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Friday 12 September 2008

Newsletter Issue 154, September 2008



Sam Young Newsletter


Issue 154, September 2008

Hi guys,

A new Australian study has been released on Careers and Men in Midlife. Read on below.

If you are working with multiple PC's, then Synergy Freeware may be for you. 


Don't forget, if you want to be taken off my mailing list, click here to send me a reply e-mail and I will remove your name.



Careers & Men in Midlife



A new Australian study by Dr Rob Brandenburg and Associate Professor Kurt Lushington, Careers and Men in Midlife, explores the extent to which personality type may influence the career experience of midlife men has been released, and can now be viewed on line (address at the bottom of this article).

Based on Jungian (Myers-Briggs Type re Indicator®) personality preference, ten Intuitive-Feeling men were were compared with ten Sensing-Thinking males (40-55 years). As many of you will know, MBTI theory focuses on two processes, Perception and Judgement.

  • Perception is the process of gathering information, either by way of the senses or through intuition.
    • Sensing (S) refers to the perception of information that is observable by way of the five senses - those with an S preference tend to place an emphasis on concrete data, immediate experiences and practicality.
    • Intuition (N) refers to perception of information as ideas and concepts - those with an N preference tend to focus on connections, possibilities, patterns and meaning (McGuiness 2004; Myers et al 1998).
  • Judgement refers to how information is processed to come to conclusions and make decisions about what has been perceived.
    • Thinking (T) function uses logic and analysis and tends to be objective and impersonal in applying personal reason to a decision.  Those with a T preference tend to base decisions on objectivity and laws/principles related to objects and processes
    • Feeling (F) function focuses on values and relationships and is a more subjective decision-making process (Myers, McCauley, Quenk and Hammer 1998). Those with a F preference tend to make decisions by considering what is the most important for people (McGuiness 2004, Myers et al 1998).

Intuitive-Feelers (NFs), when compared to Sensing-Thinkers (STs), were more likely to report fulfilling career dreams held as young men, aspire to work roles which had greater self-determination/autonomy and provided greater opportunities to coach/mentor others, were less likely to seek a change of occupation but reacted with greater disillusionment/cynicism to job loss.

However, despite differences, the majority in both groups were positive about work in midlife which was attributed to greater family/community engagement, career mastery and having achieved an alignment of personal and organisational values.

The findings support the hypothesis that personality type does influence the male experience of career in midlife. In regard to career dreams and aspirations, NFs were generally looking to remain in helping related work roles while STs were generally looking to shift from business related to helping occupations.

With the looming departure from the labour market of increasing numbers of ageing baby boomers, proactive career development strategies that encompass an awareness of compass personality type can assist in retaining and developing midlife employees.

The group conducting this study are considering completing a more comprehensive study, as they felt a limitation was that only two MBTI subtypes were compared. In future studies it may be useful to examine other MBTI pairings or whole preferences.

As an NT, I would find that very interesting!


 



Synergy Freeware



Freeware lets two PCs share a keyboard and mouse

Ian "Gizmo" Richards, tech-writer-extraordinaire for Window's Secret's Newsletter, usually works on two PCs simultaneously, their screens stacked one above each other.

Gizmo finds this a very productive arrangement: while one machine is tied up doing something, he uses the other to carry on working. He controls both PCs by a single keyboard and mouse, using an open-source freeware programme called Synergy.

Synergy is like an electronic keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switch. With a KVM, you swap your keyboard and mouse from one PC to the other by manually turning a switch. With Synergy, you just move your mouse to switch control between the two systems.

If Gizmo is using his laptop, he moves the mouse to the top of the laptop screen, and the cursor miraculously appears on the monitor mounted above that belongs to the second PC. Automatically, the laptop mouse and keyboard are connected to his second PC. Synergy senses when the cursor is at the screen edge and switches the mouse and keyboard electronically, using his LAN to make the connection. Synergy also allows him to cut and paste between PCs, synchronises screensavers and can even sync screen-locking of both PCs.

In Gizmo's words "Synergy is a true freeware gem". Get it at http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/



Have Office Ignore Internet Addresses



How many times have you had MS Office applications stop at EVERY email address in your document when you are running a spell check? If your documents contain e-mail addresses or URLs, the spell checker will stop at every one. But you can stop this by simply telling Office to ignore Internet addresses as follows:

1. From the Tools menu, choose Options.

2. Click the Spelling & Grammar tab.

3. Check the Ignore Internet And File Addresses option.

4. Click OK.

 

If you’re using Office 2007, do the following:

1. Click the Office button and then click Word Options (or whatever application you’re using).

2. Select Proofing in the left pane.

3. Check Ignore Internet And File Addresses.

4. Click OK. This permanent change affects all documents.

 



TLAs for SMEs



Here are this newsletter's TLA for you:

  • Windows SharePoint Services, WSS or SPS. A portal-based platform for creating, managing and sharing documents and Web services on an intranet. Free with every Windows Server 2003, part of the Office 2003 productivity suite, WSS is often confused with Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), a stand-alone server product with enhanced features, including enterprise content management and enterprise search.


Please feel free to email me with any TLAs that you want to get the bottom (meaning!) of.



Tips, Short+Hot Keys

And picking up once more where we left off, we look at all you can do with Alt and letters. This time it's P:

  • Word "Switch to page layout view while working" Alt & Ctrl & P
  • Excel "Move the selected field into the Page area in PivotTables or Open the Outlook Message Options dialog box (View menu, Options command in a message)" Alt & P
  • IE "Set printing options and print the page" Alt & P
  • Outlook "Print from Print Preview window" Alt & P
  • Word "Open Microsoft Outlook Message Options dialog box when sending an E-Mail" Alt & P
  • Word "Insert a Page Number field to a document" Alt & Shift & P
  • PowerPoint "Print a presentation or the current Help topic or redisplay hidden pointer and/or change the pointer to a pen" Ctrl & P
  • Access, Excel, Frontpage, IE, Publisher, Outlook, Windows, Word  "Display the Print dialog box" Ctrl & P
  • Publisher "Change text size" Ctrl & Shift & P 



Hot Linx

Tune into Eddie Izzard on YouTube for a session poking the borax at wars, flags and the choices we make at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAOLOGGftTY&feature=related

Those of you wanting the customised experience with your junk food can go to http://www.mymms.com/ and have a custom message, your photo or whatever your heart desires - in mono-chrome - printed on those ghastly plastic-tasting m&ms

If you are wanting to edit photographs but don't have the software, or if you have great software but don't know how to use it, then check out http://www.gimp.org/. There are great tutorials that show you all the tools, while the online software is powerful enough to meet most people's needs.

For those of you who are wanting to download a clip from YouTube but are unable to make it work, check out http://www.splandoo.com/. All you do is cut and past the URL into the field and "Hey Presto!" you are downloading. Ideal for my sports marketing class - critiquing social marketing ads! You may need to download a player (go to http://www.download.com/3055-2139_4-10814415.html?tag=pdl-redir for that)



                                Catch you again soon!! E-mail your suggestions to me here

3 comments :

  1. I still love this. Tres flash indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was looking for a post on this and found your blog on Google.

    Thanks so much! I have shared it on my Facebook and will
    be linking to it from my blog post that I am hosting.
    It is rather very nicely written.

    ReplyDelete

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