Tom Squared

I was at a meeting recently where employees of a company were told that the billable rate was based on them working a 42 hour work week.  There's the expectation that a 40 hour work-week is the minimum hours required to work, below standard.  Working the 42 hours will ensure the company is making the correct amount of money on the employee. Didn't sound like such a big deal, it's only 2 hours a week, right? Then I began thinking about it some more. 2 hours over 52 weeks (yes, there are 52 weeks in a year) works out to 104 hours.  In more simple terms, that's about 2 1/2 extra weeks of work, more than half a month. I was reminded of something I used to do quite often.  I'd say that the care has a whole bunch of time little problems all piled up and around each-other (in other words, it's majorly broken).  Little things can add up to huge things in very little time (maybe that's why I love square roots, they're a constant reminder of this fact). So, I...

Recently I've been thinking about the problems in my life.  My cell phone was randomly turning off and I began thinking about an upgrade.  I'm going to be driving much farther each week for class and could use a car with better mileage.  Or the constant struggle we have getting Rachel to bed at night. Today I was reminded yet again that 99.9% of the world would wish they had my problems. There's a man I talked to for a while during lunch who is going through a very hard separation and only wants what's best for his wife and daughter.  Then there are those people who don't have a home, much less a car to have a problem with.  Or the couple who wishes they could even have a daughter, regardless of whether she'd sleep well. I wonder what other problems I think I have that are really only problems because I let them. What problems do you have to let go of? Peace, +Tom

I've always, and I do mean always, had an aversion to meetings.  If we don't have a clear task to accomplish or To-Do items coming out of the discussion they are a waste of time, since it's likely a discussion best convened between two or three people, not all meeting attendees. Then I came across Tony Morgan's review of The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive by Patrick Lencioni.  One of the quotes he mentions is this. For cohesive teams, meetings are compelling and vital. They are forums for asking difficult questions, challenging one another's ideas, and ultimately arriving at decisions that everyone agrees to support and adhere to, in the best interests of the company. I can't tell you how much this resonated with me. Over the past year I worked on a project team of four people.  I can say, without a doubt, that this was the best team I've ever worked with in my working career.  We could meet for 2 to 4 hours straight, work together or o...

Way back in January, and a blog host ago I made a couple different predictions , one which I knew would happen this year.  Turns out I was right!  The Wii will soon have a game called Wii Fit which has you spinning virtual hula hoops, skiing and rolling marbles with your body.  I'll probably pick it up, but it may hurt this finely tuned belly o' fat I've been proudly forming the past few years.  I'll just have to play in moderation I guess. Peace, +Tom

As a side job from my lucrative blogging career, I'm also a Web developer and project manager primarily in ASP.NET technologies.  With that in mind, this will be a slightly technical post. People bad mouth Microsoft all of the time.  I'm not saying they're right all the time, and I am considering switching to a Mac sometime in the future since Parallels  integrates so well (I'm just sick of my computer getting slower and slower over a year of use).  With all that in mind, Microsoft does have some incredibly great products and has recently been making it easier for me to recommend them to people. I was reading Scott Guthrie's blog about the upcoming Visual Studio 2008.  While Visual Studio has previously really focused on using .NET technologies to build applications (some may say I'm wrong, but it's clearly true), I think that's changing with VS 2008. Scott has this post about how VS 2008 will provide JavaScript intellisense (it'll pop up avai...

My Pageflakes page had the following quote from Quotiki: I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ. - Mahatma Gandhi I can definitely relate to this statement.  When I look at some of the infighting going on within churches and denominations I have to come back to the same thought, that we call ourselves Christians but we still don't get it. There is one primary teaching Christ brought which changed everything .  We must love one another as he loved us.  We must live our lives in love and as an expression of that love for each-other. If someone is letting their responsibilities slide we must find a time to meet with them face to face and lovingly figure out what is going on and find a solution.  Avoiding the problem never helps and it's certainly not what Christ taught. I was talking to someone recently as we looked at some options for a leadership position.  One of the concerns came up that we need to find a pers...

I've been listening to the Grammar Girl podcast for a couple of months now, and I highly recommend it.  Turns out I was apparently educated well since I follow almost all of the grammar suggestions she has without really thinking about it.  While I rarely use ellipses, turns out I've been using them incorrectly, they need a space before and after and should correctly be written . . .  I'm also not so great with semicolons. In any case, Erin and I are now listening to the podcast on the way into work and I think she likes it as much as I do; as evidenced by the fact that she actually stayed awake all the way into work. There were some great things in the episodes we heard today.   We heard about spoonerisms and a whole bunch of other things.  But one what struck home and got me incredibly excited was the interabang (interrobang is a variant)‽ What is it you ask?  I used to like to be surprised or questions and say something like, "What were yo...