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It's been a while! I took a couple of years off blogging because I felt I didn't have much left in the way of interesting things to say.  So I've been just been programming, and studying, and learning this and that.  I've been doing a bit of Cloud development, and I taught myself iOS development, and after years in the Google cocoon I poked my head out and learned how people do things in the real world with open source technologies. And lo at long last, after some five years of tinkering, I finally have something kind of interesting to share.  I wrote a game!  Well, to be more precise, I took an old game that I wrote, which I've perhaps mentioned once or twice before, and I turned it into a mobile game, with a Cloud backend. It has been waaaay more work than I expected. Starting with a more-or-less working game, and tweaking it to work on Cloud and mobile -- I mean, come on, how hard can it be, really?  Turns out, yeah, yep, very hard. Stupidly hard. Especially ...

I have always had trouble knowing when to use the words 'then' or 'than'.  Sometimes it is easy to figure out, but other times I struggle.  Well, today I came across a sentence where the person used 'then' and I was pretty sure it should have been 'than', but wasn't positive.  Rhymes like the following have always helped me like: - 30 days have September, April June and November, all the rest have 31 excepting February, which has 28 days clear, 29 days each leap year   - 'i' before 'e'  except after 'c' (but there are exceptions) - or what a school teacher I worked with taught me about when to use 'I' or 'me' in a sentence.  If you can change the sentence around and use 'we' then you would use 'I' in the sentence, if you can change the sentence around and use 'us' then you would use 'me' in the sentence.  For example: "We went to the store."  Because you used 'we...

Do you want to get better at what you do?  Share it!!  You wouldn't believe how much I learn each time I give a minute-taking or travel webinar.  Because I am giving the webinar I have to review the material and make sure I know my stuff.  The audience will certainly know if I don't.  The same can apply in your workplace.  If there is sharing of information among the admins, then we can learn from each other and we all grow.  You can do it formally in a teaching setting or informally talking to each other at a team meeting.  Some things that the more experienced admins could teach would be minute-taking, travel arrangements, meeting scheduling, event planning and organizing your boss.  Some of the younger workers could teach us new tricks with technology to do all of the above.  The next time you figure out how to do something, send an email to your team and share it.  They might already know, but then again it m...

Being an Executive Assistant is more than just a title.  When you get to this level it is expected you will take on leadership responsibilities.  I am in an Administrative Assistant role again and am really enjoying it, but having just finished my career as an Executive Assistant, I am appreciating the work that they do. Now that I am looking at it from an Administrative Assistant's perspective, I see the EA role as being someone to look up to and seek guidance from.  It should be someone who has experience and knows their way around an office.  The person should also have initiative and be an ideas person.  When I was an EA I loved coming up with new ideas, but I also had to listen to what others on the team thought because together we came up with the best ideas. Some things that an EA can do to show leadership: chairing (or starting) an admin team planning for and organizing a schedule for replacements when other administrative s...

In preparation for the AdminPro Forum on June 15-17, 2016 in Orlando, Florida, here is an article with some Question and Answers about Minute taking .  For more information on AdminPro Forum 2016, please click on the website  and if you are able to join us, please register at this link .  I hope to see you there!  

When learning something new it is usually the little things that can seem overwhelming.  I just learnt a new program to search patient names for information and medical records.  I recall the person telling me how to use the program and it seemed very complicated: Log in, enter your password, press F1 if you want to do this, F2 if you want to do that.  When you get to this screen, look on the right-hand side and press F11 ...  You can see what I mean.  I thought I was never going to get it as there seemed to be just too many things to remember.  But after a few times using it, the little things started to become common place.  I didn't need to think about them anymore as they were now part of how I used the program.  What seemed hard at first is now very easy.  And isn't that how it is when starting a new job or taking on a new task?  I only knew one person when I started my new job, but now I am putting names to face...

It's funny how as I have moved through my career from office to office the way I organize myself has changed.  When I was at the law firm, I used tasks extensively and had a wait bin where I put things I was waiting on.  I had a lot of trigger dates I needed to remember such as when to file a statement of defence after receiving a statement of claim, or putting in a reminder when the mandatory mediation kicked in.  It was important that I pay close attention to my task reminders as these dates were critical to the lawyers I worked for.  I had a few mediation and arbitrations to set up and telephone calls to schedule with clients, but the bulk of my work was preparing documents on time and reminding the lawyers I worked for what needed to be done and by when.  I can count on one hand the amount of travel I arranged for them in the 15 years I worked there as their meetings were usually local meetings with clients or short fl...