Today I got some great news from the field. We are now deploying our Enterprise Class Server appliance in under an hour. Yep, our reps left the building in time for lunch with Attensa Feed Server quietly humming away in its new home of an exciting company that services the pharmaceuticals industry. So, to the folks at headquarters here in Portland...phenomenal job! Here is the memo from our field rep I received a short time ago and I just had to share it! "Craig, I have to tell you about today's install of our newest AFS release. These proof-of-concept 'bake-offs' versus our competition are really getting fun. Our consistent technology advantage has been that we have are able to install and deploy the server with blazing speed! I mean BLAZING!!!! Today at XXXXX, we were able to connect to their Active Directory (LDAP) and install and deploy the product in under 40 minutes!!! This is insanely fast. We were then able to train cheap text books the project lead on the Administration Console and Attensa Connect. Our system engineers showed up at 9am in the morning in 10 degree weather, and left the building at 12:30pm. The customer was completely amazed and I quote their CIO: “I have never seen a solution that could be installed and deployed with this speed and stability, I am completely amazed.” TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is critical for IT departments.

It's not like you can puncture a little hole in the leg like a blow-up toy and deflate the stress of an employee whose job-related anxiety has swollen to the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float, but you like to think you can, in a way. Or, at least that's how seemed for a while when stress management seminars were just the thing you thought they needed. Have business these programs fallen out of favor? I haven't heard about them in a while. No one's offered any to me, or any of my co-workers, anyway, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since we're just journalists around here--not one of the more cushy professions, and it's a calling or avocation, really, more than a profession, so why would we be stressed out? So, I was curious as to whether any corporate trainers out there have stress management classes in the works, and if so, what they involve? I guess, while we're on the subject, I should ask a question I probably should have begun with in the first place: What are they, anyway? What I picture is a psychologist, or trainer with psychological training (on par with Dr. Phil, only better?), first asking participants to offer up work-related situations that stress them out, and then dispensing invaluable coping strategies like prioritizing, speaking up rather than bottling in and lots and lots of deep breaths.

Just follow your nose: That's how scientists discovered a stinky new species of orchid. Dubbed the Yosemite bog-orchid, it grows in wet meadows of its namesake national crash cage park and smells like sweaty feet. The small flowers aren't much to look at, but orchid experts are flocking to Yosemite to see (and sniff) the rare blooms. Park officials are mum about where to find the orchid, out of concern that it will be trampled by a curious but careless public.—Dawn Stover (Image: The Seattle Times)

Today I got some great news from the field. We are now deploying our Enterprise Class Server appliance in under an hour. Yep, our reps left the building in time for lunch with Attensa Feed Server quietly humming away in its new home of an exciting company that services the pharmaceuticals industry. So, to the folks at headquarters here in Portland...phenomenal job! Here is the memo from our field rep I received a short time ago and I just had to share it! "Craig, I have to tell you about today's install of our newest AFS release. These proof-of-concept 'bake-offs' versus our information technology consulting competition are really getting fun. Our consistent technology advantage has been that we have are able to install and deploy the server with blazing speed! I mean BLAZING!!!! Today at XXXXX, we were able to connect to their Active Directory (LDAP) and install and deploy the product in under 40 minutes!!! This is insanely fast. We were then able to train the project lead on the Administration Console and Attensa Connect. Our system engineers showed up at 9am in the morning in 10 degree weather, and left the building at 12:30pm. The customer was completely amazed and I quote their CIO: “I have never seen a solution that could be installed and deployed with this speed and stability, I am completely amazed.” TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is critical for IT departments.

It's not like you can puncture a little hole in the leg like a blow-up toy and deflate the stress of an employee whose job-related anxiety has swollen to the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float, but you like to think you can, in a way. Or, at least that's how seemed for a while when stress management seminars were just the thing you thought they needed. Have these programs fallen out of favor? I haven't heard about them in a while. No one's offered any to me, or any of my co-workers, anyway, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since we're just journalists around here--not one of the more cushy professions, and it's a calling or avocation, really, more than a profession, so why would we be stressed out? So, I was curious as to whether any corporate trainers out there have stress management classes in the works, and if so, what they involve? I guess, while we're on the subject, I should ask a question I probably should have begun with in the first place: emergency roadside service What are they, anyway? What I picture is a psychologist, or trainer with psychological training (on par with Dr. Phil, only better?), first asking participants to offer up work-related situations that stress them out, and then dispensing invaluable coping strategies like prioritizing, speaking up rather than bottling in and lots and lots of deep breaths.

It's not like you can puncture a little hole in the leg like a blow-up toy and deflate the stress of an employee whose job-related anxiety has swollen to the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float, but you like to think you can, in a way. Or, at least online shopping mall directory that's how seemed for a while when stress management seminars were just the thing you thought they needed. Have these programs fallen out of favor? I haven't heard about them in a while. No one's offered any to me, or any of my co-workers, anyway, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since we're just journalists around here--not one of the more cushy professions, and it's a calling or avocation, really, more than a profession, so why would we be stressed out? So, I was curious as to whether any corporate trainers out there have stress management classes in the works, and if so, what they involve? I guess, while we're on the subject, I should ask a question I probably should have begun with in the first place: What are they, anyway? What I picture is a psychologist, or trainer with psychological training (on par with Dr. Phil, only better?), first asking participants to offer up work-related situations that stress them out, and then dispensing invaluable coping strategies like prioritizing, speaking up rather than bottling in and lots and lots of deep breaths.

One mistake I see developers make over and over again is that we make a feature look complicated just because it was hard to create. We may not be aware of it, but we want our customers to know merchant authorize net when we sweated blood during development, so we'll design a feature's user interface in a way that shows off how much work went into it. We're doing our customers a disservice when we do this. We should instead show off how good we are at making complex things simple. For example, the prefetching feature I blogged about last week hasn't been easy to create. This feature prefetches (downloads) links and images in your feeds so that they're browse-able inside FeedDemon when you're working offline. It works in the background so you can keep using FeedDemon while it does its business, and it's smart enough to skip web bugs , links to large downloads, and other items that shouldn't be cached (including items that have already been cached in a previous session). It didn't seem like a complex feature when I started on it, but it ended up being a lot more work than I anticipated. It could easily be an application all by itself, complete with all sorts of configurable options. But instead of turning this feature into a mini-application, I demoted it to a lowly menu item: That's it. All that work for what looks like a simple, tiny little feature to end users.

Just follow your nose: That's how scientists discovered a stinky new species of orchid. Dubbed the Yosemite bog-orchid, it grows in wet meadows of its namesake national park and smells like sweaty feet. The small flowers aren't much to look at, but orchid experts are flocking to Yosemite to see (and sniff) the rare blooms. Park officials are mum about roulette wheels where to find the orchid, out of concern that it will be trampled by a curious but careless public.—Dawn Stover (Image: The Seattle Times)

It's not like you can puncture a little hole in the leg like a blow-up toy and deflate the stress of an employee whose job-related anxiety has swollen to the size of a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float, but you like to think you can, in a way. Or, at least that's how seemed for a while when stress management seminars were just the thing you thought they needed. Have these programs fallen out of favor? I haven't heard about them in a while. No one's offered any to me, or any of my co-workers, anyway, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything since we're just journalists around here--not one of the more cushy professions, and it's a calling or avocation, really, more than a profession, so why would we be stressed out? So, I was curious as to whether any corporate trainers out there have stress management classes in the works, and if so, what they involve? I guess, while we're on the subject, I should ask a question I probably should have begun with in the first place: What are they, anyway? What I picture is a psychologist, or trainer with psychological training (on par with Dr. Phil, only better?), first asking participants to offer up work-related situations that stress them out, and then dispensing national savings uk invaluable coping strategies like prioritizing, speaking up rather than bottling in and lots and lots of deep breaths.

Today I got some great news from the field. We are now deploying our Enterprise Class Server appliance in under an hour. Yep, our reps left the building in time for lunch with Attensa Feed Server quietly humming away in its new home of an exciting company that services the pharmaceuticals industry. So, to the folks at headquarters here in Portland...phenomenal job! Here is the memo from our field rep I received a short time ago and I just had to share it! "Craig, I have to tell you about today's install of our newest AFS release. These proof-of-concept 'bake-offs' versus our competition are really getting fun. Our consistent technology advantage has been that we have are able to install and deploy the server with blazing speed! I mean BLAZING!!!! Today at XXXXX, we were able to connect to their Active Directory (LDAP) and install and deploy the product in under 40 minutes!!! This is insanely fast. We were then able to train the project lead on the Administration Console and Attensa Connect. Our system engineers showed up at 9am in the morning in 10 degree weather, and left the building at 12:30pm. The customer was completely amazed and I quote their CIO: “I have never seen a solution that could be installed student credit card application and deployed with this speed and stability, I am completely amazed.” TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is critical for IT departments.

Just follow your nose: That's how scientists discovered a stinky new species of orchid. Dubbed the Yosemite bog-orchid, buy time share it grows in wet meadows of its namesake national park and smells like sweaty feet. The small flowers aren't much to look at, but orchid experts are flocking to Yosemite to see (and sniff) the rare blooms. Park officials are mum about where to find the orchid, out of concern that it will be trampled by a curious but careless public.—Dawn Stover (Image: The Seattle Times)

One mistake I see developers make over and over log off icon again is that we make a feature look complicated just because it was hard to create. We may not be aware of it, but we want our customers to know when we sweated blood during development, so we'll design a feature's user interface in a way that shows off how much work went into it. We're doing our customers a disservice when we do this. We should instead show off how good we are at making complex things simple. For example, the prefetching feature I blogged about last week hasn't been easy to create. This feature prefetches (downloads) links and images in your feeds so that they're browse-able inside FeedDemon when you're working offline. It works in the background so you can keep using FeedDemon while it does its business, and it's smart enough to skip web bugs , links to large downloads, and other items that shouldn't be cached (including items that have already been cached in a previous session). It didn't seem like a complex feature when I started on it, but it ended up being a lot more work than I anticipated. It could easily be an application all by itself, complete with all sorts of configurable options. But instead of turning this feature into a mini-application, I demoted it to a lowly menu item: That's it. All that work for what looks like a simple, tiny little feature to end users.