Employment Site News at A.P.Lawrence.com

Answer the bleeping email

Employment,Opinion 2009/10/28

Earlier this week I got email from VMware announcing that I could now order Fusion 3.0 for my Mac. Because I had been a beta tester of this, they offered me a coupon code that was supposed to give me a 25% discount.

To my annoyance, it did not. The order page insisted the code was invalid.

In spite of diminished income in this recession, I still have more money than patience, so I just ordered the upgrade without the discount. Of course that ticks me off, so I returned to the email that promised this boon and noted that it didn't say a word about "No reply possible", so I hit reply and (politely) expressed my disappointment.

Yeah, I know - I should not hold my breath.

I don't want to single out VMware here. Yeah, it's really dumb to send out coupon codes that you aren't honoring, but never mind that. Where VMware really fails is that I can't send them email.

That's hardly unusual. At far too many large companies today, email from outside is discouraged or blocked outright. You usually can't hit "Reply" and if you visit their web sites, you are more likely to be forced fill out contact forms that may confine you to certain subjects - your particular concern may not be among the choices.

VMware has such a system. In addition to finding nothing that matched my needs, all of their forms request extraneous information that I don't feel like providing, thank you very much anyway.

Suggestion to companies implementing such things: have a "I think you screwed me" form and DON'T have any required fields other than one of email or phone.

It's possible that someone from VMware may eventually reply, but I have little confidence of that. I could try calling them, but large company voice mail systems aren't fun to navigate. I SHOULD be able to send email. That is the most convenient way to provide everything that they'd need to either redress my complaint or tell me to go stuff it. Nobody has to write down who I am, why I got the code - it's all there, because I'm replying to their promise!

Oh, right: they'd need a lot of people to handle customer emails. Oh, boo-hoo: how much would it truly cost? How much happier would those annoying customers be if they could communicate this way?

As noted, VMware is hardly the only sinner. I'm just ticked at them because they promised me $15.00 off and didn't give it to me. I'll get over it.

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

Small is the new big

Employment 2009/10/26

I've been working out of my home office since 1983, but had no idea I had so much company: The Rise of the 'Homepreneur' (Business Week) says that there are over six and a half million "homepreneurs" and that we are responsible for 10% of private sector employment.

Wow. When I tell people I work from a home office, the reaction is often a bit negative. "How long have you been doing that?", they'll ask, with a strong implication that I must just be "between" jobs. As I've said in other places, you could work for yourself for 50 years, but if you took a job at the Mall just before you died, your obituary will probably mention that: most people don't think of self employment, and especially self employment from a home office, as "real" employment.

When I first started this business, I did rent an office. It didn't take me long to realize that was a silly and unneeded expense. Yes, I had a few clients that had visited me there, but the bulk of my business was at clients offices or done remotely (dial up modems in those days). Many a day my office sat dark and unused - but the rent was still due at the end of the month. I was a "tenant at will", no lease, so after enlisting my father's help to build a workspace desk in my cellar, I moved "home" and stopped paying rent for space I wasn't using.

I actually wasn't paying rent. I had made a Faustian deal with the building owner: free consulting services in exchange for rent. His over-use of those privileges and his annoying business advice were also large factors in my moving to my home.

Admittedly there are times that a home office is inconvenient. Every now and then I get a client who needs or wants to visit. As my office isn't separated from my home, that means making everything presentable for guests - even if someone is supposedly just dropping something off, the beds must be made, there must be fresh towels in the guest bathroom and neither the dishwasher nor the laundry can be running when they arrive.

We also have to get dressed. We would have made the beds anyway, and as the guest bathroom isn't used al that much, the towels might pass, but ordinarily we might not dress until it's time to go get the mail. I'm also accustomed to showering and shaving when I feel like it: 7:00 AM, sure, but there's nothing wrong with 11:00 either. And shaving? Well, maybe, maybe not...

The link above points out that working at home makes financial sense:

Indeed, the most obvious financial benefit for home-based entrepreneurs is lower operating costs. A 2006 SBA study compared tax returns of sole proprietors who deducted home-office expenses with those who deducted commercial rent. That analysis found that home businesses, on average, had lower sales and net profits than companies in commercial spaces. But profitable home-based ventures retained a greater share of their total receipts as net income: 36%, vs. 21% for non-home-based businesses.

That's a fifteen percent difference - a good chunk of extra cash in your pocket. Remember, it's not just rent that you save. There are commuting costs, incidentals like coffee and furniture and often you are duplicating things you may already own at home. When I closed up my office, I ended up with having two of many things I really only needed one of. I could have avoided a fair amount of expense if I had never had that office.

I've often said that although our Congress critters fawn over the big companies who fill their campaign chests, small companies are much more important to our overall economy. I did not realize that the smallest of the small - people very much like me - are such a big part of that.

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

Wicked Smaht

Opinion,Employment 2009/10/19

For our non-New England readers: In the Boston area and even down into Rhode Island, a lot of us tend to pronounce our r's as h's (though a Rhode Islander might say "our r's as haitches", but that's a different story).

When I went into first grade, I was put in the Retarded Class. I'm sure that's not what it was officially called, but all of us who were in it knew that's what it was, and of course so did every other child and all the teachers. Everybody knew us. We were the misfits, the dummies, the slow learners, the problem kids. This was early 1950's, so in reality a lot of us were dyslexic or had alcoholic parents or other learning disadvantages and disabilities, but paying attention to any of that just didn't exist then.

The cause for my inclusion was near blindness. Without corrective lenses, my extremely astigmatic vision is 20/400 - which means that what people with 20/20 vision can see clearly at 400 feet away, I need moved 380 feet closer. It meant I couldn't see the chalkboard. That was enough to make me "dumb".

Yes, of course they gave us vision tests. In groups, they'd lead us through reading the lines on a chart. I'd hang back and easily memorize every line read and thereby passed those tests every time. I knew I couldn't see well, but I didn't want glasses because in the Retard Class society I lived in, glasses were a big Kick Me sign. I'd had a hard enough time establishing myself as someone to leave alone (because I'd hit back, hard) and I didn't want to jeopardize that.

Eventually, I got caught. I don't remember whether it was an eye test that I failed or if they caught me with an IQ test, but they caught me.

Oh, those IQ tests. I was always good at those. I'd be the first one done and sometimes teachers would look surprised as I handed in my tests so early. I've taken the ones you aren't supposed to finish, too: I always finished them. Yeah, I'm real good at IQ tests.

So they moved me and my new glasses into a Gifted and Talented class. That was something very new then; I and the other Chosen Ones were only the second such class ever in our very progressive town. There was resistance to even having such a class, but that's a different story also.

According to some, I was the "smartest one". I certainly didn't think so, but that was the rumor and it kept coming up throughout my star-crossed educational career. You might think that's wonderful, but really it isn't.

I was bored. I was angry. I hated school, disliked most of my teachers, and spent most of my time daydreaming and yearning to be "free". I never did much homework, never listened much in class, but of course I got by because I was "wicked smaht". It's easy to get B's and C's when you read a lot and are "wicked smaht".

Throughout my life, I've learned a lot about being "smart". One of the first things I learned is that you don't think like other people. I don't just mean that you come to different conclusions, but that you get there on a different path. The "others" can't follow your logic, and they think you are "strange" because of what you think and how you think it. That would be fine if you were always right, but of course you are not.

No matter how Wicked Smaht you are, you can be wrong. Horribly wrong, tragically wrong. Fortunately I learned that lesson early enough not to be a total dick about being so good at IQ tests. I knew that while that prodigious brain power might matter sometimes, most of the time it doesn't matter at all. Most real world problems are far too complicated for anyone, so while my arguments may seem more cogent, while I might have more "facts" to back them up, I am still likely to be wrong. Brains mostly don't matter.

Being smart doesn't necessarily make you successful, and you definitely don't need to be very smart to reach success. Being smart won't make you good friends, and won't help you fall in love. It won't make you lucky and can't protect you from disease and aging.

Sometimes people won't get your jokes, will miss your sarcasm. Things you say will fly right over their heads. That will always surprise you, no matter how many times it happens.

Being smart won't help you work with groups. Remember, you don't think like they do. You don't like the way they think, they don't like the way you think. You think they are dumb, and they think exactly the same about you. Guess what: they are every bit as right as you are - because for real world decisions, you don't necessarily have any advantage (even though you think you do).

Being Wicked Smaht is a lot less valuable than being nice. It's far less important than being honest and trustworthy, dependable and faithful to your friends. For everything that matters, being smart is unimportant.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have been happier with the Retards. I did end up happy, but that had nothing to do with being "smart". It had to do with controlling my own life and living it with a wonderful woman. Two great children also made me happy. Good friends, wicked smaht or not, made me happy. My sisters, my nephews, their kids - they make me happy. Smart? Who cares?

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

Fear of public speaking

Advertising,Employment 2009/10/14
October 2009

Last night our community Computer Club was visited by a local computer business: South Shore Computer Repair. This husband and wife team did a nice little presentation introducing themselves and their services and then took computer questions from the audience. The whole thing was great - fun, interesting and informative. I think it was easily the best presentation we've had yet.

Here's the thing: I invited other local computer business owners to come visit us. Not one of the others even responded, never mind accepted.

I suppose there are all sorts of reasons why a business might not want to come speak to a group like ours. Too busy - maybe they already have too much business? Or maybe they think that the business potential from talking to us is low - maybe they really don't want home user customers (though all of the places I visited have retail locations). Or could it be something else?

Maybe it's because they don't know how to dance.

Let me explain. I can't dance. I have no rhythm, no coordination whatsoever. I don't really grok music - I can't "catch the beat". It's hopeless; my brain just isn't wired for this stuff.

And yet, my wife and I go dancing regularly. Why? Because she loves to dance and I love her. It's as simple as that: as uncomfortable as I may feel, it's something I have to do because it's important for my marriage. So I "dance" - or at least shuffle around while my wife dances.

I suspect that for many small business owners, public speaking is something that makes them uncomfortable.

I have to admit that South Shore Computer Repair has an advantage here. Sherri Hartlen-Neely's business card describes her as "The Marketing Chick". Her husband's card says that he is "The Computer Guy". She's a marketing person already - she knows how to "dance".

But it doesn't matter. It especially doesn't matter if you have an invitation to come visit a small group like ours. Maybe you aren't ready to speak to five hundred people. I'm not ready to go on "Dancing with the Stars", but I can dance with my wife, and you can go talk to 15 or 20 people at a local computer club.

Opportunities like this are everywhere. No matter what your business is, there are little groups of people who would love to meet you. Bring them gift certificates, maybe a little swag, but most importantly, just let them know who you are and what you do.

You don't need to be a great public speaker. You don't need a killer Power Point presentation. You don't need any more skills or knowledge than what you use every day already. You just need to show up, introduce yourself, and tell them about your business. That's not a hard "dance".

Maybe you can't match Sherri's skills (but you could hire her or someone like her to help you prepare, couldn't you?). Maybe you aren't the world's most dynamic speaker. Either am I - but when we can't get anyone else to come talk to us, I'll stand up and drone on about something. Here's the real secret: the more you do it, the easier it gets. Start with a little club and pretty soon you'll feel fine talking to that big crowd - your dancing improves with practice.

By the way, retirement communities like ours are a great place to come practice. We're an easy crowd to please. In a place like where I live, which has many clubs and activities and two full time social directors, there are so many things going on that it's hard to imagine that your business can't find a niche to come talk to. That niche will be very happy to have you, and this kind of "dancing" will definitely help your business!

Thanks again to Sherri and John, and yes: we'll have you back!

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

You ask too much

Employment 2009/10/12

A Twitter message today invited me to a Webex seminar that I might have been interested in attending. Unfortunately, they turned me away by requiring full registration information: name, email, address, all that.

OK, sure: if you are offering me something free, we both understand that you are trying to sell me something. You want to be able to contact me. Maybe you even think you have a right to demand this information as quid pro quo.

Let's be a little more rational about it, shall we? First of all, with the possible exception of my email address, I can lie through my teeth on that form, so it's more than silly to make those other things REQUIRED fields.

Second, no, you don't really have any right to that information. Your webinar is offering information about your product. I'll watch it, and if I am interested or have more questions, I'LL CONTACT YOU.

Finally - and this is what ticked me off here - if you already have my information, you don't need any more than my email. That was the case here and I just was not going to take the time to repeat data they already have. Yes, my web browser will fill in most of it as I start to type - that's not the point. YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME.

You may think I'm a big old grump. True enough, but do you want to sell only to cheery folks who never get annoyed by your sales policies?

Rule number one: don't annoy your customers because of your strong desire to sell.

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

A little help with an RSS experiment?

Blogging,Web-HTML,Employment 2009/10/07

Toward the end of September I posted Why I don't trust RSS subscriber figures, which questioned whether RSS subscriptions really represent real readers. My suspicion is that they do not.

Today I happened to read this Dear Reader, Who Are You? post at the popular DailyBlogTips site. That post asks readers to introduce themselves by leaving a comment. The blog displays a Feedburner stats chiclet that shows almost 32,000 RSS subscribers, but so far, less than 200 people have posted a comment.

Actually, a LOT less than 200 - many of the comments are the blog owner respondng to reader comments!

Sure, some people are shy. Some people just don't care. I understand that. But less than 200 from 32,000? That seems very low - unless, as I suspect, most of those subscriptions aren't really being read.

So, I thought we'd try the same thing here. If you are reading this, please take a moment to leave a short comment introducing yourself or just saying "Hiya!" if you'd prefer. It's OK to do that anonymously! - I'm after statistics, not your name or website if you feel strongly about privacy.

Feedburner tells me that we have over 2,000 subscriptions. However, there are subscribers who won't see this post - people can and do subscribe to only Linux posts, only OS X posts and so on. That only knocks a few hundred off though - approximately 2,000 RSS subscribers would see this post if they really are there.

My bet is that we get less than 20 posts in response.

No, I don't mean that there are only 20 real readers. I'd guess the real number is North of 500 and South of 1,000. But less than 10% of those are actively involved.

As a point of reference, Google tells me that there were 377 Adsense impressions in yesterday's feeds. So that's less than 377 readers with Javascript, anyway.

If you can, tell me whether your reader shows Adsense ads too - that's just idle curiousity on my part. I know Google Reader does, but I'm not sure about others.

So, let's see what actually happens.

You can leave a comment if you didn't first read this in RSS, but please indicate that so we have more accurate results, thanks.

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

I am always right - aren't you?

Employment,Opinion 2009/09/30

I had some unpleasant email exchanges with someone today. Of course it was about politics and religion - the two subjects almost guaranteed to cause hard feelings. I'm not going to get into that except to note that it can be upsetting to mix our personal lives with our business lives. It's particularly hard for someone like me who is way out of the mainstream in so many ways. I know full well that I don't agree with most of my customers political views and of course they wouldn't like mine very much either. It's fortunate that our two worlds stay separate most of the time - or I'd lose a lot of business!

This morning's email exchange came because I did let a customer into Facebook. That was a mistake, but on the other hand most of my political views are right here in the Opinion section, so I didn't think Facebook would cause any more hard feelings than those pages. I was wrong :-)

Anyway, as I said, that's not the purpose of this post. One sentence from today's exchanges stuck with me:

"I've read a lot of your stuff and it exudes an I'm always right and I know more than you feel to it."

Umm.. don't we ALWAYS think we are right? Sure, there's room for doubt and sometimes we just say "I have no idea", but if we have reached an opinion on who to vote for or what to do about Pakistan, illegal aliens or whatever, don't we always think we are RIGHT? Can you hold an opinion that you think is wrong? Of course not.

I can certainly admit that I definitely come across as arrogant, confident and as "I know more than you". But let's be honest here: if you've reached a decision, you DO feel you know more than someone who disagrees with you. Oh, you can sugar coat it, you can even say that there is room for disagreement or admit that you might be wrong, but the fact is that you have analyzed the available facts and reached an opinion. You might be very ready to change that opinion should more facts arrive, but right now you are confident that you are right. How could you not be?

I'm reminded of "Often wrong, never in doubt". I don't know who said it, but I definitely feel that way. If that's arrogance, fine, I'm arrogant - and so is every successful person I have ever known. I wrote about that at Arrogance or confidence, where I asserted that you HAVE to be confident to be successful.

As to "I know more than you" : well, yeah, that's part of it also. If I'm sitting with ten people I don't know, yes, I'm going to assume that I probably know more than they do about any random subject. I might be dead wrong about that, and being wrong doesn't upset me, but yes, that is my assumption until I learn differently. Again, arrogance or confidence, your choice.

If you are a mousy little person who always thinks everyone else is better than you are, these words might make you angry. Well, I'm sorry, but that's your problem, and it IS a problem: you aren't likely to get anywhere if you aren't confident and aggressive. I don't mean over-confident: you have to be realistic. If I sat down with ten random people to play poker, I'd expect to win. If I sat down with ten WSP pros, I'd expect to go home broke. Real confidence is knowing your abilities and limits.

So, are you arrogant or confident? Do you know your limits and abilities? Are you the smartest person in the room until shown otherwise?

Good for you. We'll get along just fine. We just shouldn't talk about politics or religion.

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here

Weave your spider web by Girish Venkatachalam

Employment,Girish 2009/09/15

Girish Venkatachalam

Girish Venkatachalam is a UNIX hacker with more than a decade of networking and crypto programming experience. His hobbies include yoga,cycling, cooking and he runs his own business. Details here:

http://gayatri-hitech.com
http://spam-cheetah.com

I am going to talk about a very different kind of networking in this article. I have discussed networking in very good detail in my articles written over the last one month.

This time I wish to change tack and speak about the networking that is far more important than TCP/IP networking. I am going to talk about the technology employed by spiders to catch its prey.

Weaving a web is not an easy task. It may be instinctive and effortless for spiders but for we humans it is quite hard. We humans need a web that is quite as useful as spider webs are for a spider.

Let me explain.

Spiders and web have become computer terms now. WWW stands for the worldwide web and the Internet is a network of computers with a structure similar to the spider web and crawlers and search engines employ what is known as spiders which are automated programs that trawl the web for information.

But this article is not interested in such things. We are going to focus on the sort of web that every human being needs for his survival, success and happiness.

Success and happiness may mean the same thing for many of you but then both seem transient and impermanent. Life consists of a series of failures and successes and joy and sorrow. If you weave a web of your own it can act as a very effective safety net during the times you experience your blues. When the odds are stacked against you, then a web woven by you over painstaking effort spanning months and years can help you in a big way.

Ultimately life is about accumulating good karma. Somehow it seems that though success can be elusive and happiness transient knowledge and skills once acquired are like habits. Tough to acquire and they stay with you forever. You may forget certain details but your experience forms an important inalienable aspect of your personality and you feel confident and knowledgeable.

We find that certain things in life do not go away with failures or losses. The knowledge sticks with us and helps us in a future occasion to succeed. As part of skill acquisition we also need to acquire good contacts. By good contacts, I mean sound relationships with other people.

We need the society to succeed. We give to society what we can and the society offers you its reward in its own way. We can help the world by using our skills, knowledge and hard work. At the same time we can also build great friendships and goodwill.

Usually you find that when success and money comes your way, friends and new relationships come automatically. I am not very interested in this sort of phony individuals.

I am more interested in genuine souls who stand by you in your deepest miseries as well as the dizzying heights of success. I am more interested in people who do not get jealous of your success and well being. Instead they feel proud of you and help you and protect you.

It is not easy to build goodwill. Building goodwill takes time. And a lot of hard work and cleverness. It is not easy to build the sort of contacts that genuinely love you and feel for you. It takes sincere effort from you and you have to go out of the way to help people.

In the world of technology we find that building powerful organizations that work in a cohesive close knit manner make a lot of money and are very successful. It is not just enough to have a web inside your company alone. You need to weave a web that is really wide and far.

You need a very powerful linkedin network. You need the kind of business contacts who can come to you when they are in need. You need to keep your customers happy and build a strong relationship with them to get repeat business. It is often found that the human touch goes a long way in keeping customers happy.

And this web needs to be built at a professional level as well as personal level. Only then success has meaning. Your net should work when you need it the most. The only way you can ensure that is by investing your time and efforts in building a strong network over a long period of time. Business is all about contacts and contacts are built by helping others. There is no other way to build contacts. You cannot build relationships with fun and parties. You have to give in order to get. Your contacts respect you because you are their equal and can help them in need.

Alongside building your technical expertise you should also look at building powerful contacts with people. Both are important for lasting success. And your web starts working as effectively as a spider web albeit in a totally different fashion.

SpamCheetah
Stop spam dead in its tracks!

Comments: Click Here.

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them.

Skills Tests

Psst - wanna work for yourself?

Unix/Linux Troubleshooting e-book

Kerio Mail Server

Consulting

Advertise Here