Kolz Blog

The Goal

Jim Clark recently put together an excellent series of articles describing some of the steps that Microsoft could take to educate the Average Joe about Windows Media Center and expand the market for WMC. Obviously, those of us spending our days perusing sites like We Got Served would not be the target of such an effort, but our lives are full of these Average Joes. Over the next several weeks I am going to be sharing my experiences as I essentially build a network from the ground up, tailored to implementing Windows Home Server and Windows Media Center together.

My ultimate goal in sharing my experiences with you is to provide insight into how you can maximize Windows Media Center and Windows Home Server in an environment of novice users. There should be points of interest along the way for users of all backgrounds though. Being a bit of nerd, I will be building or retrofitting all of the systems myself and sharing tips on what kind of hardware to select, but will also be providing tips on what to look for in retail systems for those WGS readers not interested in building their own systems. I will be detailing some of the specific software and hardware accessories that I recommend for maximizing ease-of-use and family life integration. I will also be extensively exploring how to use WMC in a home theater PC, or HTPC, and the pros and cons of dedicating a PC to the living room versus using Media Center Extenders throughout the house. Finally, I will be discussing some of the considerations that go into using Windows Media Center in a multi-PC environment and how to integrate multiple WMC machines, extenders, and WHS in a cohesive way that will remain transparent and user-friendly for even the least savvy of computer users.

The Ad-hoc Network

The issues involved in deploying Windows Media Center for novice users are nothing new for me, but I want to give some background into why I am going to explore this topic with you, the reader, through the lens of an entire network deployment. After all, I do not expect that most readers will be interested in undertaking quite such an extensive action simply to roll out WMC or WHS. However, if the following situation sounds familiar, you might just change your mind.

My family’s first Media Center PC was an HTPC that I put together shortly after MCE 2005 became available. It was such a success that it quickly supplanted our cable company’s DVR. This HTPC remained the centerpiece of our entertainment center for more than a year. It wasn’t always an easy arrangement. Being the only Media Center system in the house, it was also my experimental testing grounds for new plug-ins, registry hacks, and all around tech tinkering. While I learned a lot from this experimentation, the resulting instabilities, incompatibilities, and the occasional borked system tried my wife’s patience.

After more than a year of this arrangement, our home network went through an unparalleled round of expansion. We went from having two PCs, the family PC and the HTPC, to having four PCs, an Xbox 360, a laptop, and a NAS over the course of a year. PCs got shuffled from room to room as I attempted to give each family member their own PC, began migrating to Windows Vista, and switched to using the Media Center Extender in the Xbox 360 instead of dedicating a PC for use as an HTPC. The result of all this movement has been a situation that I am sure many WGS readers have encountered at one point or another: a disorganized mess of a network with inconsistent network setups, out of synch OS installations, and no coherent backup and monitoring strategy.

The plan is to reboot the network. I will start with the networking equipment. My router is failing and I want to make the jump to gigabit to take advantage of the Cat 6 cable I ran through the house a couple of years ago. It is overkill, but that never stopped me before. Next up comes the WHS machine to replace the NAS. I have been meaning to build a WHS since it came out, but have found one reason or another to put it off. Joining the team here at WGS and the recent release of Power Pack 1 means I have no excuses left. Tune in next time to learn more about how I went about building this server, prepped the new network, and prepared the existing machines for the new network.

• Salutations!
• Integrating Windows Home Server with Windows Media Center
• Wanted: Windows Media Center & Digital Media News Writers
• Media Center Integration With Windows Home Server - Your Ideas?
• Hello from Across The Pond

A new Windows Home Server Add-in website called whsaddins.com has come online that has nothing but a list of add-ins available for Windows Home Server. It’s pretty cool so check it out.

Rainald Tassler, one of OneNote's MVPs, had contacted me a while back asking to have the Table of Contents powertoy tweaked to show a button on the toolbar rather than a text string. The text strings tend to take up too much horizontal space on the toolbar and he wanted to replace it with his own image. Fortunately, there is a way to replace that command in the toolbar without writing code and only tweaking the registry. Here's how:

1. Exit OneNote.
2. First, create the image if you want to replace a string with an image. It needs to be a 16x16 BMP format image.
3. Save it in the same folder as the location into which you installed the addin. For instance, if you installed the addin to c:\program files\ microsoft\on table of content setup, copy your bitmap there. It doesn't really matter where you put it, just make note of where it is.
4. Now it gets a little tricky. Run regedit and open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\OneNote\Addins
5. Highlight the addins key and right click it. Select "Export" and save the file to any location you want. This is now your backup in case the next few steps go awry.
6. You will see a bunch of GUIDS like {806AD7E…} and so on. For the table of contents addin, look for this GUID: {4FE3B6DF-28B8-41d0-A4F5-7010E236B4A2}. Expand its branch
7. On the right, you will see a string entry for "ButtonText" with a value of Table of Contents. Delete that key:

8.  Now add a new string value named "IconPath". For its value, enter the path you copied from step 2 and be sure to add the name of the file. Here's what mine looked like:

9.  Now exit regedit.

10.  Start OneNote. The "Table of Contents" button should be gone and replaced with the icon you created and pointed to!

You can also reverse these steps and make text strings show for any icons you want.

I followed the directions on page 11 of the "How to create toolbar addins for OneNote" PDF to come up with routine. Feel free to browse through it. You can even change which toolbar addin buttons appear on in addition to changing the icon. For instance, the task request addin I wrote for Outlook puts the icon for the addin on the Outlook toolbar (value == 9 in this case).

And if you want to change one of these values and get to step 4 and cannot find the addin you want to modify, be sure to look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Some addins install their keys there so all users can get the same experience.

Have fun tweaking the addins for OneNote!

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

I learned the power of teaching from Jim Rohn. According to him, passing your knowledge to others makes you smarter.

In his audio program The Art of Exceptional Living he says:

“Here’s what sharing does… makes room for more. Key question, if this glass is full of water can it hold any more? If the glass is full of water, can it hold any more? And the answer is yes, yes, if you pour some out. So jot that down. If you want more, you’ve got to pour out what you’ve got, then you have the opportunity to receive more.

Now, unlike the glass that remains the same size when you pour some out; not so in consciousness human beings. Your capacity will increase the more you share. You’ll get bigger and bigger and bigger. “

So in an effort to share, here are two articles I wrote for other sites I thought you might like:

6 Arguments for Embracing Hard Work and Avoiding Laziness at Dumb Little Man

How EOM Makes Your Email More Efficient at Lifehacker

I welcome your raves or criticisms in the comments below…

According to the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, the authors Ori and Rom Brafman claim we all (yes you too) act irrationally at times.  Some of these actions cause more profound pain than others.  But overall, seeking to end irrational behavior is the goal - does the book Sway help end irrational decision making or does it simply chronicle different examples?

In 2000 I bought Cisco stock for, at the time, a low $56 per share.  It was my first chance to dip my big toe in the water of stock market investing.   Almost all analysts said it was a great investment - it had historically proven strong.  With the bonus incentive that Cisco had made many investors millionaires.

But then the Internet bubble burst and Cisco stock started dropping.  It went down to $50 a share.  Then dipped to $45.

I decided if it hit $40 I’d sell.  Well, it breezed right on past $40 to around $37 and I still didn’t sell because I wanted it to go back up to $40 and Then I would sell.  It never hit $40 again.  So I set a new figure.  If it hits $35 a share, then I’ll sell.  Sadly, I still didn’t sell.  I kept riding it out.  How far?  I’ll tell you in a minute.

But first, if you look at the behavior of riding out a dropping stock, you’ll notice it seems like irrational behavior, no?

So why would a seemingly rational person (me) make an irrational decision like ride out a falling stock for his first investment in the market?

Playing not to lose and losing anyway…

Irrational decision making by normal people is what Sway is all about.  After all, my Cisco investment experience went from a simple test of the market to losing my entire leg to the sharks of Wall Street.  And although I haven’t completed the book, the chapter about playing to lose is brilliant.  They call it the “Swamp of Commitment”.  I know that I must be careful with my commitments otherwise I’ll drown in that swamp.  It explains my behavior in my Cisco investment very well.

So why would I have continued such a mistake?  According to the authors Ori and Rom Brafman, in staying with my investment, I was chasing a loss.  Much like a gambler who sits at a blackjack table until the repo man takes his car, I went against everyone telling me to “Brad, for the love of God, get the F— out of CSCO!!”  I simply hoped to recover the money I had lost.  Sadly, I sold out in 2002 for approximately $16 a share.

Before you put on your best Fred Sanford impression and scream “You big dummy!”  I’ll note that playing to lose in this instance isn’t confined only to me or my actions.  It’s quite common.  

• A salesman who takes actions against his company’s best interest so he won’t lose a customer - instead of trying to win more customers. 
• A wife who says things she’ll regret later to her husband so she won’t lose an argument instead of playing to win by formulating a solution where both would win.
• A group of Harvard MBA students who traded $200 for a $20 bill instead of cutting losses at $10 and going home (example from the book.)

Loss Induced Stress

Losing what we have is stressful.  We not only experience a gap, we often have to deal with remorse of losing in the first place.  Friends question us about the loss.  For me, on each successive downturn of the stock, it made the loss greater, thus, the pressure to recover was even more intense.

This leaves me with a number of questions. First and foremost:  If we have a tendency to act irrationally at times in order to avoid loss and we know in hindsight that it’s not good for us, how can we tell ahead of time whether we are acting out of the irrational fear of loss or not?

For instance you know I am persistent, it’s the name of my blog!    I think sticking with things is one of the cornerstones of success. But how do you know what to stick with and what to drop? I am hoping Sway answers these questions for me.

Avoid Playing Not To Lose

Here are five of my ideas based on experience on how to avoid acting irrational out of fear of loss:

1.  Plan before major investments of time, money or energy - Considering an investment in hard earned money?  How about investing months of your life into a new project?  I think it’s crucial that there’ll be a plan in place. How long do you expect to stay in before the payoff happens?  What is an acceptable loss?  Be it time, money or energy, how much can you stand to lose in this investment?  

Example: A lot of people want to start a blog but they give up after the first month. That’s definitely not enough time. But what is enough time?

2.  Set a deadline for progress - Decide on how long you will stick with the investment for it to show a return and stick to it.  On the date of your deadline, take an accounting.  Are you showing the expected progress or is it more or less.  In investing money are you showing more money?  In the investment in a project, is the project close to completion?   

Example:  If you have started a blog and your 6 month deadline was up.  You would want to see the results of your dedication.  Do you see a profit in ad revenue or have you reached your goal 500 readers? Are you at least close to your intended results?

3.  Simply ask yourself if you are taking actions to avoid loss - This step will take some soul searching.  But here is a tip.  Think of all the times you have said “I have to do… or else____ will happen.”   If you are taking a compulsive action to avoid something from happening, you are likely playing to lose.  

Example:  We all have a “whipped” friend or two who jumps through seemingly crazy hoops to please their significant other.  We wonder how a guy can baby talk on the phone 5 times a day.  We wonder how a woman will put up with a cheating husband.  I am sure the thought “I have to do this or they will leave.” has crossed their minds.

4.   If it’s not working, consider restructure - if you created something like a blog for people who like jaywalking and you find that you have absolutely no readers. What else could you spin your idea into that would be successful? Perhaps a blog on walking for fitness would be more successful.  In my stock investing example, I could have traded Cisco stock when it hit the emergency level of $40 for something outside the technology sector.

5.   Give up gracefully and learn - At the end of your deadline, you may decide what you are doing is not working.  Also, there is no satisfactory way to restructure it.  Many business partnerships work this way.  One person wants out the other doesn’t.  One person does the bulk of the work, the other is a lazy jerk.  In the case where your deadline comes and you are showing no progress and it doesn’t appear progress in on the near horizon.  Give up gracefully.  

Giving up gracefully means not beating up on yourself or others.  It also means not giving up on yourself.  Take your loss in stride and learn from it.  While many people will stick with a long failing business because of the fear of loss, they never consider what they gain by letting it go.  They don’t consider the free time they’ll have to do other things.  They don’t consider the money they’ll recover since it’s no longer going into a bottomless pit.  They don’t consider the valuable knowledge that can come from failing at a business.  Only through failing can they know at a reflex level dozens of actions not to take in their next venture.

I’m sure you have some ideas on diagnosing irrational behavior and stopping it.  Please share your ideas in the comments.

For more articles about playing to win subscribe to my RSS Feed.   

Like thousands of people yesterday, I was annoyed and inconvenienced by Gmail’s unexpected 2-hour dirtnap. But, wow. Apparently, it just irrevocably hijacked the whole day for some folks. And even sent a few into a Dark Afternoon of the Soul that most 19th-century Romantic poets would have found a bit histrionic.

Now, as a user, polemicist, and nemesis of Apple’s MobileMe problems, I’m not here to criticize the frustration about a broken cloud service; I know that feeling all too well and have the dents in my wall to prove it. But, I do want to talk about some strategies you can choose to employ whenever a change in access to anything unexpectedly rearranges your day. Because things do break, and there’s no reason you have to break with them.

One of the things that’s most helpful about a system like GTD is the way you learn to think of your work as something that can and should be viewed from multiple angles.

A 90-second GTD primer:

• Project. Any desirable outcome that requires more than one physical action in order to be considered complete.
  • “Present a persuasive pitch to Henderson’s group on 2008-10-03” is a Project.
• Next Action. The next physical activity I could perform that moves a Project nearer to the outcome I want.
  • “Call Henderson to schedule time and location for 10/3 presentation” is the next action for my Project.
• Context. Any limitation, opportunity, tool, or resource that lets me do one of the physical actions in my Project.
  • “@calls” is the Context for my Next Action
  • in this case, “@calls” serves as a list of all items I could do on any Project, so long as I have access to a phone.
  • (See? Different angle.)
• The Four Criteria Model. The notion that Priority is only one of four criteria in deciding what to do at a given moment.
  • The other three are “Time Available,” “Energy Available,” and (you guessed it) “Context.”

Got it? Contexts are a way to horizontally slice across all of your Projects in a way that lets you do what you can do at a given moment — even if it’s not the thing you want to do or most need to do. Because that’s life. And, sometimes, life is a huge dick.

Like a famous religion and a handy bit of Psychology, Getting Things Done acknowledges that, while you have little or no control over the interruptions and unexpected change in your life, you DO have the power to decide what you want to do about it right now. So, while you can’t run your life by Priority alone, you always have plenty to do. If you’ve learned to think in terms of Contexts. Get it?

So if you forgot your phone, skip “@calls,” and move to anything else. Boss out to lunch? Skip “@Boss,” and move to anything else. Internet went down? Skip “@web, “and move to anything else. Gmail is down? Yes! You’ve already guessed it! Skip “@email” and move to anything else. Anything else. Anything. Else.

Sure it’s insanely frustrating and annoying to not have access to something you depend on. And, yes, it’s natural to whine about it and even burn a few cycles on a fast, cathartic tantrum. But, friends, if you’re so mad about an uncontrollable change in your life that it takes you off all your work for half a day, then you’re still playing in the minor leagues of GTD. And you’re not doing yourselves and the people you produce work for any favor in the bargain.

Plan in Projects, work in Contexts, and strive to not let anything stick to you more than you’d like it to.

And, seriously. Guys. When one door closes, just open a freaking window. An hour without email is a great time to dive into sixty guilt-free minutes of writing, reading, or even pencil-sharpening. Work the time.

Because it ends up being a lot more fun and useful to ride the wave than to yell obscenities at it for four hours.

After a recent speaking engagement I did, a woman appoached me and asked my advice on the dilemma of getting qualified referrals for a “difficult to refer” business. She was passing as many referrals as she could to others, but because her business seemed to revolve around such a niche market, the business referrals she was receiving were slim to none, and she was starting to get discouraged.

I referred her to an article I wrote a few years back that addresses this exact predicament; and since I’m sure some of my blog readers are in businesses that are more difficult to refer than others, I thought I’d shed some light on the subject here. For networkers in businesses that don’t easily generate word of mouth, there is hope for your company because there are still ways you can successfully network and build your company’s reputation.

Years ago, I learned that speaking engagements are a great short-term approach to getting new business while you’re working on the long-term process of word of mouth. You see, when you schedule an appointment with someone you think might be interested in what you’re selling, that time you spend with them–usually an hour–is very important. Well, imagine having that same one-hour appointment with 20 to 50 businesspeople in your community, all at the same time! In effect, that’s what you’re doing when you’re asked to make a presentation at various clubs and organizations.

So, how do you go about getting on the calendars of these business and service groups? It isn’t as hard as you might think. With a little creativity, you can put together a presentation that will be informational, educational and even entertaining. Most important, you can get referrals from people to help you get in front of them. Usually program chairs are scrambling to find someone different, engaging and interesting to come in and present to the group. Your job is to help them find you!

To see a sample of the letter I used to send to program chairs when I owned a consulting firm, click here to go to the article. Getting speaking engagements can make your company easy for anyone to refer and it can also get you a lot of clients while you’re busy building your business.

If you have any comments or thoughts on other techniques that are useful for businesses that are “difficult to refer,” I’d love to hear your feedback.

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: srbichara   CC license

Doing more for less. Productivity is always important, but it’s especially critical as the economy toughens.

The 40 year-old Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) is the world’s largest private network of corporations focused on improving workforce productivity.

Although i4cp requires membership to access much of its data, the Trendwatcher archives are free and loaded with useful information.

The research that caught my eye shows that “the most productive organizations furthest outstripped the average ones in four areas:

• Culture: 79% of the most productive organizations say that, to a high or very high degree, the cultures of their organizations help raise employee productivity.

• Leadership: 76% of highly productive companies said that, to a high or very high extent, leadership in their companies raises productivity.

• Employee engagement: 59% of highly productive organizations use engagement practices to a high or very high extent. Engagement means that workers are mentally and emotionally invested in their work and in contributing to their employer’s success.

• Employee health/wellness programs: Although It could be an anomaly, “People like to work for organizations that send strong signals that they care for their employees. These particular programs may be sending those signals more than most other types of initiatives do,”

How does your company rate in each of the four areas?

Your comments—priceless

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"There's a lot of talk these days--especially in business circles--about the importance of innovation. All CEOs worth their low salt lunch want it. And they want it, of course, now. Innovation, they reason, is the competitive edge.

What sparks innovation? People. What sparks people? Inspired ideas that meet a need--whether expressed or unexpressed--ideas with enough mojo to rally, sustained support.

Is there anything a person can do--beyond caffeine, corporate pep talks, or astrology readings--to quicken the appearance of breakthrough ideas? Yes, there is. And it begins with the awareness of where ideas come from in the first place."

If you have ever wondered about creating systems in your business, then consider reading the post I'll introduce now. Rich Schefren, owner of Strategic Profits, had a great post today. He titled it "Anybody Seen the Instruction Mnual?"

Rich talks about how taking the time to outline a process can really help your business (and any other activity you are managing) boom!

He also gives you a link that will allow you to get four fabulous "Cash Maps." A Cash Map is what he calls the process flow that he has developed for different business processes. These flows will "light a light bulb" for you on what your possibilities are.

Check them out and let me know what you think!
To your success,