Tyler’s Toolbox

I recently received a text message from my friend, Wes, that asked me when I was going to get back to blogging. One of the personal projects littering my to-do list was to get a redesign for my personal site so that I could start pointing people there with pride. The last design on this page was something I hacked together in Drupal - and while the basic template I started with was OK, what it became looked like Frankenstein’s monster.

Given some experience around working on a few WordPress sites (SWSF, HHU, WA) and the new job of my friend Marianne, I knew it was time to make the switch. It’s just the best blogging platform I’ve tried (which are: Drupal, MovableType, and Blogger). That was a few months ago, and this weekend, I finally got around to doing it. This new theme is beautiful!

So, I owe a few seconds of thanks. First to Wes for the kick in the pants, then to Marianne for the inspiration, and finally to Derek Punsalan for creating such an awesome theme.

For the blog, I’ll be trying to keep it updated with a good mix of both well thought out and half baked ideas; for most posts - I’ll follow the intention behind Michael Gruen’s “word sushi,” if not the rule.

As for design, I’ve identified a few things I love about this template.

• LtR navigation. Content on the left, other stuff I’m creating in the middle, and finally things I recommend on the right. The recommendations should be well thought out by me and easy to add to, but additions/changes should be rare as I want to be sure it’s worth recommending. Having to create an image to recommend somethig accomplishes that naturally.
• Color Seperation - My creations are black and white, the recommend images can be in color - esp. if I didn’t create them.
• The tagline at the top is a great place for expansion (favorite quotes, personal taglines, etc).
• The post layout itself is elegant.
  • The small comment bubbles highlight changes or activity without calling too much attention to the fact that my blog isn’t highly trafficked. The titles are clea, the text is comeptitive enough to be able to hold your eye with decent ease (not perfect, but good-enough).

I might end up moving the share this icon to the right side - but it would then be easier to confuse as part of the preceding post, and I don’t love the date placement - but I can’t think of a better place to put it. I’ll also need to fill in or parse down the menu bar contents, that blank space is an odd size. These are small issues in an overall beautiful design. I may begin to add more content to the middle column, as I’ve done with my twitter updates, but I think it’s important to keep them text links to maintain the look of the site.

OK, so I’m happy to show off the site and now I’ve got an easy medium to express some more lengthy thoughts (as opposed to: tumblr, which is to be inspired and to post inspirational or important ‘quick links, cheap shots, bon mots‘ — and twitter, which is for keeping people up to date on my life and my thoughts).

Well, I told you it was coming. This blog would get a redesign and be relaunched into the world as my personal web playground, and by-gone-it this time I would be a regular blogger.  It’s probably a pipedream at this point to think I’ll ever be anything other then semi-regular, what with twitter and tumblr already taking up WAY to much time.

But, finally, I sat down to port over my drupal site to wordpress and made a really stupid mistake, really early on. I don’t want to get into why, or how, or any details - but I’ve deleted my database without backing it up.

After dealing with this nightmare all night, I’m gonna hit the hay. The site design is halfway there and the site itself seems to be working OK. I’ll try and see if I can’t get some old posts populated in here soon — hopefully this is the last time I ever move blogging platforms. Cut me some slack over lack of content for a little while and until I pen some pages on this site, I’ll link them to my other site at Willis Media Group.

Cheers!

From The HBR IdeaCast #43 with Bill George, author of True North. Bill says “…the hardest peson you’ll ever have to lead is yourself. If you can lead yourself, leading others becomes a lot easier.” LINK

I had the pleasure of a lunch meeting with an impressive guy today. However when discussing our mutual enjoyment of film, and my film school career he made an interesting reference. I was talking about achieving high quality results inexpensively and we migrated into other topics, he said (paraphrasing) “You want to make something interesting and something of substance, like Michael Moore.” I am a fan of Moore’s movies but the one thing they aren’t is high quality. As Colbert would say, they lack a certain “truthiness” as well. Funny though that he’s had such an effect on popular culture.

And I just noted that Chris recommended True North on his blog and introduced me to the person I had lunch with. That Chris is a smart cookie, but of course that’s not really news to anyone!

I stopped writing poetry awhile ago, but I’ve felt the bug come back with a vengeance lately. Here’s my first foray back into writing. Short. Sweet. A little sloppy perhaps, but for posterity…

“settling for God in the absence of love”

God answers my whine.
palm fronds turn to visions of women under full moon sky.
old standing building looks at me asking me why,
I don’t tell it as I float by.
my soul asking if it’s alone as mine.
I don’t know, but in this light the palm fronds eyes shine.
and we’re both alone; to be mine.

Just under two months ago I received the news that I, along with 10 of my co-workers, would be laid off. Unlike most I was OK with this as I felt I’d learned an immense amount of knowledge and I had my compensation package to pay rent and bills while I looked for another job. Long story short is I got appendicitis, and later an offer to go back to work for one month. I took it and by the time I had recovered, I was just starting to look for another job. The company offered me a full-time position. No suspense, I took the job. But I’d like to delve into why, and the benefit of working in a challenging environment.Over the 7 months I was at the company pre-layoff I learned an encyclopedias worth of knowledge about sales. I had never held a real sales career, and honestly I found the work dull. Then, relatively early on in my career my manager/mentor was out sick for a few days and I got to delve into the sandbox and close my own accounts. Luckily there was an easy win in there (it certainly wasn’t skill) and I got a taste of what it feels like to sell somebody. It’s an invigorating experience. That taught me the value of sticking through the mundane to get the win, and when I get mad, lazy, bored, or distracted I remember the sale and it refocuses me. I also developed a skill-set, which I refer to as “Bassilisms” in honor of the man who taught me 90% of the skills. I learned that I have a natural aptitude for sales and I refined the first layer of skills.

Now in June, when deciding whether or not to come back I had to weigh many factors: skills I could learn, new experiences I could get, the money I could make, how much I would enjoy my job, etc. I ended up taking the job because I felt as part of a smaller team I would be well positioned to continue refining my skills and that I would have an opportunity to take on new responsibilities if I wanted them. A larger company would have paid me more, but it would have possessed more bureaucracy and would allow me less opportunity to learn new skills. As a 20 year old starting a career and with my goals not lying in working for a larger company, but rather successively smaller ones until I can start my own; I knew learning would be more valuable in the long run then taking the money now.

So the cost benefit of salary versus development has been on my mind a lot as of late and I think the mix is different for everyone. As luck would have it, a former classmate of mine has been tracking his internship in Taiwan via Facebook and eloquently records some interesting thoughts. A lot of them are simple and seem to be common sense, but that’s what most people need reiterated. Everyone knows how to dream, do you know how to systematically go about implementing those dreams? That’s what makes an all-star. Since Facebook is a closed system I will copy some of my favorites here with my reactions below. Alex, you should really write a blog - you have been a compelling writer at least since 2004 (and my guess is longer) and you’re only getting better. Share those thoughts!

“Sitting there with the other two new-guys, it really dawned on me how much you get from the first impression. Quite a cliché statement, that, but none the less true. After hearing about the solitariness, the stress, the long hours, the ‘corporate’ side of law, it was very informative to talk to my mentor, Edison about the nature of his work. I ended up asking him straight up if he liked his job. He sorta grinned at me and rambled off a response about what part of the job makes a difference ect … then he advised me that law isn’t a happy profession, but you can still enjoy it.”

This is almost word for word my feeling for my sales job. Any job that requires full attention to detail to win a small percentage of battles is usually boring. In law, most commas are going to be in the right place but miss the one wrong placement in the 100 page document and it’s a million dollar mistake. If you program NASA satellites, a missing comma could blow up a MGS satellite. In sales a 10% increase in method could double your sales, or more. Not the same stakes, but the same lesson — being able to take pride in the big win and value your own consistent effort is an important skill to master.

“It’s not enough for an attorney to be satisfactory, anything less would be malpractice. Rather, a good attorney must spot future problems that could arise, as well.”

Alex goes on to tell a story which I won’t repeat, as he gives an example of a poor choice made by an attorney at a law firm, and I’m not sure about the implied confidentiality of Facebook (it is a closed system). Probably far enough removed, but better safe than sorry. The message is a simple one, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” (Ben Franklin), but it’s one worth repeating. In sales you could waste months chasing a customer before realizing you never asked if they could afford it. Low and behold, they can’t. When you “eat what you kill” that inefficiency hurts. If you prepare completely and actively look for problems, they become a lot more manageable. Paraphrasing Alex’s summation of this experience, If you’re lost in a snow storm it’s nice to have your ass covered, but wouldn’t it have been better to have gotten a map and not deal with frostbitten toes?

Note, posted updated quotes July 10, RP’ed to RSS. Original written July 6th.