Top Posts
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Why Nobody Can Copy Apple
Horace Dediu has written another brilliant piece titled...
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The Job Decision Matrix
A Job Decision Matrix will help identify what is actual...
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Path To Green
A Path To Green (PTG) is a clear, crisp, and complete s...
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You are Thinking of Your Career Trajectory Wrong
Most people think about their career trajectory as bein...
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The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
Always have a plan. Always. A great, simple, framework...
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STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory
My computer bluescreened with a STOP 0xC2, BAD_POOL_CAL...
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Merit Badges – A Mental Model for Success
The concept of a Merit Badge comes from the Boy Scouts...
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Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit
Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit Leaders are obligate...
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Tenets
Tenets are a few carefully articulated guiding principl...
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Work Backwards From The Customer
At the 1996 Microsoft Professional Developer Conference...
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Customer, Business, Technology, Organization (CBTO)
CBTO = Customer + Business + Technology + Organization
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Retail Pricing, Markup, and Margins
Tom’s Hardware is generally really solid. But they shou...
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One-Way and Two-Way Doors
Effective decision-making starts with understanding; in...
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Paying Developers is A Bad Idea
The companies that make the most profit are those who b...
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Be a Great Reader
When an organization has a culture where the written wo...
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Author Archives: tig
After 21 Years: Goodbye Microsoft
Today I announced that after 21 years I am leaving Microsoft to build a new company. I’m not yet ready to disclose details about the new venture but I can say I will be staying in the Seattle area to build it. It has to do with sports, advertising, mobile, social-networking, and, of course, the cloud. I’m insanely excited to get started. Subscribe here or follow me on twitter if you want to hear more …Continue reading
90% of the Decisions You Make Don’t Matter
In my post The 5 Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor, I noted that “90% of the decisions you make don’t matter; real success comes in being able to identify the 10% that do and focus on those.” The best, most effective leaders can free their teams up to get stuff done by making lots of decisions quickly and enabling those decisions to stick. We all regularly hear criticisms of ineffective leadership voiced as “Decisions …Continue reading
June 22, 1991
On this day 20 years ago I married my lovely bride Julie in Golden, CO. It’s been an amazing ride so far and I am excited for what the next 20 years bring. I love you Julie!
Some of my Favorite Quotes
“A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others.” – Hans Selye “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” – Alan Perlis “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus “No matter where you go, there you are.” – BB …Continue reading
From the Archives: STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory
In 2004 one of my computers had a bluescreen with a STOP 0xC2, BAD_POOL_CALLER fault. It turns out it was a bad memory chip. I wrote a blog post about it here: STOP 0xC2 aka BAD_POOL_CALLER Blue Screen and bad memory It is amazing to me that after all this time, my blog post remains the top hit on both Bing and Google for this blue screen. If I had a nickel…
The 5Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
Always have a plan. Always. A great, simple, framework for any plan is the 5Ps: Purpose, Principles, Priorities, People, and Plan. This framework applies to software development projects, job searches, building a garden, or a phase in your life. I have personally found the 5Ps a useful tool for small projects (e.g. prepping for a VC demo/presentation) as well as large-scale projects that include 1,000s of people. The 5Ps : Purpose, Principles, Priorities, People, and …Continue reading
Griot’s 3” Orbital Polishers Compared
I recently decided I needed a 3” orbital polisher to compliment my Flex 3401 6” Random Orbital polisher that I’ve used for years when polishing the finish on cars. I couldn’t decide whether to get the Griot’s 3” Random Orbital (which is electric) or the Griot’s 3” Pneumatic Orbital (which is air powered). So I ordered both. Griot’s fantastic customer service and return policy made this decision easy. This post provides a comparison of the …Continue reading
Charles E “Ted” Kindel 1925-1990
I was communicating with another branch of the “Kindel Family” as a result of the post I made about the Kindel Furniture Factory fire several weeks ago. As a result I looked through some old files and found a copy of the article that was written about my father’s death in 1990. Since tomorrow (June 7) is the anniversary of his death, I thought it would be a useful tribute to post the text of …Continue reading
The House Kindel Built Burns Down
My great grandfather, Charles J. “CJ” Kindel, founded the Denver Bedding Company in 1900. He sold that company and founded the CJ Kindel Bedding Company in St. Louis in 1904. In 1912 ground breaking began on a new factory focused on wood working in Grand Rapids, MI. My grandfather (Charles M. “CM” Kindel) and great-uncle (Thomas Kindel) ran the company through the ‘60s selling our family’s share in 1964. My father worked for the company …Continue reading
Now using WordPress
This blog is now running on WordPress. I’ve been meaning to move from Community Server (hosted on a server in my house) to something more modern & flexible (and hosted in the cloud) for ages. The desire to dig into the latest in Linux and cloud hosting finally drove me to actually do it. I decided to force myself to use no Microsoft technologies for this project. Step one was updating my Ubuntu Linux desktop …Continue reading
Amazon.com: Shockingly Great Customer Service
It’s no secret that I love pretty much everything Amazon.com does. You may think that this is just because they named their Kindle book reader after me, but it’s really because they do such a damn good job of focusing on the customer. Case in point: A month ago, as soon as the new Portal 2 game was available for pre-order on Amazon.com, I placed and order (using my Prime member ship which gets me …Continue reading
BendPak: Shockingly Great Customer Service
A while ago I posted about how much I love Amazon.com’s customer service and I frequently tweet about great service I receive when out and about. Great customer service should be the norm, but sadly that does not seem to be the case. So when I encounter Shockingly Great Customer Service I want to scream from the mountain tops. BendPak, a manufacturer and distributor of automotive shop equipment such as car lifts, wheel balancers, and …Continue reading
Behind the Code
The Microsoft Channel 9 Behind the Code series is managed by the Technical Community Network group within Microsoft and is intended to capture the stories of Microsoft’s most influential technical employees. Last fall I was honored to be invited to do an interview for Behind the Code and that interview was recently published. I think it turned out pretty well and represents my story nicely. So far it is the highest rated Behind the Code …Continue reading
Books I read in 2010
Lame that I have not posted anything since last year’s post on the books I read in 2009. But whatever… Below are the books I read in 2010. I’m posting this mostly for my own documentary benefit. Maybe you’ll find it useful and find some gems to read. Title Author My Rating Comments Consider Phlebas Banks, Iain M. ***** Matter Banks, Iain M. ***** Surface Detail Banks, Iain M. ***** The Player …Continue reading
Books I read in 2009
Mostly writing this for my own (future) benefit… These are the books I read in 2009 with ratings/categorization: Most were read on my Amazon Kindle (some on the DX, which I review here, others on my Kindle 2). ***** means loved it. * means I hated it. Science Fiction – By Iain M. Banks (Blog post on Iain M. Banks): Matter (****) Transition (****) Look to Windward (*****) Use of Weapons (*****) Against a Dark …Continue reading
Book: The Dead Hand – The Untold Story of the Cold War…
I haven’t posted a book review in a while. Not because I haven’t been reading, just because I’ve been lazy. My most recent book was The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman. I had heard about this book in a mention on a National People’s Radio story about Ronald Reagan. In that story the book was presented as a story about Reagan and …Continue reading
Back on Twitter
On April 4, 2007 I got on twitter to check it out. I didn’t see the value and bailed. Then in June of 2008 I gave it another try. At that time I was using @ckindel and I bounced between it being private and public. My use of twitter finally settled into one where I was only tweeting between a small (15-20) group of pretty close friends who I knew I could trust. We use …Continue reading
Longer battery life for the Kindle 2
Today Amazon announced that they have released a firmware update for the Kindle 2 that dramatically increases battery life (from a perfectly fine 4 days to 7 days, even with wireless turned on). They also added native PDF support to the Kindle 2 (this was only previously available on the Kindle DX). I continue to us my Kindles almost all the time. Of all my electronic devices the Kindle remains the one I am the …Continue reading
In 50 words or less: What the 2nd Amendment Means to you
Gun Digest ran an essay contest in 1964: In 50 words or less write what the Right to Bear Arms means to you. The winner would get an all expense paid hunting safari to Africa. I had known my father (Charles E. “Ted” Kindel) had won this contest when I was a kid but didn’t really know the details. All the family knew was that it was an essay contest in “some gun magazine”, that …Continue reading
Porsche 911 Gauge Removal
My 1998 Porsche 911 Carrera has several unique factory options including sunroof-delete and 15” Fuchs (most ‘88s were ordered with 16” Fuchs). When I purchased it in 1997 I needed to replace the tires and because I was autocrossing I appreciated the slightly lower gearing provided by the 205/55R15 (F) and 225/50R15 (R) that were recommended to me. In the end I actually really liked the look of these slightly lower profile tires as well. …Continue reading
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