celebrate Fathers Day. They gave me an eclectic set of gifts: a tape measure (really, it was one I had asked for,) a set of bandages that are useful to keep your knees from being sore when hiking (seriously, it was something I will use a lot,) and a six burner propane BBQ grill. (I said it was an eclectic group.)
I guess I’m the patriarch of my little clan. One of the pictures we took was me and my grandchildren. We missed the two that weren’t there. I’m not sure that I fit the image of the clan elder. But, then, my family has never been what you would call traditional.
Hopefully your Fathers Day was memorable and enjoyable.
It will always be an odd holiday for me.
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) 2020 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved