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Author Archives: Jeffrey
Off the Shelf: July 2021 (The Checklist Manifesto)
Of all the several books I read in July, the most impactful was The checklist manifesto, by Atul Gawande. The Checklist Manifesto Early in the book Gawande introduces research proposing that there are “three different kinds of problems in the… (read more)
Posted in Management
Tagged books
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Off the Shelf: June 2021
Most of June’s reading was for fun, but each stands out for something unique. I first put I sing the body electric! on my e-reader a few months ago because I knew I’d soon be needing a collection of short… (read more)
Off the Shelf: May 2021
Looking back at the month, I finished more books in May than I had thought, including two that I’ve been working on for a long time and two that I rushed since the Library wanted them back sooner rather than… (read more)
Broken Everywhere
I catch some good-natured and well-deserved ribbing from my co-workers and colleagues about this precept, but frankly, I take it in stride. It’s true that sometimes the new hires don’t understand it right away, but once explained and demonstrated, I don’t… (read more)
Posted in System Administration
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Ban “Interesting”
Let’s ban the word “interesting” (at least for a while). Think about it for a moment. When was the last time you used the word when it actually1 meant something? “What did you think about the incident management presentation?”“Oh, it… (read more)
Never too early—rarely too often
We’ve got a rather large project going on at the moment and a shrinking window to get it done. The deeper we dig into this mound of work, the more and varied things we pull out. What started as a… (read more)
A Manager’s Smile
We moved offices this past week, relocating the IT department (and one other) into a new space. The new space is light and airy and is laid out on the open office plan.1 Initially we were skeptical but we’re making… (read more)
5 Reasons Why Not to Use Your Work Computer to Do Your Personal Taxes
You don’t have local admin. TurboTax requires1 it and you probably don’t have it, nor should you. Admins take away local admin because users frequently don’t look before clicking and because users install things they shouldn’t, possibly introducing malware or putting their organizations at… (read more)
Posted in Other Thoughts, System Administration
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Know when to STOP
After a frustrating day at work dealing with a repeat of a problem from this past spring, I related some of the situation to my crew of hecklers advisers at the dinner table: A software package common to all our… (read more)
Posted in Leadership, System Administration
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Sharing the vision
We spent a good part of a day at the GCC National Youth Leadership Training course last week talking about “Sharing the Vision”. There was so much presented throughout the week that I doubt many of the 48 participants got more… (read more)
