Articles for category: Initiative

May 19, 2020

Greg Thomas

Sometimes You Need a Project

Projects help learn new skills and get things done. People don’t learn to build houses by writing books about them and doing it all in their head without ever picking up a hammer. And it’s not entirely practical to go pick a plot of land and start building a house. Find a project that can lend itself to helping you learn a new skill. Want to learn AWS? Focus on a component of AWS, some piece of code that you can use to manage your life, maybe an app for your phone, anything that can be small enough for you

May 15, 2020

Greg Thomas

It wasn’t THAT Bad

When we think our latest effort at something was truly, horribly, the worst possible outcome, it really wasn’t that bad. When we ask someone for their opinion, it’s generally better than our own. We are hardest on ourselves. It wasn’t that bad. It’s just not as good as it was in your head. But it’s better than what others are working towards. Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).

May 13, 2020

Greg Thomas

Enabling Bad Behaviour

I can’t take the credit for this – a good friend mentioned this when talking about client work that he does and it reminds me of the work that sometimes you “have to do” because the client “says they need it”. But what that work really does, is enable them to keep doing things badly. Maybe it’s a fear of change, maybe a few of something new or maybe they like doing it this way because that is the habit that they generated (bad habits are easier to set then the good ones). But at the end of the day,

May 12, 2020

Greg Thomas

What Agile Isn’t

An excuse to not do the work you have been doing to date and to do it right. Agile is not getting into a Tesla, dropping the hammer and seeing how fast you can go when you don’t even have a license to begin with. Agile is about iterations and delivering value. If you are not delivering value in every iteration, then it doesn’t matter how fast you are going, you have missed the point. Want more? Check out my book Code Your Way Up – available as an eBook or Paperback on Amazon (CAN and US).

May 8, 2020

Greg Thomas

Echo… Echo… Echo…

A quick service announcement. As someone who works with multiple laptops/devices and is having to straddle multiple client VPNs and what can and does not work because we are still looking to upgrade our networks and get up and running correctly. If you have multiple devices all connected to the same call, they will generate an echo between them as they are in close proximity. A helpful hint: Only use one device as your prime audio device, everything else should be muted. I find I do software demos on one machine (no audio) and have my other device handling the