Another 90 Day Sprint

... and now the work really begins ... For the second time since starting this site, I've made a change and taken on a new position. This time was a bit more structured, using the learning process from The First 90 Days, by Michael Watkins. I had read the book before, so the ideas weren't new - but as with any familiar technology or idea, it never hurts to go back for a review. Of note - in the past,…

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Gartner Symposium 2010

Last week, I was able to attend this annual Gartner event - something akin to SAPPHIRE, the SAP uber-users group meeting, without the vendor specific rah-rah. An interesting event - 7400 attendees, over four days. A typical conference - multiple sessions along major tracks, and I bounced between sessions dealing with these issues: Master Data - Continuing to look for the latest information - this is still a fast growing software market, and ideas around things like "data governance" (people…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 3

See also ... Home Development Workstation - Part 1 Home Development Workstation - Part 2 Ok, here's where we put the rest of these boxes, switches, wires, and other assorted doo dads in their place. Again, the witty reader will note that I am following along with Jeff Atwood's Build a PC posts from last summer, just adding some color commentary and my own personal notes. Hard Drives, Optical Drives When disassembling the case, I found one of the silicon…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 2

See also ... Home Development Workstation - Part 1 If You Build It ... For starters, I give major props to Jeff Atwood's series on building a PC, because the step-by-step assembly notes, and the overriding "calm down, it's like Legos!" tone ... all very comforting. I tend to be a "ready, fire, aim" kinda guy on my home technology projects, so a little common sense around the electrical equipment is always good. I won't replicate all of his build-in-process…

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Home Development Workstation – Part 1

Why I think that every techie should go through the experience of building up a desktop workstation from the ground level. Maybe it's because I date back to the days of the PC XT, when computer support duties regularly had us tearing down cases, changing jumper settings and plugging in individual chips for memory expansions. Mainstream p0wnership of the desktop's guts may also be a dying art form (notwithstanding) - in the days of ubiquitous WiFi, shrinking notebooks, Blackberries and…

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