2009 March | SQLLawman

By MichaelDeputy, 1 year and 5 months ago

«What You Tolerate, You Encourage» I am getting really fed up with meetings, web conferences, teleconferences, board meetings, etc. that can't seem to start on time. If you want to have a meeting at 10:30, start the meeting at 10:30. I have attended one to many web conferences that start 10 minutes late, then don't have time for Q&A at the end because the presenter wants to «respect everyone's time». Hello! what about the 10 minutes you wasted waiting for those who don't have enough respect for your time to show up on schedule? Why punish the punctual? If you start on time, those who are late and don't want to miss anything might try harder next time. I once worked for a company where the VP would call a meeting. When the meeting time arrived, he locked the door. If you weren't there you missed the meeting. I don't know of anyone who was late more than once. That worked for me. Have we become such a wishy-washy society that we are afraid we will offend those who don't have basic respect for the meeting organizer? I will not get onto me soap box about respect, just look out the car window as you drive down any road and you will see how much we «respect our planet and each other.» I'm tired of it. If you are putting together a meeting and you want to be respectful of the time of someone who may be exiting another meeting, schedule the meeting for 5 minutes ofter the hour, then everyone will know when you plan to start. The punctual will be there on time, as usual. Yes, I know things come up and occasionally you have to be late. But is that the fault of everyone else? Be late, if that works for you. But don't expect me to wait on you. just remember - the world is run by those who show up. If you get there behind me who has a better chance of determining the direction? So take a stand. Start your meeting on time. It will catch a few people off guard, but maybe we can bring a little respect back into our world.

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Push me over the edge

By MichaelDeputy, 1 year and 5 months ago

Like most of you, we have an Intranet at our office. Also like most of you it is a very useful tool to store information and launch web based applications. I like our Intranet. I find it very useful. In fact, it is my home page for Internet Explorer. (Of course our .net heavy intranet is the only thing I use IE, but still the Intranet is my home page) That being said, one of the most useful tools to me is the phone list. Seriously, it is interfaced with the phone switch and it always up to date. I use it often. On the home page of our Intranet is a phone list search box. I think it is great. Unfortunately, someone with too much power and is not afraid to use it has taken it too far. You didn't think the whole post would be «I love my Intranet» did you? Someone decided that clicking a web browser icon and going to the Intranet (if it's not your homepage) is too much work so they decided that everyone needs to have a desktop icon for the phone list. I'm still trying to figure out if minimizing everything to find the icon is less work. So they fired up the «Worlds Greatest Icon Pusher» (SMS for short) and pushed out an icon for the telephone list web page to every desktop. Oh, but wait there's more. Every time SMS does an inventory if checks to see if you have the icon and if you don't it pushed it back out again. Now I have to admit, I have never clicked on this icon so I suppose there is the possibility that world peace and cancer cures would spontaneously occur my user experience would be exponentially better than the search box on the homepage. Now for most of you, another icon on your desktop would not even be noticed. But I am a little strange (O.K. not a little) my desktop is black, I have no icons on it. I even use TweakUI to remove the recycle bin icon. I mean two 19» monitors with a taskbar on one is all you see if everything is minimized. But that is the point. I usually have dozens of windows open. SSMS 2005, SSMS2008, Outlook, Word, Text editors, Etc. If I need a phone number, it is so much easier to hit IE from the Quick Launch bar. But every once in a while I cleanup all my open windows and I get stuck looking at the hideous red 1980's looking telephone icon totally ruining the zen of my minimalist desktop. I have even gone to the desktop/SMS gurus and humbly requested that I be removed from this random deployment, but alas their hands are tied. Everyone must have the icon. O.K., I feel better now. Back to real work.

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