Daily Cup of Tech

My daughter was quite distraught this morning.  She had found a penny yesterday and she had put it in her room to before she went to bed last night.  When she woke up this morning, she could not remember where she had put the penny and was in a panic to find it.  We looked everywhere in her bedroom without any success.

I stepped out of the room for a couple of minutes and then returned to the search.  “Miraculously”, only a few seconds after rejoining the search, I “found” the absent penny!

Anyone who has had children knows exactly what I did.  I went into our change jar, dug out a different penny and then planted it in my daughter’s room where it was found and solved the problem.

The reason that this works because for people, perception is reality.  My daughter perceived that I had found her lost penny so, in her mind, I did find her lost penny.  The fact that he penny she has now is not the same penny that she lost is irrelevant.  In her mind, this is her penny.

This same principle holds just as true for managers and employers as it does for five year old girls with lost pennies.  It can be very easy for IT personnel to give the people that they answer to the perception that they are busy working on projects when, in reality, they are doing other things.

For example, it is quite difficult for your boss to know the difference between you researching for the new mail server upgrade project and researching your hobby.  Or writing a post on your blog looks an awful lot like working on that server documentation.

Here’s the thing.  You may get away with this for a while.  In fact, you might get away with it for years!  But, in the end, it will come back to bite you on the backside.  Here’s why.

1. Reality always trumps perception.  In the end, your knowledge of the mail server upgrade will be deficient or the server documentation does not get done one time.  People notice these patterns over time and this will negatively affect your reputation.
2. Hard, diligent work always pays off long term. There is something to be said for hard work.  It teaches you to focus, to complete projects and to be responsible.  None of these things can be learned through deception.
3. The risk isn’t worth it.  So, what do you think your boss will say when (not if) s/he discovers that they have been paying you to surf the Internet?  Best case scenario, you will get a reprimand.  Worst case scenario, you are looking for a new job without a good letter of reference.

I know the temptation to pull the wool over your employer’s eyes is strong.  It is so easy to do.  But the long term damage that you could be doing to your career just does not justify it.  RESIST!

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I recently read 64 Things Every Geek Should Know and I was inspired to create The “Official” Geek “Must Do Before You Die” Checklist:

I have also created a handy PDF version that you can download.

The list can be summed up as follows:

[Logic+Emotion]

Now it’s your turn.  What is on your geek “Must Do Before I Die” checklist?  How far along are you?  Let us know in the comments.

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Remedie

Remedie is a perl based media center application with pluggable architecture. You can subscribe to videocast feeds, watch local folder with media files and keep track of your favorite video sites like YouTube, Nico Nico Douga or Hulu. See Supported Sites for details.

It runs as a web server so you can use your favorite browser (Firefox, Safari) to browse your video collection, playback videos using your favorite player.

If you’re familiar with Plagger, Remedie is a fork of Plagger, optimized for media downloading and viewing, and comes with an HTTP web server with JSON APIs and web-based frontend built with jQuery and CSS.

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Icy Phoenix

Icy Phoenix is a CMS based on phpBB (a fully scalable and highly customisable open-source Bulletin Board package PHP based) plus many modifications and code integrations which add flexibility to the whole package. The official home page for phpBB is www.phpbb.com. Icy Phoenix has some features originally developed for phpBB XS Project which has been founded by Bicet and then developed by both Bicet and Mighty Gorgon. Icy Phoenix has been created by Mighty Gorgon after he left the phpBB XS Project.

Ovidentia

Ovidentia, an open source content management and collaborative platform written with PHP and using a MySQL database.

Ovidentia enables you to integrate simply and easily an environment for publishing content on the world wide web or a groupware portal (internet, intranet, extranet) for your company, organization, community …

MemHT Portal - Free PHP CMS and Blog

MemHT Portal is a Free PHP CMS and Blog
It permits the creation and the management online of websites with few and easy steps.
It’s completelly customizable, expandable and suitable for all needs.

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