Shaine Mata Blog

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia I've been working with Open Mesh routers at a couple of locations. Thus far, they have been reliable and have pretty good range on their own. Allowing the routers to mesh offers some pretty good advantages for small business. One location where I am using an Open Mesh router has only one router as an access point . We wanted to test it out. I've been meaning to add a second access point for redundancy, though the office is small enough to be covered by the single router. My main motivation is to ensure that wireless coverage stays up should one router fail. That way, I have time to order a replacement while still servicing network clients. In another location, I have three mesh routers. Two are set up as gateways with a third as a repeater. The two gateways are located in areas where I believe most people will use them, near the offices. The repeater is located in a conference room where it extends coverage outside the building. It ...

Image by shainelee via Flickr While this post revolves around a spiritual theme, it has business application. I was reading an article about following your vocation. While the article touched on serving God through the practice of your talents or occupation, my mind went off on a tangent, per usual. Before going into that tangent, let's just talk about a few examples of vocations . In the traditional sense, a vocation is a call to serve God as clergy of some form. However, it has evolved to also refer to other callings such as raising your family, being a carpenter, or any other skill you may possess. Often, however, we lose sight of what our vocation is and get caught up on doing other things that seem right. One example that stood out in my mind is for those of us who are married . If you spend all your time going to prayer groups and church, while neglecting your family, then you are not fulfilling your vocation as a husband or wife, or that of a parent. While techn...

Image by shainelee via Flickr One problem with having a vivid imagination and being able to grasp the totalities of ideas easily is the immediate realization of all the details involved, real or imagined. Sometimes, you may be 100% correct that a problem will crop up and give you all kinds of headaches on a project. More often, however, the possible problems are mostly imagined and never come to happen. In fact, you may find that you avoided doing something for so long, and then, when you can't avoid it any longer, what you feared would happen doesn't happen. This sort of thing happens to all smart people at some point. There is some freedom in not knowing any better because you can go right on ahead and make things work when all the experts told you it wouldn't. There are several books which illustrate the point. One of my favorites is The Millionaire Next Door . The author cites examples of some of the habits of many of the people who retire as millionaires...

Image via Wikipedia Experience has taught me that it is best when your productivity tools work together. Whatever efficiency you gain from a tool or service that does not work with others gets lost when you have to re-input information. The key is that your system should work for you, not give you another job to do. Yesterday, we discussed how Evernote is my universal inbox . Even so, it is not the only tool you should use; while Evernote excels at capturing and organizing information, it is not so good for doing anything with that information. Evernote is that legal notepad where you write notes while you are on the phone or at meetings. If you are looking for other tools to supplement Evernote, Onenote, or whatever capture tool you use, you should look for those that allow you to transfer information easily. Nothing is more frustrating than having to reenter information you have already entered at least a couple times into other software or websites. Look for those that ...