You are running a new version of VMware Player and try to start an older guest operating system, perhaps one you have not run in a while. You probably need to do two things in your image files, assuming your image name is “guest”:
policy.vm.managedVM = “FALSE”
policy.vm.managedVMTemplate = “TRUE”
policy.vm.mvmtid = “52 d6 6f f9 f3 36 0f 9f-31 da 9f f5 90 7b ce 76”
A topic that comes up often these days is how to motivate remote teams on IT
projects. It comes up because teams consist of personnel that are scattered all
over the country and the globe. Technology enables people to work from home or a
combination of work-home-travel. Sometimes teams are assembled ad-hoc for
specific projects and then the people move on to other projects. Usually teams
have daily duties other than projects. Project managers find it necessary to
keep focus and timing for success. These are some techniques for project
managers to consider for remote teams:
Take the time to meet project team and remote members either on the phone or in
person. It is only natural in one-on-one conversations to learn their
aspirations for work and personal life. This experience will allow you to speak
to them in their language and ultimately save time. Note that project team
meetings need to focus on the project not on individuals, partly to respect
everyone's time.
Do what you do on a project on a consistent basis because more than anything
else people want stability and structure in their lives. People come to expect
your status reports and queries and notifications of looming deadlines.
Project managers should almost never estimate time for others; they should shift
the burden of estimation to those responsible for actually doing the work.This
principle is necessary when the work is to be performed by IT professionals; it
may not apply to all types of projects. The people doing to work take ownership
and responsibility for the estimate and for the work itself. They recognize that
they have only themselves to blame for delays on their part of the project. This
principle may be obvious but it is necessary as a pre-condition to success.
Ideally all estimates come from the functional manager to the project manager.
IT personnel tend to underestimate their work and duration because of complexity
and because any system change must fit into a larger whole. For IT and software
development PERT estimation makes schedules more realistic.
Remote teams need to be aware of the effect they have on the project and the
consequences of not meeting their responsibilities. Project managers should make
team expectations agreed and visible to the larger organization. Project
managers also need to celebrate team contributions. There is nothing like
accountability for motivation on projects. That is why it is so important to
document roles and responsibilities in a project plan. The Wikipedia definition
of accountability is instructive here:
"Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for
actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration,
governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment
position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable
for resulting consequences."
Take advantage of modern communications like videoconferencing, intranet chat
rooms, a virtual team rooms, and systems like SharePoint. Research by the
Project Management Institute has demonstrated that project managers spend 90% of
their time communicating. That is why some project managers come home and do not
want to talk…they are tired of talking. There is nothing more important to
project success than clear concise communications.
In a matrix organization, a worker's allegiance will be oriented primarily to the
functional manager and not to the project manager. As a project manager, who do
you turn to for updates as a project progresses; do you turn to the professional
actually doing the work or to the functional manager. In most cases you want
project updates to come from the functional manager. You may get technical
updates from subject matter experts and others that report to functional
managers; do not get schedule updates from staff unless the functional manager
is not available. Functional managers should report progress weekly in
conference to the larger organization so that they seek to avoid the
embarrassment factor. The organization should have reports weekly from project
managers and functional managers in weekly all hands calls. Project managers can
make projects visible via dashboards on internal websites and via status reports
on emails and via project management software and project servers. The objective
is to maintain a focus on the positive, a focus on the destination.
Organizations do not undertake projects unless the project will remove a pain
point for the organization. Therefore any project is important; there are no
unimportant projects. Yes, some projects have higher priority than others. And
there is a natural best sequence of projects. The point is that remote teams
need to understand the importance of the project to their own financial and
career success. It is the job of the project manager to maintain the vision of
project success for the team by words, tone of voice, and body language. Normal
people want to be associated with successful projects. Successful projects are a
cause for celebration, can provide financial rewards, and at a minimum provide
something to add to a resume. Successful projects attract people to associate
with the project manager; a series of successful projects become the resume of
the organization which in turn attracts people to the organization.
Usually project managers measure success on the three dimensions of schedule,
cost, and quality. However there may be other measures that are important to the
project sponsors and to those affected by the project. For example a series of
changes to an application software may meet schedule, cost, and quality metrics,
but the Information Assurance group has an interest in whether the changes
advance or retard the security posture of the software. So make sure you know
what metrics you will need to monitor. Metrics are a way of keeping score. No
one wants to be deluded that a project is proceeding successfully only to find
that they have been following a mirage.
Some organizations underestimate the value of non-financial rewards to their
staff. A highly regarded award can mean as much to a remote team worker as a
financial incentive because resumes are about status and stronger resumes equal
stronger salaries. Encourage autonomy, an under-rated incentive. Use carrots and
sticks wisely.
Much has been written about the differences between cultures and how management
can get things done internationally. For example, humor can attract or divide
depending on how it is handled. Not all humor is universal. Some humor may be
offensive. Project managers like all managers need to acquire sensitivity to
peoples of other cultures and maintain respect and focus on the project. The
project is universal; not everything else is universal.
If you manage people on different continents and time zones, consider setting up
"office hours" (an opt-in conference call) three times a week for an hour. Thus
you all know that staff can always count on those times – those heartbeats – to
talk with the team and handle any major problems that have come up. Use a chat
room every single day to stay in touch and encourage employees to share any
great content they find. Email is great, but not necessarily for keeping up with
day-to-day operations.
When you have a deadline, be sure everyone knows when it's due in their time zone,
as well as your own. Perhaps "all times Eastern" would work. Make sure your
customers and clients are aware of the time differences, as well, so you can
schedule meetings and launches accordingly.
You're in a meeting or phone call and giving status. Should you give credit for
completed work to the individual or to the team. This can be debated but in
reality it depends. If the work can be attributed to an individual say the name
of the individual person and thank them for their contribution.
Project Managers need to praise people whenever possible, particularly when
"bringing someone back from the brink." If you have a remote worker that is
displaying signs of weakening, you need be firm about it but also let them know
that they are not isolated from the team in spirit even if by location. As they
work their way back you need to take every opportunity to praise them and give
credit on a team conference call.
Go into the Settings, tap on Display, turn off Auto Brightness and then set the brightness that you want. You can comfortably get by on some of the lower settings.
Reduce some of the connections your phone is making. Every time your Galaxy S3 searches for a Wi-Fi network or seeks for GPS, that eats up battery life. This is especially important in areas where there isn’t a stable connection or the GPS signal is weak. In places like this your device will keep searching for a nearby Wi-Fi or GPS signal. This drains the battery very quickly. If you know that you’re not going to need either of these, go into the Settings and turn off Wi-Fi and GPS. You’ll have to manually turn these on when you want to use it, but Samsung made this super simple to do by including quick access to these in the Android notification bar.
Make sure you know which apps have access to your phone’s location features and adjust accordingly. For something like Foursquare or Google Maps, having location capabilities is a must but you should think about whether other apps really need to know where you are.
Turn off background data syncing. For those who need every single Tweet, email or Facebook notification in real-time, turning off background data may seem crazy but it definitely will save on battery life.
You can download JuiceDefender Ultimate or JuiceDefender to help monitor your Android’s battery.
Make sure to charge your smartphone often and don’t let your battery drain completely before you decide to plug it into the charger. Try not to let it get below 10 percent too often. Once per month you can let it completely die. This is called power cycling, and it is important to the health of a battery.
Keep your smartphone at or close to room temperature. Don’t put it in the sun.
Today we toured the Jacuzzi Family Vineyards in Northern California. They do not use herbicides. They use Sheep. 
It’s quite a sight as you can see. Anyway the sheep are guided by dogs. One day a shepherd dog guided the sheep across a roadway to reach more vineyards. The dog had to get to the head of the flock. He was at the back of the flock. The sheep were so tightly packed that his only alternative to circumnavigating the flock was to jump from sheep to sheep across their backs which is exactly what he did. It was a memorable sight.
I’m switching from Motorola Droidx to HTC Thunderbolt. Both run Android OS. Most folks that have compared Droidx to Thunderbolt have found that the Thunderbolt is inherently faster, but also the Verizon network 4G is faster. People are currently experiencing network speeds up to 20Mbps, which is faster than the average US home user experiences from his or her ISP. This is the updated list of Apps:
Today marks the last day for John Murrell as blogger in chief for a wonderful blog called Good Morning Silicon Valley. His explanation of the difference for him between writing and editing:
“But for me at least, the process of writing is wearing. I’m a grinder, and there’s a lot of chair squirming and wandering around and staring at the stars and sometimes some cursing that goes into the production of the daily sausage. And it’s a largely solitary pursuit, which appeals to my inborn reclusive nature, but can sometimes result in getting cabin fever from living in one’s own head too long. Editing, on the other hand, has its own collaborative and craftsmanlike pleasures and activates a different synaptic configuration than writing. You start with a piece of work already in front of you, and the job is to turn it this way and that to examine all its angles and components, to check for gaps or loose fittings, to do a little tweaking here and polishing there, and finally to set it loose at least a bit better than it was (and never any worse).”
This is an amazing natural photo that was not retouched with Photoshop. Quoted: “Horsetail Falls is a small seasonal waterfall that only appears in late winter and early spring. It flows over the east side of El Capitan, so as a backdrop it has one of the most impressive walls of granite in the entire park. Then – only for part of February, and only when the sky is clear – the very last sun rays of the day selectively linger on the falls, lighting it up with a golden glow that makes the water look like lava.”
January 25th of this year I listed my predictions for what is now being called the Apple iPad. You might say that the implementation is a bit shy of my predictions.
In addition to those shortcomings, here are some others that are truly surprising:
You decide. No iPad for me…maybe never.
My original post about the Droid was 2009-11-06. Three months into Droid and time for an update. The good news is that ones life can be divided into BD and AD, before Droid and after Droid. But not without some complaints of course. The camera is really slow, which means you are going to miss some opportunities. It is really easy to accidentally activate functions unintentionally.
These are the apps I use in order of most frequent:
Steven Weinbeg received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 1991. He teaches in the physics and astronomy departments of the University of Texas at Austin. He has some important observations about space exploration funding in today’s Wall Street Journal, some of which are quoted below. It is gratifying to be able to report anything that the current Obama administration is proposing that would move us in the right direction and this is one.
One of my sons, Mark, worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory JPL in Pasadena, CA during the summers of 2004 and 2005. JPL is a NASA contractor and lead center for the robotic exploration of the solar system. JPL has done far more with it’s tiny budget than the massive NASA manned programs to improve life on earth.
What about Hubble? Weinberg notes:
It is true that astronauts made a large contribution to astronomy by servicing the Hubble Space Telescope. But if Hubble had been put into orbit by unmanned rockets instead of the Space Shuttle, so much money would have been saved that instead of servicing a single Hubble we could have had half a dozen Hubbles in orbit, making servicing unnecessary.
The Mars rovers were dispatched by JPL, and they did an incredible job, as noted by Weinberg here:
It is difficult to get reliable estimates of the cost of sending astronauts to Mars, but I have heard no estimate that is less than many hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of sending Spirit and Opportunity to Mars was less than $1 billion.
Weinberg concludes:
The only technology for which the manned space flight program is well suited is the technology of keeping people alive in space. And the only demand for that technology is in the manned space flight program itself.
