We Have Moved

I finally bit the bullet and got my own domain name! Come see me at www.keithohudson.com.

Love Life. Love Yourself. Be Good to Each Other.

It has been my experience over a half-decade of living, that I have basically two choices in life. I can celebrate life, my existence, and the existence of those around me, accept myself as I am, and try to make the world a little better for having been here, or I can rant against life, rue my existence, and try to wring a little selfish pleasure from my life while trying to remain oblivious to how my actions might affect those around me.

There is no other choice. Either I choose to love life, love myself, and be good to those around me, or I seek only my own selfish ends, which inevitably lead to regret and sorrow and self-loathing.

Sometimes, I oscillate between those two choices so quickly that it might appear I am standing still, not making things better in the world, but also not making them worse. However, such a state is always temporary, for there is no such equilibrium to be had.

The Old Testament put it this way: “How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal [an idol worshipped in ancient times], then follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21).

Whether you believe in the Bible or not, life itself teaches us that stasis is not sustainable. Take your house and yard as an example. If you do nothing, your house grows cluttered and dirty, weeks grow in your yard, and the general appearance and state of repair of your property deteriorates. It is inevitable, only a matter of time. If you prune and rake and trim outside, and clean and tidy and make improvements, then your home and yard are inviting and pleasant, and become more so over time.

Each of us must choose in each moment of our life whether to seek to serve ourselves, or to seek to serve mankind. It is not always a cut and dried choice. Gaining an education prepares us to serve others better. It also can prepare us to acquire wealth for our own selfish gain. Someone else looking at the choices you make may not know whether you are motivated by giving or by greed, but you know. Deep inside, you always know, and in the end, it will show in your life.

My hope for me is that each day I might choose just a little more to serve mankind, to make the world a better place. I know that as I do, I find greater peace, greater contentment, and greater joy than when I make the other choice. I hope you’ll want to join me in this choice.

How to Set Up Multiple Twitter Accounts With a Single Email Address

If you have set up several twitter accounts (and I can think of plenty of good reasons to do so), you may have been frustrated at the need to create a new email account for each twitter account. But did you know that if you have a google mail (gmail) account, you don’t need to go through all that hassle? Gmail lets you insert a period anywhere in your email name, and still directs that email to the same email account. So any.body@gmail.com is the same as anybody@gmail.com. (If that’s your email address, please forgive me – you’ll probably get a flood of spam now!)

With a little experimenting, I found out that Microsoft Outlook will not accept an email address with a leading period, although I can send an email from gmail with a leading period and it gets delivered correctly. Outlook also rejects an email with a trailing period (that is, a period right before the @ sign). However, gmail will gladly accept either of those. And twitter will accept either of those as a new email address when setting up a twitter account.

According to Google mail support, gmail ignores dots in your email name: “Because Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours.” (http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ctx=mail&answer=10313#)

So you can set up multiple twitter accounts using different combinations of dots, and the email relating to all those accounts will go into the same gmail box.

In fact, Google gives you two email addresses when you sign up for gmail. The second address ends in @googlemail.com. So, if I remember my math correctly, if your gmail username has 5 characters in it, using various combinations of dots in your email user name with both “gmail” and “googlemail” as endings, you can set up a total of 212 twitter accounts using the same email address. Sweet!

Does anyone want to venture a guess as to how many twitter accounts you could set up with a gmail address that has 12 letters in the username?

UPDATE: To learn how to use gmail aliases , a different approach to creating multiple gmail addresses that all point to the same primary gmail account, see the excellent article located here: http://su.pr/349kFc.

Cheap long distance, USA and Canada

I just switched my family’s cell phones to AT&T (iPhone 3GS – hurray!). I paid close attention to how many minutes I needed, and made sure I got unlimited texting since I have two teenage kids.

But I forgot to check on long distance rates. Turns out my long distance rates to the US are about 19 cents a minute. I don’t yet know what my long distance rate to Canada is – it wouldn’t surprise me to learn it is twice that.

So I immediately programmed OneSuite into my iPhone. OneSuite offers discount long distance calling, with local access numbers in many places in the US. For instance, calling a long distance number in the US (using a OneSuite local access number) costs 2.5 cents per minute, much much better than the 19 cents AT&T wants to soak me for.

Calls from Canada to the US, using a toll free number, are 3.5 cents per minute.

I have an address book on their website giving me speed dial once I connect to their network.

What’s not to love?

I haven’t used the long distance service included with my home phone for a couple of years, since discovering OneSuite. I recharge my OneSuite account with $20 about every 4 or 5 months.

For all of you who don’t have unlimited long distance included already in a phone plan, check out OneSuite.

To your Prosperity.

Keith O. Hudson

P.S. If you decide to try OneSuite, use my SuiteTreat number, A5AL07084, as your referrer when you sign up, and you’ll get an extra 5% on the initial amount you deposit to your account.

P.P.S. Note that calls from pay phones carry an initial charge of 55 cents, at least here in the States. So, if you’re calling from a payphone and you need to make multiple calls, don’t hang up after completing your first call. After the call is terminated by the other party, wait 5 to 10 seconds and you will hear a prompt asking you what destination number you wish to reach. Now dial your next call.

The Purpose of Life

Chris Mahan weighs in, and I cheer!

PM Clinic is a listserv (email discussion group) for project managers and those interested in project management to which I belong. Each week, a situation or question is posed, then members of the group (including some very smart people, certainly much smarter and more experienced than me in project management) offer answers or suggestions.

This week’s situation was:

Somebody on my team recently slipped to me that they have a crush on another engineer on the team. Office romance isn’t prohibited in our office (unless one of the parties works directly for the other person), we have a small team and I’m concerned about the potential project impact if they start a relationship.

I’m specifically concerned about
• Minimizing the impact to the team’s decision making ability and culture by introducing a couple
• Ensuring that other co-workers don’t marginalize the girl’s opinion because she’s dating the guy
• Issues from the relationship leaking into the team’s ability to work with each other
• Minimizing gossip

Regardless what I think about them as a couple, my first priority is the health of the team and finishing our project.

What’s the right course of action here? Do I sit back and address the problems when they arise? Do I act now to set expectations? Is this dangerous enough to the health of the team for my office to change our romance policy? Should I encourage them because we need more engineers in relationships?

I had to stand up and cheer when I saw the following response, shared here with the permission of Chris Mahan who posted it:

Sigh.

It is assumed that your first priority goes beyond your duties as a project manager at CORP XYZ, and that your real first priority is to be a good human being to others, and that the reason you even have a job is to ultimately gather resources so you can provide for yourself, your family, and those in need around you.

Now, one of the things people go through in life, is the finding and keeping of mates for play, practice*, and founding of a family to replenish the planet when all of us old farts die off. This is a fairly stressful thing in and of itself, and can be downright scary, especially (and I stereotype horribly) for introverted engineer types. This is one of those things that, if mishandled by a PM who is driven by deadline, or even team-cohesion, can lead to really nasty situations, horrifically bad feelings and may push some individuals to extremes (suicide, depression and subsequent lack of self-care, etc).

Imagine for a moment that Engineer X starts, for the first time in years, to get the "let's get it on" vibe from Engineer Y, and feels suddenly that the far-of dream of marriage, a house in the suburbs, and two lovely little cherubs is now within reach, and perhaps even attainable. Imagine that this Engineer X had told his aging mother about his new love interest and had witnessed the tears of glee rolling down her rosy cheeks. Imagine Engineer X having found himself weeping at his father's grave, a modest stone in a field of green grass under an imposing oak tree, wishing that his own dad could have outlived cancer another year to maybe, just maybe, come to his only son's wedding.

Now imagine the project manager for project BigBadImplementation for company ZORG CORP who now sits Engineer X and Engineer Y in his office and says: "Look, I don't want to know what's going on between you two, but let's just say that I don't want anything derailing my carefully crafted Microsoft Project four-month, nine hundred lines project plan. If there is, I'm going to have to go ahead and take some administrative action that could really hurt your chances at that 4% raise next year. Do I make myself clear? Great! Now let's get out there and give our customers what they want!"

Upon leaving the room, Engineer X would mutter some abject "Jeez, what bug bit his butt today" and Engineer Y would mutter back something like "yeah, we'd better keep to our cubes" and part ways down a nondescript gray low-walled cubicle aisle.

Now Engineer X, crushed to the bone at the soullessness of the machine, will sit at his cube and pretend to work for the rest of the day while alternating between silent seething at the PM FROM HELL and mourning the seemingly abrupt end of his chance at real intimacy and, dare he say it: love.

No. My advice is to not only not get involved, but more so to think as a caring human being first and as a PM second. If you can't see the real humans behind the badges, you've already become what people hate: corporate scum.

If you've got to push people down paths of misery, depression, and a life of missed opportunities, you're a poor excuse for a manager.

PS: I wrote in a somewhat inflammatory style. I exaggerated in order to more clearly show my point, and I hope no feelings are hurt as a result, as I was not targeting my tirade at anyone in particular, just the "situation of the week."

I heartily agree with Christ that our whole reason for being on this planet is ”to be a good human being to others” and that the reason any one of us has a job, or runs a business, “is to ultimately gather resources so [we] can provide for [ourselves], [our families], and those in need around [us].” Three cheers for Chris. Follow him on twitter at chris_mahan.

Tired of working 9 to 5? What if you could work when and where you want....

The book "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" by Cali Ressler and Jodi Thompson, tells of the transition at Best Buy's back office to a "Results Only Work Environment" (ROWE) where the focus was on actually producing results, not on hours in the office or how much of your personal life you sacrificed for work. Its a wonderful read, and instills hope in all of those "cube rats" who long for a more balanced approach to life.

Just imagine - what if you never had to leave home to get your work done? What if you could do your work when it suits you, whether in the middle of the night or the mid-afternoon, not when it suits a clock-punching supervisor? What if you could figure out how to accomplish the work required in your job in 20 hours a week, instead of 40, and you got to use all those extra hours for yourself, instead of having your boss just pile more work on you as a reward for being efficient?

In the Industrial Age, we traded our time for a paycheck. That's where the term "punch a clock" was born. In the Knowledge Age, productivity will be rewarded, not just time on the job. Many companies still live in the Industrial Age. Some will live there for decades to come or even longer, until someone figures out how to replace their industrial age work with knowledge work. Robots on assembly lines are a good example of industrial age work being replaced with knowledge work. The person who designs and programs the robots is doing knowledge work.

Many, many companies could follow the example of Best Buy, and I believe over the coming decades they will. According Cali and Jody's book "Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It" Best Buy experienced a productivity gain of 37% and a decrease in voluntary turnover approaching 90% when they transitioned to the Knowledge Age and allowed their employees to start integrating their life and work more effectively.

Take the case of Trey, chronicled in "Why Work Sucks." His life in a ROWE involves waking up when the sun is too bright for him to sleep any longer. He checks his emails to make sure there are no pressing issues, gets breakfast (or lunch, depending on the time) or a goes for a workout. He spends the afternoon working in his living room, with the TV on in the background. If his work is not done by supper time, he'll do more at night.

Is he being lazy? Instead of being judged by how many hours he spends working, Trey is judged by whether he is getting his work done. He and the team he is on have gotten smarter about how they do their work. Where they used to produce 10 or 12 ilearning courses per month, they now produce as many as 43. Yet Trey only goes into the office before 10 am 2 or 3 times a month, when he has a meeting he needs to be at. His team is getting more done than is expected of them -- they are happy, their boss is happy, and the company they are working for is benefiting from their increased productivity.

Trey is able to organize his day the way he likes and travel when he wants. THAT is Value Synchronicity. THAT is the wave of the future. Some day all knowledge work will be done that way, because it will provide a competitive edge for the companies that do it that way. But, it will take years, perhaps decades, for cultural attitudes to change, until it is more common to equate value in an employment relationship with productivity instead of simply with presence.

One of the topics I'll return to from time to time is what you can do to move toward a Results Only Work Environment.

To your prosperity.

Keith O Hudson

P.S. Here's a message from Cali and Jody:

Help further the ROWE movement by voting ROWE to be a topic at the 2010 SXSW Conference by going to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/2378. SXSW is the conference where new ideas break out in a big way. You'll need to create an account to be able to vote, but it only takes a few seconds. It will look like you can vote without creating an account, but the vote won't count - we've checked on this.

So You Just Bought an iPhone

So you just bought an iPhone, and you're trying to figure out how to use it. Here are some things I wish someone had told me the day I got my new iPhone:

1. Double tap and Pinch. When using Safari, the internet browser, you can double tap to zoom in or zoom out. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it is quicker than the “pinch”. (The two-finger motion to zoom in or out is called a pinch even when you are moving your fingers apart, apparently). In photos, if you have zoomed in using the “pinch”, double tapping will return you to the regular view, so you can scroll to the next picture.
2. Copy. When you are editing a note (and sometimes other places) you can double tap to bring up the Select/Select All/Copy floating menu.
*3. Moving Cursor. If you need to move the cursor back to something you have already typed, hold your finger on the screen close to where you want to go. A little bubble will appear that will show that area magnified. Keep your finger on the screen and slide it until the cursor is in the right position, then lift your finger.
*4. Avoiding Errors When Typing. When using the virtual keyboard, leave your finger on the screen until you see the letter you have selected “pop up” on the screen. If you hit the wrong letter, slide your finger until you get to the right letter, then lift your finger.
5. Bigger keyboard. In some applications, you can turn the screen sideways – you’ll get a bigger keyboard.
*6. Changing keyboards for one keystroke. When typing letters using the virtual keyboard, if you need a single number, press on the number icon and keep your finger there, then slide it to the key you need when the number keyboard comes up. When you release your finger, the keyboard will return to the alpha keyboard. This works for symbols also. Big time saver.
7. Edit existing note. Single tap to edit a Note that has already been saved.
8. Entering periods. Double-tap the spacebar to enter a period and a space. Turn this feature on in Settings/General/Keyboard.
*9. Power off. To power off your iPhone, hold the lock button (the one at the top you press to turn off the display) for 5 seconds. You’ll be given the choice to power down. Once you have powered off your iPhone, click either the lock button or the button to turn it back on.

10. Rapid repeat. Hold down the backspace key for rapid repeat. This is the only key that does this.
11. Caps lock. Double tap on the shift button for Caps Lock. This option must first be enabled in Settings/General/Keyboard.
12. Resetting network connections. If you are having trouble connecting to the network, you might try resetting your network connections by going to Settings/General/Reset/Reset Network Settings.
13. Warning! Before you update your operating system to a new version, such as OS 3.01, make sure you back up your device. I didn’t, and lived to regret it. If the update fails partway through, you will have to restore your iPhone to 3.0, which will wipe out all your data.

Here’s a great article on using the iPhone, even though it’s a little dated: http://www.macworld.com/article/131264/2007/12/tco_iphone.html.

If you know of additional online resources that are good for iPhone newbies, please let us know in the comments.

To your Prosperity!

Keith O. Hudson

Two Free Tacos on Tuesday

Now that I'm getting interested in couponing, my daughter is sending me deals. I didn't go for the free chocolate bar deal (see my post "What is Your Name and Email Address Worth?"), but I might go for the free tacos from Jack in the Box.

The offer is two free tacos per coupon (limit one coupon per guest) at any participating Jack in the Box restaurant on Tuesday, August 11, 2009. I think I know where I'm having lunch next Tuesday!

You don't have to give out your name or email address -- you simply print out the coupon. No limit on how many you can print. Sweet! Get the coupon here.

To your prosperity.

Keith O. Hudson

What is your name and email address worth?

What are your name and email address worth? Would you give up that information for a free chocolate bar?

Apparently Mars, Inc., the company that makes M&Ms, Snickers bars, Twix bars, 3 Musketeers and Dove bars (what happened to Mars bars? or are they only in Canada??) believes that you will. They are offering a coupon for a free chocolate bar or a package of M&Ms to those willing to give up their name, address, and correct email address. You register starting here (it didn't work for me in Firefox, but it worked in Internet Explorer) by giving your birthdate, then you're taken to a screen where you are given five minutes to fill out and submit your full name, address, and email address. If you're one of the first 250,000 per week to fill out the form (and, I suspect, respond to an email sent to your email address), Mars will send you a coupon in the mail in 6 weeks. If you aren't in the first 250,000, then I guess they get to keep your information for free, although in that case they may not know whether you have given them a bogus email address.

I'm not so interested in free chocolate that I'm willing to give up my personal information, but it does give one pause. Just think, if this company will give me about $1 worth of free product for parting with my personal information, and if there are a couple hundred thousand companies out there that feel the same way, could I possibly get them to give me cash instead? Think of it -- I could pay off my mortgage!

Don't underestimate the value of your good name (and email address)!

To your prosperity.

Keith O. Hudson

Are coupons a waste of time?

Coupons are a waste of time! I buy the store brand of pretty much everything, and couponsjust save a few cents on name brands that are more expensive than the store brands, even after using the coupon.

At least, that's been my attitude until just recently. A couple of months ago, my daughter's husband was laid off from his job, which caused her to start using coupons to buy groceries and household necessities like soap, shampoo, etc. She calls us every few days to report her couponing adventures, and its time that I re-examine my attitudes.

Here are some of the savings she has experienced in the past few weeks:

1. Spent $3.98, saved $93.31 (95.9% savings), got 4 family size Lawry's Seasoning Salt, 17 oz. olive oil, 2 80-ct dryer sheets, 4 full size Tony's frozen pizzas, 5 lbs chuck roast, 3 lbs 93% lean ground beef, 4 12-packs 7 up.

2. Spent $0.89, saved 147.62 (99.4% savings): 7 Betty Crocker cake mixes, 2 betty crocker supreme brownies, 3 packs fruit by the foot, 14 boxes honey nut cheerios, 4 bags nature valley nut clusters, 3 1.5 qt Breyers ice cream, 5 3M bubble mailers, 8 10-packs bic pens.

3. Spent $26.88 OOP (out of pocket), saved 38.63, but got $27 in Catalinas back (good like CASH on your next visit for anything but cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline, lottery tickets, and dairy, by law) so it was as if I got PAID 0.12 for shopping! Got 7 500 ct boxes of q-tips and 2 large bottles of Dove shampoo.

One of my daughter's favorite coupon blogs, A Thrifty Mom, is currently holding a contest to giveaway $926 in coupons. Check it out here: http://budurl.com/7dkl. I'd love you to use my daughter's name, Sarah Hofhine, as your sponsor if you decide to enter the contest. NOTE: contest ends August 9, 2009.

More on couponing as I learn more about it.

To your prosperity!

Keith O. Hudson

Are you a hog or a pig?

Remember the old saying, "Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered?" Getting too greedy may backfire on you. Take a look at this article by Neil Patel where he tells how he and his partner got greedy and turned down a $6 million offer for their one year old, money-losing online business. He doesn't say it in so many words, but it sounds like they never had another chance to sell it for that kind of money, which he now regrets.

Great article, lots of food for thought. Read it, and ask yourself if you're a pig or a hog.

To your prosperity.

Keith O. Hudson

Formula for success: Deliver Value

For a year I have been working on how to reshape my life and supplement my income with an online business. I've been heavily influenced by The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, that talks about how to build an online business that only takes a few hours a week to run so you can get greater control over your lifestyle. Also, by Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, that tells how Best Buy's headquarters operation moved completely to a ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) in which employees have no attendance requirements, only results requirements. (As long as they are getting their work done, and producing the results defined for them, they can work when and where they work best.)

Steve Pavlina, in an article on his self-titled blog called How To Make Lots Of Money During A Recession talks about putting a greater focus on delivering value than simply trying to make money. If you deliver true value, then those to whom you deliver value will be willing to deliver value to you.

Neil Patel, in his blog Quick Sprout, writes that pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered. By that, he means that if you get too greedy, you'll lose out.

So, after a year of doing niche brainstorming, key word searching, and trying to learn all sorts of things about blogging, SEO, social networking, and on and on ad infinitum, it has come down to this: I want to share things that have made a difference in my life so they might help others. I want to express myself, and contribute to a pool of shared meaning with a community of like-minded individuals. Whether it makes me rich or not is not the point. The point is, can I enrich others by sharing what I'm learning in my journey through life? Can some of the things that go through my brain be helpful to others?

I've decided to put those things out for the world to see, and trust that if what I have to say helps others, the universe will take care of me and I won't starve to death. So, I hope here to share with you my interests, my thoughts, and things I'm learning or experiencing. I'm not targeting a "niche", and I haven't done any key word research. The only test is "will this possibly help someone?"

Come join me on my journey.

To your prosperity,
Keith O. Hudson