Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Mac Book Pro

So, I got a 17” Mac Book Pro for work.

Still hate it.

Why do Linux and Mac have to do things just to be contrary??  It just pisses me off.  Close button goes on the right, okay button goes on the left.  In a terminal highlighting something copies and right mouse button pastes (or even center button). 

Fighting against evil

In my life time I have seen my society take the church and turn it into something hardly recongizable by those from a few hundred years ago. 

Catholics:  constantly barraged by lawsuits due to priest misconduct
Episcopal:  Gay clergy eligible for all Episcopal ministry - including bishops
Methodist:  Don’t get me started… still too close to tender nerves.
Others:  Claiming to be the church

Where are the real Christians in this time of turmoil?  Where are the Athanasius’s and the Nicholas’s and the John’s and the Basil’s?

We have organizations which are obviously not christian claiming to be christian.  We have organizations that have historically been considered Christian doing things that are obviously anti-Biblical and which goes against millennia of teachings.

I know… Jesus came into the world to conquer sin, death and the devil.  What we are seeing is those consequences of these three enemies.  I still don’t like it.  I won’t like it in 2028 when the world has ended, and I don’t think I’ll like it any of the years between then and now.

We have to get rid of this sand!  We have to concentrate on the Rock - and unfortunately most of the traditional (american) religious institutions have so much sand under their foundations and so much bitter acid poured into the chalice that it is unapproachable. 

Thursday, April 16, 2009

A thousand times I’ll tell you… quit being a roadblock to your own success!

I have heard and seen it asked more times than I can count. I have seen and heard it asked by people looking for jobs, by people writing books, and any where else in the business world where documents are submitted electronically. While it changes slightly, the question is essentially the same.

I’m just curious as to why you, like many recruiters, emphasize a WORD copy of a resume for a position that requires a candidate who is, obviously, heavily into Linux. Like a growing number of Open Source professionals, I don’t use Microsoft products. Can you not make use of a pdf, or text format?

The above is a question asked on linkedin.com for a position for a LAMP engineer/Administrator.

To which there have been several replies…

I’m not sure about this case in particular, but recruiters like to have it in Word format so that they can add their logo/information to your resume. Can’t do that in txt or pdf.

...surely a copy of the resume saved as HTML would work, no? Then it could always be imported into Office or most any other word processing app. Just a thought…

So, here, with all my astuteness, is my response.

A word copy is required for many reasons. First, there has to be a standard. The standard in the business world is Microsoft Word. Second, recruiters live in a business world, not in the world that they are recruiting in. They don’t accept .txt, .html, .pdf, xml or anything else because it is not their job to prepare your marketing documents. It is their job to hook up candidates with clients. Third, they have written their tools and processes to work with the business standard. Recruiters, as a general rule, are not technologists. They are marketers, sales people, and the like.

YOUR job is to make THEIR job as simple as possible. YOUR job is to make THEIR job as efficient as possible. YOUR job is not to be a computer bigot, a computer snob, nor a roadblock to their success nor to your own.

It is not about doing something that could be imported or that “would work”. The more time THEY spend doing YOUR job, the less time THEY get to spend doing THEIR job, which means the LESS money YOU and people like you get to make.

I don’t really mean to come off sounding like a butt. I have heard this question and these types of answers more times than I can count. The business world doesn’t care about what we are using. They care about making money. They care about using the right tool for the job. The right tool (in today’s environment) for submitting an electronic resume is in Microsoft Word format. I am not in any way endorsing Microsoft or their products. However, I am a realist. That being said, I keep my resume available in Word, HTML, and PDF on my web site. The PDF almost never gets looked at (other than by the search engine bots), the html and word ones do.

One more thing, if you believe the format you desire your resume to be in can be imported into office, then great. Save it in whatever format you want, and then import it to office.

Actually, I have a better idea. I think you should leave your resume in pdf or txt or whatever. That way, I have a better chance of getting the job.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Gartner survey

A professional acquaintance of mine asked me via twitter if I had taken the new Gartner CIO Self Assessment questionairre.

I had not, so I went over and took a look.  It asks some very good questions.  I have not read the book upon which it was based.  However, I think it will be a good choice for my up and coming trip to San Francisco to meet everyone at my new company.  However, the same professional acquaintance is also reading The 4 Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive.  I wonder if I can borrow that when he is done.  Maybe I can trade him my two Jack Welch books for it (here and here - I believe they really must be read together).

So, I started going through the questionnaire and realized even more that I am no longer in a management role.  I am a developer.  This is a completely different skill set.  However, it is doing for me a couple things that are very important.

1.  It is providing an income and opportunity.  (Most important!!)
2.  It is giving me the opportunity of being ”nothing but a technologist” but with the very recent memory and experience of being a manager/director. 
3.  It is giving me the opportunity to put my philosophies to the test - such as leading from behind, making my boss successful makes me successful, practicing candor, seeing and experiencing differentiation, providing an intelligent voice, etc.  Certainly these can be done and were done by me as a manager.  Also, as a manager, I never forgot I was also an employee.  However, now the situation is different.  First, I am not a manager.  Second there are more of us.  My previous position I was basically top technology dog.  It was both exciting and people filled and lonely both at the same time.

I do miss many of the management aspects of things.  I enjoy business and business challenges.  I enjoy working out ways to develop others and make them better professionals.  I enjoy thinking about business and translating it into IT (I also enjoy thinking about processes in general and translating them into code), I enjoy creating vision and then turning it into reality, I enjoy philosophically determining risks and then coming up with concrete ways of mitigating them, I enjoy educating executives on the use of IT and helping them figure out what real-time metrics they need so that they can ensure they are getting their jobs done or that others are getting their jobs done and that things are progressing as it should, I enjoy (to go along with the last one) shaping and informing expectations.

What will be interesting is to see how I get evaluated being at a new company.  I think that, particularly early on, I’ll be interested to see how I get evaluated on communication, time management, and understanding and meeting expectations. 

Going back to that Gartner questionnaire, on the first page it has the following quote (from the book I am sure): 

Leadership and management are different but complementary. Management is about execution. Leadership is about change, specifically influencing others to change. Leading through influence is critical for New CIO Leaders. They must lead their business colleagues by influencing their view of IT but without a formal base of authority or power. CIOs can’t TELL their business colleagues what to do, but they can influence the decisions they make.

I would agree.  I think that a first line manager is a manager.  A second line manager is a leader.  So, non-managers begin to be managers and then get placed in such positions.  Managers begin to become leaders and then get placed in such positions.  I wonder how much I am a manager and how much I am a leader.  I wonder how much I am attracted to management and how much I am attracted to leadership. 

Well, the attraction part I can answer confidently.  I am very much attracted to leadership.  Management is what I do.  I am not so much attracted to it, but it is the end result for me.  I don’t know if that makes sense or not.  It does to me.

This is one of those times where you wish that those who have worked for you could magically “age” 20-30 years in wisdom and experience and then provide you with wise feedback based on real experience and give you an assessment on your management and leadership abilities. 

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Sex Offenders, Dr. Bacchus, My Response

My friend posted some thoughts he received on a phone call he got early one morning informing him that a “sex offender” had moved in to his zip code.  You should read his thoughts.  Several people have responded, and I did too.  However, I also wanted to post my response here as well.

========= my response =========

Statistics:

The sexual victimization of children is overwhelming in magnitude yet largely unrecognized and underreported. Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood.

[D. Finkelhor. “Current Information on the Scope and Nature of Child Sexual Abuse.” The Future of Children: Sexual Abuse of Children, 1994, volume 4, page 37.]

(source:  http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2815 )

These numbers are based on what was reported and are outdated (1994) and do not include internet exploitation.  Many people who know about these things believe that the number for boys is higher, but they don’t have statistics to prove it.  They just keep finding more and more instances of it not being reported.  (and, yes, I have sent an e-mail to them asking them to update their numbers)

“Approximately one in seven youth online (10 to 17 years-old) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet.
Four percent (4%) received an aggressive sexual solicitation — a solicitor who asked to meet them somewhere; called them on the telephone; or sent them offline mail, money, or gifts.
Thirty-four percent (34%) had an unwanted exposure to sexual material — pictures of naked people or people having sex.
Children revealed 27% of these episodes of unwanted exposure to sexual material to a parent or guardian.  Children reported 42% of the distressing encounters – episodes that made them feel very or extremely upset or afraid – to a parent or guardian.
[David Finkelhor, Kimberly J. Mitchell, and Janis Wolak. Online Victimization of Youth: Five Years Later. Alexandria, Virginia: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, 2006, pages 7-8, 33.] “

(source:  http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2815 )

I know lots of kids.  Probably am “close” to 30-35.  Presuming that half are of each sex, that means I know 17(ish) of each.  If the statistics are accurate and if they apply to the specific group that I know (which, of course, I hope and pray that they are not!), then that means that 3-4 of the girls and 1-2 of the boys have been sexually exploited or will be by the time they are adults. 

Other statistics, by the way, put this at 1:3 for girls and 1:6 for boys.

The thought of this happening to 4-6 of “my kids” is enough to make me start carrying a very sharp knife and doing some exploiting of my own. 

These kids are the victims.  The exploiters are, well, the exploiters.  Studies have shown that a person committing this particular group of crimes has an extremely small chance of being rehabilitated and a very large chance of recommitting.

You said that alienation is one of the outcomes of these telephone calls.  I think you are absolutely correct.  While as a Christian, I am called to forgive their sins, I am also told that that which is done do the least of these is done to Christ.  I am told to love the sinner, but hate the sin.  I am also aware that although sins can be forgiven, the consequences of those sins must be dealt with and do not go away. 

I’ve been doing a lot of contemplation about sin and forgiveness and confession recently (thanks to Father Justin).  Sin, I have been told affects the entire community.  This is why the early Christians did public confessions.  The church found this impractical as it grew and moved away from public confessions to confessions with the priest there as the witness who stands in for the community. 

I believe that these particular groups of crimes that gets the criminal labled a “sex offender” is a good example of the communal affect the sin has.  The question is, how should the community react to this sin?

Resources: 
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:
http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=218
Cyber Tip Line:  http://www.cybertipline.com
Report adult obscenity that does not include children to http://www.obscenitycrimes.org.
Confessing in the Presence of a Priest:  http://www.oca.org/QA.asp?ID=154&SID=3

========= end my response =========