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Inbox zero, years later…

July 31st, 2010 Lloyd Leung No comments

It’s been over three years now, and inbox zero is still happening.

I’m throwing everything into an archive folder, for each year’s quarter seems to be working well.

Does it give me more productivity? In a single word, yes.

Categories: Business, General Tags:

Bad Restaurants in Toronto, boycotting one, and can’t use the other.

June 12th, 2010 Lloyd Leung No comments

I’ve been trying out different places, be that dine in, take out, and ordering online…

Some places are exceptional service, but others, are absolutely horrible.

1.) Mama’s pizza at 118 Yonge Street, Toronto, has terrible service.  After I placed my order and I wait 5-10 minutes, before the cashier gets my attention, and asks to me pay.  I was hoping that the pizza is near ready.  I had a hunch that it wasn’t even started yet, so I ask if the pizza was started.  “No, sorry”.  I was angry.  I didn’t yell at him, I didn’t do anything besides, say “forget it then…”.

Why was I waiting for 5-10 minutes between letting the server know what I wanted, till I was asked to pay?  People, if you don’t want to waste your time, go somewhere else.  Mama’s pizza has lost my business for good.

I wonder how much this business has lost, because of badly trained staff?  Why take an order, and allow the person to wait.  The point of taking the order, is to MAKE it, not sit around, and then ask payment, only to then start.  If that’s the case, TAKE ORDER, IMMEDIATELY TAKE PAYMENT, IMMEDIATELY START ORDER.

2.) Swiss Chalet canada — online ordering form.  Wow, whatever business that sold you the ordering system, has sold you something that is, well… less than functional.  Hope you didn’t pay much for it, cause you sure aren’t making as much business as you could –in fact, I’m pretty sure you’re losing a lot of business.  I tried your ordering system in chrome, safari, and firefox…  (I really wanted some Swiss Chalet, to have tried all three browsers) –  If you say “use MSIE”, well, you just lost of ton of users that are on MACs, Linux, and mobile phone orders.

- Maybe I should contact them, and see if they’re willing to get a system that would be actually functional?

- Situation: After you enter your phone number on the home page (I’ve probably used my phone number before at a different location, but I don’t remember), you enter your details on the second page, third page asks you for your postal code.  Click submit, sends you back to the first page.  Didn’t you hire a QA person, to test this site out?  You know, it’s kind of fundamental to your system, if you require each person to SINGUP to order from you.  Or a functional analyst, to determine the different use cases of your system?

Swiss chalet please fix your online ordering system, or hire a 3rd party business that can actually deliver you a working website?  If you’re looking for a contractor that could build you the system in its entirety, please let me know.

I really wanted some chicken, fries, and chalet sauce… :(

Categories: General Tags:

pidgin.im msn protocol alternative: msn-pecan

April 2nd, 2010 Lloyd Leung No comments

Day 1

I decided to try a new msn protocol for pidgin.im today.  Why? Was just browsing the list of plugins, and saw the alternative…

http://code.google.com/p/msn-pecan

Looked at the list of added benefits, and decided to give it a try… lets see if I stick with it.  So far, it is fast on start up.  Interesting to see that it picked up a ton of friend requests, that I didn’t see before.

Categories: General Tags:

little project ideas

March 1st, 2010 Lloyd Leung No comments

Just found a need to access my home server… however, it’s powered down… how can I overcome this problem in the future.  To answer my own question…  I should go lookup how to send a wake-on-lan command to the box. As well as know what my IP is…

project ideas:

1.) Current IP notifier – send to my webserver, what my home server IP is. (Dynamic). I could use a dynamic dns service… this maybe interesting to learn how to do this, if I have my own VPS… have the home-server, notify the web-server to update the DNS setting. So I would have something like: homelan.lloydleung.com or whatever.

2.) wake on lan commands.
3.) vpn to the network instead… with a combo on 1. This way, everything is encrypted…

Align windows in osx

January 25th, 2010 Lloyd Leung No comments

http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/twoup/

while it doesn’t do cascade of windows, it does a lot for being free. It can send a window to the left/right/top/bottom half of a window. The full paid version allows a little more. Seems to work fine, after I reset the hotkeys.

Useful when trying to view two windows/apps at the same time.

Exchange protocol comes to google mail/gmail

September 25th, 2009 Lloyd Leung No comments

Exchange protocol comes to google mail/gmail.

Meaning the iPhone can use it!

gmail iphone exchange how-to

Categories: General Tags:

how I’m using software now, as opposed to a few years ago.

August 22nd, 2009 Lloyd Leung No comments

I’ve used Firefox for a long time… since version 0.6 if I remember right.

The main feature of firefox is it’s flexibility and expandability of extensions.

I’ve now realized, that the majority of the applications I used, are web based.

  • Google Calendar and Gmail has replaced MS Outlook.
  • Google Docs has eliminated my need to carry a USB key around for documents. Having a single repository of documents is great! Also has journaling.
  • I’ve even allowed Facebook to integrated itself with Firefox. At least on my home computer…
  • Ping.fm has allowed me to send updates to all my social network sites.
  • Google Reader and RSS feeds, allow me to read all my sites quickly and easily.
Categories: General Tags:

DOs and DON’Ts for Technology resumes.

August 22nd, 2009 Lloyd Leung No comments

NOTE: I’m not claiming this is true for all career fields. These are only my thoughts on that matter… I am not an expert nor do I claim to be one in the matters of this post.

At work, I’ve been scanning through resumes that come across my desk to help fill positions.

There are some of the things I’ve noticed when scanning lots of resumes:

  1. Make it SHORT and to the point. 2 page MAX.
  2. Get to the point, my time is value. If I don’t see something quickly, you’re in the “NO” pile pretty quick.
  3. Get someone to proof read your resume. Don’t have spelling or grammar mistakes on your resume. This is supposed to SELL yourself to future employers. This doesn’t mean you’re automatically in the “NO” pile, but it doesn’t help your cause.
  4. Help me like you. I want to like reading the resume. Present your resume in an easy to read format. An easy to read format includes clean formating, and fonts.

I enjoy short, to the point resumes.

Different sections:

Objective: Everyone has an Objective… why, cause everyone has one. “To work in a fast paced environment… yadda yadda….” All objectives are the same to me. Keep it short, to the point, and move on to the meat of the subject.

Skill set: Highlight what skills you have that will be applicable to the job you are applying for. I don’t need long lengthy sentences, where I’ll miss your skills. For me, short to the point information. You know how to use Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Excel, Linux, yadda yadda. If applicable versions that you know. NEVER EVER LIE on your resume. Why would you lie to your potential employer?

Job History: Show here, your employer name, location, start time to end time… Keep the job listings relevent. I do not need to know you were life guarding when you were 18 years old, while you’re trying to apply for a tech position. If you want say you know how to swim, put that in your “Interests” section.

If you have lots of job, put down the jobs that relate. If that causes you to move over the 2 page limit, I suggest TRIM the older jobs to fit the 2page limit.

Education: I find this section useful. For tech I want to know your data structures are sound.

Whatever training you have is also good to know.

Interests: If you want to seem a little more human. This is the spot where I gleam a hint of your life.

References: Never just give references in your resume. Say “References available upon request”. We won’t be contacting your references till after an interview anyways. So why waste the two page limit with stuff that does not matter at that moment.

I’ve seen some immortal disasters that people have done. Epic even.

Keep it brief.
Relevant.
Accurate.
Fluff it if you need to, but don’t lie.
Employers see enough resumes to know fluff.

I welcome your thoughts on tech resumes.

Categories: General Tags:

find svn directories and remove them

June 17th, 2009 Lloyd Leung 2 comments

find . -name ".svn" -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1024 -r rm -rf

-n prevents rm too many arguments error
-r prevents execution if none found (and prevents error!)

originally from:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/902/delete-all-.svn-directories-from-current-path-recursive

Categories: General Tags:

Finally! Some kind soul made facebook a little better.

June 9th, 2009 Lloyd Leung No comments

Remove those silly quizes, that everyone is doing… “what type of X am I” type apps, that splatter your feed.

Author’s page here

Categories: General, Personal Blogs Tags: