Mind over Matter

Back in January, I attended a SharePoint class taught by Bob Mixon, and he introduced me and my (former) boss Jeff to a really cool mind-mapping application called MindJet.  It's a great application for creating a hierarchical stream-of-consciousness type of note-taking.  It's a very full-featured application, and I'm only now getting started with it.

Solid Financial Advice

I've become an avid reader of The Consumerist, which is essentially a consumer-advocacy blog. A few months ago, I came across this post about an SNL skit, Don't Buy Stuff You Can't Afford. I don't know what's scarier. The fact that SNL is giving solid financial advice, or that making fun of people's inability to manage their personal finances is comedy gold.

http://tinyurl.com/37gth4

Data Scraping

One of the topics that came up in class during the module on SharePoint's search function was data scraping - specifically, the benefits and caveats of doing it. Not long after, I came across this article in Wired about scraping.

It provides examples of how some of the bigger companies are either endorsing or looking the other way on applications that harvest data from their services, while other companies frown on it (either for legal or technical reasons).

http://tinyurl.com/23o3uv

Carlsbad? or CarlsGOOD?

While my boss and I were in San Diego, my friends Dave and Ethan took us to dinner at West Steak and Seafood, one of the restaurants owned by the company they work for, West Development, Inc. I had the Petite Prime Filet with Eggplant Ratatouille and Au Gratin Potatoes. If you're in the Carlsbad, CA area, I highly recommend it.

http://www.weststeakandseafood.com

SharePoint Training

I was in San Diego last week attending a training class on Microsoft Office Sharepoint Services (MOSS) 2007, which is why I didn't have time to post anything. The course was a Planning, Information Architecture, and Design (PAD) workshop entitled 5-Days to a Successful MOSS Deployment, and was a fantastic class. The course was delivered by Bob Mixon, a SharePoint MVP, and experienced consultant. This course offers the perfect blend of soft and hard skills training that provide an effective framework for creating a successful SharePoint solution. Both technical and non-technical staff alike will benefit from the course's holistic approach to implementing and using SharePoint effectively.

Course info: http://tinyurl.com/3b2v7l
Bob Mixon's site: http://www.bobmixon.com

TinyURL

I was noticing that some of the text on my page wasn't rendering right on some browsers, so I decided to remove all the full URL links, and embed the links into the relevant text on the page, as well as include TinyURL links at the bottom of each post.

I've also embedded a TinyURL tool in the footer at the bottom of the page. If you've never used it before, it's a great way to provide short links for long URLS.

Redacted!

So, my first post (after the introduction) isn't as cool as I thought. After reading this article:

I discovered that the updates and transforms don't apply when doing a group policy based deployment. Boo!

http://tinyurl.com/2sgbdd