Tech

My First Beer Label

 in Homebrew / Puppy / Tech  tagged beer / graphicdesign / Homebrew / IPA / label / photoshop / snagit by

And my realization that I SUCK at photoshop….

I decided to call my latest batch of homebrew Rosie IPA (in honor of the Puppy’s first christmas) and I had an idea for a label in mind.  After stumbling and bumbling through the wealth of photoshop tutorials I realized that I SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP.  Actually, let me clarify, I suck and graphic designing in Photoshop.  I can rock Bridge + Camera Raw for photo editing, but when it comes to graphics and text and layouts and layers I SUCK.  It took me an hour to figure out how to draw a rectangle that fit across the top third of the canvas!!

Anyway, I stumbled through it and I’m actually pretty happy with the result:

The crazy thing is that I think I can do all of this even easier in the simplified editor that comes with Snagit!

What Worked (surprisingly) Well – Sprint Tracker in Source Control 1

 in Tech  tagged agile / development / methodology / scrum / SDLC / software / sourcecontrol / sprint / standup by

This past sprint retrospective the team proposed that we change up the way our scrum team reports on task progress.  The team proposed that we keep our Sprint Tracker excel document in source control.   Then prior to the daily standup meeting each team member would check out the document, update the time remaining on their tasks, and check it back in.

I am surprised at how well this worked!  I was expecting that nobody would participate or somebody would forget to checkin and then go on vacation or any number of possibilities.  But I’m proud to report our standups are more effective and efficient because we spend more time to discussing what was done, what to do and what things are standing in the way.

Let me try and explain in more detail. (more…)

Job hunting and trying something new

 in Tech  tagged coverletter / jobhunt / projectmanager by

Fueled by insomnia and inspired by late night tv, I’ve decided to try something new on my job hunting technique. Recently found a number of perfect fit job postings on boards like Indeed.com or Dice.com. I would submit my resume and write a formal cover letter and never hear anything. Weeks go by and crickets. So it’s time to switch it up a bit.

Since project manager job hunting is all about selling yourself. I decided against the typical formal resume & cover letter in favor of a proven, tried-and-true selling technique: “The Infomercial”.  (more…)

My Favorite Safari Extension – Ultimate Status Bar

 in Tech  tagged apps / extension / mac / review / safari / software by

I love Safari as my default browser.  But there was one little tiny thing that drove me nuts: you don’t see the URL when you hover over a hyperlink.  I often found myself right-click > copy link > paste in text editor.  Annoying.

I finally decided to see if anyone else shared my annoyance and if anyone else did something about it.  I came across the Ultimate Status Bar extension and immediately tried it out.  Simple, Perfect and Exactly what I was looking for.  I love it when I get small wins like this!

[rating:5/5]

Heres a screen shot from the Ultimate Status Bar download page:

Cheap and Easy Puppy Cam with iCam 1

 in Puppy / Tech  tagged android / apps / mac / Puppy / puppycam / software by

Yeah, she’s cute isn’t she?  She’s about 5 months old in that picture.  During the early weeks/months of crate training she would whine when we left her but when we came home she would be sleeping like a little angle.  So we were wondering how long she was whining when we left.

A couple of our friends had a similar situation with their dog crying and destroying things while they were at work.  They ended up installing a web cam so they could check on him during the day.  I was intrigued and was looking for a weekend project, so I decided to look into “puppy cams”.

I did some googling and ended up on a bunch of hybrid technology + pet lovers message boards (yeah, the internet has everything).  Most of the suggestions involved dropping some $$ at Best Buy and calling Comcast to get a static IP address — neither of these things sounded like fun.  But eventually (buried on some message board somewhere) I came across iCam by SKJM.

This was perfect!   (more…)