Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Entries from July 2026

Text Processing Software, Please

July 23rd, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips All the pieces are here. Let’s have one download, install, and run. This is what I want: one piece of software that reads the text files on my computer (.docx, etc.), answers questions about them, writes output to a file, and I can do all the copy-and-paste I want. pandoc seems to […]

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Tags: Cloud Computing · Computing · Language · Software · Technology

Lazy Writers

July 20th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Writers can write more than we do. Is this lazy? And, by the way, lazy was the worst thing in the world according to my mother, so that comments stings. Writers in 2026 are for the most part lazy. — Dean Wesley Smith Mr. Smith’s comment stings. According to my mother, there […]

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Tags: Accountability · Research · Technology · Tools · Writing

No One Calls Me

July 16th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I receive about one phone call a week from an actual person. What happened? I have a cell phone. I still have a landline phone. Several times a day, the landline rings and a nice computer voice tells me about home improvement. These computer voices are becoming nicer. I guess that is […]

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Tags: Authentic · Communication · Family · People

Changing Technology, Changing Practice

July 13th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Technology changes. Practice changes with the technology. Nothing new here, but it requires me to change. Aargh. Sometimes I don’t like that. There was a time when Xerox machines didn’t work as well as they do now. I guess I should call them copy machines instead of Xerox machines. There was a […]

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Tags: Adapting · Change · Management · Practice · Technology

Why Would They… ?

July 9th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Those people are acting crazy! Good grief! Pause and breathe. They are good, smart people. Why would they act that way? Think. Just recently it happened again. A group of good, smart people were acting crazy in some unexplainable manner. They completely misread what people in my group had written. How could […]

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Tags: Breathe · Choose · Event · Reaction · Respect · Thinking · Time

Home From Work (Not the Other Way Around)

July 6th, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Alas, we worked from home during the PAN(dem)IC. Now we are encouraged to live in the office with everyone else. In the title of this post, “home” is a verb and “work” is a noun. Make the office your home. Live at work with your colleagues. During the great PAN(dem)IC (we are […]

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Tags: Culture · Family · Jobs · Management · Time · Work

The Paramedic Method of Editing

July 2nd, 2026 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I find an old method of editing that I was using without knowing it. I recently discovered the paramedic method of editing from UCLA professor Richard Lanham. I think I have been using this method for years without knowing it had a formal beginning and technique. I referred to what I was […]

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Tags: Brevity · Clarity · Communication · Writing