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OK it has been a while. I have been doing a bunch of the normal consulting thing these past few months. Helping customers better understand how to configure their Project Server environments around their business processes (and often helping them understand how their business processes might be changed to take better advantage of features.) I have also been doing some side-work projects. Working again on putting more meat on the bones for a framework for iterative designbuild loops for early rolloutproof of concept phases in Project Server deployments. The early stages of an addin for Project Server that would allow administrators to control which projects a security category allowed access to based on some defined set of project level criteria. 1 is something that has been kicking around for a long time and I hope to get moving on soon. 2 is much more recent and I think also more exciting (which means it will likely get done first.) It would allow you to have a category that would give permissions to projects based on the value in a project level custom field rather than just on relationships to the project. Email me your thoughts on either of these if you care to share them. I will be better about updating. 🙂 Technorati Tags: Project Server

I saw this post at Learning about Lean via Frank's Focused Performance blog and it speaks well about the issues we all face as consumers of data and information. But more importantly it made me think about WIP for the first time since I was doing process and project management work at Boeing in 1996-1997. I thought a lot about it then when I was dealing with manufacturing but not so much since then as I have been doing 'info work.' The thing it made me to tonight was to think about not just my inbox (as Joe Ely mentions directly) but also about the partly finished “things” I have laying around and the creative price of not having all of them done. It made me think about the partly finished specs for Project Server addin's that I had to put aside for other more pressing commitments and it made me think about the half incubated ideas for papers and blog posts that I scrawled down when I was on a plane or in a meeting and an idea hit me but I had no time for finishing it out. I think the real price is that as I go back over some notebooks and OneNote sections that hold these seeds I am struck by how complete I remember the thought being when I made the note and how incomplete I think they are NOW. I have lost something between then and now. I'm pretty sure I can get it back but how long am I going to have to think about each of these ideas to get back to where I was 2 months ago? So what I took from Joe's post (even though it was not what he wrote about exactly) was that I need to do a better job of documenting what I know will become long term on-hold WIP so that when I get the chance to get back to it I will not have to spend hours rethinking it to get back on track with it. You all have these on-hold projects sitting around in notebooks and in Word documents. How many of them are in a state where you could pick them up right now and start working on them without a lot of re-publishing and rethinking? Think about it.

Chris Boyd and Brian Smith do it again. Check here for two cool sample applications, one for showing how to create, read and update custom fields via the PSI and another used for reading custom field data and then publishing projects, again via the PSI. Check here for good info about OLAP cubes, Data Analysis (timeouts, plan guides and the tempdb)

The haters should note the date please. 🙂 This TechNet article covers the how to (Read it before you update): https://technet2.microsoft.com/Office/en-us/library/c3b86049-7cba-4b9c-8335-e37fb6e7518a1033.mspx?mfr=true Here is WSS SP1: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4191A531-A2E9-45E4-B71E-5B0B17108BD2&displaylang=en Here is Office Servers SP1 (which includes Project Server and Office SharePoint Server): https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad59175c-ad6a-4027-8c2f-db25322f791b&DisplayLang=en Here is Project 2007 SP1: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=CEC3E1E2-D802-4A03-BC78-05C48472559B&displayLang=en Here is the Project Server MUI SP1: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D322BA67-B199-4503-8AFF-6813B320D708&displaylang=en Here is the Office Server MUI SP1: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=3A6C26FD-0BEB-40D5-8CBA-15164FAAB150&displaylang=en And for Good Measure here is the Office 2007 SP1 download: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9EC51594-992C-4165-A997-25DA01F388F5&displaylang=en

I have seen these posts in a few places so here is mine. Here is a list of everything in my Laptop bag: Timbuk2 Large padded laptop bag . There are two sizes, get the bigger one. I have also noticed that Timbuk2 started making a version of this bag out of a lessor material. Mine has a backing on the inside of the outer material that is waterproof. The new ones do not have this. Not sure it matters since I’m not planning on getting it wet. 🙂 Great bag! Holds everything and is tough. I have had this bag almost a year and it looks brand new! Toshiba M5 Spare laptop battery iGo charger for laptop and phone Cingular 8525 Phone (If Cingular reads this PLEASE release the upgrade to 6.0. PLEASE!!!) Zune for music IPod 30gig Video for Video (when the Zune lets you get TV shows I will can my IPod) Cannon Powershot SD30 camera GPS sensor for Streets and Trips Bag with about 10 different USB cables (Ipod, Zune, Phone, etc) plus small screwdrivers, etc Microsoft LifeCam NX-6000 . Great if you are on the road and have small kids. Video chat through Live Messenger is not the same as being home but it helps my daughter! Microsoft LifeChat ZX-6000 Wireless headset. 80 gig USB hard drive (Music, Document backups, etc) 320 gig USB hard drive (Virtual machine library, full machine backups) 4gig USB Flash Drive 10 foot Network cable Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 . CoolestGeekiest mouse EVER. Bluetooth so you don’t need to waste a USB slot on it. Just the right size and if you press a button and turn it over it has PowerPoint slide controls and a laser pointer! Compact USB hub Ziploc with tiny packets of decongestant, Ibuprofen, etc) Small Moleskine notebook Large quad rules Moleskine notebook One novel (Right now it is an old Horatio Hornblower), one non-fiction book (Right now it is Halberstam’s Best and the Brightest) Travel Document holder for tickets, receipts and the like CPR Kit (gloves and and mouth to mouth mask) (because you never know when you might need it)

When I first tried Live Writer a while back it was ‘OK’ but just ‘OK’. It did most of the things that other posting apps did but it did not blow me away. I just downloaded it today after being reminded about it in Christophe’s post today. Wow. They did a lot of work on this application. One of the things I like the best is that it has a Web Layout view that obviously goes up to your provider and gets your template layout and sizes the editing page to match the settings of your blog. It also does the things you would expect like grabbing your categories and doing things like spell check and other formatting. It also does a good job of making image insertions easy. It has built in defaults for auto-thumbnailing your images but also makes it easy to save your preferences as the new default. It also provides an addin model so you can extend the functionality of the tool. Addins include adding custom “BlogThis” extensions to various browsers (as you would expect) but also to tools like Visual Studio (making it easier to blog your code directly from VS.) Others include an addin that makes it easy to post links to items in SkyDrive , insert streaming Sliverlight applications or link to Flickr pages. Nice Work Team! Check out the Writer Team Blog for the scoop .

Some people asked about the Man Cage. Here it is in full context. You can see that it goes all the way up the first flight. The last thing you want is bears on the roof! This picture also shows how the building is up on pilings so there is a lot of room under the building where someone on the stairs cannot see.