Category Archives: Work

What you need to know about Project Management.

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Project Management Truths:

  • A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.
  • Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.
  • If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.
  • Everyone asks for a strong project manager – when they get him they don’t want him.
  • Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager’s imagination.
  • Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.
  • Good project managers know when not to manage a project.
  • All project managers face problems on Monday mornings – good project managers are working on next Monday’s problems.
  • Metrics are learned men’s excuses.
  • For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

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Quiet

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I have not blogged in a while but am still alive (well, I am breathing 🙂 )

Firstly I do not have much to say at the moment.  Am going through some things and have to make some decisions which can go any direction depending on the day.

At work I have started on a new journey, it is a area that is totally new to me and a whole new learning experience.  Almost starting from zero at the age of 50, who would have believed.  Currently the job involves being on the phone most of the day with people in US and India and they being a couple of time-zones apart, is a real challenge.

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Will the IBM/SUN deal happen?

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I have not said anything about the said deal yet.  I have just read an InfoWorld article by Neil McAllister and must say that I agree with him.  This deal would be good for IBM and so more for us that work in the Application Development area within IBM. 

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IBM to cut 5000 jobs in America!

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The current economic market is more bad than worse that is forcing not only small organizations but also the giant organizations to cut out the work force. IBM, one of the leading groups, is about to cut 5000 jobs in USA.

The job cuts will account for over 4 percent of IBM’s U.S. workforce, which totaled around 115,000 at the end of 2008. An International Business Machines Corp spokesman declined to comment. The company, which had a total workforce of 398,455 as of end 2008, has not disclosed how many jobs it has cut so far this year, but has said it was making “structural changes” to reduce spending and improve productivity.

IBM, which now earns around two-thirds of its revenue from outside the United States, has been expanding its workforce in emerging markets like India and China.At the end of 2008, employment in the BRIC countries that includes Brazil, Russia, India and China with a total of around 113,000.

I hope this does not split over to South Africa.  It is unlikely since IBM seen SA as a Growth Market and is investing lots on money into this region.

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From 2 Windows XP machines to 3 Ubuntu machines

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Around September last year I got a new work laptop – Lenovo T60.  IBM, for whom I work, gives one the choice of what OS to run on the desktop ie Windows or some Linux flavor. Oh and some people actually do run Macs also.  The Linux is either Red Hat, Fedora, OpenSuse or Ubuntu.  My choice was Ubuntu.

Getting Ubuntu installed and running with all I need to get my job done within IBM took about 40 minutes.  Inside IBM we have our own APT repositories with various layer packages that install the appropriate packages and applications to get everything up and going.

Now about 5 months later I have no regrets.  Having a working machine in about 30 seconds after boot is just great.  No more BSOD’s, viruses and/or trojans to really worry about and just a more stable and productive envirionment.

At home I also had Windows XP on some very old hardware that ran very slow.  Since my laptop experience was so good, I decided, what the hell, lets totally get rid of Windows.  Now my machine at home is also running Ubuntu and it is doing it so much faster than before.  In the mean time I got another desktop and this is runing Kubuntu. 

To be honest, I have not gotten used to Kubuntu so I do not know how long my second machine is going to run Kubuntu.  I just prefer Ubuntu and finding my way around it, is just so much easier.  And the fact that Dropbox does not work on Kubuntu is a real pain.  Oh and not being able to share my floders on Kubuntu with my Ubuntu machine is not great either.  To be honest I did not really try to find a solution for this yet so it is probaly only something stupid I did or did not do.

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IBM passes $100 billion revenue!

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IBM has released its result for 2008 and you can read all about it here. For the first time IBM has passed the magical mark of $100 billion in revenue. Other than that it was a very good year for IBM taking into account the financial situation in the world.

Now as an IBMer, I am looking with baited breath in what our bonuses will look like when March comes around.

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Lotus Notes 8.5 sync with Google Calendar on Ubuntu

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I am looking for a solution to Sync Lotus Notes 8.5 on Ubuntu with Google Calendar.  It only needs to be an one way sync from Notes to Google Calendar.

I have searched the Interwebs but have not found a suitable solution.  Have found some stuff for Windows but not for Ubuntu or even Linux in general.

Advice will be much appreciated.

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