You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself

Recently finished listening to the audio version of You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself by Harry Beckwith.

There was nothing in this book that I could disagree with. It all made perfect sense. The main takeaway that the book kept on hinting at was to look around you and take note of who impresses you, how they do it and why. Same applies to companies. Compare people to each other. Why does Jill impress you and Nancy not as much? Nancy knows more, speaks better, and is friendlier but she wears jeans and T-shirts to work. Jill is always wearing a business suit, that's all it takes. This is of course a contrived and simple example but it highlights how we are always selling ourselves in everything we do, say, wear and eat.

Sex, politics and religion

It seems that I have known forever that you don't talk about sex, politics, and religion in formal environments. I once attended a lunch with 7 journalists and during the first 30 minutes of lunch all that was talked about was sex, politics and religion. When I jokingly pointed this out they said that as journalists they could talk about anything at anytime. So maybe this rule doesn't apply to journalists. However, it definitely applies to all work environments that I have been in and I have seen some interesting mistakes through slight of tongue on these three forbidden topics.

Apart from listening to this book I also have the hard copy. One thing that I didn't realize about it while listening to it is that it's made up of lots of short one page chapters. Easy vignettes that can each be read in 30 seconds. This is a great book to keep in the lavatory - if that isn't awesome praise then nothing is.

Strengths Finder 2.0

Just finished doing the test and reading the book for Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

This is an interesting "book" to read from the point of view that the book is only "usable" by one person. You cannot gift the book after you've read it. The book starts off with 30 pages of introduction which are fairly quickly put behind you and effectively convince you of the merits of continuing. You then turn to the back of the book and cut open the packet which has your unique access code to the strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment and website. Using this one-off code you do the 30 to 40 minute test online and this spits out top 5 strengths. Mine are:

• Learner
• Activator
• Analytical
• Achiever
• Focus

Once you have the list your then read the 5 Themes and Ideas for Action from the list of 34 themes and actions in the next part of the book. These themes explain how these strengths impact who you are, give some quotes from real world people who share those attributes, and finally some action points that will help you leverage those strengths. There are also a few action points for working with people who have those strengths.

Learner

Your are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. Understand how you best learn (me: by doing). Track progress when you're learning and find opportunities to do courses and further yourself.

Activator

You learn more from real experience than from theoretical discussions. Most developers (software engineers) would fall into the activator category as I think that most of us "click" when we do rather than when taught or reading.

Analytical

Prove to me that this is true. "Show me the money." I'm not going to believe your theories until you've demonstrated to me that they have some sound validity. Objective and dispassionate.

Partner with someone with strong Activator talents. This person's impatience will move you more quickly through the analytical phase into the action phase. (This means, I think, that I should partner with myself.)

Achiever

You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. And by "every day" you mean every single day...

I completely agree with this assessment and how it applies to me. I also agree with the statement that the feeling of achievement is short lived and I need to start looking for the next item. In general I agree with the action items and considering the Learner I have to accept that the "attain certifications" item is going to have to now be on my list.

Focus

You stay on the main road and don't wander off down alleys that don't benefit the final goal. You are goal orientated and driven. You must have a purpose and goal to focus on. Include time-lines and measurements in goals.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

I recently finished reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. This is a great read and packed with insight. The full title is Linchpin - Are you Indispensable?

I found the book from reading Seth's blog which I try and read daily but usually catch-up with it on weekends.

The crux of the book is about how some employees are able to do anything. They are the go-to guys who seem to know someone or something that can get the job done and have the talent for making it happening. They are the linchpins.

A lot of the book discusses art and the generosity on non-reciprocal giving. I've read a number of books like this lately and the one example that keeps on coming up is Wikipedia and I have to say that this example has been overdone many times. Perhaps it's still relevant and perhaps it's the largest and best known example of its time but I would like to see some other examples apart from Wikipedia.

Seth is a big fan of shipping and doing so on time. He's right and to get a product to market you have to ship. Don't look for perfection or you will never ship.

X.CO Url Shortener

Go Daddy have just launched their x.co url shortener which is the shortest url shortener that I have been able to find. If you are doing shortening on your server (as opposed to doing it client side using JavaScript) then here is some C# code that will work on your web server to shorten a url using their API. You will need your API key which can be found here: Integrating x.co with applications you develop.

public class XcoApi
{
    private const string apiKey = "put your API key here";

    public static string ShortenUrl(string longUrl)
    {
        var shortUrl = string.Format(
            "http://x.co/Squeeze.svc/text/{0}?url={1}",
            apiKey, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(longUrl));

        WebClient wc = new WebClient();
        return wc.DownloadString(shortUrl);
    }
}

The main advantage of shortening a URL on the server side instead of the client side is that you can keep your API key hidden and therefore usable only by you.

Erase an area in Paint.Net using the Paint Bucket

There might be an easier way to do this but I couldn't find it and it took me forever to work this out so I hope that it helps someone else as well.

Using the excellent and free Paint.Net image editing software I wanted to erase an area but I wanted to do it with the paint bucket so that it would would erase all the complicated edges that I couldn't get to.

Start off by selecting a small area that you're going to erase with the Rectangle Select tool and hitting the delete key. You now have a small checkered section.

Select the Color Picker tool and click in the just deleted area and this will set your color to transparent (deleted/erased).

Now click on the Paint Bucket tool and click in the area(s) that you want to erase with this tool and it will use the Paint Bucket to erase the area(s).

Please let me know if there's an easier way to do this.

 

Myers Briggs Type Indicator ENTJ Executive Fieldmarshal

I just took the Myers Briggs Type Indicator assessment and discovered that I'm an ENTJ. This is how my score pairs panned out:

E=18 & I=3

S=7 & N=15

T=28 & F=0

J=24 & P=5

Without reading any further about what an ENTJ personality type is I can only assume that we do not have a problem exposing our scores or writing about our type, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this.

In reading what wikipedia has to say about this I discovered the Keirsey Temperaments which classifies me as a Fieldmarshal. The personality page calls me The Executive. I'm now starting to feel pretty full of myself and without reading what The Executive is all about I give it to my wife to read to me.

She slows down, reads extra loud, and repeats some of the passages:

"...they are not naturally tuned in to people's feelings, and more than likely don't believe that they should tailor their judgments in consideration for people's feelings. ENTJs, like many types, have difficulty seeing things from outside their own perspective. Unlike other types, ENTJs naturally have little patience with people who do not see things the same way as the ENTJ..."

"...sentiments are very powerful to the ENTJ, although they will likely hide it from general knowledge, believing the feelings to be a weakness. Because the world of feelings and values is not where the ENTJ naturally functions, they may sometimes make value judgments and hold onto submerged emotions which are ill-founded and inappropriate, and will cause them problems..."

I read that other ENTJs include Margaret Thatcher and Bill Gates.

C# Script to list local users and disabled status on Windows Servers

The following script will list all local users and their disabled status on each of the windows servers that you put into the "servers" array variable. This code is written in C# and you will need to include the System.DirectoryServices assembly.

using System;
using System.DirectoryServices;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string[] servers = { "ServerName1", "ServerName2", "ServerName3" };
            DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry();

            foreach (string server in servers)
            {
                de.Path = "WinNT://" + server + ",computer";

                Console.WriteLine("Server: " + server);
                foreach (DirectoryEntry d in de.Children)
                {
                    if (d.SchemaClassName == "User")
                    {
                        int userFlags = (int)d.Properties["UserFlags"].Value;
                        bool disabled = (userFlags & 2) == 2;
                        string name = (string)d.Properties["Name"].Value;
                        Console.WriteLine(name + " (" + disabled + ")");
                    }
                }
                Console.WriteLine();
            }
           
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}