Back to work - Back to normal ???

What’s the deal with our economy? Are jobs on the rise? Are our taxes on the rise? Will we ever start to see the light at the end of the tunnel? That certainly is a lot to ponder. Personally I do think we’re starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, not a flood light, not a locomotive light, but just the light flickering of the shadows. I recently found an amazing job after working for myself for almost 5 years and it’s been an extremely rewarding experience so far after about 2 and a half months. Financially I’m starting to catch up on my bills, emotionally I’m beginning to feel a sense of worth that I hadn’t felt when running my own company. My consultant company wasn’t a bust, but I certainly didn’t expand it into a bunch of successful franchises either. It paid the bills, albeit sometimes a bit late and I didn’t starve during that time, actually I even managed to put on a few pounds! Never the less, I didn’t feel like I was in the right position, whereas now I feel like I can conquer the world.

Ok, so back to the glimmering flicker of light, well, I’m comparing this internally and this is far from any statistical basis, but I’ve been looking for a secure steady IT position for about a year and a half to 2 years now. In between 6 months to a year I had a short contract with a company and took myself off the market temporarily. When I was finished with that contract and started looking again, I got numerous phone interviews, numerous face to face interviews and believe it or not, at the end of it all, received 3 firm and official offers that I had to weigh. Needless to say, this time was way different than 9 months to a year ago and definitely more so for the better.

So, what do I take from that? Well, my take is based on the technology field, if technology fields are climbing slightly, this is probably based partly in fact on there being an increase needed in support for employees that are starting back to work after being out of work for a while.

Working from home - what's the skinny?

Ok, so I've been thinking a lot about this and was wondering what do other people think about the whole working from home idea? I ran my own company for 4 years and worked out of the house and I have to say that while going to work in your PJ's and being able to make your own schedule is more or less liberating, there are a number of trade offs that certainly made me uncomfortable.

Mainly and probably the most important thing that was troublesome to me personally was the lack of ability to be able to budget effectively. My wife and I have 2 teenagers to take care of and it was extremely difficult when I have a fantastic week one week and then total garbage the next. The ideal situation would have been to get that all to often hoped for cushion of 2 or 3 months worth of expenses saved and in the bank. Well, that's certainly a lot easier said than done.

Now that I'm working full time for a company and doing some consulting work on the side I have to say, I'm so much happier overall that it's literally an eye opening experience for me. I go to work for my standard 40 hours plus and then do some website building / maintenance for a couple of hours when I get home and I get the bonus of extra spending money along with the bonus of being able to budget our monthly bills much easier with the full time income.

There are so many hats to where when running your own consulting company that often times you wind up wearing so many at a time that you start to get lopsided. Chasing down unpaid invoices, trying to sell new customers, and staying up on the latest technology, left hardly any time for my family.

So, do I hate the idea of working from home? Not at all, if my full time job offered me the option of working from home, like many companies do now, I would jump at it. I just think that owning your own company and working from home is a tall order to fill most of the time.

Soooo, what do YOU think?

Quick and Easy Computer Shortcuts

For the longest time, people have asked me about ways to make themselves more effective while working on their computer or doing project work and one thing that always gets overlooked is the wonderful little tool called the shortcut.

By effectively using your mouse to highlight and key combinations you can really make your life easier especially while in the Microsoft Office Suite which is a dominant force in the computer world. Keep in mind also that this works with Open Office as well and probably some of the other lesser known products out there.

In this blog though, I just wanted to give you a basic list of some of the really useful tools that you might use on a regular or semi-regular basis. They're listed below:

Glossary of Terms

ctrl (the control button)

ctrl + c (Copy - probably the easiest to remember)
ctrl + x (Cut - think of scissors)
ctrl + v (Paste - don't know why they chose v, but that's paste)
ctrl + b (Bold - another kind of easy one)
ctrl + n (New - open new document)
ctrl + u (Underline - makes sense)
ctrl + i (Italic - again, kind of intuitive)
ctrl + o (Open - opens the document browser to open a new file)
ctrl + p (Print - I guess this might be why paste is the V and not the P)

now 2 that are EXTREMELY useful when making lots of changes

ctrl + z (Undo - make a mistake? This changes back the last changes)
ctrl + y (Redo - change your mind again? This will put the change back)

Ok, now that you've got some of the basics, try and use them more and more and I really think that once you've become accustomed to using them, you'll also find that you've become more productive along the way.

Thanks for Reading

Dave Haertel
Port City Technology, LLC