Danny Davids's BlogDanny Davids (10,491)     Danny Davids    What Graduates Need To Survive in the Real World--NOT!Posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008 (3 days 12 hours ago.) Viewed 254 times. May 19, 2008 Dear Graduate: Congratulations on surviving your schooling! Whether you're leaving high school or college, whether you're a teenager or a fifty-something completing yet another degree, your educational accomplishments are finally behind you. You're probably receiving kudos from your friends and family about how hard you've worked, and being given all kinds of advice on what you need to have and take with you as you get ready to enter what we out here lovingly call "the real world." You also no doubt have promising dreams about what you'd like to do in this next stage of your life. While some of you may continue on with your education, many of you instead will be coming to me looking for employment. That's just fine, as I can definitely use you. But I, too, have some advice to bestow upon you. Unlike your close personal associates, however, I'm not going to tell you what items you need to bring along. Instead, I'm going to tell you what you can get rid of. Dumping a little baggage certainly won't hurt you, and may make the journey easier in the long run. So let's get started, shall we? Protection. I'm not talking about condoms or birth control. I'm talking about living in the protective shadow of Mommy and Daddy. When something doesn't go your way in the real world, don't expect me to succumb to the pressure your parents might put on me to change my entire operation to protect your fragile ego. In fact, if your folks did happen to show up in my office for that very reason, I'm pretty sure you'd be in my office immediately afterwards to pick up your final paycheck. This is a business, not a babysitting service. Tell Momsy and Pops that it's time for them to back off and let you grow up. Self-importance. I realize you're a graduate of our excellent school system, and I don't blame you for being proud of your hard-earned knowledge. However, please don't expect to walk in the door of my company and change everything overnight with said knowledge. Learning the basics about how business operates is wonderful, but that's just the bottom level of a highly complex system. There are a lot of things going on in our real world that you never touched on in school, simply because there wasn't time. Knowledge is wonderful, but knowing how and when to use that knowledge is called wisdom. Frankly, you don't have much of that yet, so chill out and be prepared to be a student in the business world for awhile longer. Superiority. I won't undermine the importance of formal education. Yet many of my employees have gained their education by actually doing the job, and they've gotten really good at it over the years. In fact, some of these people have suggested changes to our operation that have saved us thousands of dollars a year, and they didn't get their ideas from a textbook or a professor. Don't think that having a sheepskin makes you better than some of our long-time employees who don't, and don't treat them as though their primary function is to be your personal assistant. You'll find out quickly that these individuals can run rings around you when it comes to our business dealings. Learn from them. You'd be surprised at what they can teach you. Stagnation. There are three things that are certain in this lifetime--death, taxes, and change. As I mentioned earlier, we've made some big changes in our organization over the years. Some were by choice; others were forced upon us. None was particularly easy. But that's the nature of the beast. You adapt or you die. I need people who won't get stuck in the mental rut of but-we've-always-done-it-this-way. Be flexible enough to do things differently when we need you to. Absolution. There's something about working out here in the real world that I'll tell you about up front: People make mistakes. It's in our nature. Sometimes mistakes happen at bad times, but as long as we learn from them and change our actions we're okay with that here. We get in trouble when we believe we're immune to mistakes, and so when something goes wrong it must have been the other guy who did it. If after months of working here you still haven't made a mistake because everybody around you has been screwing up, I'm going to get suspicious. Broken things either need to be fixed or replaced. Be responsible enough to own up to your mistakes, and be smart enough to correct them and learn from them. Otherwise you might find yourself in the unemployment line. So bring me your ideas, your creativity, your inspiration. Those we can certainly use. Just leave these other items at the door, or better yet, toss them from your life completely. We'll get along much better if you do. Now, I believe you said something about having a resume for me? 
Permalink Comments (2) Use Blank Laptops to Prevent Data Theft While TravelingPosted Tuesday, May 13, 2008 (4 days 19 hours ago.) Viewed 42 times. Like the expense account and the cell phone, computer laptops have become a staple of the traveling business person. In airports, on flights, in hotel rooms, and in taxis and automobiles, it's rare not to see somebody opening a briefcase and pulling one out to do a little work (and sometimes even a little play). With wireless connectivity available in many public places (some of it being free), and the increasing popularity--and decreasing cost--of Internet connectivity through your cell phone service, it's difficult to imagine why anybody would think a laptop shouldn't be an integral part of the traveler's luggage. Except for the businesses. For years the security of the laptop, and the data on it, has been a major reason why some companies refuse to allow their employees to travel with a laptop in tow. Mobility means damage--falling off laps, desks, chairs, recliners, or whatever else you happen to prop it up on to do your work. Mobility means loss--being left in an airport terminal, on a desk in a hotel room, in the trunk of a rental car. Mobility means theft--laptops are so popular that it's easy to understand why pilferage of the devices is on the rise. For all these reasons, mobility primarily means insecurity--the programs and data on the laptop are subject to damage, loss, or theft much more easily than they would be on a desktop computer, or on a file or application server in the company's LAN. And since we know that one of our first lessons on computing is to always maintain a current backup...well, like I said, mobility primarily means insecurity. Eventually modern technology seems to come up with a way to resolve a problem, and this one is no exception. Enter the "blank laptop." No, it's not an albino Mac or an invisible PC. It's a laptop with nothing on the hard drive, period. No data files, no programs, not even an operating system. You connect to the company network via a cellular modem and VPN, giving you access to everything you have on your desktop in the office. There are multiple advantages to the setup. With nothing on the hard drive itself, the company's only out the hardware if the laptop is lost or stolen. Applications and data remain on the company servers, which means they're backed up in the event you accidentally erase that spreadsheet you spent hours putting together. The disadvantages are that access through external devices, like USB memory drives, CD/DVD drives, or diskette drives (does anybody use those any more??) is denied. Access to the local hard drive is denied as well, so users can't install their favorite gaming software to play while on the plane or in the hotel room. And the business may restrict Internet access as well, preventing you from going to all those "interesting" sites you might otherwise check out when not at home. With data becoming more and more marketable, keeping that data out of the hands of unauthorized individuals is becoming paramount. The blank laptop is the latest effort to save company data--and perhaps your job.
Permalink Comments (0) Ladies Show Unusual Sportsmanlike Conduct in Playoff GamePosted Thursday, May 01, 2008 (16 days 12 hours ago.) Viewed 84 times. We've known it for years. Sports is about playing your best game and taking advantage of your opponents' mistakes, all in the name of the ever-elusive win. When it comes to playoff and championship games, the intensity of the game goes up to a new level. It's time to show no mercy and get out there and win. So what was Mallory Holtman thinking? Holtman plays for the Central Washington University softball team. Her team was in a playoff game against Western Oregon University. Oregon's Sara Tucholsky was up to bat with two runners on base. After a strike, she unleashed a swing that sent the ball sailing over the center-field fence, her first-ever home run. She rounded first base and, realizing she hadn't touched the bag, went back to tag it. That's when she collapsed, suffering a knee injury. She was able to crawl back to first base and touch the bag, but that's as far as she could get. I'd think that a home run is a home run whether you run the bases or not, but evidently the rules are different in softball. The first-base coach said she'd be called out if her teammates tried to help her. The umpire added that the team could put in a pinch-runner, but the home run would only count as a single. It was then that Holtman, the first baseman for Central Washington and the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, asked the umpire if she and her teammates could help Tucholsky. He said there was no rule against it. So Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace put their arms under Tucholsky's legs, she put her arms over their shoulders, and the three make the trip around the bases, stopping long enough to let Tucholsky touch each base with her good leg. By the time the trio made it to home plate, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears. Just a good deed, right? Nope. By carrying Tucholsky, Holtman and Wallace helped her home run score, letting Western Oregon win 4-2 over Central Washington, and eliminating their team from further advancing in the playoffs. "We didn't know that she was a senior or that this was her first home run," Wallace said when explaining Holtman's and her actions. "That makes the story more touching than it was. We just wanted to help her." When asked about it later, Tucholsky said, "The only thing I remember is that Mallory asked me which leg was the one that hurt. "I told her it was my right leg and she said, 'OK, we're going to drop you down gently and you need to touch it with your left leg,' and I said 'OK, thank you very much.' She said, 'You deserve it, you hit it over the fence,' and we all kind of just laughed." Central Washington coach Gary Frederick, a 14-year coaching veteran, called the act of sportsmanship "unbelievable." When asked about what prompted her to do such a thing, Holtman replied, "In the end, it is not about winning and losing so much. It was about this girl. She hit it over the fence and was in pain, and she deserved a home run." Leave it to the ladies in sports to show the big boys how the game should really be played.
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