Sorry for the delay. I generally abstain from HN over the weekends.
Feel free to email me, there are several addresses in my profile entry. I reply fastest to the GMail one.
I really should blog about my experience of writing a book. Some parts were easier than I expected, while others were about as hard as I expected. All together, I think with the facilities available through services like LeanPub and CreateSpace, it was easier and smoother than I initially expected.
Sorry for the second reply, but I have written a blog entry on my book writing experience. It ended up larger than I expected, yet still doesn't exhaust all that I would want to say, so more may follow.
Twenty years ago, back in England, I had 5 weeks of vacation and standard public holidays. I moved to the United States and after twenty years I have "progressed" to zero vacation days and all public holidays as unpaid time off.
The term has evolved over time, but it definitively had negative connotations, at least at the beginning.
From the Wikipedia article> This word comes from English dialect geek or geck (meaning a "fool" or "freak"; from Middle Low German Geck)... In 19th century North America, the term geek referred to a performer in a geek show in a circus, traveling carnival or travelling funfair sideshows (see also freak show).
Yup. Man I remember my childhood and it was awesome ... no planned sports, regular family meal times and plenty of time to just play or read or ride my bike or walk for miles in the local fields. I try to provide something close to this for my kids.
Step number one: no TV!
Step number two: remind them that boredom is life's way of encouraging them to be more creative!
I'm a pastor (and former geek) and I would love to see more info on your landing page before handing out an email address.
Not sure if my congregation is ready to go "online giving", but the organization I belong to may be interested. Is this only suitable for church congregations, or would a church organization (state level) be able to use it?
heyo simon! Totally understand. This is primarily for church organizations to manage tithes, offering, and interaction with members. But church congregations (members) will have limited access too.
There's a great infographic that breaks down whether online giving is right for your church. Check it out: http://i.imgur.com/WLysi7d.png
I'm going to update the landing page with more info here shortly...
That's easy ... the worst thing about most project management software is the project manager (PM) that uses it. :-)
Now that I have gotten 23 years of corporate IT cynicism out of my system I'll try to be more sensible. I have only rarely used PM software, so I really cannot speak to it, but I have been inflicted with bad PMs for the vast majority of my time.
My observation is that it is the way that PMs approach the process of PM, not the software that makes the difference. As long as projects start out with a due date and a cool name, it doesn't matter what the software is or does or doesn't do, because the project is doomed already. Who needs estimates when the completion date has already been carved into stone?
The in-house methodology states that requirements will be gathered and estimates will be collected and they'll be put into the approved software and then they will begin to suffer from bit rot because they were bad to start with and will never be revisited. The requirements are always incomplete because there are whole aspects of software development that are never considered, especially testing and creating administration capabilities. The estimates are always wrong because projects are rarely enough like previous ones to make prior experience useful, programmers are by nature optimistic and project managers are people pleasers. (I've seen my careful estimates cut in half right in front of me.) And don't even get me started on the "green shift" that PMs apply as they report up the food chain!
My favorite way of describing most IT projects is "measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe!"
Seven months ago, I became a full-time pastor. Quite different from web development using Java and programming in general. Twenty three years working as a geek is not the most helpful background for pastoring. On the other hand, I love the pastoring and I made sure that the church has a decent web page. :-)
The biggest thing for me to get used to was (still is) managing my time, being a 24x7 people person (I'm a type B personality) and juggling the needs of a congregation. Do I visit A, B or C today? And don't forget to phone D, pop an email to E and be sure to remember that you have lunch with F today and breakfast with G on Saturday. And must have a sermon ready for Sunday. And be available for people to phone or text or Facebook chat with. It's all good, but can get complicated because of the people issues ... and it's all people issues!
Suggestion 2: Signup with https://www.khanacademy.org/ and work through from 1st grade until you feel that you've gone as far as you wish.