New
Tricks
By Walter
Hanig, President
The hardest part of writing this column is coming up with a topic, month after month after month. I'm not shy about asking for suggestions and others have not been shy about offering them. So, I'd like to use this space to list a few of the tricks this old dog learned in 2003.
- Finding a new job isn't that hard . . . if you do it often enough. The gap between leaving Ericsson and joining NCR was a way-too-short seven weeks. I can take no credit for the existence of the opening. But I have no doubt that letting people know I was available and face-to-face networking played major roles.
- Volunteers are easier to find if you ask them directly. I should have learned this earlier, but sometimes begging is necessary. Sharon Burton-Hardin, our November speaker, had said as much in an STC leadership workshop.
- Box turtles need plenty of cool water and shade on hot days. This was a sad lesson whose pain was slightly diminished with the arrival of new babies, Pilgrim and Kamé, in November.
- The most effective motivation occurs after the fact. Two words, sincerely communicated: "Thank you."
- Entry level jobs for applied math majors from UCLA are hard to find. Contact me if you know of one.
- There is nothing like evacuating from home to help you decide what material items are most important.
- Structured FrameMaker 7 is cool if your act is together, templatewise. Otherwise, you're perfuming a pig.
- When it comes to training, you don't always get what you pay for. The free XML/XSLT classes I took from the San Diego Centers for Education & Technology http://www.sandiegocet.net were well-taught, informative, and free. Actually, they were better than free because I got a student ID card ($2) that allowed me to buy software at the heavily discounted educational rate.
- Year after year, French Quarter Festival http://www.frenchquarterfestival.com is the place to be in mid-April.
- Every company has a mind-numbing collection of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms. It's taken me only six months to learn that "CLI" doesn't always mean "command line interface."
- Likewise, every company has its own product development process. However, all companies share a commitment to ignoring the process when it suits them.
- Cooking for 25 loved ones at Thanksgiving isn't that hard when some help with the preparation, cooking, and cleaning, others stay out of the way, and others fetch rum and Coke. (Myers's Jamaican with lime, if you please). And, yes, brining a turkey is a good idea!
