Chad Clemons

Back in December I had the unique and unexpected opportunity to visit Egypt on a business trip.  Looking back, that time was probably the relative calm before the storm, or at least the last straw that started the very dramatic events that we have seen over the past few weeks.

Anyway, during my visit I made many new friends, and I wanted to share (with permission) what one of my colleagues sent to me and others.  I believe what he wrote offers a unique perspective and one that has not been captured in most of the media coverage that I have seen.

Chad

…and a followup…

This video has been circulating around the office for awhile.  It brings up some interesting and surprising findings related to how people are motivated in the workplace (and in general) and that the typical reward systems may actually be having a negative effect.  Check it out, and let me know what you think!

An information security associate of mine sent this my way. Very interesting (and scary) possibilities of your private data falling into the wrong hands by way of a digital copier. be careful what you copy!

http://www.wimp.com/copymachines/

Two days into my phone upgrade, I’m really liking the Motorola CLIQ…so far.

I use T-Mobile for my personal and moonlight business mobile communications needs, and I particularly like the My Favs feature (unlimited calling to 5 any 5 numbers).  I also don’t call enough to justify an unlimited plan, but T-Mobile’s $24.95/month unlimited data plan is hard to pass up.

Anyway, a few months back I had a problem with my old Motorola Z3 phone (short version – basic phone, had it 2+ years, it broke due to user error )  I went in to grab a new phone, looking to try something new (non-Moto) and walked out with a Samsung Behold.

Not a bad phone, the Behold, and I liked it for awhile.  But a smartphone it is not…and while my Z3 was great, it was just a phone, but I was ready for something a little more powerful.  The Behold was not enough, and it was starting to have problems, so I went back picked up the recently released Moto CLIQ.

I should mention that I have a Moto Q9h for work (Windows Mobile) and it’s very capable as a work calls/emails device.

I”ve had the CLIQ for a couple days, and I wanted to capture a few things I’ve noticed.  Not a full review, maybe I’ll do one of those later.  So hear goes…

The Good

1. Slider QWERTY keyboard – I’ve decided I need to have one of these.  The Behold keyboard on the touchscreen was ok, but not as good as I expected.  I ended up correcting my typing way too much, and found myself missing the true button feel of my Q9h.  Oh, and the backlight on the keyboard is great, and yes, I did notice the backlight changes when you hit Alt to get to the numbers and symbols.  A nice touch.
2. A hard switch for putting the phone in silent/vibrate mode – Bravo, Motorola!  I think my Behold took 2-3 touches to go silent, and my Q9h about the same, maybe more.
3. A “standard” 2.5″ headset jack right on top – Nice!  No more weird dongle hanging off the side of my phone to connect headphones to!
4. Uses same micro USB charger interface as my Q9h – Another good call, I just took one of the many chargers out of my travel bag!  For a road warrior, even a few ounces of a charger matters.
5. Auto switching between 3G and wifi – When at home, the speed of my wifi network is way faster than 3G, and the CLIQ switches over for data traffic automagically.  Very cool.

The Not So Good

1. Fingerprint magnet – But aren’t all phones these days?  Even ones without touch screens?
2. Battery life – Well, I’ve only had it a few days, but it looks like it will go maybe 2-3 days on a charge with light voice usage.  I can live with that I think.

Yikes.  I haven’t even started talking about Droid and MotoBLUR and all the cool aggregation stuff with Email, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, how the browser experience feels a lot like being on a computer…guess I will need to post more later!

Don’t get me wrong, I love the look of holiday lights on a house…once they are all put up and glowing brightly!  Well, maybe I don’t love them as much as Kendra (I think she has some Griswald genes in there somewhere!)

Anyway, every year I almost dread putting out the decorations for one reason or another…fear of falling off a ladder, fear of kids running around like the maniacs they are and bumping into aforementioned ladder while I’m on it, or this year…only 29% of all my light strings agree to light when I plug them in.  Not a good sign.

In years past I would have sat down and started troubleshooting…and I caught myself starting to do that this year!  I even invested in one of those light tester things…which sort of work…but anyway, going light to light trying to figure out which bulb is blown (or loose) in a string…well, it’s kind of maddening after about 5 minutes.

Forget that.  I bit the bullet and bought new lights!  I’ve had those old ones for years, and it’s time for new colors anyway!  Or so I am telling myself.  I even picked up some of the newer LED lights (although the jury is still out on those on whether I like them or not…they seem to emit a strange barely detectable flicker, but then my eyes are fairly shot as it is).

So the outside is looking pretty good this year…although not even close to Griswaldian standards, much to my lovely wife’s dismay.  Maybe next year, darling.

One more parting thought on the topic of holiday lights…prelit Christmas trees.  Sounded like a great idea…until one section of a strand of bulbs goes out!  And I thought troubleshooting a bad bulb in a string that I could actually stretch out and see was bad.  If you find yourself in this situation, do yourself a favor, cut your losses, disable the rest of the string that is embedded in the tree and drape a same-color string over the area.  Trust me, you’ll thank me for this piece of wisdom as you watch a friend or family member try to isolate the problem on their prelit tree.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

I’ve had bloggers block for awhile now, mostly due to being way too busy. But it occurred to me that perhaps I could beat it by posting some “quick” articles…tips, tidbits, etc. Nothing Earth-shattering, but perhaps things like software apps that I use and like. So here’s one…Roboform!

I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of website logins and passwords to remember…and I mean a LOT. Being somewhat security conscious, I try not to use the same password on every site (although I know that’s one way to be able to remember everything).

Anyway, I’ve been using a great little utility called Roboform. It is a browser plug-in (works with IE and Firefox and probably others) and remembers all my logins and passwords for me. I have one “master password” for unlocking Roboform, then the app takes over and logs me into my usual sites (Gmail, Facebook, etc.) automatically. It’s pretty cool.

Roboform can also fill forms, like web-based order forms, with just a couple clicks…yes, I don’t have to type my name, address, phone number, and credit card every time I want to order something on the net. Very handy.

Roboform has some other nice features, but I’ll save those for a future post.

If you are looking for a reasonable secure way to store website passwords, check out Roboform!

I got an “email forward” today, you know what I’m talking about, some story or seemingly crazy claim. This one was a nice story, and I wanted to believe when it said “true story”.

But being the skeptic that I am, I always try to check the facts in the forwarded message…quick Google and Snopes search usually does the trick. I’m sorry to say that almost every time the forward is a hoax, an overly embellished half truth, or an outright lie.

But today it was actually a true story!  Go figure.

Most of us have been there, sitting in an airplane on a runway just after landing, waiting to move to the airport gate. On this particular occasion, I found myself sitting on such a runway for about two hours…the cause of which is probably best saved for another blog post! Suffice it to say, I was stuck with very little to do.

If you ever find yourself in such a situation and on an airplane with audio service that has a channel for listening to the cockpit communications, I highly recommend tuning in.

Pilots and controllers have a rather extensive lingo and means of communicating over the radio, and it’s pretty cool! At first it seems like a foreign language. But as I listened in for awhile (2 hours, remember?) I started to pick up on bitsI and pieces. Our pilot was nice enough to advertise this channel to us as well as our flight’s callsign…my first critical bit of information to listen for.

Much of the conversations were very terse and full of references to other airplanes, locations on the airport runways and taxiways, etc. At least, that is what I gathered after listening for awhile. The efficiency of the communications was amazing, both concise and fast in delivery.

It got me thinking about how people communicate in general, and how the context as well as the parties involved play into finding the most efficient means of conversing. A conversation over dinner and a glass of wine has a very different feel…we take our time, even pausing to find the right words, think of questions and topics, listening closely but perhaps not hanging on every word. But when considering email (for work in particular), I have learned that brief and to-the-point emails go a long way in conveying the important points and in getting things done, much like the controllers and pilots I was listening to.

I’ll be keeping my headphones ready for my next flight to listen in on the action, but hopefully not for so long.

I’m not sure if a company whitepaper qualifies me to say that I’m “published” but it is pretty cool to have my document posted on a Fortune 100 company’s website. 

Before now I’ve been hesitant to make any blog posts related to my work at Intel, but I think this is a good exception, and maybe even a precendent.

See below for the re-post of my IT@Intel intro for the whitepaper, or skip to the bottom for the link to the paper.  And I must tell you that this paper was not mine alone, as I worked collaboratively with several of my peers at Intel to bring each of our shared experiences to the content.

Please take a look and let me know what you think!  I’d love to get some comments posted here or on Intel site, even if it’s something like…”Gee, Chad, I read the whitepaper, but I have NO idea what you are talking about!”  Seriously.  I wonder often if I even know what I’m talking about. 

Thanks!

Chad

I’m pretty excited.  Last week we completed and posted our very first whitepaper related to Intel IT acquisition projects!  Several peers and I got together and worked up some key learnings from past projects and compiled them into a whitepaper where we discuss the various aspects of IT and how we go about integrating an acquisition into the overall Intel IT environment.

As you can probably guess, we have more than our share of challenges on such projects, and I have personally found that even the smaller, “no brainer” acquisitions each have their own unique twists and challenges.

Anyway, I’m very proud of this whitepaper, and I hope you’ll take a look and post your thoughts and comments!  Perhaps this will be the first of many efforts to share our experiences on M&A projects with other IT folks around the world.

Check out our whitepaper at http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-3563

Continuing to kick the tires on my new Asus eeePC netbook.  I’ve been trying to take it everywhere…and most of the time, it’s pretty easy to locate a wifi hotspot to get connected.

Today I find myself at the community pool where my daughter is on a rec swim team.  Very fun to watch, although very hot for those of us not in the pool! 

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that there is NO wifi connectivity around the pool area.  Yes, I was shocked (well, not really).

So what is a “needs to be connected nearly all the time” fellow to do?  Turn to the even more universally available Internet access method: my data enabled cell phone!

Sure, I could carry around a USB cable to tether my netbook to my phone and piggyback off of the 3G cell signal, but no, that would require packing the cable.  I cannot be bothered with that.

Enter Bluetooth to save the day…again.  (BTW, I finally did get my work laptop connecting nicely at that troublesome airport from a previous post).  Anyway, it did not take me long to pair my netbook to my phone via Bluetooth and then hop on the net.  Wow.

So here I am, surfing and blogging along on my netbook, no cables anywhere in site, watching my daughter swim her heart out at the community pool.  How cool is that?

(…now if only I could hop in the pool and really cool down…