Never Warp your Brain with Time Zone Math Again !

An excellent new website – www.everytimezone.com shows the time in various time zones. Should be handy setting up a conference call with people in different time zones.

 

Attachment Detector

One of the most embarrassing things in life is forgetting to send an attachment with an email, when you write down the whole 100 words of text describing the attachment. It was most heartening for me to know that a lot of people felt that way, and some came up with a solution.

There’s one solution out there for Outlook, and one for Gmail. The tools – “politely remind you to attach a file if it finds the word "attach" in your email and no actual attached file.”

Outlook Attachment Reminder via Lifehacker

Gmail's Forgotten Attachment Detector

Programming Contest with a Supermodel !

This is kind of old, but too good to pass.

One of my favorite Coding Tools is Coderush and Refactor by DevExpress. They have templates for code generation, which make you extremely productive. We all have used Coderush for a long time and know it saves a lot of time.

Recently the guys at DevExpress organized a challenge at DevConnections where you had a speed coding contest with this Super Model. Check it out - there's a video out there as well.

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/IDETools/CodeRush/sara.xml

At the DevConnections conference in Las Vegas NV, we took a spokesmodel, gave her 6 hours training and then let her go head-to-head with experienced software developers to determine who could write working code faster, more efficiently, in either C# or VB.

With the help of CodeRush Sara went undefeated.

If you write code in Visual Studio .Net for anything more than 6 hours per week - you should be using this!

Read another post here and here. And you can read the most interesting post on Mark Miller's blog. He is the funniest guy ... uncensored brilliance.

My Top Five Strength's According to Gallup

I did this Gallup Foundation StrengthFinder Test a few years back. It told me my top strength was "achiever" and I needed to accomplish something everyday in order to feel good about myself. It was a bit funny, but very true. After all, I was the guy who carried a Steve McConnell book to a snow camp.

It also told me I liked learning about new things - whether or not they are useful. Knowing my strengths was pretty helpful, I could plan my work, my life around it. I picked roles at my job which gave me chances to learn. I knew if I had a tough day, all I needed to do to get back on track was to accomplish something.

Recently, some of my friends at work gave the test too, and this has become a part of our conversations at work. Somebody whom you always knew to be a "Whatever you say" guy - had a strength "Harmony". Somebody whom you knew to be great planner - had the strength "Strategic" and "Futuristic". 

My sister, after hearing our conversations gave this test and she found that she had the top strength -"Woo". She has already convinced 10 odd people into giving the test themselves!

Here are my top 5 strengths according to the test -

Achiever
Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive. Achiever describes a constant need for achievement. You
feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to
feel good about yourself. And by "every day" you mean every single day-workdays, weekends, vacations.
No matter how much you may feel you deserve a day of rest, if the day passes without some form of
achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied. You have an internal fire burning inside you. It
pushes you to do more, to achieve more. After each accomplishment is reached, the fire dwindles for a
moment, but very soon it rekindles itself, forcing you toward the next accomplishment. Your relentless need
for achievement might not be logical. It might not even be focused. But it will always be with you. As an
Achiever you must learn to live with this whisper of discontent. It does have its benefits. It brings you the
energy you need to work long hours without burning out. It is the jolt you can always count on to get you
started on new tasks, new challenges. It is the power supply that causes you to set the pace and define the
levels of productivity for your work group. It is the theme that keeps you moving.

My Analysis : I would come back at 2 AM after a complete day out at the movies or partying - and want to do something worthwhile - Read a tech book, Catch up on some blogs or do some work. Then I could sleep happy. 

Input
You are inquisitive. You collect things. You might collect information-words, facts, books, and quotations-or
you might collect tangible objects such as butterflies, baseball cards, porcelain dolls, or sepia photographs.
Whatever you collect, you collect it because it interests you. And yours is the kind of mind that finds so
many things interesting. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity. If you
read a great deal, it is not necessarily to refine your theories but, rather, to add more information to your
archives. If you like to travel, it is because each new location offers novel artifacts and facts. These can be
acquired and then stored away. Why are they worth storing? At the time of storing it is often hard to say
exactly when or why you might need them, but who knows when they might become useful? With all those
possible uses in mind, you really don't feel comfortable throwing anything away. So you keep acquiring and
compiling and filing stuff away. It's interesting. It keeps your mind fresh. And perhaps one day some of it will
prove valuable.

My Analysis : I hate throwing things away! And I just keep collecting books, movies, more than I can read, more than I can watch... I would subscribe to 260 blogs knowing I would only read 30.  But you never know when it might be useful.

Focus
"Where am I headed?" you ask yourself. You ask this question every day. Guided by this theme of Focus,
you need a clear destination. Lacking one, your life and your work can quickly become frustrating. And so
each year, each month, and even each week you set goals. These goals then serve as your compass,
helping you determine priorities and make the necessary corrections to get back on course. Your Focus is
powerful because it forces you to filter; you instinctively evaluate whether or not a particular action will help
you move toward your goal. Those that don't are ignored. In the end, then, your Focus forces you to be
efficient. Naturally, the flip side of this is that it causes you to become impatient with delays, obstacles, and
even tangents, no matter how intriguing they appear to be. This makes you an extremely valuable team
member. When others start to wander down other avenues, you bring them back to the main road. Your
Focus reminds everyone that if something is not helping you move toward your destination, then it is not
important. And if it is not important, then it is not worth your time. You keep everyone on point.

My Analysis : Sometimes this makes me the irritating guy - who just wants to get work done.

Learner
You love to learn. The subject matter that interests you most will be determined by your other themes and
experiences, but whatever the subject, you will always be drawn to the process of learning. The process,
more than the content or the result, is especially exciting for you. You are energized by the steady and
deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. The thrill of the first few facts, the early efforts to recite or
practice what you have learned, the growing confidence of a skill mastered-this is the process that entices
you. Your excitement leads you to engage in adult learning experiences-yoga or piano lessons or graduate
classes. It enables you to thrive in dynamic work environments where you are asked to take on short
project assignments and are expected to learn a lot about the new subject matter in a short period of time
and then move on to the next one. This Learner theme does not necessarily mean that you seek to become
the subject matter expert, or that you are striving for the respect that accompanies a professional or
academic credential. The outcome of the learning is less significant than the "getting there."

My Analysis :  Ah ... the thrill of learning new things! Teach me a new thing and I will add your name to the list of people I have to do something good for.

 

Analytical
Your Analytical theme challenges other people: "Prove it. Show me why what you are claiming is true." In the face of this kind of questioning some will find that their brilliant theories wither and die. For you, this is precisely the point. You do not necessarily want to destroy other people's ideas, but you do insist that their theories be sound. You see yourself as objective and dispassionate. You like data because they are value free. They have no agenda. Armed with these data, you search for patterns and connections. You want to understand how certain patterns affect one another. How do they combine? What is their outcome? Does this outcome fit with the theory being offered or the situation being confronted? These are your questions. You peel the layers back until, gradually, the root cause or causes are revealed. Others see you as logical and rigorous. Over time they will come to you in order to expose someone's "wishful thinking" or "clumsy thinking" to your refining mind. It is hoped that your analysis is never delivered too harshly. Otherwise, others may avoid you when that "wishful thinking" is their own.

My Analysis : My conversations with one of my best friends go like this ...

He says pretty confidently - "Hillary would be the president. I am sure.". He is very specific and very confident when he states his theory.

I go - "How can you say that ? The polls prove otherwise? "

He -"I just know it"

I - "What do you mean you know it. Give me your facts or reasons. I mean she is trailing. Besides you are totally ruling out the republicans. "

He - "I just know it and you will see"

I keep trying ... to find a logical reason ... but I just end up getting frustrated. Now he wouldn't give me his reason, and I have to wait till an year to prove it to him that he was wrong. By that time I will forget. Total "lose-lose" situation. Damn it!

Finding REAL 'Flow' at work ... And a Tribute to Mark Polino

My coworker and friend - Rubal, is reading the book "FLOW" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  Its one of my favorite books, great content,  and partly because I love asking people to read the name of the author ;-).

Mr. Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee) , former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, has been the Thinker of the Year 2000.

According to one of the studies in the book - they track how people feel at various times during the day. The studies say that people say - "I wish I was doing something else", most when they are *working*. Our culture and media have somehow lead to this outlook. You would rather be watching TV or relaxing on a beach, than working.

The irony is that people report real happiness and flow the most during *work*. The don't report real happiness while relaxing, or doing nothing. Though, there is a chance that you might report real happiness watching your team win a thrilling match, however their is a greater chance of finding the same happiness at work.

The moments when somebody is in a high-challenge, high skill situation accompanied by feelings of creativity, concentration and satisfaction -were reported more often at *work* than at home. 

Ever since I read the book few years back, I have believed the key ingredient is "HIGH SKILL". If you are skilled, you will be happy at work.

Now consider this - Mark is the CFO of Transit TV, his day job. He uses Dynamics GP at work, and I am sure he excels at his job. He knows GP so well.

However, there's a ton more -

1. He hosts DynamicAccounting.Net - which is the best and biggest unbiased Dynamics GP resource on the web,

2. He has a podcast on GP - GP Rocks, 

3. He has a video series "Dynamic Sherpa Videos",

4. He regularly posts replies in Dynamics GP Newsgroups,

5. He's been interviewed by Steve Bragg of Accounting Best Practices,

6. He regularly promotes new bloggers and community efforts related to Dynamics GP

and I don't even know Mark personally. That's just the stuff I ran into while working with Dynamics GP. There might be a ton more.

The only way somebody can do all that is - with very high skill. He excels at GP and doesn't mind working hard to make sure his skills always match up with changing technology. 

In his recent post - "A Whack at My Ego" - he writes about how he discovered something new. I can imagine Mark reading about the new views and then going into Flow .... "Do I have these views in my installation?", "When did they come out?", "What can I do with this new information?"

Check out any of his posts and you'll know what I mean.

Copying File Location

I must have spent hundred of hours copying locations of files.

Here is what I generally do

1. F6

2. Ctrl + C

3. Ctrl + V in notepad or email editor

4. Click on the file

5. Click F2

6. Click Ctrl + C

7. Go back to notepad or email editor and press - Ctrl + V

Phew!

I remembered having read about a shell extension that made this easier, so i googled for "copy file path" and got this - Copy File Path Extension. Requires Dot.Net 2.0.

Now i just have to right click and copy the path.

The really cool thing is that i can copy the UNC path. I generally have to access my machine via machine name to do that right now. This is something which is going to be installed whenever I set up a new machine.

By the way, VISTA has a hidden Context menu that comes up with similar options, when you right click pressing Shift.