Category: Uncategorized

This morning, I came across this interesting post about why performance reviews don’t work.  The alternative that stood out was weekly one-on-one meetings with direct reports.  It’s a recommendation I first heard nearly two years ago on the Manager Tools podcast.  I’ve managed employees in the past, and when I followed the advice about weekly one-on-one meetings, virtually every relationship improved.  It is more meetings, but the results are worth it.

While I don’t have a manager title in my current job, I’m still in fairly regular touch with the employees I used to manage.  Were it not for those regular meetings, I doubt I’d have the same relationship with my former co-workers that I do today.

After the Antelope Canyon tour, we pushed on to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The north rim doesn’t get the kind of attention that the south rim does, but it was well worth the visit. The views from the overlooks we visited were amazing.

This morning, we rode into Navajo Nation land to see Antelope Canyon. It’s one of a number of slot canyons in the area. Unlike other canyons, this one had very narrow openings at the top. This meant it was pretty dark (and cool, thankfully) even at midday.

Nate, our guide, grew up in the area and told us a lot about how the canyon formed (mostly water, a little wind). He also played some flute for us, and pointed out the best places to take photos from. Hopefully, my shots will turn out well.

One other interesting bit of trivia Nate shared was that Britney Spears shot a music video in the canyon.

A couple of days ago, we left Torrey and headed for Castle Valley, UT. Our purpose there was to visit Arches National Park, especially the famous Delicate Arch.

Once we got to the park, we found not just beautiful arches, but balancing rocks as well. Some of them looked as if they were placed on top of the massive stone columns by giants. Getting to Delicate Arch was a long, steep hike. It took almost an hour to walk the 1.1 miles. We got there before sunset (when it is supposed to be the most beautiful) to avoid going back downhill in the dark.

We stayed at yet another great bed & breakfast there, the Castle Valley Inn. In addition to a main house, it has a number of cabins, all set in an apple orchard. It also has a big hot tub, which proved perfect for stargazing. We met a French couple there who are currently living in northern Virginia.

The next morning, we got to sample the apples in fresh apple juice and as spiced apples on our pancakes. We also had a nice conversation with one of our innkeepers. They turned out to be very experienced travelers, with multiple trips to South America, Europe, and Africa under their belts.

After breakfast at the Spotted Dog Cafe, we bid farewell to Springdale, Utah (and an excellent hotel, the Desert Pearl Inn) and headed to Bryce Canyon. The biggest difference between our two canyon experiences so far was elevation. At the highest point we could drive today, we were over 8900 feet up. We spent three or four hours there, driving to different overlooks and stopping to take photos. After the tough hike yesterday, my travel companions and I opted for a much shorter one.

From Bryce, we drove to Torrey, Utah. It was a beautiful and terrifying drive. Beautiful because of the sandstone cliffs and trees. Terrifying because of the substantial number of hairpin turns, the rocks, trees (or really long fall) awaiting any misjudgment, and my pedal-to-the-metal friend that I was attempting to keep in sight.

After surviving that drive, and checking in at Skyridge Inn Bed & Breakfast, we had dinner at the Diablo Cafe. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen “free range rattler” on a menu (and no, I didn’t eat any). What we did order was very good. The dessert was excellent.

Even better than good food and great dessert, was having a hot tub outside my room to relax in and look at the stars before bed.

We spent most of the day inside Zion National Park (in Springdale, Utah). The centerpiece of it is a large canyon made mostly of sandstone. Even though we’re in the middle of the desert, there is a surprising amount of greenery (pine trees, cacti, etc). It turns out that the desert can be quite beautiful.

Hiking to the Emerald Pools was very tough (we took the steeper of the two routes by accident). It wasn’t just the rocks, but the fact that a lot of them were covered in this really fine sand. That made our footing rather treacherous, but we made to all the pools there were to see.

It’s a lot easier to see the stars at night out here–so different from home with all the lights and traffic noise. Springdale has narrow roads, and traffic is light enough now that you can hear crickets more often than cars passing by.

Even though Google Chrome is open source, I wonder what will happen to Firefox (my current browser of choice).  Its extensions (like FlashBlock) and other ad-blocking capabilities make browsing the web a much more pleasurable experience.

If you want to try it out, grab a copy from here.

Scott Hanselman came up with this site that tells you what version of .NET you’ve got and your shortest path to .NET 3.5.  I’ve tried it from a couple of different Windows machines (one virtual machine, one real) and it works pretty well.  When I browsed the site with my iPhone, it figured out I was running a Mac.

Especially useful is the JavaScript snippet he provides that lets you have that functionality on your own website.  I’ll definitely be passing this url around the office.

Lately, I’ve been getting e-mail at my Gmail account that are clearly intended for other people.  I thought “Scott” and “Lawrence” were fairly common names individually, but the number of people who believe that slawrence [at] gmail [dot] com belongs to them has grown to the point where it’s beginning to become inconvenient.

The e-mails that concern me the most are the ones that contain people’s travel information, passwords to certain websites, and cellphone bills.  Because they’re automatically e-mailed from these sites, I’m not sure what the best way is to contact these folks to have corrections made.

I welcome any suggestions readers (all 3 of you ;-)) might have on the best way to deal with this.

I picked up a white 16GB iPhone 3G on July 13.  After a month of use, I can add my 2 cents to the tons of reviews already out there.

Battery Life

I have to recharge the phone every two days, running with 3G and wi-fi off, except when I need them.  If I leave 3G on, I have to recharge the phone after a day.  From people I’ve talked to about other 3G phones, this amount of battery life is typical.

No Keyboard?  No Problem.

I’ve found that I can type with 2 thumbs reasonably quickly, even without the physical clicking of keys.  I can’t type as fast as I could on my old Nokia 6820, but it’s still usable.

The iPhone as a Phone

The only functionality obviously missing is support for MMS (picture mail).  It seems odd that phones AT&T gives away have a feature that the iPhone lacks, but that’s the situation.  While it isn’t a feature I want desperately to use (I barely used it on the Razr), having to surf to a website to receive MMS messages someone sent you is inconvenient.

I like everything else.  The recent call and voicemail features are particularly well-done.

The iPhone as a Web Browser

Browsing the web is where the iPhone really shines.  At this point, there’s no other device its size that enables you to surf the web so easily.  If you aren’t an AT&T wireless subscriber, this feature alone is probably one of the best reasons to buy an iPod touch.

While the iPhone doesn’t support Flash, I see this as a plus.  On my work and home machines, I use Firefox 3 with Flashblock enabled on virtually every site.  No worrying about ads, or video I don’t want, or the battery life penalty that would likely come with Flash support.

The iPhone as an iPod

Last week was the first time I used it much as an iPod (I was in Toronto).  As cool as the click wheel was on previous iPods, multi-touch crushes it.  I didn’t think navigating through a large music/video collection could get easier, but it is.  Watching videos on a screen that size isn’t bad at all.

E-mail on the iPhone

So far, I like this feature.  Occasionally, I’ll see a “This message has not been downloaded from the server” note, but that only happens with my Comcast e-mail account.

The Apps

I spent a lot of time playing JawBreaker when I was at Pearson International waiting for my flight home.  It’s an addictive little game.  Beyond that one, the apps I use most are NetNewsWire, Facebook, and Pandora.

Overall

I’m very pleased with it.  I’ve only gone traveling with it once so far (to Toronto for Agile 2008), and even though I had a laptop with me, I barely used it.  If I had it to do all over again, I would have left the laptop at home and simply synced the iPhone with my work e-mail.  It’s that capable and excellent a device.