Valkyrie's Page of Wonder

Post Date?

2010-02-19T09:30:00-05:00

Testy test

Test

2010-01-13T21:23:46-05:00

This is a test of the commenting thingy

New Photo Gallery

2009-03-09T10:10:00-05:00

Yay! The new Photo Gallery is up and running! There are already several sets of photos to view. They aren't the most descriptive of names and/or captions but they are up. Commenting is also enabled for those who like to talk about the photos. Let me know if you find something broken or doing something unexpected.
Have fun!

How to Manage Geeks

2009-02-11T09:10:11-05:00

How to Manage Geeks

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
When the geeks at NCR in Australia threatened to go on strike, it was a move that could have paralyzed ATMs, supermarket cash registers and airplane check-in. This underlines the fact that IT has become so central to almost all corporations, that any disruption may cost a lot of time and money, which again means that keeping the geeks happy at work is an absolute requirement for a modern business. Happy geeks are effective geeks. The main reason IT people are unhappy at work is bad relations with management, often because geeks and managers have fundamentally different personalities, professional backgrounds and ambitions. Some people conclude that geeks hate managers and are impossible to lead. The expression “managing geeks is like herding cats” is sometimes used, but that’s just plain wrong. The fact is that IT people hate bad management and have even less tolerance for it than most other kinds of employees. So where does it go wrong? Here are some top ways that managers can lead geeks effectively and respectfully.

Steps

Value training. If a boss thinks that training is a waste of money and expects you to teach yourself, you feel pretty demotivated in any job. Training matters, especially in IT, and managers must realize that and budget for it. Sometimes you get the argument that “if I give them training a competitor will hire them away.” That may be true, but the alternative is to only have employees who are too unskilled to work anywhere else. Also, if you pay them well and have good benefits, they won't go somewhere else.
Give recognition. Since managers may not understand the work geeks do very well, it’s hard for them to recognize and reward a job well done, which hurts motivation. The solution is to work together to define a set of goals that both parties agree on. When these goals are met the geeks are doing a great job.
Keep overtime down. Avoid taking the approach of wringing as much as possible out of IT employees just because you figure they don't lead a normal life. Wrong! That’s a huge mistake and overworked geeks burn out or simply quit. It's a complete myth that long work hours are good for business.
Avoid using management-speak. Geeks hate management-speak and see it as superficial and dishonest. Managers shouldn’t learn to speak tech, but they should drop the biz-buzzwords. A manager can say “We need to proactively impact our time-to-market” or simply use plain English and stick to “We gotta be on time with this project”. The latter makes total sense to everyone involved.
Don't try to be smarter than the geeks. When managers don’t know anything about a technical question, they should simply admit it. Geeks respect them for that, but not for pretending to know. And they will catch it - geeks are smart.
Act consistently. Geeks have an ingrained sense of fairness, probably related to the fact that in IT, structure and consistency is critical. The documentation can’t say one thing while the code does something else, and similarly, managers can’t say one thing and then do something else.
Don't make the mistake of ignoring the geeks. Because managers and geeks are different types of people, managers may end up leaving the geeks alone. This makes leading them difficult, and geeks need good leadership - the same as all other personnel groups.
Include them in decisions. Never make decisions without consulting geeks. Geeks usually know the technical side of the business better than the manager, so making a technical decision without consulting them is one of the biggest mistakes a leader can make.
Give them the tools needed. A fast computer may cost more money than an older one and it may not be corporate standard, but geeks use computers differently. A slow computer lowers productivity and is a daily annoyance. So is outdated software. Give them the tools they need.
Tools come in many forms. Caffeine is considered a standard tool among Geeks. The more wired they are, the longer they work.
Remember that geeks are creative workers. Programming is a creative process, not an industrial one. Geeks must constantly come up with solutions to new problems and rarely ever solve the same problem twice. Therefore they need leeway and flexibility. Strict dress codes and too much red tape kill all innovation. They also need creative surroundings to avoid “death by cubicle”.
Recognize the outcomes of not treating geeks with respect as outlined above. Happy geeks are productive geeks, and the most important factor is good management, tailored to their situation. Doing the opposite to what has been outlined in this article has serious consequences for your organization, including:
- Low motivation
- High employee turnover
- Increased absenteeism
- Lower productivity
- Lower quality
- Bad service

Tips

Caveat: not all geeks are the same; geeks are wildly different people and this article does generalize dangerously. And this article is not saying that all IT-people are geeks. Some are, some aren’t.
This advice would work well with most employees, not just geeks.
The word 'geek' in this article is not used in a derogatory manner: "definition 3: an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity
."[1]
- The word geek is normally derogatory, but it is thought of as meaning a person with skill and knowledge in the computer arena.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

Original source of article, Alex Kjerulf, How NOT to Lead Geeks. Shared with permission. Thanks Alex, The Chief Happiness Officer!

↑ Merriam Webster Online Dictionary

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Manage Geeks. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Photo Gallery Updates

2009-01-20T07:17:00-05:00

As you may or may not have noticed, there are a lot of blank albums in the Photo Gallery/Art section. After uploading the ones for Munch-Munch I decided I needed to be a better way of doing that. Most of the other online photo galleries out there allow for multiple photos to be uploaded at once. I am currently in the process of recreating the Photo Gallery by combining what I've learned from the Navigation management and what I am slowly learning about Adobe Flex.

Borrowing from the Navigation section is the ability to infinitely nest items into one another. Meaning that there are no longer Categories and then Albums. It's just albums and then more albums in those albums. Might have to rethink my display page in that regard.

From Flex comes the main hiccup. I have a batch uploader that was supplied by a Flex Tutorial. And it was working great, except that none of the photos it uploaded when into a particular album. They all started out in an "unsorted" album. In the process of trying to integrated the album selection into my management I am learning how to pull external database data into a Flex application. So far its been 2 full days and no success. I did, at one point, have it outputing 1 entry of for each entry, but couldn't figure out how to get to show the info instead.

If anyone out there knows how to populate a combobox in a Flex Application from a database at runtime (not compile time) it would be great. Otherwise I'll just be approaching this problem from another angle.
Wish me luck!

To Screen Watch or not to Screen Watch

2008-03-03T16:57:49-05:00

Texas Instruments' Dual View: Look Ma, No Split Screen

The technology built into new DLP TV to allow for 3D viewing of movies has had an interesting side effect. Whether it was originally planned or not, I don't know, but it's very exciting for gamers such as myself.

First, some background on the 3D portion. Original 3D Movies showed two images at the same time on the screen with some red/blue color variations. Using special 3D glasses you could see the composite image and enjoy having a rampaging dinosaur or something look like its about to chew your face off.

These new 3D TVs have a similar technology but instead of showing two images on the screen at the same time it very rapidly, 120hhz/fps, alternates between full screen images of slightly different images. Using special glasses that alternate which eye is looking at the screen at a given moment you can see the wonderful 3d effect.

If you can alternate which eye is looking at the screen at a given moment, why not use both eyes and have two different images on the screen. That is exactly how this technology applies to gaming. You can have player 1's screen and player 2's screen showing full screen at the same time and, using the glasses can only see your screen, preventing the "cheat" known as Screen Watching.

Another less explored side of this technology is being able to watch two completely different movies at the same time. Or watching a movie and playing a game at the same time. This last one would be nice because then I could be in the living room playing games, while my wife sits and watches her favorite show/movie whatever on the same TV. Then the only problem is independent sound, but i'm sure they have that figured out too.

Check out the link or do a search for "Texas Instruments Dual View". It's getting to be an exciting world out there.

My Views

2008-02-07T11:07:03-05:00

My Views:

A) I dont care what color you are.
B) I dont care what religion you are.
C) I dont care about your ethic background.

What I do care about is the way you treat others and yourself.
A black man who treats himself as a black man is racist.
A black man who treats himself as a white man is racist.
A white man who treats himself as a white man is racist.
A white man who treats himself as a black man is racist.
A man who treats himself as equal to any other man is a good man.

Race, Color, Religion, Age, Sex, Handicap are issues that should never be brought up in a politcal situation when talking about the canidates. But it always is brought up. We have a Woman and a Black Man running for president, when it should just be two people, two canidates running for president.

Sadly these issues will never, and I do mean never, go away. People will always look at each other as black, white, hispanic, asian, jewish, catholic, christian, muslim, male, female, old, young and any other way that sterotypes another. I feel that this will ONLY change when people stop looking at themselves in these ways. If you say "i'm white" or "i'm black" people will look at you that way with all their racist and sterotypical views already applied.

I am a person. I am an individual. I am whatever I say I am. Nothing anyone else can say will ever change who I am and what I am.

Photo Gallery is Finished!

2008-01-17T14:59:18-05:00

I've finished the Photo Gallery admin section so I can finally start uploading images and such for everyone to see! But I haven't actually uploaded anything. So it's somewhat empty. I will however eventually transfer all the images from the old site to the new.

What I put together yesterday however was a neato to-do list thing. Dont have a front end display yet and already i'm thinking about tacking on some new/needed features, but it works and now I can keep track of my things to do in a more reliable way. I've used DXWidgets before but they kept breaking after so often so I gave up on those.

If I ever get a front end display thing going I'll let everyone know but until then keep checking back.

Moving closer to the goal

2007-12-16T21:50:55-05:00

Well I just finished the admin section for the CraftyWeasels website. Which is based off the SitePro design. Also, it was all done in PHP instead of ColdFusion. It took a little longer to get going since I don't have nearly as much experience with PHP as I do with ColdFusion but I finally got the hang of it again. Having the ColdFusion page to go off of helped tremendously. It also helped in knowing which PHP codes coincided with which ColdFusion codes. And remember to hit $ instead of # for variables.

Now if I ever get some free time I should be able to start the conversion of the SitePro design to PHP. Not sure what all that will accomplish now that I have this site but whatever.

I'll try to remember to get my photo gallery going either this week or over the weekend but don't hold your breath. I know I won't.

Forever and a day

2007-12-14T23:32:00-05:00

Things have been rather busy for me these past few months. I've been working on several big projects including Centurion Homes, Whatley Ford and two new projects for Aqua Salon & Spa and Beazley Real Estate. The last two links go to their current sites and not the ones we have done for them. They should be updated to the new sites either later this week or perhaps next week.

On top of everything else I've also been trying to get the Centurion Homes Home Configurator finished. I've gotten almost the entire back end done for managing what goes in each model and what options can be selected. The front end portion is in final stages and after that its just the reports and what gets printed out that needs to be finished.

My wife started working for me this month. And so far, I like it. She's a much better worker than the current help. Now if only I could get better technicians. It's not that they arn't any good. They know what they are doing, but their professionalism and maturity levels are not very high. Makes me wish we still had one of our older techs like James or Brad.

Bruce was hired at the same time my wife was to do sales, design, and help me with any web work I have. Sales he's good at. Design I haven't really had a chance to test, but his web skills are very lacking. I'll have to train him on just about everything. Hopefully he's willing to learn. However, I brought my Visual Quickstart Guide to Flash MX to work for him to read and learn and he left it at the office instead of taking it home. Plus he's high strung and he seems to be easily distracted. As the weeks wear on maybe he'll settle in and I'll be able to get some decent work out of him.

I haven't forgotten about my story it's just been on the back burner. After doing so much on the computer all day, it's hard to come home and do much of anything with a PC. I'll try to work more on it sometime soon as well as finally get the photo gallery working here, but don't hold your breath.

Where have all the updates gone?

2007-10-08T16:35:23-05:00

Well its been a few days and no updates to anything. I haven't had much time to do any updates or any new programming for this site lately. I will eventually get stuff up including but not limited to the Art/Photo Gallery page. Be on the look out.

We're Stylin' Now

2007-10-02T16:30:26-05:00

After some hard work and much tweaking, I think i've finally got the major styles down for this new blog. Still haven't touched the admin section of the blog but the display and new entry form is looking good.

Redesigned Website

2007-10-02T11:15:00-05:00

Working on a redesign of my current site that includes several new features. I will keep you updated as things happen. The Art section is sudo finished and will be accessible soon.