Submitted by greggles on
Jason Goldman figured out two things to save america.
Parapharsing: get rid of phone books and do assigned seating in movie theaters. Eliminating phonebooks saves us "fucktons" while assigned seating saves us from wasting time in line. Great ideas - the average person would probably be opposed.
Submitted by greggles on
EDIT: like this? Digg it.
I get asked questions - and now I'm answering them here to share the knowledge beyond the emails.
Today one of my coffee group reported the following:
1. He was trying to sign up for {online service} and was asked the usual
information and also he birth date and sex (not gender, as that only
applies to language usage).
2. He questioned the need for this and tried to submit the request
without it. He was rejected and told to fill out those boxes.
3. He called the {online service} and was told that they do not request that
info, that his browser had added it to their website. He was told that
if he did not believe them, he could try logging on to their website
through another browser and see.
4. He tried using MSN and IE and, lo and behold, the questions were
not there. They had been there when he used AOL.
Our question to you: Is this possible? How can this be?
This is interesting, and very possible.
There was clearly something malicious going on that didn't involve the {online service} system. It could have been an extra entry in his hosts file or it could have been some software that watches your browser and whenever you type in {online service} it adds in some extra fields and redirects the form to somewhere else. The malicious software could have gotten there from hundreds of different ways including security flaws in IE and/or Windows. It could have gotten there because this person downloaded some "fun" software for their machine and installed that (and the fun software had malicious software inside it).
Submitted by greggles on
I've been using Google Calendar for a while now and there are a couple of problems that I have noticed and a couple that friends have pointed out.
Generally, Google has yet again made a great product. The new event parser works really well. If you don't know, it basically allows you to type in events the way that you think about them (e.g. "
Another thing that they got right is public calendars. There are currently thousands of public calendars that you can add into your Google calendar like a calendar of holidays. But you can also subscribe to iCalendar feeds (as I have demonstrated icalendar importing of Drupal events in the past). This is the kind of thing that will take a geeky technology (iCalendar) and hopefully make it easy enough for "my mom" to use. She can just use the "search" box for the term in an iCalendar feed and there she has it without knowing about iCalendar protocol at all.
In that same vein, you can have multiple calendars in your google calendar - e.g. work and personal - and share your calendar with different permission levels. So, the wife can see and edit my personal calendar but not my work calendar. You could allow coworkers to view (bot not edit) your work calendar and only let your coworker friend see your personal calendar as well. Pretty cool.
Submitted by greggles on
We need an IKEA on the front range.
We really really do.
Thanks.
Someone told me we wouldn't get one because Ikea hates doing shipping inland and only wants to ship by boats.
When you look at this map that kinda makes sense.
DAMN THE MAN!
Submitted by greggles on
I stumbled upon this article yesterday and it's a good read. Basically, Eric Sink, who founded a small ISV (Independent Software Vendor) writes about life as a small ISV and why you should make lots of mistakes, just not any fatal mistakes. ISV's are small to medium businesses - maybe somewhere between 2 and 200 people and they create applications to sell to other people.
Submitted by greggles on
This is a delicious peanut sauce. I can't really say that it fits a particular cultural style, but it is a blend of various different recipes and most closely resembles a "Thai Satay" sauce.
peanut sauce
oil
soy sauce
peanut butter
coconut milk (optional)
curry paste (optional)
cilantro (optional)
garlic (optional)
onion (optional)
brown sugar (optional)
hot sauce to taste
Submitted by greggles on
A couple things I've noticed in my limited career:
like barbecues, holiday parties, picnics, potlucks, chili cook-offs and the like. Pick a friday of the month, tell everyone to plan ahead, and it will take care of itself. Nobody gets much done Friday afternoon anyway, so it isn't a big productivity loss.
One of my favorites on this was the award for the last person to arrive at the monthly meeting from Connexn. The last guy in the room received a trophy made out of a can of really bad beer. People who had done something good got a "GOBOSH (GO Big Or Stay Home). People who had been there for n*years got an anniversary certificate. People like awards. As Napoleon said "give me enough ribbon to cover the tunics of my soldiers and I will conquer the world." And when you give these awards - announce the person's name (learn how to pronounce it before hand), say "thanks", and look people in the eye.
Some places spend lots of money on fancy dinners and think that's right - I don't think that makes much marginal difference beyond a hot dog from Mustard's Last Stand. Some places dont' do anything - that clearly won't work either. I like the idea of, first, doing things that help your employees get their work done and that keep them happy (like breakfast burritos on Friday morning once a month) and, second, that reward a common interest like a friend who works in a ski town and whose company flies employess who have worked there for 3+ years to Mexico for a vacation at the end of the year. All the employees take week long vacations in the spring/fall off-season anyway, that's part of the attraction of working in a mountain town. Letting them do it together builds corporate love.
These won't guarantee happy employees, but man if you don't do these things that's one sucky company.If these don't exist, start them.
