Chuck Tomasi

I learn, I share, I change lives

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HDI 2011 Annual Conference

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I’m pleased to announce that I have been selected to speak again at this year’s HDI National Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The conference runs from March 29-April 1 at the Venetian.

This year I will be doing a morning “brain bites” session entitled “Fired to Hired in 23 days“. I offer actionable advice how to be prepared and get results should the inevitable layoff happen to you. After 22 years at my former organization, it happened to me and thanks to great preparation, I was able to secure a new and exciting job in just a few weeks. While I cannot guarantee the same results, you’ll be able to take home many of the lessons learned and start using them immediately. It’s a lot of information to pack in to an hour so you want to ensure you get your morning coffee.

I will also be spending some time at the Serivce-now.com booth meeting customers/prospects and answering technical questions. If you can’t find me there, look around for the HDI officers and I won’t be far away.

I look forward to seeing you there.

New York Anxiety

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I have to admit that I have never been thrilled with the thought of going to New York City. I can’t really put my finger on it. Perhaps it was the fact that driving and parking were terrible (how is that different from many other large cities I have been to?) Perhaps it is the stories of people getting robbed or mugged. That happens elsewhere too, but it seems to be more known in NY. Perhaps it is just because I grew up in a modest midwest town and got used to that lifestyle. I am not sure what it was, but it made me uneasy when I was told to travel there to help a customer with their software implementation. [Read more…] about New York Anxiety

Inspiration From a Tree

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I am inspired by the crab apple tree in the front yard. Each spring it is the centerpiece of our “estate” with white flowers all over. That lasts about a week, then it goes to work producing fruit. While some falls to the ground, a large amount stays on the tree well in to winter. By some unknown clock, birds descend upon the tree in February and eat the majority of what’s left. Perhaps it’s fermented and they need a little birdie-buzz?

The inspirational part is the tough times that tree has had. When it was still fairly young, something ate most of the bark at the base of the tree. (Without bark, the nutrients cannot get back and forth between the roots and branches.) The tree held on and eventually healed.

This past summer, we had a severe hail storm that wiped out most of the leaves on the tree. A few weeks later, that tree started shooting out new leaves and even blossoms – never before seen after the spring bloom! How could I tell they were new leaves? The old ones turn dark green, have spots on them, and many even fall off in the effort to pass on the energy to the new apples. New leaves look lighter green and fresh.

So here we are in October. Frost is occasionally on the roofs and lawn in the morning. The ripe, red, dime size apples are starting to fall from the tree, but it continues to produce a blossom here and there. It continues to put its best effort to continuing on even after devastation. It continues to put a positive spin to a difficult situation. It perseveres.

How about you?

iPad after two months

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In May I purchased an iPad after Donna told me to give myself a present for landing a new job so quickly. I have now been using it for two months and have some feedback about this interesting device.

1. I love the touch type keyboard, however I might get an external one. One of the critical success factors for me to purchase the iPad was the ability to touch type on it. I wanted it to be a fairly efficient note taking device as well as crank out email faster than touch typing on the phone. When I tried one out in May it seemed to meet the requirement well (although getting used to the location of some of the non-alpha characters is still taking some getting used to). I also notice that I need to tweak my typing style a bit since I normally hit keys like x, c, and n with the tip/nail of my finger and that’s not good enough for the touch screen. I had thought about getting the wireless Bluetooth keyboard for a while, but don’t care for the idea of hauling two items around all the time. Since I work from home, I am never too far from my laptop anyway.

2. I wish they would upgrade to iOS 4. Since the iPhone has upgraded to iOS version 4 earlier this summer, I am surprised it has taken so long to upgrade the iPad to the same. I really enjoy
background processing on the phone and wish I could play Pandora, for example, then switch apps on the iPad. I also love the idea of folders to group icons together on the iPhone. Just because the screen is bigger on the iPad doesn’t mean it is easier or quicker to navigate around 50 or more apps.

3. It makes a great photo frame. I know, this is one of those simple pleasures and specific applications, but since I already have an iPad, why should I spring an addition $50-100 for something that only displays photos. Besides, out single-purpose photo frame doesn’t stand up all that well.

4. It is a great Netflix viewer. Watching movies works well if you have WiFi, but the 3G service doesn’t keep up very well and can get expensive if you are on the 200MB plan. Not only is the app a movie viewer, but it also allows you to manage your queues. The netflix app UI is very similar to the website in terms of navigation so there is no learning curve to watching your favorite Instant Queue movies.

5. Having 3G service is handy. Although it was a premium on the device, I find it very handy to use while traveling and the ability to turn it off while I am not using it. Around the house and several other places that I frequent, WiFi is the preferred method. My only wish is that I could send and receive text messages. The device has a phone number and this *IS* a data plan after all, isn’t it?

6. Having a case like the Apple one or Incase is a must. One of the first things I noticed when I first got my iPad was that it was heavy and kind of difficult to hold for an entire 2 hour feature film. Also, typing on my lap was a bit tricky with the rounded back and the angle it lays on the lap was sub optimal. The challenge was to find a case. I should note that while I looked, the device was protected with neoprene sleeve. I had two options in mind, the Apple jacket or the Incase leather book jacket. Both protect and double as a stand that improve the angle for typing. While the Apple case is less expensive and thinner, I started hearing people report that the case started to get lint and other funk on it. I opted for the Incase sleeve because it offers three stand angles and is a bit more padded. I ordered it online and it took about two weeks to arrive.

Got one? Want one? Leave a comment.

This article was composed and published from my iPad.

New Look

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I’m happy to say the website has undergone a new look. I got tired of updating the photos and front page in iWeb. The most minor updates, such as adding a badge for LinkedIn, could take 20 minutes, had to be done on a specific computer, and involve a secondary application to the upload. Sure, the front page looked nice before, but it wasn’t all that fun to add a few photos since the entire website had to be re-uploaded (I guess Apple doesn’t quite understand the concept of “what’s changed”) and I still had to do some jiggery to get it to use the WordPress blog rather than the one that comes with iWeb.

Believe it or not, I had to reference our book Sams Teach Yourself WordPress in 10 Minutes to find a bit of little used knowledge to make a static front page and still retain the blog. Other key things I learned from this experience included custom menus, more in-depth CSS modification (most of the time spent), and installation/configuration of a photo gallery.

Now when I have new content, I can compose from any browser, the iPad or iPhone. Uploading photos and creating albums is made much easier by staying in the WordPress framework. Very simple.

To make the development of the new look easier, I installed a local copy of Apache, MySQL, and PHP which allowed me to get everything done “offline” then upload it to my server when it was the way I liked.

I hope you like it too.

Special thanks to Kreg Steppe for his help.