DocAndersen
I am going to reduce the clutter in my home office over my vacation. Being the holiday season, I’ve decided to get my office in better shape. I am not good about cleaning, ergo the office getting in the state it is in, but I am going to spend a ½ hour every day for the next few days to get my office back in shape. I’ve already moved a bunch of older tech into the goodwill pile. Sometimes it is best just to give things so that someone else can use them. I tried to do this, office cleaning three years ago. I failed only because I ran out of time. I also failed because I tried to do this project in two days. I get distracted, and there are many things I would like to do other than clean my office.
One of the things I am going to do is actually to organize the cables in my office. I have a tub, waterproof, that has my poetry notebooks from years in it. I am going to do the same thing for my various cables. I am going to remove all the speakers in my storage area as well. I have speakers sitting in my closet that haven’t been used in more than three years. Time to get rid of old speakers. It is funny what ends up collecting around a house over time. The Comic Geroge Carlin had a routine where he talked about the point where your stuff fills your house, and you have to buy a different house! It was a funny routine, but one that remains a thing I need to be aware of and honestly reduce!
The other thing I am going to do is get rid of the cables. I have too many cables. At some point, the number of cables should equal the number of devices that use those cables. Maybe, just a couple of extras. Right now, I suspect I have way too many USB cables. Ethernet cables are in short supply but that was because I moved a bunch of my home network to a new ethernet segment and need 20 ethernet cables quickly. The new Wifi6 solutions will be shipping soon. Between Wifi6 and 5g, the amount of bandwidth in and around your house is going to change. Having a cable network system (ethernet cables) and a wifi network may not be in the future. Tomorrow most likely, you only have wifi and 5g in and out of the house. Even then, you will probably only need the same number plus a couple of spares of USB cables compared to devices.
Time to clean my office!
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Question of
do you think I will make a dent in my office mess this year?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
Will I at least spend some time cleaning?
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Yes
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No
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Q: DO YOU THINK I WILL MAKE A DENT IN MY OFFICE MESS THIS YEAR?
Yes (5 votes) – 63%
No (3 votes) – 38%
Q: WILL I AT LEAST SPEND SOME TIME CLEANING?
Yes (8 votes) – 100%
Save this for a New Year’s resolution. Off-topic, Indiana basketball only has one loss so far. I want to see how they will match up in the Big Ten though.
she shall see in the big ten.
I don’t have a lot of time after new years gotta start it now!
can you ever have too many cables?
i think the sad answer to that question is yes you can.
got two big bags of cables in my closet and still don’t have enough. yet somehow, have too many…
i have a lot of micro usb cables – 20 which since i only have 10 devices is probably more than I need.
I am going to do a cable reduction and storage program!
perhaps move a few to the glove compartment?
i have two cables for each device in the glove compartments already – great suggestion though!
should’ve known you’d have already thought of it
i am the king of cables sadly.
i shall extend my dominion to connectors next!
it is the logical extension of your influence
personally I had hoped Bluetooth would take over, but with the ease of blu-jacking, i am nervous about non-secure BT devices.
because security is really more of an afterthought…
i agree but it makes me really sad. Bluetooth has more potential than any protocol in years.
trying to shoehorn security into your system reactively is generally a pretty painful process
exactly why we have so many problems today.
in particular cell phones.
seriously. it would be better just to redesign from the ground up with integral security. it might even be both faster and cheaper…
i was working with the Windows team on the migration paper when the stop happened.
Even with a complete stop, there were still 10million lines of code. The change of error, great.
Linux has 7 million lines of code and frankly more errors than anything else on the market.
there’s a pretty firm correlation between lines of code and bugs
honestly at this point worrying about bugs is something everyone chases. I worry about zero-day!
I keep telling CIOs yes it is bad that someone can’t use something as designed. It is worse if someone gets into your systems!
if it doesn’t work as designed, that’s a bug. if it has an exploit, that’s a bug. if it requires a fix, that’s a bug…
true, but as a former program manager in my past life, it is really easy to say bugs were by design.
it is easy to lie, but much harder to lie to me if I’ve read the func specs. and I always read the func specs…
as a program manager for about two years, I know many functional specs that were rewritten to support by design.
you could throw the old one out but would be dismissed because it was the old one. That one bit me many times!
they tried to pull that on me a few times, but I’d always maintain that it was either a bug against the product or a bug against the func specs. either way it was a real bug and they still needed to fix it…
i assume you guys did team bug meetings right? the lead alway sends up making the call.
i know the first one I sat in the by design changes to the func spec after the fact killed me.
team meetings, scrub team meetings, cross team meetings…
were program managers dinged during bug fests?
we did a bug fest pre-launch and that was when things changed form let’s fix it, to by design!
one of my PGMs was totally awesome, but most of them were tools…
In a couple weeks, 10 days, I will be doing another series on organizing.
But what I will tell you right now to help you is, that goodwill box, take what you got in it now and get rid of it. So no doubt will creep in.
I am pinning all I comment on tonight.
I can’t get at the goodwill box once I give it to my wife. she empties it almost every day!!!
Such cleaning is not pleasant and can take a very long time. I know this from my own experience.
hey if you want to clean my office 🙂 last two times i tried to do it all at once. This time I am going to do a little over a few days!
You decided to do a good job and I hope you do it, dear friend …. I have a similar job waiting for me too, I just don’t know when it will be your turn
i hope so, thanks pal!!! 🙂
With great pleasure, my friend….i hope you make it
project starts today, we shall see if I succeed!
Cheerful to work…..I have no doubt in you, dear friend…..
thanks pal! i started yesterday and realized I have way too many cables and speakers. time for an old tech donation run!
It takes time to declutter but oh so worth it when you are done.
30 minutes a day for the next five days! i will get some de cluttered@
Think of the treasures you might find.
or cables for things I got rid of 10 years ago!
The irony is that as soon as you get rid of something, it turns out you need it. I can’t count how many times this has happened to me ?