John McGehee

  We all have instruction manuals and documentation for our stuff. Where do you put them so you can easily retrieve them? File instruction manuals alphabetically by manufacturer name in an A-Z expanding file. Just put them in the pocket for the first letter of the manufacturer name without further sorting within the pocket. While filing by manufacturer name might seem disorganized or arbitrary, it is actually a simple hash table , which in computer science is well known for efficiency. I recommend the Smead 70121 A-Z expanding file . Order online—retail office stores usually stock only a cheaper, harder-to-use store brand.

We have all seen someone try to take undeserved credit for leadership of a project. Or, you step up and do someone else's job for them, but they still want the recognition for the work you did. Let me share a political maneuver you can use to preserve your position as the project leader. First and foremost, do a good job. This strategy is only effective for a successful project. As success becomes imminent, prepare a thoughtful email in which you: Declare the project a success Heap praise on the project participants. Feel free to exaggerate a bit. Use an vague term like "team" that includes the largest possible number of people including your opponent. Say nothing about your opponent or yourself as individuals Just as the project finishes, send the email to the project participants, your opponent and everyone's managers. Timing is important—your email must appear in the recipients' mailbox before any such email from your opponent. This is why you prepare the ema...

When faced with a problem, you naturally start thinking of a solution. By immediately jumping to the solution space, you forgo a deeper understanding of the real problem. One of the most famous ( actually, mythical ) examples is the Space Pen: legend has it that NASA commissioned a special  pen  that can write in zero gravity. Meanwhile the Soviets recognized that Cosmonauts would need  something  that can write in zero gravity: a pencil. Extending this example a bit, the Cosmonauts' pencils have a smaller problem space: What if the ink leaks? What if they lose the cap? Those questions do not even exist. Back here on Earth, you sometimes have the opportunity to create a rule that slices off a big chunk of your problem space; a simple thing you can do to eliminate a whole class of problems. It does not matter how infrequent such problems are now. The point is to make a set of problems impossible forever . You'll always have problems, but in a ...

A relative recently fell victim to the virtual kidnapping scam, where criminals demand ransom for a loved one whom they only claim to have kidnapped.  To make their claim more convincing, the perpetrators make their ransom demand when the purported kidnapping victim cannot be contacted.  They might simply know when the person is isolated and unavailable, or they might force them to go incommunicado by stealing their mobile phone.

As a boy I spent a summer on my grandfather’s farm in Mississippi. I learned a lot about farming. Grandpa taught me about hog rings, a piercing applied to a pig’s nose to prevent rooting (digging with its nose). He said they came in three sizes: pig, shoat and hog.

It was during my first job as a computer technician in high school that I developed the maxim: first check power, then check clocks .

If you speak a foreign language, you would naturally like your children to learn it, too. However, look around you, and you will find that only a few children actually become fluent in their parents’ language, and fewer still can read or write it. We reared a Japanese/English bilingual daughter in the United States. To help you formulate a plan for your own family, I will describe the strategy we used.

Last week I got an e-mail from a manager.  “I saw your name on some source code.  Nice job.  Here is some information that might interest you.”  Sweet.  By just  typing my name, I got information I needed, plus I have someone thinking nice things about me.  If you do good work, put your name on it.  If you do not do good work, well, you can stop reading right now.