Jason Alexander

Just a quick note...

We're up on the ballot this year with our new product, Graffiti CMS. If you haven't played with it, take a look, and if you have: GO VOTE FOR US, PLEASE! :)

Ok, enough of the shameless plugs. Sorry!

Hey again! Yes, I know, I'm blogging again. Gasp. Shock. Awe. Hehe.

This week I want to talk about what it takes to get blogging on a normal basis. If you read my post last week about losing weight and the discipline it took there, I thought surely I can get off my butt and actually blog on a normal basis. I can't let this blogging thing "beat" me, dangit! So, in my usual manner (as Rob can attest) I set out to figure out how I can do this on a normal basis by putting together my own little attack plan to start executing upon.

Here's Yet Another List (YAL) on what you can do to help make yourself blog more regularly:

1. Set an attainable goal. That sounds familiar, huh? Same principle, last year I started trying to blog daily and just blog about every little random thought I had, and at the time I thought it was fun. And, it was for awhile, but I quickly realized that it just wasn't a natural pace for me. I was doing everything I could to enable this "insta-blogging" scenario where I could quickly pop open WLW, type, ctrl+enter to post, and it would automatically close for me. Yeah, that's great, but I don't think readers necessarily want to hear my everything little thought. If you really, really do, go read me on Twitter.
2. Figure out your style. It's taken me, literally, YEARS to figure out what my style is for writing. I start off trying to do these huge article style posts, where I tried to be all articulate, have screenshots and illustrations and so forth; later, I tried doing the quick, easy going, talk-about-whatever's-on-my-mind style and that was fun, but exhausting for both me and my readers (IMHO), and now I'm falling out somewhere in between. I want to write about something that's worthwhile and I want to spend some time on it so that it's not a waste of your time. And, this really works for me. It makes it easier for me to put down whatever I'm doing and write.
3. Don't forget! I just had to block off time in Outlook for "Writing a blog post". No joke. With reminders and everything! ;) I live and die by my Outlook calendar (even though I hate you, Outlook... seriously. stop looking at me like that.) so this is the most effective way for me to set that checkpoint to myself to say "Oh, crap, it's time for me to blog." I talked with James Shaw once about this and he sets up a AT job in Windows to pop-up WLW at a certain time/day. That's awesome! Whatever works for you. Right now I have a reminder to take an hour a week, every Wednesday at 1pm CST, to write my blog posts.
4. Make time for blogging. Yes, there's always a million other things you need to be doing or should be doing, but blogging is JUST AS IMPORTANT these days. Not only does your company probably blog (if they don't, they should), but it's great therapy for you to unpack those topics that are swirling around in your head, and a great way to capture whatever may be on your mind. I'm constantly thinking about ideas, thoughts, subjects to post about, an opinion I may have, etc... there's no better way to record it than on my blog. Take the time to put down whatever you're doing to blog, and if something comes up keep blogging as a top priority! It's no less important than anything else you're doing. And, finally...
5. Write it down. If you're like me, you constantly are thinking, "Oh, oh, that's a good idea or topic to blog about!" and then I promptly forget it completely 5 minutes later. Yes, I suck. But, in this case, I've started using 37signals Tadalist for just creating a list of topics that I want to blog about at some point. I currently have 12 topics in there. And, I'm usually putting a new topic into every day at least - I almost always have a "shower thought" that I think is bloggable.
   
    

So, of all my old Code Drop posts that I did last year, I probably get at least one email a week asking where my Authorize.net wrappers went. I had no idea these things were so "popular" until they were no longer available.

Digging through my old webroot, I dug these out of Community Server and stuck them up.

If you're interested, you can download them now here: http://jasona.net/files/uploads/AuthorizeNet.zip

Likewise, I've added a new category to my site called "Downloads" at the top level navigation in case I publish anymore code here.

Andrew announced this on the mailing list, but DotNetOpenId 0.1.1 was released yesterday!

It's been awhile, but this was a pet project that I started quite awhile back when I decided to start porting the JanRain boo libraries over to C#. Digging in, I found lots of interest in this area, and Andrew had built some ASP.NET controls for OpenId already - it seemed like a perfect fit!

And, boy, was it - Andrew has been a MACHINE. Unfortunately, I've been busy and haven't done much other then then initial porting of the core libraries, since then he and others have spent substantial amounts of time improving the libraries, controls and server and they continue to set an incredible pace for pushing this project forward.

We're using much of this work in Community Server 2008, and if you're looking to add OpenId support to your .NET application, you should really look at this library - it's one of the most mature, and supported project out there for .NET!

Meanwhile, here's Andrew's original post:

 

*DotNetOpenId 0.1.1* DotNetOpenId version 0.1.1 is done. Included in this release are feature enhancements and a security fix for OpenId providers. Find out what's new with version 0.1.1 . Download the binary and samples here . *What's coming...* Coming up next, version 0.1.2 will have support for partial trusted hosting environments and no requirement for session state for consumers. Early adopters are welcome to check this version out of branches/0.1 and test it. *Contributions...* Do you want to contribute to the project? Email dotnetopenid@googlegroups.com with what you can offer. Right now we especially need people who can write unit tests and extra strings for localization. If you happen to be an expert on the OpenId 2.0 spec, we're scoping the work for upgrading to support that in version 0.3 as well. -- Andrew Arnott

Now, I know it's been awhile since I last blogged. And, I'm sorry. I really am. There's no excuse other than that I've been really busy. But, who isn't? I promise to work harder this year about blogging more often.

That said, I wanted to kick it off with a post that's a bit off-topic. I hate to do the fatblogging like Jason Calacanis, but as some of you know I've taken control of my weight the past year and I've had lots of questions of how I did it. I think many times I've simplified it too much, and I want to get this out of my head and into a post somewhere. If it helps even one of you guys, I'm happy.

To give some background, nearly one year ago I had finally hit that point where I had it. I was miserable, frustrated, and upset. I was starting to believe that I would never get back down to my old weight. Here I was, 6' 2", and right at 260 pounds. I had hit the 40" waist club, too, and even they were getting tight. I was deathly afraid of spilling over into the 42" range and having to head to the Big & Tall store for clothes. And, I had 4 year old and a 1 year old that I want to be around for as long as possible, and be able to get out and play with them if I wanted to.

I had recently noticed one of the guys at our user group had dropped a substantial amount of weight, and when I cornered him about it he just said that he had started watching his calories in and calories out, and excercising. Wow! I totally expected him to talk about some miracle diet that was working wonders for him, but he didn't. Surely it couldn't be that easy.

Looking around on the Internets I found http://sparkpeople.com and was intrigued. Sparkpeople.com really works with you to understand the calories you're taking in, and the calories you're burning. They help you set goals, telling them how much you want to lose and by when, and they tell you how many calories you should be eating daily to reach that goal. From there, they have an incredible application that helps you track your daily caloric intake (with a huge database of items in it already, with other screens to help you easily enter nutritional info off of items that aren't in their database), and can even help you build your grocery list for the coming week.

Seemed like a big step, but what the hell. I didn't have anything to lose at this point. So I dove in and started trying to record my meals and snacks. I did this for about two weeks, quickly realizing I was about 3k+ calories a day. I had no clue! I thought, "Hey, I'm eating chicken, this should be fine." meanwhile it would be smothered in sour cream sauce, queso, butter, something. And, if that wasn't enough, instead of having a decent serving I would have three. I mean, it was chicken, it should be fine! Boy, was I wrong.

So, Sparkpeople told me I needed to get down to around 1,500 calories per day. Dang, that's tough. That meant cutting my meals in half. And, I won't lie, it wasn't easy. But, with some time and effort I was getting down to that level. I'll admit, I had/have my bad days, but I kept trying instead of just giving up the first time I fell off the wagon. Slowly the weight started coming off. It wasn't drastic. I was losing 4-5 pounds/month. It wasn't like the Atkins where you lose 10-12 pounds/month. That's not healthy for you to lose that quickly. And, losing that quickly doesn't help you set the habits and life style that you'll need to maintain the weight loss.

Now, nearly a year later, I'm down 50 pounds to 210 and I'm still losing a little here and there (but I'm really focusing on maintaining at this point).

I'm not trying to brag or expect any "attaboy!"'s... I'd like to give you some advice if you're in a similar situation I was in a year ago:

1. Small, Attainable Goals - Don't set this big, looming goal that you'll never hit. Let's be practical about it - sure, you'd love to lose 50 pounds but it's much better to say lose 10 pounds 5 times. The problem I've had in the past is I would set this big monster goal that was just not possible, and after a month or so I'd get frustrated and give up. But, by telling myself I wanted to lose 4 pounds a month, I felt like that was a much more attainable goal. And, I was less likely to give up if I missed my goal for one month.
2. Educate Yourself - Start understanding what you're putting into your body. As they say "Your body is a temple", and you shouldn't just put crap in your body without understanding what type of nutritional value it is. Start writing down the calories you've eaten, use Google to find out the typical calorie count on your lunch, it DOESN'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT. Start paying attention to the those white nutritional info boxes on stuff, and pay attention to the number of servings. One of the tricks is that they will set the calories really low, but then jack up the number of servings in the package. For instance, they may say 100 calories, but there's 10 servings in a box. If you're not paying attention you might eat the whole box thinking it's only 100 calories, then you've blown 1000 calories in one pop! That's rough.
3. Don't Diet - This isn't a diet. This isn't a fad or something you're doing right now and that later you can go back to doing whatever you want. You have to make the mental decision that this is a change of lifestyle and that it's not an option to stop doing it once you've started. You have to create some sense of permanence to it, otherwise it's way too easy to just give up.
4. Be Patient - Again, this isn't going to happen overnight. If you lose 20 pounds in a year, that's awesome! That's 20 pounds lighter than you were a year ago! Keep in mind that 20 pounds in a year is 1-2 pounds per month of loss. That's not much, but it adds up! Keep the big picture goal that you don't have to lose a pound a day, or 10 pounds a month... that's crazy. Look at your goals a little bigger: how are you doing after 3 months, 6 months, etc...?
5. Go Ahead and Cheat - Yes, that's right. You're going to have bad days. You're human, you can't eat rice cakes and water only for 12 months. It's not possible to maintain a silly diet-like menu of things you can and can't eat, but just educate yourself on what it means to eat that one bad thing. Initially, I started off saying that I would eat bad only on Saturdays until I had a better understanding of my food and calories. Later, as I got better at things, I knew I could eat bad on different days, or levels of bad eating that I could eat throughout a day.
6. Keep a Running Tally - First, I used Sparkpeople.com to understand what I was eating and help me keep up with it. Nowadays, I keep a running tally in my head of how many calories I've eaten and how many I have left for the day. You could come to me at any point of the day and ask me and I could tell you. I know, it sounds crazy, but it gets easier I promise.
7. Quit Snacking! - I used to snack constantly. I thought it couldn't be bad becuase I was just eating little portions of whatever. But, once I realized what I was eating I was ingesting 200-400 calories per snack in most cases. You're wasting valuable calories for the day! I'd much rather "save" those calories and have enchiladas for dinner, personally. Ado hears me tell him constantly about this, anytime he grabs a snack I tell him, "empty calories dude". Yes, I know, that's annoying... but that's my mental checkpoint that keeps me from eating that one granola bar in the snack room.
8. It gets easier, I promise. - Early on, you'll seem like you're starving, I know. Early on, just take small steps in the right direction. When you're hungry go grab one of those 100-calorie snack packs (I love those), grab some jello (0 CALORIES! GREATNESS!), something. You don't have to starve yourself. This goes back to #5 - if you try to starve yourself, you'll eventually break down and give up. You don't have to be super strict to make this work. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

So, with that being said, please feel free to come talk to me (if you're a Telligenti), email me (jalexander [at] telligent [dot] com) if you have questions/thoughts/whatever, and I'm glad to help.

And, just remember to do small, achievable goals; it's okay to cheat; and this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Good luck!

I spent about an hour this afternoon getting all upgraded to the latest version of Graffiti beta 2. The upgrade was super, super easy and now Jayme's migration tool is all built right into the product itself, so I imported most of my old CS blogs in a matter of minutes! It was incredible.

Very nice work, guys. This is certainly a shining example of always hiring people smarter than yourself. ;-)

Go check it out, if you haven't already!

And, excuse the dust around here while I get things back to normal!

At a friend's bday at the american legion. So country and laid back, but so much fun!

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Sent from my Moto Q.

Continuing on with multi-post, detailed review of Good to Great, by Jim Collins -

Another core concept that Jim talks about is the overall formula to make your company great. It's hard to really boil down the specifics, and many of the Executives at Great companies couldn't really explain what they did or how it happened, "It JUST happened!" but Jim boiled it down to three things, which we'll get to. The main theme of these points, though, is discipline.

Dictionary.com defines discipline as the following:

dis * ci * pline - Training expected to product a specific character or pattern or behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.

Interesting. I think it's good to keep the context of the word in mind when going through the following points. Again, these points are what Jim states you do in order to become Great:

1. Disciplined People - Those right people that you now hired, you have to make sure they're disciplined. Do they have what it takes to carry to work through the tough times to help push you to Great?
2. Disciplined Thought - Now that you've got the right, disciplined people you have to all come to an agreement and work together, with absolute diligence, towards a common thought or goal.
3. Disciplined Action - And, finally, you have the right, disciplined people with all the same, disciplined thoughts you have to have disciplined action to carry through and take action on your game plan and strategies. Even with this being the last step that doesn't make it any easier, that's why you have to have the discipline to carry through on your game plan.

I know you think, "Duh, that's just common sense!" - and it is! But, for some reason, bigger companies can't see the forest for the trees in this case.

In his book, Jim gives lots of good insight into specific business cases. One of the cases, and I'm sure I'll slaughter this one, has to do with Walgreen's Pharmacy. Walgreen's competitors were all making big bets on the internet, putting a lot of investment into building big, hulking website. Walgreen's took their time, made a slow turn towards the internet, put lots of thought up-front and eventually launched a website that flipped the industry's sites on their heads. But, it took Walgreen's having the right people and team in place, with a unified, disciplined thought and strategy and having the disciplined action to carry out their plans. And, ultimately, this was seen as a huge win for Walgreen's!

Continuing on with my various thoughts after listening to Good to Great, by Jim Collins, I wanted to talk about "The Bus".

Jim does a great job of explaining the right/wrong employee situation using a bus metaphor (paraphrased):

 

First, you get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus. And, you make sure the right people are in the right seats.

 

This is so true. It's not just important to hire the right people, but it's equally important to make sure they're in the right roles to where they can be effective.

I've seen many companies hire someone who was great, and, for whatever reason, put them into a role that really didn't suit them. Sometimes it was a role that they had never done before, maybe it was a role that they thought they could do, sometimes it was just a temporary fix to get that person into the company with the intentions of eventually moving them to the ideal position later.

But, ultimately, even putting the right people in the wrong roles can be just as damaging to your business.

One of the first audio books that I read, as I mentioned, was From Good to Great by Jim Collins. This was an incredible book. In it, Jim and some of his researchers created a system by which to profile a company to understand if they were good or great, and how to get down to an understanding of what made the company become great. They profiled over 500 companies, and in the book they detail many of the Great companies and the details.

I won't give away everything, but Jim talks about many core, fundamental concepts that companies must follow or do to help them to become great.

In one of those statements he talks about the fact that companies, traditionally, always say that people are their most valuable asset. But, that's not true. It's the right people that are your most valuable asset.

And, he's absolutely right. This principle rang clear and true for me and our practices here at Telligent. As some people may have heard, Telligent has a tough interview process and we're VERY picky about new hires. We are adamant and unwavering in the fact that we must always hire the right people.

Now, that's not to say that we don't get it wrong sometimes. I'll admit, we have hired a few people that weren't a good fit, for one reason or another. But, we're very good about identifying those persons and making the corrections as necessary.

That may seem cold and cruel, but it's a terrible fact about business. Sometimes you have to make those hard decisions. Sometimes you can't avoid conflict. And, sometimes that affects people's livelihood. That sucks. We don't like it at all. But, it's unavoidable, unfortunately.

Take for example our internship program, this summer we started off with 6 great interns. Unfortunately, about half way through one of those interns were asked to leave. In this case, this particular intern wasn't right for Telligent - he was too young, too immature and had too much of an ego to really fit in. Very unfortunate because he was very, very smart. But, that's how it goes - you have to make sure that you're always hiring and keeping the right people.

Definitely check out that book, and look around at your company and think about it - do you think your company has done a good job of hiring the right people and making sure they're in the right roles.