What prompted the great escape?

The deed is done. I’ve made my decision. But, what made me look elsewhere? When I break it down, there are three main issues that led me to look for a new job: No psychological safety No growth mindset Too many narcissists The first two are at the heart of successful teams and the crux of Culture Code and Creativity Inc. You don’t need to know the terms to feel their effects, and notice when they’re missing. Psychological safety refers to how comfortable you are with the people you work with. Do you feel comfortable speaking up without fear of ridicule? If you make a mistake will the blame thrower be set to annihilate on you? Do you feel your opinion matters and your voice is heard? If you ask for help, will it be giving without judging? Growth mindset is learning from your mistakes. It’s about trying new things, failing fast, and not repeating a broken process. Are you […]

Achievement Unlocked: New Job Acquired

The deal is done. The papers are signed. I’m very excited to report that I’ve unlocked a new achievement and moved to another company. Oddly, the job is almost the same. On the surface at least. It wasn’t a bad experience by any means. A bit odd doing interviews through Zoom and Teams, but not bad. I felt the interviews were far more casual and conversational, perhaps because people were actually at home. I got to know people a little better since it felt more relaxed. That was a big part of my search criteria, what kind of company was I going to join? What were the people like? The work is similar, but the people at their attitude make all the difference. We’re going to start off with manual testing then move forward with automation testing. It’s a hardware and software solution, which isn’t something I’ve worked with before. The fact I had so many questions about how things […]

Text Filtering and Replace with Keyboard Maestro

Along with many other features, Keyboard Maestro has some solid text Filtering features. You can combine this with Search and Replace to strip formatting and clean text. If it’s extensive, I hand this task over to TextSoap, but Keyboard Maestro has quite a few tricks to work with. For example, the Filter block has some built in ways to clean text. As an example, there is: The Search and Replace block can replace words as well as use Regular Expressions. This can be used to remove Tab, CRLF, and other characters that Filter may miss. I used this for a variety of tasks. The obvious is stripping out characters or making sure everything is lowercase. I’ve also taken Katalon Studio comments and stripped out the // and /* blocks so I could use my comments in documentation. Another use has been a macro to convert JIRA tickets into a task list. I copy the text, then use Keyboard Maestro to […]

A few observations on using SurfShark VPN

I’ve only used SurfShark for a short bit, but so far it has been working well. The connections and speed have been good, along with reliable connections. I’ve actually had it connected on my work and home machines 24/7. Really the only downside is how some sites react. For example, connecting to email or logging into Amazon from different locations, makes them lose their minds. That might not be a bad thing, but Amazon will absolutely give you the 3rd degree if you log in from somewhere unexpected. This includes changing your password, and a several step verification process. Microsoft and Google will do the same. Even when connecting through an email client, they require verification for “unusual activity.” I’ve also had to solve the “captcha” for Google several times when searching for information. All of these are the nature of using a VPN and not specific to SurfShark or any other service. I could easily avoid this by only […]

Securing and sending documents for job and taxes

Since applying for jobs and filing taxes is a virtual affair, how do you secure your documents so everyone doesn’t see your social security number and other sensitive information? With switching jobs, I had to send multiple documents including my driver’s license, salary information, SSN, beneficiary details, birthdate, address, and lots of other personal details. Not information you just want floating around out there. So, how do you deliver such information? Create a Secure Volume: If the other person has a Mac, the easiest thing to do is use a password protected DMG file. It only takes a moment to create and you can drop all your files inside. To work cross platform, if they’re willing to spend a few moments installing software, VeraCrypt creates a password protected volume that works on both Mac and Windows. Another alternative is the password protected Zip file. Using tools like Keka, BetterZip, or 7Zip, add files to the archive, set the password and […]