Slideling hill, pa

Great call colors here, though this starbucks tastes kinda hinky. An hour into Lost Symbol.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Today’s Nerd-out: Wiping a Blackberry Bold and deleting an old IT Policy

 

Just a quick post for those of you who get a Blackberry Bold (9000)in an company, and then leave, like I did. The problem is that Blackberrys(Blackberries?) have sophisticated IT Policy mechanisms that allow your company to route your internet traffic, deal with your email, and also things like disallow you from using a media card.

I have a Bold (9000), and my former employer had a weird policy around internet routing. So I did some research on how to delete that policy.

It turns out, no matter how hard you try using normal means, you can not delete an IT Policy. You have to use special means, and an extra scary hack to do it. Something hackishly named JL_Cmdr.

I got it working, and here is what I did. Special thanks to the authors of this article, and this one.

Several easy steps:

1. Download JL_Cmdr. I used the installer.

2. Run the utility according to instructions.

Warning: The JL_Cmdr utility is a command line  hack, and I have no doubt that under certain circumstances it will mess your BB up completely.

In other words, you are on your own. Don’t blame me if you end up with a doorstop. It worked for me.

Of Bullies and Bobbleheads

In trying to refine my managerial style, I have taken to writing it down in order to force a clarification. Having been in the “world of work” for a while, I have been subjected to several kinds of management styles, from Laissez Faire to extreme micro-management. Some worked better than others for me. When it worked poorly, sometimes it was an issue with my managers, sometimes it was an issue with me. We all go through these phases. That said, I despise being micro-managed.

There is a lot of good writing on bad bosses. I am a fan of Jim Miller’s Best Boss, Worst Boss, which you can find on Amazon. I have been thinking about the parallels of two bad work environments I have been in, across the two decades of my career, lately.

In two notable cases, I have been in what I call toxic environments. These are work environments where the work and the management are punishing. In both cases, it involved bullies and bobbleheads.

Read the full article here...

What I Learned From Sun (and Others) DRAFT

 

I am feeling somewhat nostalgic now that Sun Microsystems is being swallowed by Oracle. Sun was a great place to work. But it was also a very hectic and unfocused organization. Sun was among the best and worst places I have worked.

That said, these experiences taught me a lot. In reflecting on the lessons I learned there, I have captured the following key points:

1. A Small Group of People Can Change the World(java)

2. Founder CEOs should have term limits of 10 year.

3. Bad executives do enormous amounts of damage.

4. Good executives can get organizations to achieve more than they were naturally capable of.

5. No amount of “vision marketing” can move you out of an uncompetitive position

6. Never take a job with “Strategy” in the title.

7. Bad organizations can make good people behave badly

8. Threats from Management Are Failures By Management

9. Beware the “game changing” new product release.

This is a preliminary list, and I will be updating each of these with a paragraph or 2 of exposition/explanation. If you are a Sun refugee and would like to add your 2 cents, please do.

Beware the cobweb

One of my favorite writers is Neil Stephenson. His book Cryptonomicon is brilliant at both the technical details and character development. I am a fan of his early work, too, written with J. Frederick George. One of his novels is a story about the intelligence community in Washington, DC. It does the unthinkable. It makes bureaucratic struggles entertaining.

The title of the book comes from a bureaucratic verb “to cobweb”.  To cobweb someone or some initiative is to throw endless reviews. presentations, and documentation in the way so you effectively kill it.

This can happen outside of the government as well. I have seen it happen several times in my career. It will often come about when a new idea, or a fundamental changes, is taking place. Those in senior management who are opposed to change will throw a myriad of things at a “change agent” in order to slow the process down, or defeat it. If you hear any of the following phrases, you are most likely getting cobwebbed:

• Operations Reviews
• Review or Control Boards
• The establishment of “Project Management Office”
• In software: anything related to CMMI level 2 or higher
• Strategic planning reviews
• RACI or Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed
• Work Breakdown Structure

It must be said that Six Sigma, for which I have a lot of respect, can be used as of the ultimate cobwebbing tools in the wrong hands/

There are rare occasions when these cobweb tools can be used effectively, but they should be used sparingly. Most of these are tools for large organizations, like government projects with thousands of people. I have not seen them used effectively in any organization of less than 1000.

In the end, the way to defeat a cobweb is to go around it if you can, or to get out of the organization you are in. It is important to think of any large organization not as a directed-graph hierarchy, but as a tree structure with cycles. The cycles are points in the organization which jump one or more levels, and may not always follow a linear hierarchy.

Read the book to see how the characters got out of their cobweb. While the book feels dated in its pre-September 11 America, its still a great read.

If you feel yourself getting cobwebbed, either break the web, or find something else to do. A cobwebbed environment is most surely a soul-sucking one. Life’s too short for that.

Prediction: Chicago will not get it

Watching MSNBC on selection day for 2016. My guess is the legacy of Bush and our current military adventurism will exclude us from consideration.

I would like to be wrong. I love Chicago.

Political Advertizing the in Philadelphia Market

One thing I will miss when I move back to San Jose is Philadelphia politics. Because of its proximity to DC, and the fact that it is a much more competitive state than California, make it a vastly more interesting place to watch politics.

Take for example the issue advocacy ads. The one running on MSNBC right now is one from Heath Care For America Now. The ad, which strikes me as overtly political, is actually from a 501c4 issue advocacy organization, the Health Care Action Network. Their key tag line is:

If Insurance Companies Win, You Lose.

Interestingly, no talk about a public option. They do not single out any politician or piece of legislation, but say “Call Congress….”.

Its a pretty good site. Its media rich, which makes it slow on my netbook, and they are using Google Analytics, which shows some sophistication.

Public Option Day

MSNBC is saying its Public Option Day.

Interesting fact, only Baseball and Healthcare have exemptions from the Sherman Anti-Trust act.

In my view we need a mild public option, like support for Kaiser-like co-ops.

We need to take an incremental approach. It seems to me that this year's healthcare solution should take the following form:

1. Eliminate pre-existing condition rejection
2. Some tort reform.
3. Either eliminate monopoly control in states where monopolies exist, or:
4. Allow healthcare companies to act nationally (with a limit on the martket concetration).

Key point being this is a big hard problem, and democracies can not often handle radical change without a non-existential threat.

Unable to Reach Google Tasks

 

I have been getting a lot of connection errors to Google recently, like from Gmail and Google Tasks. Anyone else seeing this?

Bill Safire, R.I.P, Vast Right Wing Conspiracy moves on

I mourn the passing of William Safire today. Like Nicholas Kristoff, I disagreed with many of his political views, but his writing was beyond reproach. His On Language column was amazing.

In other news,  President Clinton says the VRWC (Vast Right Wing Conspiracy) has moved on to attach President Obama. If this is the case, the VRWC is clearly fielding their second or third team. *Iam talking to you “Birthers”…..

Ordo ab Chao: Funny piece on Masons

There is a great piece today on the masons in Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27639.html.

The Order from Chaos thing is a bit freaky though.

2010 Midterm elections

They are predicting, on the Chris Matthews Show, that there is a good chance that Democrats will loose the House in 2010. In order to do this they would have to loose 38 house seats. Nate Silver and Charlie Cook are both predicting that there is a good chance that this will happen. But Stu Rothenberg has a point: This is like 2 tsunamis striking on after another.

We'll see.

Management Quote of the Day

I am in the middle of a job transition. It is a job transition that is mostly, but not completely of my choosing. This is mainly due to a different in managerial "styles". and it has caused me to reflect on what my "style" or philosophy is.

Believe it or not, I still used the the Franklin Covey planner, mainly because it leads to a well formatted diary. It also has a quote of the day. Today's quote comes from Warren Bennis, and typifies my philosophy of management.

The leader...is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather, they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators that creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent, and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.

In my view, the job of a leader is not just to manage, not just to "get things done". The job of a leader is to craft an excellent team where people are operating at their full potential. If a leader does their job right, people could be executing at a level beyond what they think they are capable of.

Gmail Down

First day off work and Gmail is down. Is this an omen in the other direction?

The Perfect Burger King

I am reveling in in my first day of unemployment. I left my car to get serviced. It needs and oil change, and I want to make sure it will make it across the country. Since I have no other means of transportation right now, I have to wait for my car to be finished.
I decided to walk down the street and hang out at the local Burger King. Now, my impression of Burger King is not especially good, but it was the only place near Clark's Auto Repair in Phoenixville.
I think I have found the perfect Burger King. Its freaky. They seem to be targeting me perfectly. First off, they have a value menu so I can get something small and reasonably healthy (by my standards of course). Second, they have free wireless, asnd it was east to get connected. Finally, they have CNN on flat-screen playing all the time. Who needs Starbucks?
I think this is a good omen.
Update: They block Facebook....wierd.