Who appointed me the Help Desk?

One of the hardest things about having a career in computers is that you are suddenly the help desk for the family.

Can’t get on the internet at home – call me.  I can tell you where the WEP key is, even though I have told you two dozen times.

Don’t know how to run your new Blackberry – call me.  I can push buttons to figure things out.

Can’t get your cell card to get initialized – call me and take me through every agonizing step as I drive down the highway at 6 am.

Have a problems with a spreadsheet – call me.  I just love to listen to you pound the keyboard.  When I ask you where you are at, the screen changes because you can’t quit typing.

Want to upload your pictures from your camera to the computer – call me.  I have nothing better to do than have to retrain you for the 10th time how to upload the pictures.

The Tivo in your office stops working – call me.  I certainly know how to unplug it and plug it back in.

Can’t get the DVD player to play your movies – call me.  I can go get the instruction manual out to learn how to play a movie.

God forbid the satellite dish is out – call me.  I love a panic phone call when I am on a business trip because you can’t reset the satellite dish.

Family Help desk hours have been changed – all calls will be answered from 8:00 am -8:01 am on Saturday.  If you are calling after hours, please leave a message and we will have a technician call you back.  Otherwise feel free to get the instruction manuals out and figure it out before I call you back.

Food and Technology

I love it when two of my favorite things merge – food and technology.  I really wonder where my family dinners would be without the Internet.  Dinner is much more interesting at our house with new recipes

It is great to Google new recipes.  For instance, I wanted to make Chicken and Rice.  I was tired of the usual chicken, rice and cream of mushroom soup.  I found a unique tasting one at:   http://southernfood.about.com/od/chickenrice/r/bl10805e.htm Halloween would have been a bust except for the recipe of mummy dogs and bat fries.  http://www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=16015 Loved by the big and little people in my life.

Then there is Food Network.  Food Network is my absolute favorite source for recipes.  My family has tried all sorts of things we would have never tried.  Ancho Chile Powder is a favorite new ingredient.  Paula Deen’s “Grandma Pauls Carmel Corn” was a huge hit at our house.  Not to mention any number of recipes from the other food network chefs.  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/grandma-pauls-caramel-corn-recipe/index.html

Today’s favorite recipe came from the Dallas Morning news.  Anyone who knows restaurants knows Dallas is a treasure trove of wonderful eating establishments.  Today I found a Flank Steak recipe from The Grape in Dallas – which I can’t wait to try.  http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/taste/stories/DN-nf_cheapsteak_0903liv.ART.State.Edition1.1a47c08.html

In our current recessionary climate I am planning on exploring even more recipes on the Web so it will feel like we are eating out – yet saving money.

Honesty and Respect

Honesty – adherrence to the facts, fairness and straightforwardness, sincerity.

Respect – act of giving particular consideration or attention to; high or special regard esteem.

Well it happened again, someone tried to flatter me with all sorts of nice comments and then they dropped the bomb.  This person says they like to be honest.  The situation left me wondering what does honest mean.  I had to look it up, it left me confused.  The situation left me questioning my respect for the individual.  I had to look up the definition of respect too.

I was left wondering about what it means to be dishonest.  Perhaps this person’s approach to the situation to begin with.  Getting their ducks in a row, making commitments to others without facts, still claiming they are honest.  Attempting to give constructive criticism thinking it will be well received when the receiver knows the other person does not have the facts,

Does honesty mean only being honest when it suits your situation?  Does it mean only being honest when it suits your timing in getting things done?

The funny thing about honesty it is well received when you deliver it based on facts, not how it suits your purposes.  When it is based on facts, respect stays in tact.  When it isn’t respect is lost.

I am not a person to hold a grudge, so I will move on in my relationship with this person.  It will be hard for me to really know if this person is being honest with me from now on.  I guess I needed to know what their definition of honesty was.  I now know.

Honesty and respect go a long way in a relationship – personal or business.

Tomatos Glorious Tomatos

It’s finally here! Yippeee!!! Homegrown tomatos.  I love this time of year.  You BBQ czars can forget about your meat.  Bring me fresh veggies.  Finally!  BLT’s, fresh sliced tomatos, tomatos and mozzarella, fresh tomato sauce – need I go on.

I can’t get enough of tomato’s.  Add fresh green beans, pea pods, corn on the cob, fresh carrots, homegrown lettuce or any other in season vegetable and I am in heaven.  I just need a little protein to keep me going but otherwise this time of year is for the fresh veggies.

I had my first BLT of the season this year.  Rather I had two of them.  Good bacon, mayo and fresh tomato and I am there.

Tomatos Glorious Tomatos I love ‘em.

Happy Birthday America

You can’t help but love the 4th of July holiday.  Not only is it sign that summer has reached it’s mid-point, but it is a great reason for folks to slowdown and enjoy each other’s company.

I really love July 4th.  Every house is decorated with flags and  folks wear patriotic clothing.  I love seeing all the red, white and blue.

We start the day with the childrens bike parade.  This year we went to see the B17 that was at our local airport.  A couple of WWII fliers were there to answer the questions of folks.  One of the gentleman actually flew in the ball turret.  After seeing the thing I was very impressed.  What a great way to celebrate our nations birthday with a WWII veteran.

The rest of the day was the swimming pool, BBQ and fun with neighbors and friends.  All the kids get together and share fireworks.  We parents supervise and visit and watch remembering all our 4th of July’s as kids.

Finally the ice cream – the coolest part of the day.

I thank my lucky stars daily that I live in a free country!  Happy Birthday America!

Cavemen and Disaster Recovery

One of the advantages of living in the MidWest is that we have the Ozark Mountains.  While many people enjoy all the outdoor capabilities there are, others find a business in these caves.

For years folks have used caves for offsite storage of documents, tapes and files.  The currect use of caves is for IT disaster recovery sites.

I had the privilege of visiting one of these sites that a customer uses.  The particular site is in Branson.  All visitors have to be escorted onsite by someone who is a customer of the facility.  The cave hosts three million square feet in storage.  There are two generators with plans to build a sub-station.  Several large companies use this cave for IT hosting and several known companies use it for off-site storage.  To keep the dust down, the shale walls have been concreted over.  Gas powered devices are not allowed past the front door, electric vehicles are the chosen mode of transportation.  Large pillars support the cave roof.  Moisture is limited to the front of the cave where the front was blasted away to provide doors.  Unlike another cave site nearby that had many shale layers that housed moisture drip pan throughout hte cave.  There are so many other features of this cave it is amazing.

I was really curious of what it was like inside.  I knew it would be cool temperature wise, but I was curious if it was claustrophobic inside – it wasn’t.  All in all I was very impressed.

Caves aren’t just for cavemen anymore.

Paper, Paper Everywhere

I am constantly reminded that I am not the only one who has too much paper.  Talking to a customer today I realized that just as I get frustrated with too much paper and too many files, so do they.

So how can we get rid of the paper.

1)  Get rid of anything that you can get electronically.  Personally these consist of brokerage statements, bank statements, credit card statements, etc..  Professionally these consist of pay stubs, eMails, green bar reports, etc.

2)  What you have to keep look for an imaging solution.

3)  Start imaging everything

4)  Start imaging old paper

For the home you can go as simple as using the scanning software with your printer or as sophisticated as products such as neat receipts and other software.

For the office first you will probably need a higher capacity scanner than your printer.  As for the software, some software allows you to grab printouts before they go to paper and index them.  The key to the profesisonal software is indexing.  You want to be able to search contextually (using keywords).  You also want to be able to comment on the the images if necessary and redact i.e. whiteout key parts of the images you don’t want other to see.

Besides getting things moved to electronic copies, imaging also has the ability to set up workflow between co-workers.  (Imagine anything that needs to be routed around for approval.)

We deal a lot with customer on imaging and what all it is used for is quite amazing.  Many hire temporary help to scan and image old paper online.  Others use conversion services to move from microfilm to electronic images.

So next time you get paper, paper everywhere think about making it electronic.

Is eMail “Old School”?

For the last month I have set the goal to begin to really use the productivity tools that I have been given to see if they actually help or hinder my productivity.  Thus began not only an in-depth examination about Lotus Notes (our personal productivity software of choice), Salesplace (our CRM software of choice), and instant messaging.  But, also how could new social networking technologies such as blogging, Linken In, wikis, twitter etc., help make me productive and help me better communicate with others.  My goal was to increase my productivity and increase customer face time.

So far so good.

Today I read something in one of my favorite Lotus Notes blogs, by IBM’er Ed Brill (www.edbrill.com), that got me thinking – is eMail becoming “old school.”  As one of IBM’s Notes evangelists, Ed was responding to an article in Sunday’s New York Times by another fellow IBM’er, entitled “I Freed Myself from eMail’s Grip.”  This Times article went on to describe how the author was using “collaboration” tools to get things done and minimizing the use of his personal productivity tools (eMail).

I spent a good part of the day today reflecting how one lives without eMail or even minimizes it.  I then realized maybe we have now gone so far to the left using eMail as our main source of communications, that we have forgotten about all the other ways we connect with people.  Prior to eMail the good old telephone is how we communicated.  Prior to social networking sites we had chat rooms.  Now with social networking sites, and collaboration tools like instant messaging we have more choices and newer ways to communicate.

We recently held a seminar for clients and prospects on social networking.  The idea was to educate them on what is out there and how it is being used.  The interaction between attendees was amazing.  My favorite story came from one of our University clients.  The individual attending had been tasked with how to best use blogs, wikis and other social networking tools to communicate between faculty and students at the University.  He went on to describe how an incoming freshman inquired about what tools the college used to communicate.  When she was told eMail, instant messaging, wikis and other collaboration tools were used she stated – “eMail is how old people communicate.”

I have worked with quite a few companies in the last year replacing eMail systems and setting up retention strategies for eMail. Buying not only hardware and software, but services for these projects.

So I ask you is eMail “old school” or is it one of several tools to communicate?

Lightening Bugs and Three-Year Olds

After four days being cooped up with a three-year old with chicken pox, we escaped to the front yard.

I am not sure who needed this more her or me.  The toys flew out of the garage so fast that it had my head spinning.  All I could think about was the fact that I would probably have to put them back in.

As I sat on my lawn chair to watch the world go by, my daughter decided this was the perfect time to learn to drive her Barbie car she received for Christmas.  I got a huge kick trying to teach her to drive from my lawn chair.  Forward, backward, left, right, towards the red car, back in the driveway.  Anyway you get the picture.

Alas she noticed one of her favorite things of summer – lightening bugs.  The car was quickly parked and she began running around the yard in her PJs and Crocs chasing lightening bugs.  She quickly realized she couldn’t catch them.  Pretty soon I was dispatched to go inside to get her bug cage (gift from the Easter bunny) and net.

As we chased the lightening bugs around the yard trying to catch them.  I got to thinking things don’t get any better than this.  Summer is meant for the simple pleasures of being outside catching lightening bugs, eating popsicles, visting with neighbors.  In the age of having to have every electronic gadget available to entertain children sometimes it is the simplest things that amuse them.

Why do we as parents think that they need to be occupied every moment with these gadgets?  Why can’t we let them enjoy the outdoors and the simplest of things?

We got a lightening bug.  It slept in the cage next to her bed all night.  We finally released it this morning with tears.  Assurances of more lightening bugs and more summer night fun helped.

It is my goal this summer to kick back, relax and enjoy the simplest pleasures of the summer.