• Business

    27 Tips for Working From Home

    I spent years working from home. Then I went to an office. Then I split time. Then I worked from home. And all of those iterations were just glorious. Until they weren’t! For those forced to work from home suddenly, there are some tips in my time in those trenches that might help others. To summarize it all, be mindful and deliberate. But here goes with more specifics (and I would love to learn more so please feel free to comment and add some)! Keep normal hours. One thing that’s worked for me is to still get up at the same time (maybe minus drive time or maybe not). Falling…

  • Articles and Books,  Small Business

    6 Ways to Win Friends and Influence People as a New Manager

    My latest piece on Inc.com was 6 Ways to Win Friends and Influence People as a New Manager It starts a bit like: Call it the New Sheriff in Town Syndrome. You’re a new manager at an established company or your own startup. You think of yourself as a fixer, so you quickly set out to implement changes or new processes, often bringing in ideas from your old company. Whoops. While making improvements should be the goal of any manager, you need to be careful. It’s easy to come across as over-aggressive and disruptive, and you could end up alienating many of your colleagues. To read more…

  • Articles and Books,  Business,  Consulting,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    10 Quick SysAdmin Time Savers

    I’m not gonna’ lie to you, I’m a pretty lazy admin. As such, I look for ways to reduce the amount of typing I have to do routinely. And ways to not make mistakes that I made when I was young and needed the rupies. The more time I spend at the command line, the more I use these, so here goes (hope they help you in some way shape or form): Make your own bin and put stuff you use often in there.  You can use any folder you like and just include it in the export PATH=$PATH line by throwing a : at the end and typing that path.…