Design By Tim

Well as most of you know (if you’ve at least been reading) I’ve gotten my Dell laptop. To sum this whole post up - it’s a beautiful machine. I needed a machine to increase my mobility in my productivity. I’ve been looking for something that had a large enough screen to handle image editing with Photoshop to increase the power of my Canon 20D. So far I’ve been able to move my complete work flow from my desktop to the laptop.

I wanted to be able to take my web design mobile with the imminent moving of corporate offices and the purchasing of a house my lunch breaks will limit my freelance work to wifi access and a desktop from home limited that - with the laptop I will be able to move more productivity in my already busy schedule.

Since recieving my laptop I have recieved the ordered external hard drive case, 2gigs of 533mhz ram, and D-Link 4300 wireless gaming router. These have helped in several ways - I opted to have a smaller hard drive to improve performance when gaming and overall use. The external hard drive gives me plenty of space for work and looks cool to with a sharp red metalic case. The 2gigs of ram are needed. I chose Dell’s lowest memory option of 512megs to last untill the upgrades came in - I was surprised how will the system ran with just 512megs - that is after I reformatted the hard drive and installed xp sp1 removing all the bloatware and extra crap on the system. Now with 2gigs the performance is incrediable - I’m using the OZ 533mhz 2×1gig sticks which I got total from Newegg for around $125.

The gaming router from D-Link replaced my current D-Link 604 wired router. There are several distinct advantages of this upgrade. The first is the wireless capabilities with the super G 108mbs wifi 802.11b/g . Secondly is the upgraded routing capabilities and Gamefuel abilties - I’ve used both Netgear and Linksys wireless routers and they are ok with performance however I’ve always like D-Link products for their simplicity, durabilty, and performance.

Now for the Dell e1705 Review: (first some quick specs as built out now)

2.0ghz Intel Centrino Duo Core
2×1Gig OZ 533mhz Ram
60Gig 5400rpm (7200rpm in the works)
17″ truelife wuxga+ screen
XP sp1
nVidia 7900gs Dual Pipe

The system is rugged - it feels a bit heavy for a laptop yet for a 17″ is not a bad weight because it’s distributed. The lid has a nice double latching system and smooth lift. The graphics are crystal sharp and brightness is easily adjustable. The calibration was easy since not much to adjust - and the glare off the glossy screen is not bad outdoors, since the angle is fairly easy to adjust.

The processor has never been over 80% even when multitasking between firefox (with at least 10 tabs), Photoshop and several other apps. Memory is smooth without hesitations… The harddrive speed has not impacted any slowness - I’m just looking to improve load times with the faster rpm.

Now my complaints:

Dell should give the option for customers to get the OS bloatfree - or without an OS. And better pricing for the upgrades like memory… Other than that it’s been fun and we’ll see within the next month or so how well it works for it.

I read an interesting post on how conventional leadership and management styles hold them back. The “quick-fix” mentality seems to offer fast results for little effort. In reality, it simply postpones the problem. Sometimes it adds its own extra sources of later difficulty as well. And where leaders resort to dictatorial, driven styles of management, can you blame the good people for voting with their feet? There’s only so much anyone can take of finding whatever you do, it’s never enough. The credit will eventually catch up, and we wonder why so many companys are failing.

Every source of leadership value has an opposite negative demotivator. - Source

I never thought this day would come, with the exception of my first computers that I can remember (several macs and old xt machines) I’ve never bought a system from a manufacturer period it’s all been custom built by none other than trial and error myself. (There were a few laptops sprinkled into the mix but technically I didn’t own them because either it was business or my parents owned the machine outright…) But this is the first premade computer I’ve owned and wow - after working on so many friends systems and swearing my death if I should befall one of these monstrosities. Well I’m not eating my words just yet cause granted I’ve only had it since noon today - and already reinstalled windows 4 times (turns out dell laptops and xp sp2 and sp3 have issues with batteries and drivers - go figure) so now i’m on install 4 with sp1 singing away. But my first impressions is that this beast (it’s light for 17″ but for lbs per lbs this sucker really kicks ass. The graphics are freakin incredible, and while only sporting 512megs of ram (which the 2×1gig sticks are already on the way) it moves like a champ - i have already bogged it down memory wise but the processor has yet to hit over 60% stressed out!

And the best part: MY WIFE LOVES IT! oh wait damn now that means I have to share. I’ll be posting later on the Dell experience - but if you remember back to lowered expectations make happy customers - read up and then see a real world example. Oh and check out Google Spreadsheets - it’s the latest craze of taking of the world in a good way.

Well it’s been a little while since I purchased my last toy (Canon 20D my flickr gallery). My thoughts - I love it - since purchasing the digital back I purchased a canon 50mm f/1.8 II for all around shooting - I will say that the results are satisfactorily - I think they could be better - I had the type I version of this lense and sold it about a year ago - biggest film mistake of my life… the focusing noise (in af mode) is horrendous for the type II. But I’ll live - I’m looking at some more lenses to fill out my repertoire of possibilities.

I’m still learning the controls and what works in certain situations - trying some night shots - I had focusing issues and am trying to innovate a better ocular viewing piece so that I can adjust sharpness better. Till then long nights in PS and NeatImage will just have to do the trick.

My problem is that I shoot a brick of photos bring them back to the digital lab and work through processing the images. Because I mainly shoot in raw I get better results but the time it takes to get them where I am satisfied with the work is getting longer and with longer hours at work and family life post process is just not happening as much. So the solution was to make the lab mobile.

That’s right I bought another laptop, I’ve had several over the years the problem is that I push the edges of sanity, and laptops just weren’t there. Until now. Meet ….. *drum roll* ….. curtain draws back to reveal a blank stage…. ok so I didn’t lead you on this tangent fool you, I did get a laptop - it’s… ugh… just not here yet. Ok so I’ll just tell you about my wonderful dream machine.

My friend/coworker Matt led me onto looking at the HP dv5000t (or just look at the whole dv line). The more I looked at them I started to get impressed - the duo core processor technology intrigued me - and after reading up on it (plus with the macbook pro coming out with it) I had to look into it further - basically my requirement for a laptop would be to semi replace my desktop (the beast that it is). The duo core got it one step closer to doing that - and oh my you can add up to 1gig of ram - bingo I’m starting to churn numbers so what do I do? I go to dell.com of course and my eyes fell in love with the wonderful xps systems *start dreamy music* and then *slap* $3200!!!!! - uh no freakin way… then I saw it e1705…

Ok so I looked at the e1505 and then saw the larger size and started working the numbers to see how to get this one past through the bookkeeper (my lovely wife). So I mentioned it to her… and got the we’ll see - maybe you can get it this fall… answer. And then heaven’s gates opened and a gift card was dropped into my lap by an angel (ok so it was Liz…) and the numbers started getting lower. Did I ever say that I love deadlines? Because the gift card/coupon had a deadline that was approaching fast - I was able to button the screws down and push the purchase through!!! So as of this morning I have a brand spanking new fully customized e1705 headed my way - it’s already been built, tested, bloatware installed, and boxed - I can hear the delivery truck screeching out of the loading docks now. I know you’re chomping at the bit to find out what the specs are… lets not wait

1. Dell Inspiron e1705 T2500 (2ghz, 2MB Cache, 667MHz FSB)
2. 512MB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz
3. 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife
4. 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7900 GS
5. 60GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
6. Integrated 10/100 Network Card and Modem
7. Dell Wireless 1390 802.11g Mini Card (54Mbps)
8. 24X CD Burner/DVD Combo Drive
9. Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD Audio
10. 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery
11. Windows XP Home
12. And 200+ titles of bloatware

Ok I know you’re going - and that’s supposed to wow me? Well here’s where it gets fun - remember that I’m married - see married people have this thing called dependencies where there are certain things in life that you end up having to be responsible for…. so I was working on a limited budget here - so I bought a barebones Dell and now you get to see my magic.

First I picked the T2500 (2ghz, 2MB Cache, 667MHz FSB) over the 1.66 and 1.83 because it was a $100 jump from 1.66 to 2.0 now here’s the logic - I found a $750 off coupon - but in order for it to qualify I had to have it over a certain price, well at least that was my reasoning - although I have been trolling on a awesome laptop resource looking at systems specs, mods etc. I found that Photoshop and other CPU intensive apps love 2.0 a little better than 1.83 and while 1.83 is the recommended route for the large majority just because a jump from 1.66 to 1.83 is a noticeable speed difference and a jump to 2.0 for Photoshop like apps is even greater as well as 2.0 is like the holy grail of laptops… if in fact i should need to sell this wonderful machine it’ll be more future proof. And because this was system will be for productivity only (yeah right) I wanted to make sure i didn’t scrimp on the meat.

512MB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz is a bit palsy - so I’ve already got 2×1gig Dual Channel Oz 4-4-4-8 DDR2 533mhz sticks in the mail speeding their way here - I went with 533 because the CAS (latency) was only 4 whereas on the 667 I was getting no less than 5 and avg 6 on the relatively priced modules - and the timings were worse than 5x. So in the grand scheme I’m sticking with shear brute force instead of the better looking mhz numbers. I found it was interesting that the week before I bought my system (while prelim number crunching) dell offered a free 1gig upgrade (and today offered a free dvd burner upgrade) the memory however from what I’ve read is ok - but nothing really to hang your hat on. I’ve been told that crucial (as always), muskin, oz and kingston are the ones to use… fortunately for me I found these at a great price.

You must get 17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen UXGA Display with TrueLife™ because the normal wxga sucks - here’s the deal - the U stands for uber - wxga only can get like 1200×800 (well the laptop tiny res equivalent…) but the WUXGA not only is the proper size it is the best one out there period if you need screen realestate - don’t think about even getting it with the wxga - … once you get everything setup - you’ll want to go into properties and change the dpi from 120ish to 92 trust me you just want to do that… it helps fix image rastering problems and font jaggies… at least this is what i’ve seen so far

256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS - do not get the others period - because they’re placed differently… so for a later upgrade to the 7900gtx when the price gets better… which btw dell does not consider a warranty void as long as you don’t run a pin mod etc - swapping memory, hd, video card, wireless, Bluetooth … etc even putting thermal paste and aftermarket heat syncs does not void warranty!!! yes you read that right DOES NOT… oh god the wet dream is starting

Hard drive - whatever… it’s a hard drive i am debating on upgrading to the 7200rpm - an external is already built and waiting next to the desk. Along with my 8x DVD writer - I’m gonna try to sneak a 16x drive and maybe a new seagate 300gig drive out of newegg home to expand the possibilities.

I went with the dell wireless card over the Intel for several reasons - A) the broadcom card has a better range supposedly but drivers suck with linux - so since i’m not planning on running Linux on this (yet) i think I’m safe plus it was 30 bucks cheaper this way. One thing I also did not include as the Bluetooth option - mainly because our good friend EBay offered one of these up to me for 9 bucks shipped and dell wanted 42 bucks - hmmm sounds like fuzzy math to me.

On the topic of fuzzy math - I could have the speakers (oh yeah baby rock that 5 watt sub) just be any old shit - so i had to have the Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy® ADVANCED HD Audio. I know it’s only software but realistically it makes a great difference - hell it’s only 25 bucks and while there’s a ton of creative bloatware I’ve found an ISO that stripped it down to bb and now all I need i the auth code (which is pretty sneaky on dell/creative’s part for marketing this sucker). With that I’m set to party hard. But not too long since i only got th 53 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery - Dell wanted 150 bucks for the 9 cell whereas EBay said i could have one for 65 bucks shipped. Did i mention eBay is my new best friend?

Oh and lets not forget the OS - wonderful Winblows XP HOME! and all of Dell’s generous (over 200+ titles) bloatware. Why the hell can the Inspirion series not get the benefit of not including this crap like the xps systems are offered? So the first thing to to get wiped? that’s right the hd partitions are getting cleaned and good ol’ XP Pro here I go… now to decide on sp1, sp2 or the elusive sp3?

Next update on this project will be the arrival, memory, etc upgrades (oooh and yeah it’s getting a paint job - I’m not sure if I want smooth creations to do a hot chick airbrush or if I’ll just paint it candy tangerine pearl)… Peace bros

My good friend Matt (the previous matt - not 2.0)… wrote a great article on his learning from our experiences together, thankfully I can say that I was not his boss… read the full story here. And here’s the best part:

Imagine that you are in kindergarten again, and it coloring time. Look around at your friends; all have boxes full of colors. You however have one of those 3-packs you get at a restaurant, one of them is broken, another is white, and the meal cost $650. Teacher then instructs you to draw a rainbow….

… That, my friends, was my experience with Lasso

I was watching a kid eat an ice cream sandwich the other day and the thought occurred to me of the parallels between eating an ice cream sandwich and good management. I am what you could call a creative developer - I like problems that require something different than an out of the box fix. That doesn’t mean I use a hammer to fix dinner but it also doesn’t mean that just because a tool claims to increase my productivity doesn’t mean that I will use it without figuring out how that tool will benefit me. I digress. I am also from the John Maxwell train of thought on leadership and management. Having position, title, rank or digress doesn’t qualify anyone to lead other people. No one is given the right to lead. The right to lead can only be earned - which takes time.

What does that have to do with an ice cream sandwich?

The key to becoming an effective leader is not to focus on making other people follow, but on changing yourself into the type of person they would want to follow.

I have seen three kinds of leaders in my short existence: 1) Those who push their way forward 2) Those who pull their way forward 3) Savant idiots. Unfortunately life doesn’t always follow these simple rules for every leader. And while there is grace for those who fall - falling is meant to help keep one humble and strengthen their skills of rising to the occasion. Zig Ziglar says that there are three ways to motivate people, fear, incentives and growth. The word “Leadership” comes from an old Norse word meaning “To make go.” The trouble is, people misunderstand who makes what go. In essence as a manager you have to leave room for the possibility that geniuses in the group who will bring you things you can’t teach them. Because if you knew it all already then hire drones. However a successful manager is one who can lead leaders, ideally it is the successful manager that constantly adjusts what is needed to leverage their own group’s success.

As organizations grow and diversify as a response to ever changing demands of them from their constituents, they naturally become more dependent on their managers. More often than not, the organization does not effectively clarify what is expected of their managers. One cannot expect the organization to make your management responsibilities easier – it is up to you to do that for yourself. And surrounding yourself with those who want you in a position to lead them makes it that much easier - just don’t squeeze too tightly on your control.