Best posts made by alexntg

.net domains were for ISPs and networking providers, so depending on your business, they may or may not be a good choice. There's always the country-specific TLDs, such as .us.

Great use of Fett's Vette by MC Chris!

Some meetings have purpose. They're still quite necessary when dealing with external parties. Internally, if you're having regular meetings on something, something's wrong with your processes. The processes you use should have communications and information steps built-in. Order got held up? Send an email to the logistics group. I've been in multiple manufacturing organizations where production/logistics would sit down every morning for their daily powwow. They'd always be rehashing the same things - order 123's still awaiting raw materials, work center 8 is down, etc. If they instead communicated this via a job status board/spreadsheet/application/slate and chisel, the info would be available to those that need it when they need it.

Case study:
In a manufacturing environment, customer jobs would get handed off between departments as needed. There was no cross-visibility between departments, so the key players from the departments would have a morning meeting to ask questions on orders. The other folks in the room would take notes in their notebooks, then go their own ways afterwards. This meeting would consume nearly 2 hours a day, and there was likely some job or question that was overlooked. The ball would get dropped on jobs, material purchases weren't made in a timely fashion because logistics didn't know the order was coming, etc. It was a mess.

Later on, Purchasing worked with IT to develop a job material purchase tracking system spreadsheet. They'd have visibility on each job and easily be able to keep material purchase info updated. Eventually, Scheduling was working with Purchasing on an issue, and liked the material spreadsheet. Soon after, Purchasing brought a laptop to the daily meeting, and just updated the spreadsheet with the meeting's notes. After a couple months, the spreadsheet was added to in order to include Scheduling's info, as well as Order Entry, Tooling, etc. People started entering their own data into the spreadsheet. A projector was set up in the conference room, and updates were added real-time as the meeting went on. After a few months (when all the open orders had been entered and kept in the spreadsheet), the meeting wasn't really needed anymore. Everyone had timely information at their fingertips and didn't need to sit around a table to discuss it. Notes and discussions happened within the spreadsheet, and everyone was on the same page.

With that in mind, if you see recurring meetings happening, try to figure out what's wrong with the process that's creating the need for these meetings.

Meeting prevention's also important. Set your environment up to be conducive to one-off discussions. Have whiteboards in open areas so that folks can just walk up and discuss a concept. They can hash out ideas on the marker board and move on. Bam! Meeting prevented. A newer, yet growing concept, for internal-use conference rooms, get rid of the chairs and put a projector and marker boards in. It changes the dynamic of the room from sitting around talking to being active and doing. Meetings will be shorter, less prone to attention drift, and more collaborative instead of one-sided.

After reading this, I think I might be in the wrong line of work. Maybe I should pick up an MBA and go into business consulting?

@JaredBusch said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@pol.darreljade Why would it be so common if money isn't in abundance? It is a relatively rare development platofrm in the US and in Europe because of the very hogh cost associated with using it - it is expensive to license, expensive to support and the mainline development tools for it are quite costly. For desktops, sure. But for servers running applications, it is definitely a niche choice for companies looking to spend a lot of money or for shops looking to spend money on technology and save money on developers since Windows development is generally cheaper as it is in less demand.

This is completely out of touch. Every single small business I deal with that has not migrated out to hosted solutions use software packages built on and designed to run on windows. Yes new stuff should not be designed that way, but the embedded market has it and has had it for years and will not just change for no reason.
Hell, we just decommissioned a System 36 (not Windows, I know but extremely long time in service is the point).

^This! For those developing for a web platform, the end-user doesn't see the backend platform, so the OS doesn't matter. For desktop OSes, Windows still has the market by a staggering majority. http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0 Why would a company spend time and money developing for a platform that has less than 2 percent of the marketshare?

And it's fugly! I think I'll still go with an ELR after my current car's paid off.

@Nic said:

Open plans suck, especially for introverts. I couldn't stand it so I had them make me a real cube.

That's one of the reasons I left my last job. I'd be trying to bang out some detailed project work and have Nerf darts whizzing by. Cubes are better, but I prefer an office. Some of my best work happens when I'm in an office with low background noise and no windows.

Sales killed me when I ran my own business. I couldn't sell my services at all. It's a skillset that I don't have. I should have waited longer before starting up so that I could have afforded to pay a salesperson.

What's a ChelPee?

@Nic said:

@alexntg said:

@Nic said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Gabi said:

Back to topic. I found Web Root customer service shocking, but might be different now.

+1

In a good way? You should probably give it another shot now, since we went through the big revamp 3 years ago. Webroot got rid of a lot of the dead wood at that time, so CS and support are better now.

When was the change from SpySweeper with Antivirus to WSA?

About 3 years ago - Webroot bought Prevx in 2010, so that's when it started.

In that case, if anyone hasn't tried Webroot since then, they'd be in for an incredibly pleasant shock. I ran Webroot with Antivirus back in 2008, and was not impressed, but can't speak highly enough about the current product.

Would it be possible to add some informative text? New visitors don't necessarily know what the site's about.

Revenge of the Fifth! May the Force set you free!

@ShaunS said:

Ok, and the deep scans are nice and light too? Its the full system scans where we run into real issues with Kaspersky after V6, and all other vendors we have tried so far.
Emails coming through from our google accounts are usually fine, its those that come in through our web hosting company that give us grief. They offer a mail AV product from McAfee on the server, but want something like $10 per email address which is just not worth it when our on-premise AV filters incoming mails. If we have to purchase something different to do that task alongside Webroot on the endpoint, that would increase our current cost dramatically ( The listed price for Webroot is already quite a jump from what it cost to renew last time with Kaspersky).

Full scans aren't even noticeable. It doesn't even hiccup a bit on my business system, and on my home system it doesn't impact my gaming at all.

@nadnerB said:

Have fun with the meet up. I'd really like to come but it's just a bit too far for a leisurely weekend drive.

Just for lulz,
My closest city to NYC
City furthest from NYC

Better get digging!

More importantly, why aren't they covered with a tarp?

If you haven't received a raise, using potential departure will be a temporary help. If you make your mind up to leave, leave. As someone who's moved literally halfway across the country for work, sometimes you just need to do that. Traveling for work can also be lucrative, but I understand that it isn't for everyone. Sometimes compensation grows as the position grows, but sometimes it doesn't. In the latter situation, you need to change in order to make the appropriate amount of money. Whichever way you go or don't go, there will always be what-ifs, but it's a matter of learning to not dwell on them.

Another reason to go with Windows 8 - computers will aut0-reboot for updates after a few days.

Otherwise, you can set a deadline on the updates when you approve them, which will force reboot.

Jedi propaganda!

@PSX_Defector said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

I'm not alone. If you look at the job listings for VisualDNA (http://www.visualdna.com/careers/vacancy/?p_id=829), a hip London startup, you'll see that they actually request that applicants give details of where they can read more about you (forums, blogs etc etc).

Nope!

Once again, my internet life and my real life are separate, and never shall the twain meet.

Besides, do they really want to read my AdultFriendFinder posts?

Given your writing style, that could be rather entertaining.

@scottalanmiller said:

If only it were on a good network. But we'll never know.

Your mileage may vary. I've maintained a fleet of 40 AT&T phones, and they've had excellent service throughout the country, as well as in Europe, China, and even Mauritius.

If you can't break away from work completely for a week, it's a sign of one or more things:

1. You have a problem such as addiction to work
2. Your company doesn't have proper controls in place to mitigate the impact the loss of an employee
3. You haven't properly cross-trained your backup person.

The same thing applies to vacations as getting hit by a bus. What happens if you get hit by a bus? Will the company go under? If so, fix it. If not, enjoy vacation.