What's on Mike's mind? » Productivity

No More Facebook

Mike — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:51:00 +0000

I never did spend much time on Facebook. I liked that I was able to connect with some old friends through Facebook. Why leave? In the end, Facebook is a virtual world that I don’t want to be a part of on a personal basis. Yes, I do want to be involved with my friends and family. but not through the public vehicle of Facebook. I will still keep my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Letters? Emails? Phone calls? Visits? Yes, those I will like very much!

In case you want to leave Facebook too, here is a guide on how to delete your Facebook account.

The Last Steps


And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; — I Thessalonians 4:11 (KJV)

Scrum Videos

Mike — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:13:44 +0000

I posted this over at Effectual Working, but thought I would add it here too.

I have been doing some research on agile software development methodologies, specifically Scrum, and found the following videos.

Pretty straight-forward concepts: Scrum Basics
Another quick overview of Scrum: SCRUM in Under 10 Minutes
Google Tech Talk with Jeff Sutherland: Scrum Tuning: Lessons learned from Scrum implementation… (This runs about an hour.)
Goofy: Agile Development with Scrum: What they don’t tell you.
Kinda long: Agile vs. Waterfall: A Tale of Two Teams

Making a Gantt Chart with Excel

Mike — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:17:45 +0000

I needed to create a simple Gantt Chart to communicate a high-level project plan and found this great little tutorial on YouTube.

This is a useful technique to remember. Often project management tools such as Primavera or Microsoft Project are too heavy for communicating at a high level. Most of you stakeholder community needs an easy to understand picture of the project. Excel fits the bill for this.

Thanks to Ralph Phillips for sharing this tutorial.

IT Publications

Mike — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:13:59 +0000

Out of all the publications I receive as an IT professional, Computerworld is the best.Â How can I tell?Â It is because rarely can I finish an issue in one sitting.Â I will try to skim through it first, but usually get stuck on Don Tennant’s editorial.Â Then I get caught reading an article and then dog-earring several others to read later.Â This magazine is full of valuable information and insight week after week.

Use an RSS Feed Reader

Mike — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:36:10 +0000

One piece of technology that has made my life easier is Google Reader. It is simple to use and convenient. The main time-saving advantage to an RSS reader is that is automatically checks websites for you and displays new posts. You can then choose what to look at, saving time because you didnâ€™t have to browse all these websites to determine what is new.

Above is an image of my Google Reader, so you can see how it works. The left column shows the sites I monitor and indicates new articles by bolding the link and showing the number of new posts. You can click on one of these links to display the most recent posts for that specific site, or look at the middle column for the most recently updated content.

The sign-up process is easy, as is setting up Google Reader. All you need to do is follow the instructions!