Category Archives: Work

Communication at its Finest

Posted on July 19, 2006 by jim

My place of work, at the behest of their insurer, has implemented a new requirement of their employees: everyone must authorize release of their Motor Vehicle Reports. There’s more, but this is the only thing that requires direct employee action. … Continue reading →

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Productivity Tip: Throw everything on your desk in a box

Posted on August 2, 2005 by jim

From the good guys at 37signals: >Toss everything, and I mean *everything* on your desk in a box. If it doesn’t fit in a box, put it on the floor. Your desk should be completely cleared of everything — no … Continue reading →

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An old theme

Posted on July 6, 2005 by jim

I’m an IT professional – I’ve spent well over half my life making computers work for people. While my platform of choice is Mac OS X, I still know much more than the average bear about making Windows XP go … Continue reading →

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Lowest Common Denominator

Posted on June 20, 2005 by jim

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogs (I really dislike blogosphere) that “small is the new big“. 37signals loves it, of course. Scoble talks about it in Microsoft land. Brought it up with my CIO this morning, and … Continue reading →

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Get out of my way

Posted on June 15, 2005 by jim

Several years ago, I came across an open-response question: >”If you could have only one superpower, what would it be?” A lot of respondents wanted to fly, or be immortal, or see the future – but one person came up … Continue reading →

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What am I worth?

Posted on October 1, 2004 by jim

What do I charge for my time?
It’s a fairly normal question for people who have been sararimen all their professional careers and are looking to do some freelance work. Searching for comparable rates rarely helps – web and IT geeks (my line) rarely advertise their hourly rates, same with editors (my wife’s line of work). So how do you figure out what to charge a client?
This is my take on it. It assumes you want to earn the financial equivalent of someone who has a full-time job; someone who works 40 hours a week (not 50, 60, or 70), gets benefits, sick time, training, vacation, and paid holidays. Sound good? Climb on board.
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Tom’s TIB

Posted on September 10, 2004 by jim

Okay kids, go read this. You’re going to have to have a PDF reader of some flavor to actually get into the goodness but, trust me, it’s worth it. While it has a lot of your typical “what color is … Continue reading →

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Doing the Obvious

Posted on April 7, 2004 by jim

One of my ongoing projects at work has been allowing the HTML-impaired to update web content. Thus all the blather about lightweight/personal content systems. I’ve already shimmed one MovableType “blog” into a [quarterly newsletter](http://www.engr.washington.edu/enews/) where the TOC for a given … Continue reading →

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Roll Over, Rover

Posted on January 28, 2004 by jim

Was having various and sundry data errors with my MovableType install on niherlas.com, which were finally attributable to database corruption. Given that I was using BerkeleyDB when I set it up, but now that Pair gives my account level access … Continue reading →

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