I Hate Apple Or Reclaiming Local Access to Pictures in iOS 14 Or How Linux People Think Too Much To Live In A Walled Garden.

If you are looking for a bit of help to set things back to the way that the phone was on pre iOS 14.0 try these things.

In Settings:

Camera - Change  Formats to "Most Compatible"

Apple ID - iCloud, Photos should be Off to leave the photos on the device.  

iCloud Drive - I turned this off to retain control of my data.

General - Airdrop should be contacts only so you don't get "weird stuff sent to you on a bus".

Photos - Turn off iCloud Photos, My Photo Stream, and Shared Albums.

This allowed me to have full access to the photos locally when I plug the phone into the cable to the laptop.

The Long Story:

Maybe this all started before the phones.  Maybe I should be blaming it on T-Mobile, I am not completely sure.

I've had T-Mo since before I moved to Fort Lauderdale Area, say back to 2003 when I got my first cell phone when I was on vacation on a Florida area code, and went back to Philadelphia.

I have been quite fortunate that a very good friend of mine gave me a couple of his old Android phones over the years.  One "stuck".  It's an 8 year old Samsung Galaxy S4 and I have been able to root it gaining full control, then install an "alternate" version of Android called LineageOS when true to form, Samsung stopped supporting the thing after two years.  That particular eight year old phone has a fresh 8 day old operating system that is still supported.

If it isn't rooted, you don't fully own it.  It is like having a car that you can only drive on Northbound roads. 

T-Mobile will be switching to a new network connection protocol called VoLTE.  Voice Over LTE.  5G to the rest of us.

But it is uncertain whether that beloved S4 phone will still be supported.

I am waiting for Q1 2021 to see which of these phones will actually work on the network.  I vastly prefer Android since I know more than a little bit about the Linux operating system that they are based on.

A Smart Phone Is A Computer That Makes Calls.  If I can't use it as a computer, its use is highly limited to me.

That brings me to Apple and my complete disdain for the company's design practices. 

You see over the years, I've been given iPhones.

Currently, working are an iPhone 6, and 7.  I was told that I should have them because the 6 "Is too old for me" and the 7 "has the better camera and you need it for your blog and for skating".

Generous, but still, iOS does not like me.  They have a nasty habit of hiding things from me.  Microsoft is doing the same thing these days with Windows 10.

You see the 7 came without any way to use a NORMAL pair of headphones.  You know, that little plug thing that we have all been using since the 1980s?  Those dozens of headphones that you collected over the years?  Yeah they are worthless on an iPhone 7.  Go get an adapter.

Some clueless designer decided that thin and gorgeous is better than useful and compatible.  I guess that is a pretty good view of how Apple designs things. Consider that using an iPhone without a case is dangerous, and now I have a case on that phone that weighs about a half pound and definitely is not thin and gorgeous.   242 grams because you actually want an extra battery to be able to use it without thinking about Range Anxiety.

Mind you if I am trying to take pictures or video while I am about town the camera works, and the phone has 128GB of space on it.

But I still can't listen to the headphone of choice while I am skating because it does not fit.

The other reason why I was given the 7 was so that I could do Facetime with my sister on her birthday.

I am sure you folks have done many more video calls than I have, I use the phone for internet radio and photos for this blog... when I have the headphones that work.

After a rough night sleep last night I took a pre-dawn picture of Rack the McNab SuperDog (TM) on the floor near my foot and thought nothing of it until after a successful Facetime test call with someone here.

Anyway, I said that I had some pictures on the phone that I needed to get off the thing and copy to my laptop.  You know what?  They were not there.  My pictures were no longer on the phone.

You see the iPhone cajoled me with a red dot that said I should upgrade the phone to iOS 14.0.1 NOW.  New!  Shiny!  FasterSaferBetter!

Rule One of Project Management.  Never force a major change to a system without getting permission from the main user.

You or me.  We are the users, we own the system.  They need permission from us.  It isn't the other way around.

Except.  If it isn't rooted you don't own it.  Welcome to Apple, do as I say, not as you need.

The theory with Apple is you live in a walled garden.  My theory is that the only thing that the Walled Garden has a lot of similarities to a Prison Exercise Yard.

You see, they have disdain for the open world that I personally subscribe to.

Where they say they have "upgraded" the phone, my pictures vanished.

Where they say they have "upgraded" the camera, my pictures came up in a strange format.

It took me about an hour of hunting to find the hidden tick box that allowed me to make the pictures visible when I plugged the phone to the side of my laptop, then another hour to find another way to get the pictures back into JPEG format.

Mind you, the version of Linux I use, Debian, is known to be "conservative".  They take their time and do very measured updates.  When I do an update to my laptop, it is a novelty and on my schedule.  Things Do Not Break.  It Just Works.  I use it and enjoy it, and it does what I want, not what That Dead Guy thinks it should.  If I want to change something, I can and do.

It also means that when Apple decided to change the format of the pictures to a weird format, I had to go into the camera and change them back.  Then launch the weird format pictures into a program one by one and copy and paste them into another piece of software to put yesterdays dozen or so back into JPEG.

Why?  I Was Not Asked.  The reason seems to be storage and that there is a newer standard for DSLR use that is supposed to be more better-er for video.  Well, just throw out your old toys and make new E-Waste, you won't mind will you?

The problem is like someone went to your garage, switched the engine out on your car while you were not watching, put in a Diesel engine and left you with enough fuel to get to the filling station... without telling you.

I hope you noticed that the filler cap is now green.  You didn't?  Car won't go now will it?

I don't care if the standards have shifted, mine have not.  Not yet, later.

The moral of the story?  Let go of my ears I know what I am doing. 

Or Linux People Think Too Much To Live In A Walled Garden.

As my good friend in Atlanta says, with a shrug, "It's Just Apple and Apple Just Sucks".

Personally I think that there's a worm in that apple called a fetish for mimimalism and it needs to be excised. 

It used to be "Think Different".  Now, It seems to be "Don't Think At All".

Sorry but Momma Didn't Raise A Fool.

Is Anyone Writing Documentation Anymore?

So the last exercise I had done before Hurricane Irma hit was to take a computer and completely install a new operating system onto it.

I will be doing that again today, from my own instructions.

Sure, it's a bit esoteric, some people are good at reading between the lines. 

The problem with that is that you end up spinning your wheels and finding that something you assumed, you assumed wrong.

For the record, when I write documentation, I write it as I do it.  That way I know it actually works.

It may have taken 26 steps once you had all the pieces, but if you had my hardware and the right software, you'd have a nice happy laptop running Debian.  Thinkpad Laptop, X201 or fairly similar, although the version of Debian I used (Non-Free) was fairly liberal with getting what you need for many more laptops.  Evil Wifi Drivers not withstanding.

The next step was to find documentation to install a web server.

The trick with installing complex software these days is that you basically have to find the right documentation. Or to be more precise, the correct documentation.  Documentation that is complete and actually will work.

Oh and of course you personally have to read and understand what you are reading.  No distractions allowed.

However, it is rare that you will find exactly the right documentation to do what you want.  Often software is updated and that documentation you used two years ago to do that exact thing no longer works.

Highly common in the open source world, some very minor tweak will change where the files are and you are back online doing a search for what you were looking for.

In the consumer software world, you have a similar situation where the documentation was only partially updated since it was originally released.  Think Windows XP vs Windows 8.1 vs Window 10.  Things just moved around drastically within Windows itself let alone functionality.

I got "caught short" with trying to install a web server.  Did it before.  No problem.  Since it is an open source project, you get what you pay for sometimes.  Following the wrong guide I got the entire web server working.  I just don't have any passwords for anything.

As they say on a football field:  Drop Back 5 and Kick.

That would be American Football.  I never played Soccer, at least not for any length of time.   All that running around annoyed me.

So at some point I'll re-attempt that mess.  FInd another tutorial that promises to install the LAMP stack and write down what I did.

Or I will find that one bug and fix it all.  My choice, after all.  

That is why I keep this blog.  Many times I need to do something more than once.   Create a Linux Web Server, save it off, then reproduce the results on a different computer a year later.

So when I post a long diatribe on how to do this and the other thing, I'm doing it for Future Me.  So I don't end up banging my head on a wall.

Like Today.  I got it wrong.  Happens.  Time to start over.

For now, I'll just go look for the football.  Maybe the dog will chase it around the yard.  Blow off some steam.  Finish my Spanish for the day. 

Try, Try again.

A Housefull Of Windows Replaced In Two Days

We're beat.

26 windows down, 1 to go - if I got my count right.

Part of living in South Florida is accepting the environment and preparing for it.  Oh, sure, you do the same in other parts of the country.  Actually you do it everywhere, but you generally don't give it all that much thought.

When you move in, set down roots in a new place, you begin that process that you learned when you were growing up - but didn't realize it.  You adapted to your environment, and bent what you could to fit it to your own preferences.

We're doing that here.

The house was built some time after 1956.  We aren't completely sure whether it was 1956 or 1968.

Neither is the City.  Records are a bit sketchy.

We do know that nobody did any major renovations here.   A pool was added in the early 1960s, or maybe the 1950s, there isn't a record of that either.

Someone laid tile in the "Public Areas" of the house.  Right on top of the grey travertine, or what ever it is called.  You could correct me and an hour later I'd get it wrong anyway.  One of those names I can't keep in my head.

Just like most names.  They just don't "stick".

It was actually laid by most of the Police force of the City at the time.  They did a crappy job, just like anyone you'd expect to be drafted to do something by their boss.  Some of the tiles have a hollow sound to them when you step on them, and the grout is crumbling.

Another project for the future.

But past that, the cabinets were put in and left alone, just as most of the rest of the bones of this place.  We're replacing some fairly major systems here as time goes on.

The first thing to go was the fire hazard of the electrical panel.  Do yourself a favor - find your electrical panel and see if you have the words "Federal Pacific Electric" on it or the initials "FPE".  If you do, you had better replace it.  Major design flaws resulting in fires.  Such a bad design that the company was bankrupted and stripped for parts.  They actually cheated on the "UL" tests and got the approval they were looking for then sold the hell out of those faulty Stabloc circuit breakers.  Go check, I'll wait!

But the windows remained.  Leaky Jalousie windows.

Not. Any. More.

Impact resistant windows.  The words "Impact Rating: Large Missile" are written on that sticker on the windows and are waiting for the inspector. 

I won't test that although I did get a chuckle out of the phrase.

Much quieter too.  I'd say it knocked the noise level down outside to where I can't hear the cars on the street and I'm hearing different sounds from inside the house.

I may have to let some of the old style mechanical clocks stop because they're now so prominent when the radio or TV is off.

The sounds changed so much that now Rack is alerting to different things.  He actually "moofed" at the ice maker until he got told it was OK and got used to it.

It was 2 solid days of construction.  Knock out 27 windows, replace with 18 or so, and then caulk everything.  New woodwork.  Stucco where needed.

Oh and lets not forget that while all that is going on, the house is effectively without windows.  No, not "open windows" but "missing".  Letting in a Mosquito is not an option.  Letting in 50 mosquitoes was what happened. 

And "Letting In" is not exactly correct so much as they let themselves in.

We have a thing that looks like a tennis racket.  It has a set of parallel wires and when you swing it through the air, it will zap any bug it hits into a vapor with a white hot flash and a "SNAP!" sound.

Rack hates it.

But it works.  When the first day of demolition and construction was finished and we were sitting in the chair, one swipe through the air killed 21 mosquitoes.

At One Pass.

Inside the living room.

The next morning I killed one on each arm before construction began anew.

I'm a quart low at this point and the top part of my brain is drying out from the donation.

But it is mostly done.  One window left and we're done.

What.  A.  Weekend.

*WHEW!*

Dice.com Latest Upgrade Broke The Site

At least as of 6AM to 9AM, the job search website for tech, www.dice.com is not useable in my experience.

They went ahead and rolled out a major revision of their website today.  There actually were a few things in it that were kind of slick.

When you go in to do a search for a position, and it makes sense to do so, you have a slider for a criterion.

For example, when you are requesting a page for a search, you can tailor the number of results you want back by using a slider to change the number from 10 to 100 in increments.   The 100 is a big help.

Distance works the same way.

There are a few others, but the problem is that there should be a little box at the end for you to enter in a specific number.

Why? 

Simple - I live in Wilton Manors, Florida.  I used to have a search that would look for a 27 mile radius.  That would include West Palm Beach but specifically exclude downtown Miami.  I don't want that commute, nor would I want that for anyone else. 

If there is a slider, you need to be able to enter in a specific number.

They also deleted the ability to search for an Area Code or a group of Area Codes.  Broward County is 954 and 754.  Palm Beach County is 561.  Having the ability in a large urbanized area like this to simply search for something within a county is very helpful.  Otherwise, the distance must be used, and will slow one down with extra searches.

They deleted the ability to exclude recruiters.  Recruiters in my experience are unreliable.  I tend to look for direct hire only.

They clearly did not test their site when they went "Live" today - by the time I got to it.  It may be fixed later, even later today.  Much of this could simply be because they are rolling out changes at this moment.

When I get the results of a search, they come back with either "Relevant" or "Date" available, but the default is usually Relevant unless you caught the tick box and set it.  But the link is dead to change it back - normally, but not always.  This sort of inconsistency is very common within the site.

That's the problem.  Things work sometimes but not always.

So basically their site is not useable as of this writing, 9:15 AM EST, 12/15/2014.

As for the way it looks? 

I personally am not a fan of the Web 2.0 Look And Feel for things where there are a lot of items to search. 

Dice.com is one of those sites.  They are presenting a database of links and a tight list format is the most useable. 

I understand that they want to look different than the other two big sites, www.Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com however, their search results in LARGE FONTS and lots of Whitespace means that you're constantly paging when you do get the 100 results per page, if you can actually get things to work.

Thank you again for the 100, it helps.

But when you page through the site on a large monitor (1920x1080) getting only seven results per view until you page down is limiting.  Put as much on a line as possible.  I guess that means it's first page with 4 links, then 13 pages of 7 links (or so) plus the remaining 5 links (or so) - that's how the math works out.

Your User Interface guy must have missed that particular meeting.  The Testing folk are confused too - I got a page coming up using the old interface and immediately thought "THANK YOU!". 

Then I refreshed the page and it was back to the new design.  There were no links though, kind of a surprise since I saw links on the Old Format Page.

I'll be waiting.  The new design needs A LOT OF WORK.  The site has so many bugs in it that I simply closed every window that I had.   All my old links are no longer functional.  If I try to recreate them, the site is so buggy that I can not get anything even remotely like the results I expect.  I can't page to the second 100 results.  Not even the old text search works properly.  If you want to search for Business Analyst, and put them in quotes, the new software thinks you are looking for "Business OR Analyst".  It's not the same thing.

For example, if I search for anything within 20 miles of zip code 33301 I am showing results in California.  California is a great place but a bit more than 20 miles away from South Florida.

Oh and one missing thing that is extremely important.  Dice removed the number of hits that a particular resume has.  It's a metric that needs to return.  How else would you know if your resume is effective unless you know now many people look at it in a given month?

At this point, there's nothing else that I could suggest other than telling someone who wants to use a job search engine to wait this one out and hit the other sites.  Dice.com is unusable due to UI, UX, and QA issues today.  

They tried, but ... well, maybe tomorrow.  They went with a Big Bang Release and broke what they had before.  Would be best to roll it all back and try an Agile Project Management approach of gradual improvements instead of what they got here.

Monster.com, Are You Kidding? Fancybox? Really?

In business, there is a phrase.

"Eat Your Own Dog Food."

Monster.com doesn't seem to realize this in their roll out of new "features".

You see, Eat Your Own Dog Food really means that you're going to use your own product to make sure that it suits what you intend it to do, and that you aren't giving the competitors an unfair advantage.

In web development and Project Management, this means finding someone who becomes the "Subject Matter Expert" and "Product Owner" and takes on a very special role.   When I worked at the university, and in every position I have held back into the beginning days of my career, I've assumed this role.  It means that you are going to step back, listen to what the "Main User" of the system says about it, and champion that role within "Development" so that the Main User's need are best served.

It means that you have to anticipate how any person will use the system and make sure that problems do not occur, and that when they do, problems are dealt with gently and "Gracefully".

It also means that unintended consequences sometimes occur like in this picture above.

It is one of my least favorite features, the "Fancybox" or the "Lightbox".

It is also very very rarely used correctly.

This is an example of how badly monster.com used the fancybox.

I did this under "my signon" and on another browser with no signon and it repeats itself.

Simply put, go onto Monster.com and do a search for any position you like in what ever zipcode you prefer.  Monster will return a list of positions.  It may even give you more than one page.  When you go from page 1 to page 2, it will put a "fancybox" up on your browser asking you "Let These Jobs Come To You".

No, you blistering idiot, that is not what I wanted.

You see it will do that for this page, and any future page I want to look at. 

Every Blistering Page.

Ok, so I'm quoting the TV Sliders and Dr. Arturo with his wonderful rants and insults, but the point is still valid - Fancyboxes rarely serve a useful purpose For The User.

I went in immediately to my browser, clicked "Adblock Plus" and found a script.  I blocked it, and refreshed the page, and now I'm back to the old Fancybox Free behavior.

If I wanted an RSS Feed of the search parameters, it would not work because since I live in a major metropolitan area, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, there are thousands of jobs.  I have given up on RSS Feeds for this because they "max out" at 50.  I typically would need around 500 to be able to see the last two days worth of positions on this given search.

I have many searches, and have saved each individual page to save me a LOT of time that would be otherwise wasted clicking on "Next Page" buttons.   If I were not able to do the search the way I do, then I probably would have stopped using Monster.com a long time ago.

So all you need to do is go into your adblock plus and block the script called:

http://media.newjobs.com/nmy/usen/iperceptions506.js

It is badly written code, your QA, Development Department, and Project Managers have made a mistake.

It simply does not belong in a professional product like we have come to expect in Monster.com.  It only can have come from someone who has sat in too many Marketing Meetings and thought they could get more "buy-in" from their users.

Web Annoyances - Websites Where Keyboards Don't Work

This one gets me a lot.  
It's so basic that I have to wonder who on earth is making these web pages? 
Worse, who on earth is approving and testing them?

Oh, that's right, you can't do Proper QA any more since everything is written overseas on the cheap.

You get what you pay for.

Rant aside...

For the most part, even now, the place most people are doing their "heavy duty" web surfing is on a browser.  I'm basing that on this blog's statistics, and I feel confident that that feeling is backed up by most web services.

The proportion is roughly evenly split between Internet Explorer, Firefox (and its variants), and Chrome.

I personally have noticed this on Firefox and on Internet Explorer, on Windows, Linux, and on Mac OSX.

It just doesn't happen on a tablet or a phone since the way you use a webpage is different there.  You only have a mouse (touchscreen), you rarely have a keyboard.

I notice this on a daily basis on Monster.com, but it also shows up with many other oddball sites.

Here's how to find the problem on Monster:

• Surf Monster and do a search.  Doesn't really matter what kind of job you search for, your own zip code will be fine.
• You will be presented with a list.  Pick one from the list.   It doesn't really matter which.
• Now that you are looking at a page, a job really, use your Page Up or Page Down keys.

They don't work.

You actually have to click inside the body of the page to get the page to move.   You can tab around, cursor around, whatever you choose, but it just doesn't work until you click inside the page.

If you are a web developer and call this done, you are bad and you should feel bad.

Zoidberg doesn't like you and neither do I.

This also works with the Windows or Linux alternate page down, the space bar.  

Navigation is simply locked down until you click inside the page.

My best guess is that it's a function of working with the software behind the scenes (Ajax) and having reworked your browser so that all the keys are forced to do a certain special task.  Don't know but it's still wrong.

Now go back and fix your web page.  That's a rookie mistake.  If you're good, Robot Santa may leave you a gift.

Too Many Cooks Spoil the Project

So how many times have you heard that phrase?

"Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth".

I usually start my own variant of it when I'm in the kitchen.

"Git!  My Kitchen!  MINE!"

People being social beings tend to gravitate where others are.   Prepare food and now you have cause and effect. 

Throw in a dog or a parrot or both and now you have a very full stew pot.

No, I'm not suggesting that you cook your faithful companion, feathered or furry.

When I'm in the kitchen puttering about, there's a much higher chance that I'll be joined by one of three critters in my house at least for a sniff around.

Usually the largest of the critters will mutter an apology and try to be scarce, or at least as scarce as possible.  The other two will either shout out a cheery Hello! or sniff a wet black nose around the corner while twisting his spine into a neat S Curve and sprawling in the entryway in the most inconvenient way possible.

Does that extra "help" speed up the task?  Nope. 

Trying to make a holiday meal doesn't work when you have a house full of cooks unless they all have their tasks laid out in front of them ahead of time.

Making bread does not take two people.  However when the second person arrives, it's always best to "give them a job" and ask them to go fetch something.

That's why the midwife on TV programs will tell the "expectant Father" to go boil water.  Giving birth rarely requires boiling water, and it will remove an extra pair of hands while that pot is boiling. 

Go make us a spot of tea, pop, you're in the way.

Recently I've found out that mindset has a formal name to it in Project Management.  It is called "Brooks' Law".

Fred Brooks was a person who managed large software projects for IBM back-in-the-day.  His observation was that throwing new people at a project didn't make it finish faster, it would simply slow it down.  Reason is that you have to bring the new people up to speed first and that slows down your most productive workers.

To Quote:  Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Too many cooks again.

Once they're up to speed, you have all those extra "interactions" forming a bit of drag on the system and slowing everything down.

If it did indeed speed things up, that extra body, it means you didn't have enough hands to get the job done when you started so sometimes ... you just might have to throw people at it.

Just not when you're baking bread.  If I'm cooking, I'll tell you "Git!  My Kitchen".

You'll get your rolls later when they're done, sorry.  Here, have a glass of Iced Tea.

The corollary to Brooks' Law is even more telling.  Just don't boil that water because:

"Nine Women Can't Make a Baby in One Month."

I'll have that Iced Tea now. 

Inertia, or Resistance to Change

Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.
Objects at rest tend to stay at rest.

Newton's First Law of Motion.

Sure, a marble on the table given a nudge will roll but it will also slow down.  The reason is the force applied to it from outside of the "system" of the marble and table.   It's called friction.

That is a basic principle of Physics, but it also applies to life.

Some people are much better with change, they can apply themselves and work through things as if it is water off of a duck's back.  Others are much more conservative and freak out when there's the slightest bit of a wrinkle on that double oxford broad cloth shirt.

Instead of grabbing an iron, those folks will wring their hands and fret.

The point is that while things can be done, they almost always can be done more ways than one.  Toss the shirt out and buy new.  Of course that new one will still need to be ironed, but don't say anything until they get that home from the mall.

There's always a judgment call that has to be made as well.  How much effort needs to be applied to cause the change to happen?  Can we live with the results if we do or don't change things?

If you keep asking questions like that you eventually end up with a tree of yes/no answers and build a process.  Things tend to sort themselves out in order.   If you don't proceed in order you will end up revisiting things later, usually caused by a resistance to change, a rigidity of thought.

Can you take things in one big bite or can you divide and conquer?

All binary questions.  Yes, or No?

That would be the basis for a systemic analysis of a project.   Laying out all the alternatives, in order, and following the path of least resistance.

Oversimplified, but that is the meaning of "basis".

Of course there are shades of grey, but they are usually held back for a later time. Especially if there are 50 of them, and that is a very different story indeed.

Cobwebs and a Fresh-ish Start

Knowing is half the battle.
Planning wins the battle.

Knowing that last week was going to be hell, I filled the blog with articles.  Sat down and emptied my head about the dog, and other random thoughts that came to mind.  Being quite preoccupied, I was allowing a mental vacation even if a rest was the last thing on the cards.

Now that the week is over, it's time to restart some things.

Projects always need to run their course, even if it is a matter of saying "we're not going to do this any more" or "I'm done and lets bring it to the next level".

Fewer distractions mean more things get done even if getting it done is spinning the wheels.

Having finished the week, sitting down at the end of the morning rituals, it allowed me to look out the window and realize that it was time to dip the toe into the water of a few very specific tasks.  Being self-directed, you only answer to yourself when things "go long".

So now I am taking a bit of my own medicine or eating my own dog-food.  Step back, get the big picture, then take the long view of things.  Life is a marathon, not a sprint.  If you're impatient for results, you're cheating yourself out of the opportunity of excellence.

The Long View however can not be achieved in one big step normally.  So divide the goal, and conquer. 

I think I heard that somewhere.

So reach for the first stage in the plan.  It's usually the smallest one and is easiest to congratulate yourself when it is over.

For now, there's a server that has been waiting on my time to finish.  Getting it up to date means that at least the mind is moving in the right direction.  Sure, it's a small step but it is moving forward.

Modern Life Is Logistics

Did you ever step back and think how is everything going to fit in?

I'm having one of those days.

But they're normal, if you think about it.

We have all these labor saving devices to save us time so we can find more things to do with that time we saved.   Time isn't strictly speaking "Saved".  You don't have a Time Piggy Bank somewhere that you can withdraw from when you are feeling harried.   The end result is that you find strategies to get more effective and more efficient with what you're doing.

Basic Project Management.

Going to the shops?  Make sure you have a list of the most important things.  Don't forget a pen if it's on paper. 

I always forget that.   Well, that and my glasses.

Getting up an extra half hour early is a great way to fit things in if you hadn't gotten to sleep late the night before.  That ends up in a candle burnt at both ends.

On the other hand, you can do a lot in a half hour.

The last time I felt I needed to get things done, I multitasked a list of things.

Made a crock pot of Carnitas Pork.
Made bread dough for rolls for later baking.
Roasted a batch of Decaf Coffee.
Brewed a mug of Third Caff Coffee.
Brewed a pitcher of Iced Tea.
Breakfast was in order.
Made the dog happy by tossing her an ice cube.

You never know how much you can fit in a block of time, but always remember those around you who deserve that little extra attention.  

It may just be an ice cube to you, but to the dog it's a wonderful treat.

Since there is always some time to fit more in later, I've also got three laptops I'm prepping for a friend from Key West who is visiting.  Yes, all at once.

Line them up, knock them down!  Win a kewpie doll!

So got more to do?  Sure, but there's time for it since Modern Life is Logistics.

My Own Furry Project Mis-Manager

If a Neat Desk is the sign of a Sick Mind, then a Cluttered Desk is the sign of a Nervous Dog.

I stopped using the desk a couple years ago.  It's getting piled high with projects.  For someone who calls themselves a Project Manager, that's a bit of an embarrassment.  But yes, I am blaming it on the dog.

Not the usual way, in this case there's something else going on.  One Wet Nose.

I am watched very closely by Lettie.  If I leave one room, she will wait until I settle in and then position herself so she can see what I'm doing.

Except there's a wrinkle.  If I'm feeling mischievous, I'll wait.  She'll fall asleep.  Old dogs do that sort of thing.  She'll sleep most of the day anyway and one of the sounds of the house over the radio playing softly, the all the various clocks, the occasional parrot chatter both inside and outside of the house, is her snoring.  Her snoring isn't the trick, it's that she's mostly deaf.

Quietly, on little sneaker clad feet, I'll leave the room.  She won't realize it for another 15 minutes or so until she wakes up and looks around to check in on me.   Then it's a perimeter search and find out where everyone is.

So if I need something at my desk, I have found the path of least resistance is to wait until she's snoring.  The music will help to drown out most sounds.  Then up and go take care of business.

That doesn't help with the desk.  There is a pile of old battery operated watches waiting to be re-fitted with new batteries, a couple hard drives, an assortment of tools - all of which are waiting for a free moment of time when the wet nose brigade hasn't found me.

It makes her even more nervous.

So we're in a feed back loop.  She watches me a bit too closely and wants to help.  I end up wearing my automatic and wind up watches as a result.

I am waiting though.  I may have a nice long block of time.  There's an electronics hack that requires me to use a little bell wire and a soldering gun.  She'll forget to follow me one day and then who knows!  Soldering time!

Pack a Box Like Playing Tetris

You know it's a job when it takes an hour a box to pack each one.

I had three boxes to send out for gifts yesterday, and now (sound of hands wiping against pants) it's all done. 

A couple years ago, I got a rather vague comment along the lines that I have to be more careful in packing things sent by the mail.  More like "You've got to learn how to do this", with no more explanation.  

Since then I've been packing fragile things like they're going to Mars.  

It starts sometime around October.   The holidays are looming, it wasn't even Halloween, Xmas decorations were beginning to appear in the malls.  Ahh the spirit of Shopping-Mass!   As time went on, every time I'd get something shipped to me, if the boxes were "small", I'd save them. 

You know I'll need that!  Give me the box, I'll store it!  Oooh Bubble Wrap!  Don't you dare pop that!

I had a tower growing.   Boxes that were too complex to "flat pack" and reassemble ended up on the Dining Room Table.  The "flat pack" broken down boxes were stuffed behind the laundry box in the kitchen and in the laundry room itself in every nook and cranny I could find.

By the time Thanksgiving hits, my mind ticked over into High Gear.  I could make Cookies!  I could make Fudge!  I could Roast Coffee!  I have all these Things!  Lets send them off!

The day after Thanksgiving I began roasting coffee, a logistical challenge in itself.  It isn't difficult to roast coffee if you have the right popcorn popper, but there is a timing thing.   I put the beans in the machine, push it out the window, and plug it into the wall.  Six minutes later plus or minus 30 seconds depending on the temperature outside in the Lanai, the coffee is done, poured onto a large dinner plate to cool.  Then wait 30 minutes for the popper to cool and repeat.  The thing is as the sun comes up it heats the roof and the Lanai can go from 70F to 90F in an hour on a clear day.  That changes the roast.  One batch is "medium" at 6 minutes 10, the next would be burned Starbucks beans.   So I spread that out over a week to get my 12 batches of coffee to send out.

Quality is my motto!  Can't rush perfection!  More Business Buzzwords! 

Similar micromanagement went into making the cookies - Chocolate Chips, Pecans, Butterscotch Chips, Butter, and Eggs were bought.  Cookies made in three separate batches over three days were baked then frozen to keep them fresh.  Two kinds of Rocky Road Fudge was made, cooled, cut, and immediately frozen.

Finally there were some specific handmade gifts that were to go to specific people.  Bamboo smartphone dock to one, wind chimes to another.

All these things needed care to find their way into boxes.  After all, you don't want coffee grounds all over the fudge that would be inside of the wind chimes do you?  Admittedly the fudge is an experiment in packing logistics itself.  It's winter and once it gets North of Florida, it should re-freeze at the outdoor temperatures "up there".  I'm looking forward to hearing about how that stuff fared.

Boxed each kind of thing up when the boxes were available.  Made other boxes for strangely shaped things.

I'm hungry what time is it?  12:30?  I've been at this for 2 hours?  Throw some pork into the microwave and go back at it.

Hmmm, that pork smells great, got to toast some rolls...  1PM and I'm wandering around the house with a slab of pork and cheese on a toasted English Muffin as Box 2 is done.

Luckily by 1:30 the last box was built and sitting by the door.  By 2:30 I was back home thinking I had just played a game of Tetris that my friends and family would unwind as they find a holiday letter with a hand signature that was scanned at the bottom of the letter and printed on.

Hey, if I have to write it out, I may as well let the printer do it for me!

So the next time you open a box, consider the effort that went into making the mundane packaging.

Then toss it out with the rest of the garbage and get your New Thing!  Who doesn't like New Things?

Skype in a Small Start-Up

Back a few years ago, I was consulting for a small start-up company called WhatEver Productions.  The company ran its course and closed in 2009, but the experience was an interesting one that would grow into a CTO role for me.

Having left my job at Temple University where I was a Project Manager in order to eventually move to South Florida, I was looking for a part time gig to do while we were preparing the house for the move.  The house sold at the top of the market and in 2006 I moved to South Florida.

While I was doing that move, I was also doing some Webpage Quality Assurance.  Fancy words for you write it, I test it, and give you back my input.  We went back and forth with that and realized that we could eventually build this into a side business that would support the creation of a Musical.  Yes, a non traditional role for a traditional Project Manager.   This experience taught me some lessons of how to be completely flexible and how to build a technology base on a shoe-string budget.  Literally next to nothing.

As we assembled the executive team, we realized that there was only so much we could do on a collection of cell phones.  After all, if you want people to collaborate, you have to have a way to do the collaboration.  I came up with the solution.  Skype.

Skype is a number of things, but basically if you're a small business it puts a lot of power into your hands, and you could do it for the best price - free.  We were able to leverage the fact that everyone had computers, and while some had Macs, some had PCs, and yours truly even had Linux, they could all work.  It was the beginning of this Post PC era and we hadn't even realized that we had a name for it yet since Steve Jobs had not coined the phrase for another few years.

We used Skype to chat via text, make phone calls, make conference calls, whiteboarding, and even video calls.  Whiteboarding is just like in your conference room, you draw on your computer with mouse and the picture comes up on everyone else's computers, where ever they were.

The nice thing about it was that while it was free, it worked well.  Even back a few years ago when we had someone participating on a dial-up modem.  On cable internet speeds, you could get clean signals, on a dial-up line the signal was like an old school wired phone call. 

Using Skype, we tied together people here in Florida, Metro Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania hills, North New Jersey, and Manhattan into a cohesive unit.  It simply would not have been able for a bunch of people to hold meetings and rehearsals via cell phones. 

The software is still around.  Skype was bought by Microsoft recently and will be included as Microsoft Lync as a corporate product. Microsoft will be expanding the product and adding new features to try to win their market, but it already has the strength to do many of the things that you would expect a corporate phone system to contain. 

Another situation that Skype can solve is that of domestic or international calling via something then called "Skype Out - now called Skype Premium".  Skype Premium will allow you, for a fee of course, to be able to treat your computer as a phone.  The costs are much lower than the phone company for calls to specific countries, and there are limitations.  The upside of this is that you can also purchase the ability to run Skype as a phone domestically in multiple countries, including the US.  There may be cheaper alternatives for phone services, after all you have to keep some sort of computer or smart phone plugged in and turned on to the Skype network, but this one does allow you to do some of the things you'd expect from a phone service cheaper than most.

The Skype software allowed us to solve a very specific business need for a very small organization.  It let us do so for zero cost, and gave us the ability to progress past the two people we were for a while. 

Interesting experience indeed.

Careerbuilder.com Update Broke My Job Search

Yep, it's another tech post.

See here's the deal.  Everyone who 'owns' a website is always looking for ways to refresh it so people find more reasons to come back.  More visits mean you're more likely to click on an ad and send a few pennies to a few dollars their way.

Sometimes the refresh works, other times they need to go back and rethink it.   This is one of those times.

This is also a good illustration of why I put "User Experience" and "User Interface" on my resume.  I've written about how Dice.com made a change, why it was wrong and what they needed to do to fix it.  They hit that blog posting and decided I was right on some points, and used my ideas.   I'm sure they read it because they're out in Iowa and nobody from that city had ever read my blog before that posting.  It was easy to find.

A little background and high order discussion. I'll try not to get too "techie".  In fact, I pride myself and have been told I'm successful in writing about weird tech issues and getting things across to people who don't understand them.

I look for permanent work around 35 hours a week on average.  I use the major job boards and some of the minor ones to ask the question "What Jobs Are Available within 30 Miles of Zipcode 33305 in Computing Within The Last Three Days".  You know, IT and Project Management.   Since I live in a major city, that search returns a lot of positions.  I further finesse that by saying search for specific job titles, certain exclusions of companies that are inappropriate for various reasons, and even some arbitrary things.

Once a week I have a similar search that is targeted at specific companies and all of the cities and towns in my county and a few neighboring cities that I know about.

Pretty straightforward, there are millions who are unemployed, underemployed, looking for permanent positions, and just curious that go through similar processes every day.

This process can be called "Data Analysis" or "Data Mining".  You do the same thing every time you use a spreadsheet.   

One reason why I prefer www.dice.com to all the other sites is that it further categorizes things as to whether it is a "Direct Hire" which is a company vs a "recruiter" which typically is just reposting a position that a Direct Hire had posted the day before.  Needless to say, I know which recruiters to skip.  If they have a "hot deal" they'll call me with the position and most likely I've already made my judgement as to whether to pass or not.  We'll talk but usually they realize I've been there, done that, and moved on.

You can see from this picture that everything that I need to see is presented on one line.  Dice.com has successfully reduced things down to just the information you need to decide whether a position is worth looking at further.

Basically I've managed to use Dice in a fashion that is slightly inconsistent with their website.  I save each individual page as a link so that I don't have to click onto the next page.  Each page is it's own link in a folder in Firefox and I can look at each page in it's own tab. 

When you are opening 150 pages a day, you want to save every last second you can.

The list is presented in Job Alphabetical Order, all jobs are within the last three days, and I can tell at a glance whether I need to pursue looking at a link.

By the way, a helpful hint.  If you are looking at a webpage, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the link and it will open in another tab.  You can do that many times, and look at all those links later.  It saves a lot of time!

That's the biggest criteria about this.  Saving time.  Can you imagine doing this by hand in a newspaper? 

Now here's what happened with www.Careerbuilder.com. 

Careerbuilder is a little different.  They're big and they partner with many newspapers around the world.  You're going to hit one of their sites if you are looking at a branded website for many organizations.  It also has a few quirks.

One is that no matter how hard I tried, I can't get it to give me more than 25 positions at a time.  That forces me to open up as many as 20 links for a given criteria.

Their sort is semi-broken.  If I have more than one job type on a given link, it's going to put a few jobs from "today" at the tail end of the search.  When you are looking at 400 jobs for that criteria, that means you have to load up 20 pages just to get to the tail end. 

Now that you're committed to opening all those pages in tabs, you have to consider what you want to look at.  If you're looking at this thing every day, you don't need to look at three days worth, you can skip to the end.  Check for "Today" and "Yesterday".  Today, in a list of 20 opened tabs, Today and Yesterday were pages 1 and 2 and part of 3 then again in page 20.  That's a lot of extra page hits for no good reason.

This screen grab from Careerbuilder.com illustrates how just a few little problems break the page and make it more difficult to get to the information you are looking for.

They used to have a handy page number at the top of each listing.  Minor perhaps, but knowing you are on page 4 of 20 and looking at positions 76 through 100 is surprisingly helpful.  After all, you expect to have to skip ahead to the Next To The Last Page, so you need to know where you are at.  

The date is not shown, but it is implied by saying "posted today" and "posted yesterday" all in grey lower case text.  I can handle the grey, but the date would be more useful since it is more compact.  I would prefer to see the date as "Mar. 18".  The year can be implied, we all make the same mistakes on our checks but by March or even the second week of January, the mental block against the year has been past.

Most importantly they slid all of the position specific information into a single column.

Position Name
Company Name
City Name

Position Name
Company Name
City Name

... is not as helpful as stringing it out in one line.



Position Name     Company Name     City Name   Date
Position Name     Company Name     City Name   Date
Position Name     Company Name     City Name   Date

The reasoning is that if you're skimming through 400 positions for a given search, you need to be able to skim the column and check on position name first.   Ctrl+Click to open that position into a new tab and continue onwards.


That brings up another point.  The order it is presented is incorrect and there is no way to specify which column you're sorting on - and you need more than one column.   The job name should be the most important order.  Ideally this should be Sorted first by Date, then Job Name.   What the result would be is now that you have all the "Business Analyst" positions sorted together for "today" and not mixed in with the "Data Analyst" positions.  They are similar but distinct disciplines and while many of the skills are similar, they don't completely overlap.

After all they have different position names don't they?

Luckily they have the position names all in blue and the rest of the text in other colors so with a mind trick I can try to turn off the rest of the info until I need it...

When you redesign a website as complex as Careerbuilder, you are trying to balance a lot of needs.  You don't want to do a radical redesign because it will get so alien to people that their minds will switch off.   It needs to be evolutionary.   Things as minor as the list of pages you are on will be noticed especially if you're skipping to the end of 20 pages and can't get to page 19 unless you go to page 20 first like I did the other day.

Basically the information is all there - Content gets an A Grade.
Presentation?  You can do better.  C Minus perhaps. 

If Life is about Compromise, why should Technology be any different?

Having a conversation with someone they dropped The Question to me.

What kind of computer would you recommend?

If you know someone intimately, like a good close friend, you will be able to have a better time at this but you will always need to know some more information.

• What are you using it for?
• How much are you willing to spend?
• How are you going to be using it?
• What size would you like to have?
• Does color matter?
• Do you have a favorite brand?
• Do you have a least favorite brand?

Have you noticed that list has no technology specifics listed yet?

You see, it's easy to say "Mac vs PC" but that's not always the right question to ask. 

To me, the decision making process for getting a new PC is just the same as getting a new Car, moving to a new address, choosing new shoes.  I fail to see the difference on the broad level.

If you have "more money than brains", you can go to the store and buy anything you like.  I got into a conversation with a car salesperson once.   She said that once someone came in and she wanted a new car.  When pressed with the list above, she was told firmly "I want the blue one".

Yes, "I want the blue one".  

We had a laugh at it, but that sort of mindset but it is very prevalent in people who do not understand something.  Again, it's broadly - this could be applied to cars, computers, cookery, and many other aspects of life that start with letters other than C.

So once we get past all the basics, many folks are overwhelmed.

The "How much" question:

• How much storage do you need?
• How many people will you put in the car?
• How many burners do you want on your new stove?

They're all the same question, merely applied to a different "technology".  If you have never believed that cooking is technology and science first, allow me to suggest baking some bread from scratch. 

The next time you consider running out and getting that new shiny object, ask yourself another question - what will I get out of it?

Sure, it's derivative of the questions on the first list, but being general is an asset in making decisions.

The best suggestion I can give to anyone is to find their inner three year old.  That beautiful little toddler that you once were had none of the answers and also no fear.   Your beautiful three year old self had the most important question ever asked.

Why?

That simple little word is the fulcrum to the lever that will move the whole world.

User Experience or Why Websites Fail

Facebook is a study of User Experience. 

There are many people who are paid strictly to improve the User Experience of a website.  So many that they're just abbreviated to UX and UI.  UI stands for User Interface.  Both are quite tightly coupled. 

Every time you change something, you will annoy someone.  The idea is that if you don't change your system/website/front garden you will find that the world will have passed you by. 

Just as a garden is never a static thing, especially in South Florida where if you blink you have weird exotics overtaking your prized Podocarpus, a Static Website will get overtaken quickly.

There is a balance toward adding new flowers to a garden so that it will be appealing to the eye, or just add new plants to make it fill out better, and doing too much and making it overgrown.

The corollary is that software problem you find in things like Microsoft Word where 95% of the people use just 5% of the features.

So why add the complexity?  You just may use it some time, but you can always ignore it.

Another corollary is the Automobile.  If they didn't improve things, we'd still be driving the Model T.  Beautiful machine that evolved over its years to be faster and more efficiently built but would not work on the roads of this day.

After all, you really do want a stereo and automatic delay wipers and cushy seats and the ability to be comfortable in 90 Degree Heat as well as 9 Degree Cold.

Applying all this blather to a website such as Facebook you find yourself asking why did they do this?  Part of the problem is that changes just "happen" and you're left confused.  Get off my lawn, young'un I want my grass to grow!  Sometimes the changes do work, but usually those changes are only after people make many complaints.  Simplification of Privacy Options on Facebook are a good example.

Today I was presented with this new and shiny feature in the news feed on Facebook.  Sure, it's their right to use things the way they like and develop new features so we all don't move back to My Space (yeah, right) or some other site.  After all they make their money by being the biggest thing on the block.  If we didn't change, we'd all be using dial up modems on AOL. 

This New! and! Shiny! Feature! was that of the Top Stories.  For me it's not an improvement, in fact it causes problems with the way I personally use the site.

I use Facebook as a scrolling surf board.  I've liked tech blogs, news sites, and other sites that I tend to hit frequently and it may be the first time I read about something important.  I read about Fukushima's Tsunami on Facebook first after I caught a BBC article slip past.  Things like the Top Stories interfere with that by merging articles in because they were voted more important by your friends.  Now instead of having the most recent articles at the top and merely refreshing from time to time to see if I missed anything important, I'm afflicted with the Facebook Obsessive Compulsive Refresh Disease - FOCR.  Yes, they've turned me into a real FOCR as I hit F5 because there's something in the way that I can't suppress. 

The only benefit I see of this new layout is that everyone else will have the same pain as the flying bird of Facebook lets fly with some new top story only to splat itself on the windshield of your browser.  Spraying Bug Juice over it won't get rid of this new "feature" at least yet.  Hopefully it can be turned off.   Briefly it was only for US users, but it has been spread over the pond to UK English users as well.

Sorry I haven't found the fix for this one. 

Their User Experience Folks need to go back to the drawing board.

Job Recruiters Amuse Me

Having my resume on Dice.Com, Monster.com, and Careerbuilder.com I get to speak with recruiters.

It is like saying you will get wet if you stand outdoors.  Underwater.  Repeatedly.

Yesterday I had two things happen that had me amused.  

I have a Lot of Project Management experience.  I'm doing some consulting for New Divine Mercy church where I have migrated their website off of LAMP and Joomla to Google Sites.  I also act as their videographer, and handle their technology needs.  I also have been the treasurer for a political campaign, and a webmaster for two campaigns.  I have written advertising copy and have been a speech writer - all of which in the last year.

I am also the social media director for Wilton Manors Main Street, maintaining their facebook group and their blog, as well as producing the monthly newsletter.  I produce the newsletter and the embedded newsletter site with content from Krishan Manners and it was my idea to get content from other organizations within the area so that there would be one central place to find the information as well as one newsletter going out instead of five or six.  It is well received and is growing each month.  If you would like to get our next newsletter - click on this link. We don't sell the email addresses to anyone else.

Yesterday I got an email from someone at Robert Half International about a position.  I had read it, shrugged since I thought I was a little "short of the qualifications" and moved on.  A couple hours later I got a phone call from the same "associate" who sent me the email.  After her interviewing me and going past the elevator pitch, I told her my opinion.  I also told her how they typically do their interviews.  After being in the market as long as I have been , I'm a bit more wary of agreeing to go in to talk to recruiters.   They have a habit of wanting to see you, a Meet and Greet, without anything concrete behind it.   Robert Half is guilty of this as are some of the other firms in this field.  I have a hard and fast rule if I have done the Meet and Greet before, I won't do it again unless you are ready to send me out on an interview.   I told her this and thanked her for her interest but since "gasoline is $4 a gallon and this would take two hours out of my day to get there and back, I was not inclined to come in for a face to face but would consider it 'if there was something concrete' involved".

You see if you are interviewing your time is free, theirs is not.

Nothing against this particular recruiter, she was knowledgeable and understanding, she was polite, and she was willing to listen.  I just didn't want to play by the script.

The other wrinkle I found over the time of interviewing is that most recruiters are fairly useless.  There are some exceptions and I write THEM, directly.  These are the ones that after going the first meet and greet contact me about specific opportunities.   I keep their emails on a spreadsheet for easy access.  There simply are too many folks in and out of that career for me to bother with the fly by nights.

Why I consider most fairly useless is that there is a pattern.

First the company needing the new hire will post a direct job specification either on their website or on one of the job search boards.  In Technology, Dice.Com is probably my favorite - I can submit a resume in under 5 minutes, a little more if I have to tweak my resume or my cover letter. The State of Florida has a page that is utterly useless, and the Federal Government's is bad as well but better than Florida's.

After the company posts the specification, recruiters will spot this and contact the company and find out if they are open to recruiters.  That may be as simple as Recruiter A sees Company Posting B at 8AM, claims it as their own and posts it to Recruiting Company internal website and then onto Dice/Monster/Careerbuilder.  That happens usually by 8:01AM.  It can be that fast.

If it is a Project Management or Business Analysis position I know I will have a busy day because I will notice multiple hits on my resume on those boards.  I keep a spreadsheet that tells me what the raw counts are and how many hits there were since yesterday. 

Usually after the local boards send me a feeler, a couple days later the Out Of State recruiters start calling.   They're much later because they're "fishing" for a hit.  The problem with the Out Of State recruiters is that you will never have any kind of a relationship with these peoples.  It is like a door to door contractor showing up and asking if you need your driveway sealed.  That's a call I get every other week, the recruiters are daily.

If there is a phone call on my cell I immediately look to see the caller ID.  I have a definite priority of who I answer.  If you have called me, I add you to the SIM list.  If you haven't then it shows as a raw phone number.  

First Priority are people who I have spoken with before - Friends, Family,  Business Contacts and former recruiters who I have dealt with.

Second Priority are those who have a local area code.  954, 754, 561, 305, and 786 area codes.  I'll consider my own time constraints as it is usually easier for me to go on and let them talk to my phone and I can screen it later.

Lowest priority are out of state first time callers.   If they are from places like NYC Metro, specifically North Jersey I will always let them go to the answering machine.

The lowest priority calls are invariably someone calling from India as a recruiter on a scratchy Voice Over IP phone line trying to pretend that they are here.  If I make the mistake and actually speak with one, I can't hear the accent over the static and tell them that they need to email me, they have my email address on the resume, and that they can expect an answer "shortly".

Then I forget they ever called.

After all, there are people here in the United States who need the jobs more than shipping them overseas.  I know one, intimately. 

So if you need a Project Manager, Business Analyst, COBOL Programmer, Web Developer, Social Media Director, Software Development Manager, or one of about 30 other hats I wear or wore, let me know.  We can work something out.

Did I tell you about the telecommuting organization that I built using Skype and functioned as it's CTO with help from my business partner?

Yeah, I've done it.

Shopping Online at JCPenney Could Be Easier

Ok I'm that guy who breaks things.  I'll admit it.   I've got more than 15 years experience in Project Management, more than 25 years experience in Software Development.  I've done decades of this stuff, including Quality Assurance and Change Control.

Basically if you think of a software development shop, I've done it.  Including User Experience and Search Engine Optimization, I've got a very broad background.

I had a position where I was hired as a Software Project Manager.  They used my Network Admin (My direct report) as a fill in at in Information Booth that I ended up Specifying, Procuring, and Deploying a brand spanking new Server using Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server while babysitting a vendor based in Sydney Australia.

Not only was the vendor upside down, but he was shocked when I told him that I managed to get his e-commerce software working within a Virtual Machine using a copy of Windows Server 2008 running on a cast-off desktop computer sitting in a stock room "down the hall".

The vendor's software was Everest E-Commerce software which is used in many large scale "shopping carts".  I managed to get this "heap of code" working despite the admission of the support person down in Oz saying that he couldn't believe that it could be installed by an "end user" let alone within a copy of Microsoft Virtual PC 2007.

Yes, it worked.
Yes, it worked well in a very strange environment.
Yes, I'm kind of pleased with that.

So when I go hit a website to shop, I have a very good idea of how things should work.

Today I had a "coupon code" for JCPenney.  Oooh Discounts!  No worries, I have some polo shirts that are comfortable but embarrasingly old.  I keep them because I like how they fit, not how they look and I realize they should be used to wax the car...

We all have a few.

I went to the web site and begun to order. The product was a shirt, it came in five sizes, it came in around 10 or so colors.

There were a stack of pull downs to the right of the picture.  You select your shirt (Solid Pique), You select your size (Large, I'm a tall dude), and you select your color (Started with something called Bayview).  Click add to shopping cart.

Woo hoo, one shirt ordered.  It greyed the window, placed one of those light boxes with what you just did and gave the option for you to go back and order more.

Ok, I had a coupon code to knock off $10 bucks if you order 6 so I was going to order six.  I needed them and it gave me an excuse to wax my car with those old shirts...

Problem 1.

That picture had a color selection strip below.  Hover over the color and it would light box a small square of the color.  Oooh.  Click on it, and the shirt changed to the color you wanted.  Ok, so far so good.  The problem was that it didn't update the pulldown for the selection you wanted.   This may be by design, I concede that you may not always want that selection pulldown to be changed, but I would do so.  Makes it faster for that person sitting out in their living room with the feet up on the coffee table to order what you're selling and not to close the window in confusion.

Problem 2.

Now that I've found the color that will adorn my 48 inch chest, and realized that the pulldown does not match the sample, I've corrected that in the pulldown.  Click Order.  The screen repaints.  I'm confused, I said I really did want this in Oatmeal, why are you not telling me that I have another shirt in my shopping cart.  Scratching my head, I scroll downwards and see a red stripe saying this item is out of stock.

If it's out of stock, why present it on the web page?   It's like saying we have this but you don't and you never will but isn't it a pretty shirt?

While the first problem I could say isn't really a problem, this one is.

However, had I been designing the product I would have flagged this as an error for correction in the next release - Change the Error Message to a different color, and do not show selections that are out of stock.

The latter is obviously more important.   It should not have taken me 15 minutes to get the order completed on a high speed network link.

Ok, admittedly, I got what I wanted, it wasn't a Terrible Experience.  This was one of those things like "ok, son, (pat on head) we'll get it right later, now go finish your homework" kind of experiences.

Besides, I really do like JCPenney.  I'm generally able to find what I am looking for both in the store and online.  It just hit me that (patting the kid on the head) it's almost there.

Some Advice for Office Depot

In full disclosure, I am a Project Manager.  I do Web Projects.  I do Desktop Publishing.  I do Graphics.  I do all those things that people need in small businesses when their computer goes "oops".  I've done education in a corporate environment.  In fact, I'm a rather good trainer - I can give references. 

The resume is very long, very detailed.  It's typical for an expert in certain pieces of technologies to have a long detailed resume like that.   I'm the guy who after a beer at 9:00 at night can tell you why you need to run a Virtual Computer using VMWare or MS Virtual PC at home to surf so that you won't get hit by a virus and then tell you to order me another so I will explain why it is safer.  

Some really esoteric stuff huh?

Well all of that takes technology.  I have some rather old technology here, but it's all like an old VW Beetle - noisy, slow but gets you there.

Just like that old VW Beetle, some of my technology is beginning to wear out.  I suffered a hardware crash this week on my Desktop Publishing Laptop in front of a client.  My "daily driver" all purpose laptop has a questionable memory chip reader and is starting to have weird freezes due to heat.  It clearly is time for me to upgrade.

I watch the "deal" sites VERY closely.  As any of my friends on Facebook know, I tend to share the links when I think the deal is good.  I'm Platform Agnostic - I'll recommend Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux compatible hardware from any hardware vendor if I think it will do what the person needs.  I've got a very good record at that, and even tell the person on the other end of the line if there are compromises to be aware of and why it is important to consider them.

The whole ball of wax.

So when I personally shop, it is a big deal.

I have been looking for a very tight specification for a laptop.  Must run Windows 7 64Bit.  Must have at least 500GB disc space or a 128GB SSD.  Must be fairly light, and no larger than 15.6 inches.  Must have an i7 Processor.  Price must be below $800. 

The last bit just knocked about 95% out of the running... so I will sit back and wait and limp through until I find THE Buy since the market hasn't quite hit my price point.

But here's the problem... I surf a LOT of eCommerce Websites.  I have some knowledge on how to implement an eCommerce Website, administer them and how to get the Web Developers to do things in a timely fashion.  I did all of that on my own in a Virtual Machine - yeah that weird software stuff again.

When a site is done right, I can drill down and see Just The Right Item and buy it.  If it is done wrong - I get angry and yell at the laptop and scare it.  Not the nicest thing to do to an old friend, is it?

Done right is www.newegg.com - I surf that site FIRST for any deal after I have found the "best buy" on another site.   Its not TOO big like Amazon, although I prefer Amazon for "regular person reviews".   It's not too small like some others and it has some very good technology on it.  The nicest thing about www.NewEgg.Com is how I can go to laptops for example, select it by processor with a couple clicks and see all the i7 Intel based laptops and then re-sort by price.

Nobody believes that "featured" makes any damn sense in this day and age of price wars and bad economy.

Here is where www.officedepot.com  has a problem.  Say you want a laptop.  You want an i7 based machine, although you can easily select any other processor.  You have decided that you want to see a specific selection of one particular grade of i7 you can do that easily.   They are basically trying "too hard".

What if you want to see more than one grade of i7 based laptop?

You can't do that easily.  I have to ask, did their Project Manager in charge of Web Quality Assurance actually test the changes to the site themselves?  I sincerely doubt it.

Here is the direct link and go through the steps and you shall see why I was annoyed.... Oh wait, I can't give you a direct link because they store your Session ID.  Yes, they're tracking you by step through the web site.  Partly that means you will get better service.  In this case I have to tell you how to get there:

1) Surf http://www.officedepot.com
2) Hover the mouse pointer over "Technology" and find Laptops, then click on Laptops

In the case of the link above, there was no Session ID tracking... so they're not overtly following through with that basic task, but anyway...

3) Page down and under the words "Shop Technology" there is a Processor Model link - click it.
4) Now this isn't all the Processor Models that you can surf and compare so you will have to click "See All Processor Model". 

Ok, The Grammarian In Me comes out - it is "... Processor Models" not "... Processor Model" but that is minor.

5) A big long list opens up.  You really can't help that, although to do a category for each type of processors would be best like "i3" "i5" and "AMD" for example... So select one processor.   I selected "i7-820QM".  I may as well live large since it was the fastest.

Here is the first problem.  The page reloads.  Who wrote that?  RELOAD?  Come on... ok, so now we go onwards.... because I don't want JUST that one processor, I have to go back and start over.

6) Select "See all Processor Model" and grumble at the lack of the "s' at the end.
7) You are presented with the list again.  Select "i7-740QM"

And the page reloads. 

You see the problem.  You, the person sitting at your desk should be able to see the list, click a whole bunch of items and then click a button to "go" and have it go fetch all at once.  It works that way on most other "Ajax" enabled sites.  The situation is so painful with all the reload that my next step was to:

8) Click close and surf another company's website.

The problem is that while Intel has been great at supplying us with so many grades of processor, there really isn't THAT much difference to the consumer between grades of processor.  The biggest difference is speed, not whether it is an i7-740 vs an i7-760.   The ideal would be to show each grade of processor and allow them to select that, then allow them to refine the search if they know enough between the grades to continue.

It can be easily fixed, I trust.  They are just giving the user too fine a list.  The person who will need to know the specifics of the processor will be at the tail end of the decision process, not the casual surfer - and there's a search box to further refine what to include.  It was much easier for me to do a search on "i7", select computers, select laptops, and then sort "low to high" and find what I was looking for than go through the menu on the left. 

It is my opinion, and only an opinion, that when you are surfing a website you will not use a search box first. Most folks will click away happily but they won't go to the search box unless they're frustrated.  Why?  Because they're lazy and won't want to move their hand off the mouse or trackpad. 

Of course I had to click on view all because that's just the way I roll...

That is what got me started on this blog piece here...

I am a lazy surfer as well and will either click or type and don't want to do both.  I suspect that the little old lady living in a farm house outside a small town like Stanton Nebraska, surfing on a website to buy a computer with the grandkids for the first time will be just as lazy if not more so.  Every step is important because it is a step for that dear sweet grandmom to step away from your site to someone else because it's confused her and the Cherry Pie has to come out of the oven anyway.

All that reminds me I have to put the Barbecue in the crock pot for dinner...

(Pause) It's a Sales Job (Click)

I talk to a lot of recruiters.  Being a Freelance Project Manager and IT Consultant, I am actively looking for a permanent position.  Nearby.  Within a reasonable driving distance of my home.

There are a lot of "Perfect Positions".   When I hear the loud shrill ring of my phone sound off, I check to see where that call is coming first.  If it is outside of the Broward County Florida and adjacent areas, it is usually the perfect job that would require selling the house, loading granny on the receiver tray on the back of the jeep and moving out. 

No, I rather like it here.  I have no intentions of moving.  There are some stinkers here, but for the most part I like my neighbors and the city.  You may have gathered that from some other postings.

This week alone, and this is before start of business on Thursday, I have had recruiters call about positions in Jacksonville, Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.   Each position would have been perfect were it here in Fort Lauderdale.  So I smile and think at least I'm shopping the right resume out there and wait for a local offer. 

If you want someone who can telecommute, I'm your man!  Between me and another person who was an amazing person to work with, we built a one of a kind virtual office using open source technologies that was splattered between here and the Northeast on a shoestring.  It was that man that taught me a very important phrase of "Own It". 

I spoke to a local recruiter yesterday while I was on the way to another interview, and rattled off the Volunteer and Consulting work I have done over the last 2 months and thought "Hey, I should hire Me!".  There will be an interview out of that one, and it would be The Dream Job.  It's even here in Broward County!  Just far enough away to justify having a car and listen to my audio books on the way in, just near enough so the commute isn't boring.

I have got to land that one first though so lets hope.

While that position is completely appropriate for me, there's the others.  At least twice a week I get some poor confused soul calling me with a sales job.  I'm not a salesman.  If I were, I'd be doing some sort of technical sales position somewhere, I'm sure...  My negotiation skills are more of the "Yes, Director of the Department, you think you need A B and C but what you really have to have immediately is only A so that is what I'll instruct the programmers to work on first and explain to them that B and C will come next time around" manner of doing business.

Agile Project Management... next step the Joint Application Design Meetings and my hovering over a programmer to get just the right look and feel....

Back to that poor confused Headhunter.   It seems that there are a lot of sales positions lately.   If they are calling me, they must be confused.  I have a long and technically oriented resume.  It is designed for a computer to read it.  I got 25 hits alone yesterday on Careerbuilder on that resume so it is working.  At least it did yesterday.   I have to think someone just went and scanned the resumes for phone numbers and started down the list.

I'm a "W" so I'm sure that was a very tired person in a dank cubicle somewhere.

It is amusing though.  If you have someone who is trying to talk to you to fill their position, there seems to be a rule.  Always hold back the most difficult detail of the position until last.  Sometimes it may be "Chicago", and others it is that you will be expected to travel 50 to 75 percent of the time. 

Chicago is a great city.  I loved it when I visited.  I will visit again, happily, but when the winds blow off the lake in February I will not be there.   Travel once in a while can be a life enhancing experience but if you're gone 75% of the time do you ever really live anywhere?

The last one recruiter call I got I knew was going to be one of these positions.  He asked if he could record the call for "Training Purposes" which was a tip off that it was going to be entertaining.  Then he rattled off the location (Telecommuting?  Hmmm interesting... do go on) and that he had read my resume and thought I was just the right person for the job.   Gave a pay grade and a bonus schedule that was appropriate for my varied experience and paused.

By the way, this is a sales position.

By the time he finished the word "Sales" I was already saying "I'm sorry I am not considering changing my career path at this time".   By the time I got to the word "Changing" he was apologizing. 

Here's a suggestion.  If you are calling someone who has a position of "Consulting Project Manager" and "IT Manager" as their current and prior positions on the resume, you already know that they won't be a perfect fit.   State right out that this is a sales position.  Then Breathe.   Most likely you will be hearing "Thanks but no thanks" and the call will end.

It will get you onto someone who may indeed be a salesman.

Color me Amused.  Sometimes the most entertaining thing you will do in a day is talk to a recruiter.