The Human Resources department (in most cases) is not the Office Energy department. Typically, no one is in charge of this crucial aspect of a company. When someone is visiting your office for an interview, they are noticing things such as: Office layout Types of computers/screens on the desks Ceilings/Lighting…
Well, my sabbatical is over and it’s time to get back to work. My kids are in the same boat, getting ready for a new school year. It has been a great summer. Here are some of the highlights: Hawaii Trip Lots of Tennis (2-4 times a week) Wrote about…
I was helping someone set up a password on Intuit.com. When they asked for a password, they presented this visual clue. Notice where it says NO SPACES. That is just lazy programming. Spaces are a completely valid character for a password. There was no designer or product manager who said,…
It’s such an interesting expression. I heard it on a podcast of This American Life. It means to look around different neighborhoods, so that when you buy a house it sends your kids to the best local (public) school possible. The problem is that the phrase implies a very specific…
Last night, I took the 2.5 hour drive to Sacramento for my kids to see Epic Rap Battles of History live. You may not be familiar with ERB, but they are great. They are #17 on the top Youtube channels with almost 2 billion views. The format is funny and…
Recently, I have turned out Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and DirecTV. They all have certain benefits and different UX. This isn’t a comprehensive review, but hopefully is helpful to you. There are so many ways to use these services. The xBox, native TV apps, DirecTV, Roku, Amazon Fire stick, WDTV,…
I’ve been using Windows 10 for a couple of months now. I have been a beta tester of every windows operating system since Windows 95. I am not an Apple Fanboy by any stretch. I have been a fan of Microsoft products include Office for decades. I think I can…
In many silicon valley companies, you can earn a sabbatical after 7 years in the same company. While many people jump from company to company each year, I have been lucky enough to find a home for a longer period of time. So this summer, I decided to take my…
I just got back from a vacation to Maui, Hawaii. It was the first trip that I had taken without my extended family (siblings, parents, cousins, etc) in decades. I haven’t traveled much, so this was a new adventure. I went just with my atomic family (wife/kids). Here is a…
For the last few years, I have been working on the hardest/longest project of my career. http://docs.marketo.com – The Marketo User Manual A few years back, I did a series of interviews of our customers. Specifically, I spoke to customers who thought the product was “too hard”. Turns out that part of…
A person just declared to the world that they identify with a certain group. Their DNA contradicts that assertion. Who am I talking about? Bruce/Caitlin Jenner Rachel Dolezal Bruce Jenner says, “I’m not a man. I am a woman.” The world says, “You go girl!” Rachel Dolezal says, “I am black”…
In any disruption there are winners and losers. The internet has been the enabler to disrupt many businesses in the last 20 years. Some examples: Music. Downloadable compressed audio enables ripping/pirating. Losers have been the record labels. Winners have been iTunes and small artists who want to get their name out…
I have been using OneDrive for a while now as our cloud service. However, complaints have forced me to reconsider. Here is a quick summary of my thoughts on the subject. Pricing OneDrive pricing. 15 GB Free 100 GB $1.99/month 200 GB $3.99/month 1 TB $6.99/month (includes Office 365) Google…
In computer security and programming, a buffer overflow, or buffer overrun, is an anomaly where a program, while writing data to a buffer, overruns the buffer’s boundary and overwrites adjacent memory locations. This is a special case of the violation of memory safety. I use it for human thinking as…