Part of a well planned investment business strategy is knowing when to invest. The other side of the coin, knowing the time to leave is just important.

Employment takes time and effort once you have invested your time and effort you should see a proper return. If you do not you should work on your exit strategy. Decide definitively when is the right time for you to jump ship and look for better opportunities.

If this means taking a class to upgrade skills or simply waiting for a bonus figure it out set some guidelines and execute. You’ll be much happier about life.

If you work in today’s business world you are probably looking to upgrade your skills on a consistent basis. One of the best things you can do is take some time in deciding what you should learn next.

The skills that you choose to upgrade should be pertinent to your current job and industry. It will do you no good to take a word processing course if you are a construction worker or a chef unless your moving from the front lines to the back office. If you are looking for suggestions about what to learn. Here is what I would say as a rule of thumb.

If you currently work in an office it is a good idea to learn how to better use the tools in your office. Every business has a set of software and licensed applications. You should look to learn and become efficient in what is in house. The industry standard for most companies across the nation for word processing is th Microsoft’s Office suite, however if your company uses another product you should strive to be skilled in using that application. The good news is that most pc applications work in a similar manner so by learning one you are building a skill set that will likely be usable for others.

If you are more closely tied to the sales and profitability of a company focus on concepts related to reporting, analytics, and marketing. The task here is to learn as many tools as possible to gain, track, and earn more sales. Learn about spreadsheets, word processing, presentation software, and online marketing.

There is overlap in these categories so by learning one you are helping your aptitude in the other category, but the goal here is to develop a laser focus and set a path for yourself to reach your business goals.

How to Comfortably and Easily Start Using Computers…. Starting with YOU!

If you are new to using a computer, the first thing that you need to do is don’t worry. You are not alone. There are people everywhere that have never used a computer either because their lives have never called for handling a computer or because they have always had someone else around to help them with using computers. Thus, regardless of your situation we are going to help you get started on how to use a computer.

The first thing you need to do is site directly in front of your computer screen. The computer screen is the visual component of a computer. The screen allows you to interact with the computer and tell it what to do. You should make sure the screen is at your natural eye level to avoid stress and strain with using a computer. At eye level, the screen will be at a position where you can easily see all of the information without tilting your head in order to see the images better.

Next locate the keyboard. The keyboard should also be directly in front of you and at a level that allows you to utilize your typing skills without placing your wrists in an un-natural position. This will alleviate strain on the wrists an help avoid carpel tunnel. You should be able to place your hands comfortably on the keyboard while they are in the correct position for qwerty two handed typing skills.

The last component that you will need to locate is the pointing device. This is commonly a mouse or sometime a trackball device. Depending on if you are right handed or left handed place the pointing device just left of the keyboard if you are left handed or on the right side of the keyboard if you are right handed. The pointing device allows you to direct the cursor at different positions in the screen so having it on the side of your dominant hand will allow you to easily manipulate the cursor while sitting at an optimal position from the computer screen.

Now that you are in good position to use the computer let’s get started in operating your computer.

Spreadsheets are commonly used tools in business. Their main function is to group and label data to show information in an easy to understand format. When it comes to data, it is often harder to write out in words what a simple spreadsheet can show easily through its table structure.

Spreadsheets are made up of rows of data that are labeled from left to right and also labeled up and down. It is common for the left to right columns to be labeled by the alphabet while the up and down columns labeled with numbers. (Please see example below)

Basic Spread Sheet

One common use for spreadsheet is to show the income and expenses of a project or business. This will be the example we use for our spreadsheet today.

Step 1

Let’s start by labeling some categories in the A, B, and C columns of the spreadsheet. We will label them as Item, Income, and Expenses. We can achieve this by clicking on the cell desired and then typing our words directly in the cell. When you are done with this step it should look something like this.

Step 2

Next we will add some details to our spreadsheet. In cell A2 let’s add a detail item for some income. We will call it Invoice 101 to signify that we were paid on invoice 101 and we are recording in our spreadsheet. In the income column B2 let’s type in 550.00 to represent that the customer paid $550.00 for our services. The spreadsheet should now look something like this.

Step 2

Step 3

Now let’s record some expenses for our spreadsheet. In cell A3 let’s add the item named Supplies to signify that we bought some office supplies for the month. For the amount of expenses let’s type in -100 into the expense column C2. The spreadsheet should now look something like this.

Step 3

Step 4

Now we might want to know what the result of our income and our expenses are for this month at this point. In the spreadsheet we can add a total column that will add these two values together to give us the running total of our account to this point in time. Let’s add the text “Total” into cell A5 to show that is will be our result of income after expenses. Now let’s create the actual math to calculate the total of the account. To do this click on cell C5 and enter the “=” operator. This tells the spreadsheet that we will be starting some math. Next click on the B2 Income column notice that the spreadsheet shows B2 after the equals sign. Now continue and type the “+” operator. This tells the spreadsheet that we are going to add two things together. In this case, we will be adding two cells together to get the account balance. So with the B2 and + in our spreadsheet click on cell C3 to finish our equation and factor in the expenses. Your spreadsheet should look something like this.

Step 4

Step 5

Now hit the enter key to show the result. The spreadsheet should now show the product of your income with your expenses for a total of 450.

Step 5

This is just a simple example of how to do a spreadsheet for accounting or book keeping purposes. Other ways you can use spreadsheets is for inventory or advance uses like data look-ups and charting. We will look to cover some of those topics at a later time.

Social media is a big part of a lot of peoples lives today. Places like MySpace and Facebook have become well accepted as every day household names and part of everyday life. However, we  need to take responsibility for our own security and privacy.

These sites and services have helped me and millions of others reconnect with old friends and colleagues but they also ask for insane amounts of private information. Every little bit of information they ask for many users willingly offer up with little to no thought. We all need to realize that we are not just sharing this information with friends but we are willingly offering this information to a multinational company.

Companies are not bound by our moral codes in many cases  they operate on their own imposed standards. Let’s put it this way if you asked a criminal what minor information would help them be better at their “job” I bet most of what they ask for is willingly posted on social sites.

In a conference, developers from Apple shared their vision that you identity would be you phone. Medical, dental, mental, social security, banking and everything else would be on your phone. In the IT world this is known as centralized data. For you this means one source to hack into to get ALL your information and most of us are giving it up freely.

The solution? Don’t post everything. Separate your data. Put pictures in flikr or some other site. Keep your information to yourself. Just beacuse you can fill it out doesn’t mean you should.

The windows operating system is an ever changing environment. As with all software, with each release new additions, improvements, and removing unnecessary features are a natural progression in the life cycle of a software program.

It can sometimes seem daunting to try and keep up with all the changes that happen within the computing environment. The good news is that most programs keep the basics consistent to help people use the software as soon as they get a hold of it.

One of these features is the toolbar at the top of the programs. The main tool bar will often contain several tabs that offer different features of the program. One can usually either use the mouse to click on the tab to access the features or in most cases you can also use the ALT key to activate the tool bar.

Once the tool bar is activated via the ALT key the arrow keys can be used to move through the tabs. Using the right arrow will move the tab focus one tab to the right and consequently using the left arrow will change the focus to the left.

This feature can often save you time by limiting the amount of time your hands need to be away from the keyboard. This method also uses less hand eye coordination such that if you know the keystrokes by memory you can accomplish tasks just as easily as typing. The next time you use Work or Excel be sure to play around with using the ALT key and have some fun playing with this feature.

I was working with dates in Excel today. The spreadsheet needed dates for the next three months. We also found that the actual day of week would also be useful.

If you have worked with excel you know that it will convert numbers to dates pretty readily. You can even just type the month and day and it will change it to a date. (10-1 for Oct 1st), but how do you get the day of the week? How does one know if the day is Tuesday or say Friday?

There is a very simple function in excel that will do this for you. You can use the TEXT() function.

For example:
In the desired cell type…. =TEXT(cellreference,’dddd’)
This tells Excel to convert to text with ‘dddd’ indicating to return alpha characters rather than numbers.

Till next time… Have a great day!

Okay people.  Here are a few rules of engagement for comments.

1. ACTUALLY, READ THE POST IF YOU EXPECT TO GET APPROVED.
2. Your site should actually load to be approved.
3. Related websites take priority.
4. More than one link will be marked as spam.
5. I will and do blacklist.

For the record, blink links to your account that are not related count against you in SEO terms.

So you spammers are really only hurting yourselves.

Have a nice day.

How many software developers does it take to code something?
Sounds like a bad joke doesn’t it? Well, in many ways it IS a very bad JOKE!

Listen… people… talking about working IS NOT WORKING! If you are a software developer and you spend more than 30 minutes a day in someone else cubical or office talking about how we “should” code things. You are not working… period. You should be reprimanded for wasting company time. Unless you are a project lead, or a on the project management team, you should be putting your head down and generating quality code for people to use and not talking about coding with your peers.

Just because you think you should be in a leadership position doesn’t mean that you get to act like one and “practice” leadership on your less knowledgeable peers.

If you were truly fit to be a lead then they would have already put you in that position. Leadership is not about how quickly you can drop acronyms, how much you can obfuscate your code, or if you are using the latest “coolest” MVC.

Here is a little hint… if you are a developer learning a new technology and you have a peer sitting in your cube telling you what to type and how to code then he/she is not really teaching you. They are trying to make you dependent upon them to do your work. You need to ask them very specific questions about where you need help and the, *** ask them to leave while you try their suggestions and  your own theories***.

You will learn more by trial and error on your own than under duress from a more peer. Plus, you’re better off without their griping and erudite behavior.

Last point… then I will end my rant. Management people (if you are reading this) you need to recognize this behavior and deal with it immediately. You are allowing two full time high wage earners to waste company time. Case in point, would you pay two doctors to sit in a cube and talk about diagnosing your problem? I would hope note.

If you allow this type of behavior you must recognize that you are allowing to Full Time Employees to work on one problem. You could and should be getting twice the production that you are currently getting. If they feel the developers need to talk about how things “should” be done grab the lead developer and project management and make them explain what they plan to do in one short meeting.

Be aware: Developers WILL try and steer a project left or right so that they can use the latest buzz word technologies and add them to their resume. The problem is that in most cases this does NOT add any value to the business or the application just their egos.

As a developer, I often take for granted the basic computer skills. Even as
I write this entry I am using short cut keys for editing and moving about
the text content. I am using a text editor rather than a word processor, and
I know how to fix any formatting errors that might arise from posting.

So as a self introspective experiment I am going to try and list different
skills that I use every day to help with my experience with computers.

1. Operating System short-cut keys – window key, shift-key combinations,
function keys
2. Mouse functions – right click options and double-clicking for different
situations
3. Software specific short-cut keys – calling the search/find through
keyboard keys, maximizing and minimizing windows, moving from application to
application without the mouse

It is an interesting exercise to self-examine ones computer skills however I
would encourage everyone to try this exercise. If there is something that I
have listed that you are not familiar with. Visit us again later as I will
write articles on these skills in the future. If you have others that you
use that you would like to share please feel free to post a comment and let
us know.