Deys.ca | Bill Deys

No matter which side of the fence you are on, you can make the grass greener. So often I see friends, family and people I know, through business or personal, keep moving around from job to job or profession to profession but they never get anywhere. I think the reason goes back to the old saying “The Grass is Always Greener on The Other Side.”

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While it’s true it always seams that way, I ofter think about how nice it would be to be doing something different, such is often not the case. You look back at our grandparents generation that quite often had one job their whole life, they started there out of high school sweeping floors and taking out the trash and they had a big retirement party after spending a few years in management after climbing the ladder for years.

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Contrast this to today when people are changing jobs seemingly every other week. What happened to moving up the chain and earning raises as well as seniority? Compound this with the endless string of “Handy Men” that span every profession. “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” seams to come to mind as well. They muck around and make a bit of money doing whatever they want but in my opinion they usually get the job done in the worst way possible.

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Don’t get me wrong, Handy Men have their place when you want a piece of your deck replaced or a patch in your drywall but ofter they get asked to do a job that a professional should do. My point in all this that in general people need to focus on their jobs and cultivating their own speciality in it.

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To relate it back to my original thought water your grass to make it greener and stick to your own side of the fence!

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Technorati Tags: grass, green, handy, handyman, jackofalltrades

John with Cars

Originally uploaded by Bill Deys

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clipped from www.new.facebook.com Event Info Host: Young Professionals Social Group – London Chapter Type: Party – Bar Night Network: Global Time and Place Start Time: Thursday, August 14, 2008 at 5:00pm End Time: Friday, August 15, 2008 at 12:00pm Location: TJ Baxter’s City/Town: London, ON HOT AUGUST NIGHTS! Emerging Leaders, London Creative Network and Young Professionals Social Group are taking over the streets of London! Yep that’s right it’s fusion-style baby! We’re all coming together to celebrate the final days of summer and you are invited to the mega party where good food, good drinks and good people will be flowing in large supply! Join us on the rooftop patio at TJ Baxter’s on Thursday, August 14 and help us spread the word. This party is going to be sizzling!

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Cornerstone 2002 cab franc

Originally uploaded by Bill Deys

One of the best wines I’ve had in a long while. And its’s 13 bucks! Definitely gonna have to stop abd get more on the weekend at http://niagarameetup.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

I love email, in the right place it works great! I know who I can get fast email responses out of when I need them, and if it’s not real important no big deal if it goes unopened for a while. BUT the key is “in the right places!”

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In my day job our customers don’t “do” email. Some, or most, have email addresses but you’ll be lucky to get a response in a week! The bulk of our orders are handled via Fax, a great technology for sending purchase orders and custom measurment forms. Because of this the office work flow is setup to efficiently process orders via fax. Email just doesn’t fit. When the one person who handles the “general mailbox” for orders is on vacation guess what, stuff piles up and there is a pretty good chance something will get missed.

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You may say but Bill there are some great email-fax and fax-email solutions out there. Yes there are, but when two out of 600+ people use it, I’m sorry just not gonna happen. Get with the 1980 people, we still need fax machines.

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This is aside from the fact that some people get hundreds of emails a day. Few people are efficient enough at sorting and filtering through all that to find those important orders.All I’m saying is know your place, if your customers and you have a good workflow via email then great, but you may have to act as a digital to analog convertor when you pass it on!

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One question I do have, how many of you still have fax machines in your offices? What kind of office is it? Tech?

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Technorati Tags: business, company, email, facsimile, fax, tech

Thanks to Steve Z for making this super awesome promo for the Niagara Meetup conference next weekend. If your interested there is still time to register.

Direct: MP3

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Technorati Tags: meetup, niagara, niagarameetp, notl2008

clipped from yro.slashdot.org With the recent attention to the DHS’s draconian policy on laptop searches at borders, a blog post by Steven Bellovin from last month is worth wider discussion. Bellovin extrapolates from the DHS border policy on physical electronic devices and asks why authorities wouldn’t push to extend it to electronic data transfers. “…it would seem to make little difference if the information is ‘imported’ into the US via a physical laptop or via a VPN, or for that matter by a Web connection. The right to search a laptop for information, then, is equivalent to the right to tap any and all international connections, without a warrant or probable cause. (More precisely, one always has a constitutional protection against ‘unreasonable’ search and seizure; the issue is what the definition of ‘unreasonable’ is.)”

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