Branko Santo

A nasty temper does not exclude the possibility of great ideas.

I am sure everybody has a coworker with fire coming out of his mouth as soon as he opens it. But does it mean he is not allowed to have great ides? Definitely not, but if you start with a wall on front of someone they need to have an incrementaly more awesome idea the nastier they are. Next time a constantly nagging guy comes to you with idea, stop and listen to him maybe he has something smart to say.

Are there more nasties in the male population or is it just me?

Here is actually a video on how knowledge impairs performance!

Ran into it thanks to this blog.

He (or she) asks some interesting questions on how much we loose by being project managers. Proces this, methodology this, follow this, chart this… blah blah blah. Are we loosing the feel for it and just becoming a sofisticated type of monkies in suits?

Not really, but we are deffinitely loosing the joy of watching the work develop and hapily seing it come to a fruitful end.

Don’t get me wrong having a “team” feel like a Team (not A Team) to each other makes perfect sense, but why is that every organization is looking for a follow the book solution? Teams get built with you or without you. They can build against you if you are not careful! Clear cut lines between rank and file don’t really work in the modern economy with the rank being able to add a lot of value to work. Be honest to the guys and girls, have an honest down to earth conversation from time to time and ask for their opinions. When I say ask for their opinions I don’t mean just put it in some file and throw it away, think about it, give them feedback and let them know they are valued.

This is what got me thinking.

Ran into this article and to an extent this seems like normal. But it feels somehow old and washed out. Hasn’t this been the mantra for ages? In brief  it says:

Share your knowledge and promote your expertise.

Be a mentor.

Learn the right way to use social media.

I am all for sharing but having sharing presented as a PR activity really hurts me deeply. Share if you love to share and help your fellow workers, don’t share if the primary reason is to better your career. Being a mentor is something wonderful (having a mentor also) you can have somebody to bounce off ideas and who will be there to keep you in check if you get some crazy ones. Its just important to have it more in a friendship style and not “Me king, you pawn!”. And as for social media, I am up for all the new hot technologies and using it to better get in touch with you followers and I totally think this channel of communication has more problems then benefits but if used correctly it can be done.

Now for something really extrodinary!  Check this out!

That is how you position yourself as an expert!

As a start I said Scott makes me drowsy, maybe its just the format

Take a look at his great article The cult of busy and don’t forget to read the comments some really nice things there.

Personally I am all for your results matter and not how much effort you put in. It is not always in direct relation and the rewards in the cruel capitalistic world are definitely out of all imaginable proportions

Have a nice day!

Now for something completely different.  From 1st June I will be changing to another position in my company (AT&T). Focus of my work will be on project management thus a new chapter occurs in the story that is to be my life

After careful research I decided that my first steps into serious project management will be the basic course at PMI.org (the guys who brought you PMP/CAPM) and Scott Berkuns “Making Things Happen”. The PMI course is going on pretty decently but its a lot of material to digest to start understanding truly what they are saying. I am happy with it although the price could be a tad lower (as always). I am already coming to grips with the terminology, and the names of all the documents that will be produced during one carefully thought out project.

Scott Berkuns book is pretty decent but a real torture for me somehow. There is interesting stuff, a lot that I could learn and a good story behind it with him being a long time Microsoft employee. But after 15ish pages I get really drowsy. Blame it on my lack of sleep but my ATM favourite book author Seth Godin just puls me in and doesn’t let go.

Considering the seriousness of the situation and that I definitely want to really do my job well and like the job itself I decided on an attack plan to combat study fatigue and increase retention of new topics and improve old ones. Books are mountains and for every mountain you need an excessive amount of effort. Articles are hills, across smaller ones you can even run, over bigger ones you can jog. So spotting one good business/project management/people management article per day and digesting it is what need to be done.

Now let’s get to it

As my job is going to be slowly switched to security I was browsing eBay today and while surfing for PIXs and ASAs looked at prices of routers and switches for CCIE R&S. You can now get a 3550 48 port SMI for $350 which is dirt cheap compared to last year or a bit more when I was looking. Then they were around $1000. For someone going into CCNP it would be great to buy two of these plus a couple 2950 ($75-100) and a couple 2610 ($100) which can all be used for CCIE later. Thats just above $1.000 and trust me will be very beneficial for you. Just for BCMSN I used around $150 for rental and used Dynamips for others but would have loved to have had real equipment.

I can say that now it has become affordable to acquire equipment for your CCNP which can carry on to CCIE (just add 2 more 3560) and you can also use these in all other CCIE concentrations and preparations for the likes of CCSP.

Think about it

I have recently been able to test online flash cards from www.certflashcardsonline.com. Trying to prepare anyways for this exam so this was a nice addition to the materials.  Tride out a couple of the “tests” in which you get 50ish questions and try to answer it before looking at the answer. Nice thing is that you get thorough explanations for each answer so you know why you were wrong. Pretty good materials and will surely come in handy when taking the test. One thing I did not like is that you can’t just go to the home page you need to go to app.certflashcardsonline.com to find the tests. A bit awckward for me but it was free and still beats anything else I have seen so two thumbs up.

Hey people, spent like two hours setting everything up so thought someone might like to try it out. It is from the first volume the OSPFv2 exercise, think its not breaking no legal stuff.

KLMN router are attached just to the 10.31.x.x network with O. The network 10.30.254.x is not operational but still there are connections built in the .NET file.

When moving my blog to another server the files got lost and can’t find them right now as I switched to another computer too and the last one is gone. Still trying to find everything but not sure if I will be able to. Sorry

How to switch between multiple terminals (command prompts for you windows people )

ALT + F1 – ALT + F6

How to view processes

just use “top”

Thats all folks