My Job Went to India
My Job Went to India
is the latest book from the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I listened to Andy Hunt’s recoding of the introduction — yeah, it’s good.
Chad Fowler, the author quickly realized that those people in India are really people and they need this job not only to support themselves, but their families which generally includes their parents, grandparents, in-laws, etc. When you have that kind of drive, you will do almost anything for a job.
The New Christian Hipster
Relevant Magazine has an interesting article intitledThe New Hipster
This article is quite relevant (pun unintended) to my LifeLight experience. I hope that this article is right about Christians being tired of emulating secular culture — I have had enough of that.
It closes with a good thought:
We are to be a counterculture—in and not of the world, accepting yet not acquiescent, flexible but not compromising, progressive though not by the world’s standards.
Windows Shortcuts
Here are some Windows Short cuts that I have never seen before. These are from today’s Kim Kommando Tip of the Day:
| WinKey + D | Minimizes all windows and shows the desktop |
| WinKey + L | Locks the computer (Windows XP only) |
| WinKey + Tab | Cycles through the programs shown on the taskbar |
| WinKey + F | Brings up the Windows Search box |
| WinKey+E | Opens up Windows Explorer |
| WinKey + R | Opens the Run dialog box |
| WinKey + Pause | Opens System Properties |
| SHIFT+F10 | Same as right-clicking an object |
| CTRL+ESC | Opens the Start menu |
| SHIFT | Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you insert a CD-ROM to bypass the auto-run feature |
| ALT+underlined letter in menu | Opens the menu |
| ALT+F4 | Closes the current program |
| CTRL+F4 | Closes the current window in a program |
| ALT+F6 | Switches between multiple windows in the same program |
| CTRL+Tab | Switches between multiple tabbed windows in the same program |
| SHIFT+DELETE | Deletes selection immediately, without it hitting the Recycle Bin |
Complements, Substitutes, and Customers
My latest item from IT Conversations has been Novell’s David Patrick on “Open Source Renaissance”. It’s from OSCON 2004 — yeah, it’s old, but it’s still good.
It’s filled with lots of good stuff but what was really good for me was hearing him talk about substitutes anc complements. When starting a new project, one should look for an open source project that complements what you are doing or an open source project you can substitute for you project. This strategy, overall, should lower the cost of IT resources.
It should be added that to make this strategy more successful, one should be encourage your developers to participate in open source projects — sometimes it would probably be required. If you have a open source product that you want to use but it has a show-stopping bug in it or it doesn’t have a couple of features you would like. Why not put a couple of developers on it and send the code back? Everyone wins — you and the product.
Patrick also discusses that for an open source company to succeed, they have to form a relationship with the customer and serve to their needs and that this mentality is a new one in the software industry. I think that it’s outrageous that forming a relationship with your customers and caring for their needs is a new concept in this industry — but I do agree that it is. Companies for too long have focused on lock-in and not giving customers what they need. I think this is one of the main reasons that open source has been so successful and will continue to be.
Office upgrade
When I was gone, I got a message that we are upgrading from Office 2000 to Office XP. The reason?
This upgrade doesn’t change much as far as usability is concerned, but it will allow it to be easily patched should the need arise.
I.e. we are spending thousands of dollars to upgrade because we will no longer be supported — not because we need the new functionality (is there much new stuff in Office XP?) Madness!
