My wife has written an interesting perspective on the huge waste of time that is created when a job description is vague and doesn’t really identify the job you might be applying for.
It struck a chord with me not only from previous job searches, but also from things I’ve seen and heard in both the technology and legal industries. (Especially in the legal technology area!) It seems all too common for there to either be “formal” job descriptions, that describe the job as it was done the last time someone in HR got on the everyone needs a formal job description bus, no matter how many years ago that was, or something thrown together at the last minute by people who have never done the job they are now advertising for.
The latter situation comes about because of a pure lack of planning. Someone resigns and everyone is caught by surprise. There’s no succession plan, no cross-training has been done, and there’s no clear immediate steps identified for replacing that person. It usually takes longer than the two weeks notice to even make any sort of decision about hiring a replacement, therefore there’s no input on what to look for from the person who has actually been doing the job.
On the other hand, the former situation comes about because there was, at one time, an attempt to develop succession plans, and identify the steps necessary to assure work continues to get done in the interim, but those plans have not been updated in years. Things change, quickly, in any technology area. New tools are brought in, roles change, staff members assume new responsibilities, etc. Dusting off the years old descriptions is not going to give you a clear understanding of the skills you are currently looking for.
In both situations, you wind up reviewing resumes and maybe even interviewing a lot of people who aren’t good fits at all for the job you currently need to fill.Wasting your time, and theirs.
Posted
January 9th, 2012 in Career, LawFirms, LitigationSupport, Tech
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I have to admit, I haven’t given much thought to QR codes, or how to use them, over the last year. I keep sort of waiting for a reason to really learn what there is to know about them. But, when I saw this post about QR code malware, my mind immediately flashed upon something.
Haven’t we been telling people for years now to always check the URL before clicking links, so that you won’t be taken to a malicious site? Not to click on any links in emails from people you don’t know, not to open unexpected attachments, to type in the URL for their bank or PayPal instead of clicking links, etc.? Doesn’t encouraging the use of QR codes sort of undermine that?
The whole point of QR codes, it seems, is for the end user to scan it using their smartphone, and have information presented to them or be taken to a specific site immediately. In the interest of security, do we really want to encourage that sort of behavior?
Posted
January 4th, 2012 in Tech
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Just the other day the wife and I were discussing the problem with using Flickr to host your online photos. For both of us, we paid for a pro Flickr account, and enjoy the fact that Flickr allows our photos to be discoverable by anyone, any time. I also like the ease of linking to the photos from there on the blog. Facebook really requires someone to “friend” you in order to even discover your photos.
On the other hand, most of our online interaction with family and friends takes place on Facebook now. We’d like for folks to be able to interact with our photos whether they have a Flickr account or not.
Well, in an amazing coincidence, our friend Kevin shared an app on Facebook called Goyaka Export, that allows you to simply grab a photo set from Flickr, complete with titles and descriptions, and import it as a new photo set on Facebook. Now, I can share photos in both places without going through the extra steps of typing titles and descriptions on both sites.
Even nicer is that when you import a new set, it will automatically be set to being only viewable by you. So you can import a bunch of sets, but only make them visible when you’re ready to share them, instead of overloading your friends newsfeeds. 
I’ve started selecting some photo sets from Flickr to my Facebook profile. Looking forward to sharing the memories of vacations on my Timeline!
Posted
January 3rd, 2012 in Photography, SocialNetworking
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I’ve talked before about the things that show up on procedural TV shows (I’m looking at you CSI) that simply aren’t possible in the real world. Think about the number of times you’ve seen a crime drama take a crappy cell phone picture, for example, and using “technology” get a crystal clear image of a license plate 200 feet behind the subject of the photo, for example? It drives me up the wall when attorneys expect those of us who work with electronic evidence to just magically be able to do something similar.
I’ve always wondered how much of what we see on television in areas that I’m not as familiar with, is completely wrong as well.
Worse yet, as someone who’s worked in technology for awhile, it’s somewhat shocking how many incorrect “facts” show up in actual news articles about technology. Articles that complain about missing features, that aren’t missing, or reviews that seem very biased written by people with a clear agenda, etc.
The other day I was listening to a hockey game and one of the announcers started talking about the schedule having “back to back visits by teams from British Columbia”, which seemed odd to me, as Vancouver is the only BC team in the NHL that I know of. Of course, I checked the team’s schedule and saw the next two games were against those great BC outposts of Edmonton and Calgary.
The point is not to poke fun at hockey announcers and technology writers, however. As I thought more about this mistake, I started to think about how many American’s probably do think those cities are in BC, or just don’t have any idea. I’ve been a hockey fan since childhood, and following the game means I probably know more about Canada than most Americans. Given that, I knew the statement being made was incorrect. But, how many areas of knowledge can I be expert enough in to make sure I’m getting “facts” from journalists? For most of us, when we hear economic, health, geopolitical, or scientific “news” reports, we don’t have the expertise to know an inaccuracy when we hear it, or the resources to fact-check the reports. The best we can hope is that someone who does know differently will point out the inaccuracies, or the misleading uses of statistics, etc.
But what if they can’t reach most of us? Are you looking for the corrections, or just taking what your favorite news sources tells you at face value?
Posted
January 2nd, 2012 in LitigationSupport, SocialNetworking, Tech
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No this is not a blog post about Apple’s backup system. This is about a couple of pretty useful plugins for WordPress. One, which I’m pretty sure got it’s name from the Apple backup software, I’ve been using for quite a while. The other I just discovered the other day and thought would be kind of cool to have on the blog.
WP-Time Machine is a plugin that will create a backup of your WordPress install. It includes options to store your backup files offisite, with Amazon AW3 or Dropbox accounts. It’s a nice, easy way to create a backup of my site, files and database, and store it on my Dropbox account for easy access if I should ever need it.
Of course, I have to remember to go and make a backup, so it’s not foolproof. Let too much time go between backups and you’ll lose quite a few posts!
The new plugin I discovered is just plain Time Machine. It’s a little difficult to explain what Time Machine does, so if you’re reading this somehwere other than the site itself, you may want to click through and see it in action. On the right hand sidebar there’s a section titled “On this Day…” and then a list of posts that were published to the site on this day (within a day or two.) over the 10 plus years that I’ve been blogging here. I thought it would be a good way to highlight some of the old stuff, though I also admit to being a bit fearful of some rather poor writing from the time I was still figuring out this blogging thing will be resurrected. (Who am I kidding? There’s a possibility of poor writing, or statements that have been proven ridiculous, all through the history of this site!)
The lesson, as always, is that if there’s something you might want to do with your WordPress install, there’s probably a plugin that will help you.
Posted
December 31st, 2011 in Blogging, Tech
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This has been a bit of an off year for me as a photographer. Dealing with all the changes and challenges of this year has kept me busy, obviously. Not really traveling much this year compared to the last few certainly contributed to that as well. On the other hand, I have spent some time exploring some of area I am now living in, and while I don’t have as many photos to choose from this year, I have many that remind me of the wild ride that has been 2011, and have enough personal meaning to be among my favorites of 2011. I hope you enjoy them as well!
Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer
Posted
December 30th, 2011 in Personal, Photography
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This being the end of the year, I’ve been doing a long overdue cleanup of some of my various information sources, the first being Google Reader. After taking a look at the over 300 subscriptions I had there, and removing all of the ones who haven’t posted in 2011, and a number of ones I simply don’t care about any more, it occurs to me that a large part of why I’ve been struggling to find things to write about outside of eDiscovery and Litigation Support is due to an utter lack of good sources of information about Tech or Photography, for example.
Of course, this seems odd. The tech blogosphere is where I first learned about blogging, and where I used to find a ton of inspiration. However, I realize now that I’ve really lost touch with it. It seems the only tech news sources I’ve been following have mostly been consumed with iPhone/Android comparisons, and Google +/Facebook/Twitter comparisons. What happened to all the folks working in IT sharing their learning experiences? Where have the tech support folks gone?
So, now that my subscription list has gone from over 300, to just about 180, I’m looking for suggestions. What are your favorite blogs? What are the best sources of information about technology, photography, and yes, litigation support and legal technology, as well?
My RSS reader needs some new content!
Posted
December 28th, 2011 in Blogging, LitigationSupport, Photography, Tech
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A.k.a: “Things you can do when you work at home, that you can’t do in a cubicle.”
Such as take a few minutes and get some aerobic exercise when things are slow, or when you’re waiting for data to process/load/index. When you work in a cube, your coworkers might not appreciate that.
Posted
December 27th, 2011 in Career, Personal
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