I Think, Therefore I Rant!

I am sure that you have heard of the current oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.  If you haven’t, here is a link – please come back after you have caught up with current events.

I am just aghast at how stupid these companies are. Current reports are that they didn’t install an “acoustic switch” on the well. From NewsInferno:

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded last week was not outfitted with a safety device that might have prevented the massive oil spill now nearing the U.S. Gulf Coast. The device, known as an acoustic switch, is a last-resort protection against underwater spills, and is required by regulators in Norway and Brazil. Unfortunately, the U.S. has no such regulation for oil wells operating off of its shores.  

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• Create Your Own Windows Update CD/DVD/USB With c’t Offline Update

September 3, 2009

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While I didn’t always agree with Senator Kennedy’s positions on certain issues, there is no question that the man was always trying to advance the care of his fellow man. The “liberal lion of the Senate” spent decades in public service but always lived in the shadow of his older “over achieving” brothers, Joseph, John, and Robert who all died at a young age and due to tragic circumstances.

There will be a variety of obituaries on the Senator, so I am not going to link to any individual one.  Just do a search on Google News if you want to read more.

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Mastering Technical Sales has a great article on their site explaining how to handle 200 emails a day. It is purposely written for suggestions to their target audience which is the pre-sales technical folks that are the brains in the IT sales world.

I pulled out a few of the more relevant paragraphs that were relevant to all regarding of profession but I suggest that you read the entire article.

I will start this suggestion list by sharing one of my habits. “Don’t file – SEARCH”.  Install one of the several desktop search indexing tools such as Google Desktop Search, Windows Desktop Search, or Copernic Desktop Search. Then, when you have read and are finished with an email, move it to a “Done” folder and forget about it.  Don’t try to figure out if you should file the email in the customer folder, the folder of the person that sent you the email, the folder for product problems or whatever.  Most people end up spending way to much time worrying about their filing system or trying to find an email in the file system.  Don’t worry about it – just search for the email in one of the above systems let the engine do the heavy lifting for you.  

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With any downturn in the economy, there are always new rules and regulations that are discussed or passed to prevent the previous calamity from occurring again. The same is true for this latest downturn with a variety of efforts and attention being shown to the banking and mortgage industries.

Now attention is also being shown to the venture capitalists. This is not necessary. Nothing in this current downturn can have VC activity pointed to as the cause. In fact, VCs are fairly well self-regulated by the activity of the stock market and they take a sizeable set-back when the tech bubble bursts (most notably in the early part of this decade).

No VC is too big to fail and no VC has a huge majority of the market. It simply doesn’t make sense to overly regulate this industry when so much of what we enjoy on a regular basis is the result of VC activity (nearly the entire IT industry including the technology that makes this blog possible and your ability to read it).  

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• ‘Birthers’ Are Truly Certifiable

July 28, 2009

• Unreality-Based

July 28, 2009

• 10 Questions for Supporters of ‘ObamaCare’

July 27, 2009

• Boost Your Sales: “Beware of Hiring Your Competitor’s Sales People,” by Lee Salz

July 27, 2009

• 10 Ways To Use Twitter As A Reminder Service

July 27, 2009

• Ever wonder who your hard drive’s father is?

July 27, 2009

• Stumbling Governors Signal Trouble for Democrats

July 26, 2009

• Obama Health-Care Plan Would Take Away 5 Important Freedoms, CNN Says; Obama Would Also Raise Taxes, End Affordable Plans, and Break Promises

July 27, 2009

• Lindzen on Climate Hysteria

July 26, 2009

• Declassified Images Reveal Extreme Arctic Ice Melt

July 26, 2009

• Boost Your Sales: “The Power of 1% Negotiation,” by Michael Schatzki

July 20, 2009

• Boost Your Sales: “Collaborative Negotiating Strategies,” by Dr. Tony Alessandra

July 22, 2009

• The iPhone Story
 

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• How Do Climate Models Work?

July 13, 2009

• CO2 and Temperature Link Not Well Understood by Climate Models

July 23, 2009

• Reports of the death of climate skepticism are greatly exaggerated

July 24, 2009

• Leave it to the Experts

July 23, 2009

• Yahoo Messenger for iPhone gets push-y

July 24, 2009

• How to Make Money (Passively) With Your Blog

July 26, 2009

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After being on an iPhone for a year, I don’t think I could ever go back to a Windows Mobile phone.  I used the Windows Mobile platform for probably 11 years (including the original Windows CE non-phone devices) and it always seemed like the NEXT generation would solve all my problems. The next generation never did come and by the time I gave up, I was in the habit of restarting the phone every morning.

I recently tried to install the desktop search tool from Microsoft.  After several tries and lots of reading online, I couldn’t get the add-on installed that would allow this tool to search my Outlook 2003 files (let alone my Thunderbird personal email).  I gave up and installed Google desktop and was completely indexed on everything in one overnight session.  

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I read a lot of RSS feeds for work, blogging, and general interest.  I used to use Google Reader for most of this before I had my iPhone.  When the iPhone came out though I found that the iPhone reader was very difficult for me to read without my reading glasses (I have reached that point in life when I need to keep reading glasses close when I am going to do serious reading).  When I read feeds on my laptop, I don’t mind using my glasses but if I am away from the computer and just trying to catch a quick update, reading glasses are a pain to deal with.

Since the Reader on the iPhone wouldn’t let me change fonts, I went with another service, Newsgator, for my needs.  This required me to use their desktop app (or web app) as well.  I still prefered Google’s Reader but the entire package put me ahead.  

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Like a lot of people, I have become hooked on “desktop search” products. These products index your hard drive’s documents so that you can quickly and easily search for that piece of information you know that you have but are missing. The most popular version of this is Google Desktop but there are others and I particularly like Copernic Desktop Search because I find it more stable than the other utilities on the market and it can read my calendar in Outlook which is a big deal to me.

As much as I like these tools, I find that there is one big thing that they all miss. They don’t rank my favorite sites higher than other sites if I am doing a web search. This simply doesn’t make sense. Obviously, I have been to that site before (or else it wouldn’t be in my Favorites/Bookmarks folder). Therefore, I trust that information more than other information.  

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