Tap My Mind

A Blog by Scott Isaacs

Tag: Professional Page 4 of 25

GiveCamp MKE

By

On August 5, 2008

In Uncategorized

I’m very excited to announce that we are planning the first ever GiveCamp in the Milwaukee area: GiveCamp MKE.  In fact, it’s one of the first GiveCamps anywhere.

"What’s a GiveCamp?", you ask.  In short, it is an opportunity for developers, designers, DBAs, project managers and anyone else involved in the software development process to give back to the community.  And we do it by doing what we know how to do best — building software.  We will soon be accepting applications from various charities for software that they need.  It could be anything from a website to a data collection app to a mailing list manager or anything else.  For more information about the whole GiveCamp concept, and to see what other communities have had (or are planning) GiveCamps, please visit the official GiveCamp site.

We’ve been putting a lot of time into this over the last couple weeks, but we’re still not quite there.  Please bear with us as we continue to finalize things, including the website itself as well as more info about the GiveCamp MKE event.  Rest assured that we will be making regular updates to the GiveCamp MKE site, so please check it often or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss anything.  I’m sure I will also post major updates here as well.

I am very excited about this, and how things are shaping up.  Remember that conference call I wrote about a couple weeks ago?  That was about this.  I just wish I could put all of the things I want to say into words tonight before I fall asleep, but that might take me a couple hours.  :)  So keep checking back here and at the GiveCamp MKE site, and I’ll eventually get it all out there.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to let me know, or to use the contact form on the GiveCamp MKE site.

I Am Excited About… A Conference Call?

By

On July 22, 2008

In Uncategorized

For the first time since — ummm — since ever, I am looking forward to an upcoming conference call.  And I’m really looking forward to it.  I don’t want to say too much, yet, because I want to get some very basic details ironed out first, but I will say that it is about a special project we are working on for the WI .NET Users Group.

I’ve been thinking about this project for a few weeks now, and I’ve actually taken notes.  If you have ever been with me to a meeting, that statement alone should let you know how serious I am about this.  I am a terrible (appalling, horrendous, atrocious, apocalyptic) note taker, so much that I often don’t even take a pen and paper with me because I will get more out of my memory of the meeting than from my notes.  But I have notes for this.  And they make sense!

So, if you work in technology in the Milwaukee area, keep an eye on my blog over the next couple weeks.  If this call goes even half as good as I expect, I will be asking for your help!

Which Is Better?

By

On July 21, 2008

In Uncategorized

I can’t decide if I get more pleasure from solving a big problem, or from the process of breaking it into a series of smaller problems and solving each of them.  Does anyone else ever think of stuff like this?  Or is it just me?

Working From Home

By

On July 15, 2008

In Uncategorized

As part of my new job, I will be working from home one day per week.  Now that I’ve been there for a couple weeks, my first work from home day will be tomorrow.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be trying to make improvements to my home office, including deciding which room to use.  We built a den/office in the house, but I’m thinking it might not be ideal.  It’s in the main area of the house, and the doors have windows, making it very easy for Charlize to see Daddy and want to come visit.  So the current thought is to setup a small work area in the spare bedroom, which is in the back part of the house.  It has a heavy, solid core door, which is typically closed throughout the day anyway.  So Charlie will probably never know that I am even in there.  For tomorrow, though, I’ll probably be in "my chair" in the living room.  Charlie and Mommy will be over at Grandma’s house for most of the day.

In the past I’ve worked from home a day or two here and there, but never on a scheduled, regular basis.  If any of you work from home, I welcome your suggestions.

Work Soundtrack

By

On July 14, 2008

In Uncategorized

This happens to me on a regular basis — probably every other month or so.  I get tired of the music I have on my iPod.  So I’m looking for suggestions.  What music helps you get your job done?  Sometimes I need something nice and mellow to get myself into the right frame of mind, and sometimes I need something I can turn the volume up to drown out the background noise.  Sometimes vocals are good, sometimes they are distracting.  Unfortunately, streaming sites don’t work from the office, so things like Pandora are out.  Looking forward to your suggestions.

TimeSnapper

By

On July 13, 2008

In Uncategorized

I’ve been using the free version of TimeSnapper off and on for some time now, but pretty regularly over the last few weeks since I started my new job.  I’m doing billable work again, and am notoriously bad at getting my time entered.  TimeSnapper helps by taking screenshots at some interval throughout the day and allowing me to play them back like a movie.

I’ve been thinking about getting the Pro version for a couple weeks because there are a few more features that could be helpful.  It’s an inexpensive program at about $40 (USD), but I just hadn’t pulled the trigger and bought it.  Then today on Twitter I saw that it was on sale.  It was actually on sale for $20.  Since I was on the fence at $40, I couldn’t pass it up at $20.

If you are like me and have a hard time keeping track of what you worked on, I highly recommend you check it out.  I still haven’t taken advantage of the Pro features, but even the free functionality is worth $20.

Blog Recategorization

By

On July 12, 2008

In Uncategorized

As I mentioned earlier, I was bored tonight.  Rather than visiting MySpace I decided to do a little work on the categories I use in my blog.  I didn’t remove any categories, but I did add a few.  As of right now, all of my posts are tagged as either Personal, Professional or both.  I don’t have any hard fast rules for how I’m going to apply these, but here is the gist of it.  If it’s something my wife, parents, other family or non-techie friends may want to know, it’s Personal.  If it’s something I want to share with coworkers, colleagues, community, or pretty much anyone else, it’s Professional.

So, if by chance you prefer to subscribe to a filtered feed you can use one of the following RSS feeds:

Of course, you can still subscribe to the full feed.

So there you go.  A somewhat-almost-semi-productive use of the last 2 hours.

Office Communicator Hotkey

By

On July 11, 2008

In Uncategorized

Anyone know if there is a way to remove the Windows-Q hotkey from Office Communicator?  That is my hotkey of choice for one of my favorite utilities (SlickRun).  With Communicator "stealing" this hotkey, I’ve had to map SlickRun to Windows-W instead, which causes a lot of confusion for me.  I’ve tried to add "cmd" as a contact about a dozen times now…

Last Days All Around

By

On June 27, 2008

In Uncategorized

Today was my last day as an employee at my current (umm, previous) job.  After 18 months full-time, plus a couple months of part-time consulting and advising, I’ve decided it’s time to move on.  I still believe the product has enormous potential, and I may be walking away from early retirement, but it’s time to move on.

Starting Monday, I will be a Technical Architect at Fullhouse Interactive in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.  I’m excited for a number of reasons.  I’ll be working downtown again, and, while the drive is long, I’ll be close to friends that I rarely get to see.  Even with the extra drive time, I will be able to spend more time with my family because of my average number of hours will decrease.  On top of that, I will also be working from home on a regular basis, which is a first for me.  I’ll get to learn some new things, and hopefully teach some things as well.  I’m also getting to get back into consumer facing web development, which I miss.

I’m really excited for this new job.  If you’re near downtown Milwaukee, let me know and we’ll setup a geek lunch sometime.

As I’m sure you have already read all over the web, today was also the last that Bill Gates will be working for Microsoft.  While I’m sure he will probably never read this, I wish him all the best in his retirement.  Now if only I could figure out how to retire as a billionaire so that I could spend all my time running my charitable foundation…

Community Coding Contest

By

On June 26, 2008

In Uncategorized

This is pretty exciting.  Chris Pietschmann, an MVP, a friend of mine, a committee member of the WI .NET Users Group, developer of Virtual Earth controls, and an independent consultant I have worked with in the recent past, has three MSDN Premium Subscriptions to give away, and he is having a coding contest to determine the winners.  He is building a website for this contest at www.communitycodingcontest.org, but the site is not up yet.  In the meantime you can get some basic info from this post on his site.  The contest will run from July 1 through September 30, so that’s three whole months to get something built.

The most amazing part is the prizes.  From his blog post:

1st Place – 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

2nd Place – 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

3rd Place – 1 MSDN Premium Subscription with Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite

4th Place – Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 Professional

I am also looking for sponsors to donate additional prizes to give away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I’d be happy with 3rd place.  If you work for a company that would like to sponsor this contest, please contact Chris through his blog, or e-mail me and I will put you in touch with him.  If you’re a developer, get those gears turning.

I do have a question for Chris, though.  Chris, why not sneak one of these subscriptions to me and have a contest to give away the other two???

Page 4 of 25

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén