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Clarity

Mar 11, 2010 9:29pm

There are times when it would help to have someone else read this blog before I post. Last night was one of those times. I was so intent on using the exact wording of my second-line manager’s question as an excuse to insert a reference to IBM’s Career Derailment Factors...

Off the rails

Mar 10, 2010 9:09pm

IBMers who have spent time looking at IBM’s Leadership Competencies may be familiar with the eight career Derailment Factors that IBM Learning has identified (hint: avoid them!). I found a new one today. After reaching out to my network in the wake of last week’s surprise, several people had identified one particular...

Think Time

Mar 9, 2010 10:53pm

After last week’s surprise, the rest of the week was a whirl of phone calls, meetings, and e-mail exchanges, making and renewing contacts, gathering information, and trying to get to a place where I’d have enough data to think about considering making plans. I realized that while all that activity was...

Right

Mar 8, 2010 10:38pm

I had my first session today at Right Management, the outplacement firm that IBM has contracted with. I had a 90-minute one-on-one with a “Career Management Consultant”; we talked, unsurprisingly, about me and my options going forward. There was some very concrete advice (have a local phone number and a...

Showtime!

Mar 7, 2010 10:28pm

I’ve been taking classes at ComedySportz San Jose for a little over a year and I’ve finally reached the pinnacle of the system, Rec League (we even have our own t-shirts!). In Rec League, we intermix classes and shows — tonight, it was my turn to be in a...

That was the week (and job) that was

Mar 6, 2010 9:56pm

It started very innocently. It was Monday morning, about 9:20am; I’d been in the office about 30 minutes, after my usual weekly trip to the chiropractor. I’d been unable to connect to the intranet all weekend because of a fiber cut in Westchester County, so I was busily processing my...

Simply amazing

Feb 28, 2010 8:57am

Google has become part of my daily life, but every so often, I am still amazed by what it makes possible. This morning, while washing some dishes, a tiny fragment of melody from my childhood popped into my head — it was a line from some novelty song that I think...

A GTD insight from Merlin Mann

Feb 18, 2010 12:02pm

Merlin Mann made one observation during his OmniFocus talk that I thought was useful enough to repeat (partially as a way of solidifying it in my own mind!). Even though he’s Mr. Inbox Zero himself, he leaves items in the OmniFocus inbox until he knows what he’s going to...

links for 2010-02-17

Feb 17, 2010 10:03pm

The Hidden Art of Achieving Creative Flow (tags: flow gtd productivity creativity)...

A day at Macworld Expo 2010

Feb 17, 2010 5:19pm

I tried to make it to Macworld last year, but work got in the way; this year, I did a better job of defending my calendar (and having the expo include Friday didn’t hurt, either) and was able to make the trip. IBM (mostly Lotus) was out in force — they...

links for 2009-12-07

Dec 7, 2009 10:03pm

20 Key Questions on Motivation and Habits, Answered (tags: simplify life)...

links for 2009-11-24

Nov 24, 2009 10:03pm

Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Making a travel checklist (tags: RTM travel)...

Three days with the IBM Academy in [internal] Second Life

Nov 20, 2009 5:11pm

The IBM Academy of Technology used to have an Annual General Meeting where the 300 or so members, along with guests and senior IBM executives, would spend three-plus days in intense interaction, setting our agenda for the next year and taking advantage of chance meetings. Oh, and socializing. ...

A day at the CIO Council

Nov 4, 2009 9:03pm

I spent today at the CIO Council; the session was devoted to Enterprise Architecture, a subject on which I am most definitely not an expert, so I stayed relatively quiet much of the day. But the first speaker, Gary Hamel, wasn’t focused on Enterprise Architecture (I won’t abbreviate it, because when...

A GTD Experiment

Oct 20, 2009 9:58pm

Kelly Forrister, @GTDCoachKelly, ran a guided mindsweep on Twitter last week. I found it useful, and thought it might be handy to be able to repeat it (using her prompts and timings), so I threw together some truly awful HTML and JavaScript to do so. Here it is. ...

A trip to Banff National Park (the final day)

Sep 6, 2009 7:36pm

We knew we’d have to get up fairly early on Monday to make our flight home, so we decided to practice by setting an alarm clock for Sunday morning, too. It wasn’t too painful. Since Yelpers had praised Melissa’s breakfast, we decided to go there — our timing was great...

A trip to Banff National Park (day 3)

Sep 5, 2009 8:11pm

Saturday dawned early, I think; we didn’t. We decided to try somewhere else for breakfast, and, based on the bartender’s suggestion on Thursday (and some Yelp and Frommer’s research), we settled on Coyote’s. The place was nearly full when we got there, but there were spaces at the counter, so...

A trip to Banff National Park (day 2)

Sep 4, 2009 10:49pm

Friday, we enjoyed not setting an alarm clock, but still woke in plenty of time for the hotel’s continental breakfast, which was OK but no more. The weather looked promising, so we took off for a full day of exploring, with the Columbia Icefield as our goal. We left Banff...

A trip to Banff National Park (day 1)

Sep 3, 2009 10:16pm

About three years ago, I participated in a workshop at CSCW on “Revisiting Online Trust.” When the workshop ended, we left with plans to work on a special edition of a journal, but that didn’t happen. What did happen, though, was that I was thoroughly impressed with the...

Controlling the Airport from the command line

Aug 14, 2009 10:31pm

Both my MacBook Pro and my 20″ iMac are running Leopard 10.5.8. On both machines, it’s easy to turn off the Airport from the command line: sudo ifconfig en1 down On the MacBook Pro, it’s also easy to turn the Airport back on in the obvious way: sudo ifconfig en1 up But on...