Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Let not check a communications channel using that same communications channel. It is pretty silly to do so. Since the great pandemic of the early 2020s, I have been part of countless ZoomerTeams meetings. Almost every one starts with, “Can everyone hear me?” Let’s pause and think. If a participant cannot hear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes it is worth the effort to make the output “look good.” Sometimes this pretty printing is a waste and only aggravates those involved. This past week at work I spent hours and hours pretty printing. We had “done the work” and were trying to make a printout of the work for […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I find projects that are over organized. There is a good long-term reason for such. It still is a pain for the rest of us. I recently started working on a project that was over organized. The computer files were arranged by this criteria and that criteria and the other criteria. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we just don’t understand when someone else doesn’t understand. I was recently attending a meeting online. This was one of those ZoomerTeams things where the PowerPoint was on the screen and the presenter was talking in a room with one of those microphones on the conference table. I couldn’t understand what […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Writing about technology on the job breaks just about every rule taught in creative writing classes. That is because you are writing to inform, not entertain. Sometimes I encourage others at work who are writing about technical topics. Their job is to inform. I encourage them not to entertain. All these encouragements […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Take caution with negative statements as they often contradict themselves. “There is no crying in baseball,” is a famous line from the movie A League of Their Own. (My wife says that is a movie about sisters. I say it is a movie about baseball.) That is a self-contradictory statement. One person […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Loving and caring people want to help others. So we put one more thought into the writing and one more statement into the speaking. Delete those. Here are tips on editing writing that don’t need much thought, but hold true about 98.6% of the time: Get the idea? Loving and caring people […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Three generations ago, an eight-year-old told us the reason for the season. The most-heard sermon of all time was delivered by an 8-year-old boy voicing a cartoon in 1965. Christopher Shea spoke the words below in A Charlie Brown Christmas. That sermon has been heard by millions or hundreds of millions of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let us mean what we say and say what we mean. Sometimes that requires too much effort. The effort is worth it if we want others to take us seriously. You know what I mean, huh? You get my drift, right? Just go along with me on this one. And then one […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We continue to use too much jargon. Are we illiterate or just too lazy to type words? I am reviewing materials for a certification. Gosh, I am too old for this, but whatever. I won’t mention the name of the certification. I you continue reading this post, you can probably guess which […]

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