Top 10 Signs That Your Employees Think You Are A Jerk

via BNET

Mad

1. You don’t know the difference between managing and micromanaging:

A good small business owner knows about more than just how to run his or her business and make a profit. Good bosses manage their employees, allowing them to do their jobs the best they can. Jerk bosses try and tell their staff how to do their jobs, down to ridiculous detail. If you spend more of your time on silly minutiae and less on the big picture, your employees probably don’t like working for you.

Follow the link above for the rest of them.

A Challenge to Myself

I couldn’t help but notice that I haven’t been writing a lot in the last year or so.

The truth is that I have been writing but not writing on my personal website nor have I really been doing much tweeting. Due to this observation I have decided to set a short term goal of writing 3 to 5 articles per day for the next week.

Will they be of use? I hope so.

As I make my way through Mac OS X Lion and all of the small issues that are coming up, I should have plenty to write about. (see the post below)

For example…

The first change I made after upgrading to Lion? I reversed the direction of scrolling. Honestly Apple? Really? Getting everyone used to a single direction of scrolling after a few years of everyday use and then deciding to change the direction was a disaster of a decision. Did you try that out on any everyday hardcore users? I’m guessing no.

I have read this morning that you will notice a speed increase after spotlight creates a searchable index file. If your system seems slow after the upgrade just wait a few hours and you should notice an increase in speed.

Three to five articles a day is a lot to someone who works two full time jobs. We’ll see how this goes.

How to Fix Your Skype Mic Problem in Lion

This was one of the first problems I encountered in Lion. The Skype “I want to automatically control your microphone input” problem that we’ve seen before. In the past, we would refer to the following via MacWorld

Go there and bookmark the page…

The problem in Lion is that your Application Support library under your home directory is missing. Well, it’s not really missing. It’s just hidden from view.

To fix this problem, open up your Terminal (under Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) and paste in the following statement and hit return.

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

Next, you’ll need to restart your finder. I would recommend just rebooting your computer.

You should now be able to see all hidden files. Now you should be able to disable the automatic gain as instructed above. (I would recommend removing the MicVolume statement all together as it is simply not needed.)

Now when you run Skype you should have complete control of your microphone input level.

The Problems With Lion

Yes. I have upgraded to Mac OS X Lion.I’m a geek. Don’t be silly.

Here is a small list of things that broke when I upgraded.

My timer for recording podcasts. (got a new one)

My seriously old version of Photoshop. (I have a newer version that I’ve been waiting to install)

My recording software as a whole. (I have a backup that I just NOW got to work)

Is it enough to make me regret the upgrade?

Not in your life.

I expected things to break so no surprise there. The operating system is working great for everything else. I love “Mission Control” and think they finally got “Spaces” right.

Waiting for Mac OS X Lion

A quick “Twitter-Style” drive by post to let everyone know what I’m up to. I’m waiting for Apple to release Lion so I can find out how much of my recording equipment will be affected and won’t work.

That’s all. 🙂

Update: (07-16-11)…still waiting…

The Ideal Candidate for President

I agree with Jimmie Bise on this one.

The ideal candidate for President is someone that loves America and it shows. It’s all they talk about. Their position on America’s place in the world is crystal clear and no one who ever hears a speech that they give will doubt that.

The ideal candidate will not attack any other candidate. They will not use phrases such as “well Bob, unlike my friend here, I believe that…” or “that Chuck, boy what a nutcase he is.” You get the idea. This candidate will not have a derogatory thing to say about their opponents because he/she will be focusing on other things, as it should be.

The ideal candidate will outline what our immediate problems are and outline what he/she will do to fix them. Not “pie in the sky” fixes based on a whole bunch of variables that they really have no control over. Instead of saying “the unemployment rate will never get above 8%” the ideal candidate will outline the steps they will do within the perview of the office to affect change.

The ideal candidate will not be big on social media. I would rather have the president tending the daily business of running a country and really don’t care if they tweet about what they had for lunch. Seriously.

The ideal candidate will be wise enough to realize that neither they nor anyone who works with them is smart enough to tell me how to live my life.

The ideal candidate will not tell me what to eat, how to eat, or ban things that I like to eat. It’s none of their business and the ideal candidate is smart enough to know that.

The ideal candidate will not talk about things that he/she doesn’t know.

The ideal candidate will realize that it’s “your” money and act accordingly.

It’s a shame that the ideal candidate no longer exists.

The ideal candidate sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan…

On Organization…

I actually never thought I’d ever write anything about organizing. Quite frankly, I only recently got my shit together when it comes to organizing not only my daily schedule but my entire life.

I thought I’d pass along something it took me years to learn.

Wanting to organize your life will not make it so. You actually will need to participate in a process that will involve doing certain things certain ways. It involves changing habits (mostly bad ones) into good habits and habits that will help you achieve your goals.

1. Get a planner and learn how to use it. I recommend Franklin-Covey. Life is a set of goals. You need goals in everything you do in order to be successful. Why? Why would you start a race without knowing where the finish line is? Life is no different. What are your goals? What would you like to achieve today? Would you rather write your marching orders or have someone else do it for you? A planner puts you in control of your life. It’s the difference between living “proactively” versus “reactively.”

2. Learn to set your work area in a certain way and then make sure that when you leave the area, everything is in it’s place. You should be able to spot when something is out of place by a quick glance. Keep your work area clean and clear of distractions. Do you know where your stapler is? Spare pens? The less time you spend on finding things the more time you can spend on the important things, whatever that happens to be for you.

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 as needed.

I have a friend who “cleans” and “organizes” his office only to have it fall back into the mess it was before he “cleaned” it a week later. His problem? Self discipline is missing. He continues to use the same bad habits such as leaving things sit where they obviously don’t belong with the philosophy of “I’ll get that later.” The problem is that by the time “later” rolls around the entire office looks like shit again. Without self discipline, you fight a losing battle.

Step 2 is vital to controlling this problem. Do you realize how much time you waste when you can’t find something in your office? Have you ever spent more than 10 minutes trying to find something? If your office was organized that 10 minutes turns into 10 secs or less and those minutes and seconds can really add up.

These things may seem simple but simple works. Keep it simple stupid is a philosophy I live by. While some may argue that I excel at the “stupid” part, I’d like to point out that as simple as I may be, I still know where my freaking calculator is.