In Memory

Today would have been my father's 88th Birthday. Tomorrow is the 10th aniversary of his death.

Dad was a child of the depression, born in rural Alabama, a farmer at heart. He joined the Army during World War II and was a supply sergeant for an anti-aircraft battalion in the Pacific Theater. His unit island hopped from Australia to the Philippines. Dad brought home a piece of shrapnel and a Purple Heart when he came home from the Army.

Dad met, fell in love and married my mom shortly after returning from the war. He returned to a civilian job as a clerk at the at Brookley Field Air Force Base. They settled down and tried to start a family but it was twelve years before I was born. Dad worked at Brookley until it was shut down in 1969, then he took early retirement and went to work as the chief clerk in the Baldwin County Tax Collectors office, where his best friend from high school and the army was Tax Collector. He worked in the collectors office until he retired.

He loved the land and tried his hand at raising chickens, cows, and for a short time pigs - before mom complained about the smell. He had two catfish ponds dug and stocked. He loved growing things. At different times he had scuppernongs, satsumas, pears and peaches. He planted a large vegetable garden every year until he got too old to deal with it. He set up a greenhouse and rooted azaleas and other shrubs and flowers and planted them indiscriminately around the place. He always hoped I would develop a love of the land and farming but I'm afraid I was a disapointment there, but I married someone who shared his love of plants and growing things - if not his interest in livestock.  He made sure my children were introduced to living things leading him to buy goats and chickens for them to watch and pet and leading him to take my son to see "Mr. Perry's Cows".

He was blessed with a great deal of creativity but cursed with an inadequate skill level to pull off his designs - leading to some truely unique - horible looking bird feeders made from scrapped microwaves and piles of assorted junk that he was sure he'd find a use for someday.

When he left us suddenly ten years ago he left us prepared. His father died in his early sixties and he always expected he would too. So for twenty years before his death he kept telling us where all the important papers were, he had his plot picked out, he had the casket and arrangements bought and paid for.

It was Labor Day weekend and we were out of town visiting my wife's Sister's family when we got the word.  We had celebrated his birthday before we left. We called him on the actual day to sing happy birthday and tell him we loved him. He died quietly and quickly while he was getting ready for church on Sunday morning. We were 10 hours away. The trip home was horrible. I hated that we were not there for mom during those hours but the folks in the community and from her church took care of her as we drove home and they supported and uplifted us as we mourned his loss and celebrated his life.

Dad and I had the usual father and son relationship. It had it's rocky moments over the years. We were from two very different generations and we didn't always see eye to eye. In the end we were at peace with each other. We loved and respected each other and he was proud of me and the family I was raising. He would be proud of my daughter's choice for a husband and be thrilled at great grandchild she's carrying. He would be very proud of my son, who shares his name and who is learning to build and repair airplanes on the grounds of the old Brookley Air Force base.

Collaboration Lessions from Zynga

If you’re on Facebook, then you’re familiar with Zynga the ubiquitous Facebook game creator responsible for Yoville, Farmville, Mafia Wars and Café World – just to name a few. Zynga, whose mission statement is “Connecting the world through games” has capitalized on the success of  Facebook and other social media platforms with a group of games that vary from the simulation games like Café World and Yoville to role play games like Mafia Wars to traditional card games like Poker or puzzle games like Scramble.

But Zynga’s  games all include a specific hook – they enlist you to invite and involve your friend in the game.  Through regular game play users are urged to collaborate in order to maximize their game play experience.  

As Café World has been my addiction, I’ll use examples from it to illustrate my point but I’m sure the many of the same functions carry over to other games.

In Café World you begin with your own small café, a few tables, a stove and a serving table. You also have a beginning bank of Café Coins to buy items or food to operate your café. As you work through the game, you choose items to cook and serve and then receive Café Coins, Café Points and a Buzz Rating as computer based characters come to your business.  You strive to grow your business, gain and keep Buzz and increase your Café Coins or Café Bucks, while building Points and unlocking additional features – stoves, tables, and recipes you can cook. Zynga’s goal behind all this is to encourage you to spend money. They offer items for the game that can only be purchased with “real” money using Café Bucks.  While there are occasions in the game to earn Café Bucks, they’re usually not big opportunities.   While you can theoretically play Café World all on your own without other people, you will hobble yourself, or wind up spending  money by overlooking opportunities to work with others. 

Be Inclusive – You generally get introduced to Zynga games by invitation from someone in your social media circle.  This personalizes your entry to the game and increases the likelihood that you will at least give it a look – you know that someone you know is in the game and thinks it’s worth sharing.   

Be Accessible on Many Levels – With Café World you can randomly choose foods to cook and serve or you can use the information provided on cooking time, number of servings, costs and selling price to determine the items to cook that will maximize your profits.  As you get more money, you can expand and decorate, hire staff, change your layout and tweak the geography to maximize profits and buzz.  You can also figure out hacks in the game that allow you to speed up the process of getting items started and served.  The game design allows you to quickly learn and enjoy basic game play but the and interface gives you enough information and offers new challenges to allow you to continue to enjoy and participate in the game at whatever level fits your interest.

Provide Immediate Feedback – Café World provides multiple levels of feedback, Café Coins, Points, the above mentioned Buzz and also medals for specific sets of tasks like cooking for five consecutive days.  Buzz ratings determine the number of people who will come into your place. They’re affected by the quickness of the staff, the arrangement of the furniture and doors and the food you cook.  The feedback provided by the buzz ratings gives an up to date reading on how well you are playing the game.  Leave customers waiting too long for food and your buzz rating plummets,  provide a efficient layout for your chef, staff and customers and keep food provided and your buzz rating maxes out -  keep customers waiting because you don’t have food available, or your staff can’t easily reach customers with food and buzz plummets.

Encourage Users to Ask for Help – a core value of Café World is encouraging users to ask their friends and neighbors for help.  At times tasks come up for which there is no easy solution – you can spend money or you can ask friends to give you things.  This can get annoying if you send to friends who don’t play the game but it does encourage you to reach out and others are rewarded when they provide help by the game. 

Provide Rewards for Helping Others – Café World encourages you to send gifts of food or drink – or accessories like stove parts and spice bottles – to your neighbors. It also encourages you to visit neighbors’ cafes.  When you respond either the game or your neighbors generally respond in kind and you receive points or coins or food or accessories.

Provide Public Recognition – Café World attempts to share all your accomplishments with your entire Facebook group.  The game offers to post to your wall every time you move to a new level, cook the dish of the day, win an award, etc.  This can also get annoying to your friends if you don’t watch out –but the important take away is that the game attempts to share your accomplishments with your peers.

Keep Things Fresh – Zynga ensures that players will not get bored, or get every possible item by making small changes throughout the year.  Special dishes are introduced and removed based on holidays and themes, new furniture, fixtures and design elements are introduced with different themes. This encourages players to keep their design fresh – and to spend Café Coins or Bucks.

Encourage Coopetition -   Zynga allows you to compete with your friends. It ranks all the players within your Facebook circle of friends and shows you how far ahead or behind you are, but through encouraging you to work with others by sending gifts and visiting their Cafes, it demonstrates the ideals of coopetition – cooperating while competing with others.  

The Myth of Computer Productivity

Many studies have been done on the effect computers have had on productivity in the office, with mixed results.   Is the idea of computers improving office productivity a myth?  Or are businesses overlooking an important factor in getting the most out of their investment in technology?

When I entered a new job in a Microsoft Exchange shop – after 15 years working with Lotus Notes – the first thing I did was familiarize myself with the features in Outlook.  I have to admit that most of the features I was used to in Notes were available in Outlook.  By pouring through the help files, trying options on the menus and a few Google searches I had a pretty robust knowledge of the functions in Outlook.  I set up categories and color coded calendar items and tasks, I figured out how to set follow up flags, merge multiple calendars.  I set up folders in Email and organized data to keep my inbox down to just the top items I needed to act on.  Looking around the office at my fellow employees I noticed some of the same problems I’d seen with the bulk of the my Notes users at the gas company.

• Users ,  especially top managers who never delete anything from their inbox

• Managers who print out emails, hand write instructions on them and put them in subordinates physical inboxes or on their desktop or chair instead of forwarding or assigning as a  task

• Administrative assistants who don’t know how to create a meeting request and instead email memos around to set up regular staff meetings.

• Users  who don’t know how to add email addresses to their personal address book and instead use the addresses cached in the email client.

• Users who have no idea how to use their contact or calendar information on their blackberry or iphone.

• Departments using  a paper calendar to schedule the use of resources like conference rooms instead of adding the resource to the system.

• Users emailing the same document to the whole department  rather than storing it in a common place and using a link.

The problem is a lack of training. While companies may spend time and money training employees on ERP applications they fail to provide training in using collaboration tools. Managers seem to think “hey, it’s just email how hard can it be to use”.    

• Users trained on all the calendaring, scheduling and contact management features included in their email application can better manage their time and locate the people they need to work with.  

• Managers who keep their schedules in their online calendar and expect their subordinates to do the same – and who use the calendar application to book meetings, schedule rooms, projectors, and laptops – will soon find their department functions more smoothly.

• Managers who understand how to use categories in their calendaring and scheduling with have a more visible cues  to their schedule for the day.

• Managers who understand the task management functionality of their system can more easily delegate and items and follow up with subordinates. 

• Users who manage their inbox filing items in folders or deleting if no longer needed will get a faster performing system and will stop losing important emails in all the clutter.

• Users who have a grasp of the calendaring and scheduling functions in their email will be better able to make use of mobile computing to keep up with tasks and contacts away from the office.

Email was the killer application for the 1990s. Within the enterprise it’s still extremely important, but even more important is a collaborative infrastructure that combines email with contact and time management.   The good news is ALL the major players in the market have the functionality in their product – they just have never been fully embraced and used by the enterprise.  A few techie experts won’t be enough, the collaborative tools of the enterprise need to be embraced at all levels.

Mr. Dean this is your wake up call

Like a lot of other people, I've been living in denial for many years about the effect my lifestyle has on my health. With a family medical history that includes high blood pressure, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, I have no excuse for my ignorance. I've struggled with my weight for most of my adult life and at regular intervals around the big "0" birthdays I've managed to drop over 50 lbs through diet and exercise - twice. In both cases I went whole hog with the diet extremes - a restrictive low fat diet and then the Atkins diet. I threw myself fully into the programs, read the literature, bought the concept, counted the fat grams or carbs, and in both cases I finally hit the point where I couldn't stand the diet restrictions and slipped back into old ways of eating - a victim of fat or carb withdrawl. Along the way my sense of dietary balance and portion control fell by the wayside and my post diet conditions have always been worse than before I started.

Where does this leave me? I find myself on the cusp of 50 with the metabolic trifecta - high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Thankfully, we caught this early before symptoms, we recently changed personal physicians. As part of the change over, my new doctor required baseline blood tests, EKG and chest X-rays. EKG and X-rays were clear but the blood test results were significant enough to get me put on Zocor and require a retest of my fasting blood sugar. With the results in, I am officially a type 2 diabetic. Thankfully, my sugar level is low enough to control with oral medication (Metformin) along with diet and exercise. I've had my first diabetic class, a short course in correctly testing my blood sugar and an introduction to a diabetic diet plan.

My first reaction to the news of my diabetes diagnosis was - I need to get back to a low carb diet - I mean - sugar = carbs and the best way to deal with diabetes has to be to take the carbs away right? A little research online seemed to support this, but if your search terms are "diabetes and low carb" your results are going to be skewed.

So, I geared up and started phase 1 (induction) on South Beach. My lovely bride of nearly 29 years got on board and agreed to follow it with me. She suffered through a week of protein and green vegetables and was going through cereal withdrawl before I went to class and found out I was wrong.

In my diabetic class the instructor placed me on a controlled portion balanced diet that requires (not allows) me to consume at least 65 grams of carbs a day - with at least 8 servings of starchy carbs, 3 servings of fruit and 3 servings of dairy a day. Of course I argued the South Beach arguments - her response - we're not focused on weight loss right now - you've got to learn how to live with diabetes - which seems to mean balance in all things. So far so good - a week in - I've still lost weight.

Thankfully, the wake up call came before my blood sugar levels hit 200, 300 or higher. My cholesterol levels were discovered before I had a heart attack or stroke. I'm still healthy enough to be able to dig my way out of this pit with good nutrition and regular exercise. Note, I didn't say diet. No matter whether I have the extra weight off or get off the Metformin, I'll be a diabetic for the rest of my life now so the diet cycle has to stop. I will be on a balanced, portion controlled meal plan for the rest of my life... and that will be good.

So if you, like me, have a family history that includes high blood pressure, heart disease or type 2 diabetes and you haven't had a physical or blood test in over a year - get tested now. You don't have to be 50 lbs overweight to have type 2 diabetes, it is genetic. If you are 50 lbs overweight and you've yo-yo dieted for years - get tested, get with a nutritionist and get a diet plan that fits and get in some type of exercise program. According to the American Heart Association - 81 million people in the US have some form of cardiovascular disease, 107 million Americans over 20 have high cholesterol, the National Institute of Health studies show almost 24 million Americans are type 2 diabetic - though 1/4 don't know it and another 57 million more are pre-diabetic. Get your wake up call.

What I've learned from Bejeweled Blitz

I've become addicted to the Pop Cap Game Bejeweled Blitz - a one minute speed round version of their popular Bejeweled series of games available on Facebook. After a particularly hairy day at work I settled in to chill out with some Bejeweled and get my mojo back.

It hit me that there are several lessons to be learned from Bejeweled that apply to life, work and productivity in general. If you've played the game I'm sure you can come up with others.

1. There are no perfect games (outcomes, projects, etc.) , you can always do much better or much worse with the same level of effort. Work to maximize your outcome but cut your losses when you have to.

2. You can't afford to focus all of your attention on one section of the board (or your life), opportunities or challenges come up everywhere, often at the same time.

3. Problems and opportunities often follow patterns, learn to recognize patterns and how they fit together so when the confusion of crises or deadlines hit you can still squeeze in the last few steps to improve your outcome.

4. Don't depend too much on specific pieces, your actions, or forces out of your control can cause them to disapear from the board just when you need them most.

5. Sometimes a timely decision is more important than the best decision.

6. Sometimes a rash decision can ruin your game - or day.

7. You can't afford to focus too closely on the most important pieces, sometimes you'll miss much greater opportunities or problems with the all the other pieces.

8. Realize that patterns operate in multiple dimensions - learn to see them rightside up, upside down, backwards and forwards.

9. Synergy is the key. If you can't get the pieces working for you clearing the board you'll never make the high score.

10. You've got to work with the pieces you've got on the board right now.

11. If you watch the clock you'll never get anything done.

and finally....

12. Learn to walk away and do something else. Too much time focused on the game will make you weak and boring.

Results

Butts off the grill after 10 plus hours. An hour to rest in an empty cooler and then to the forks, voila! Pulled pork! Tasty!

We're Smokin'

Found a great deal on Boston Butts at Winn Dixie - $1.55 /lb. yesterday, so today I slathered them in yellow mustard, massaged them in rub and plopped them on the smoker.

The enticing flavor of hickory smoke is wafting through the neighborhood as we speak.

I've got a North Carolina style mop sauce ready to start going on around 2pm today and by 5 we'll be pullin' pork.

Have your self a good weekend, I'm off to fix a big glass of Iced Tea.