Deep Sleep for MacBooks

Since I started commuting I was getting aware how much power my MacBookPro still uses when sleeping. If my Mac is fully charged in the morning, I still need to take my power supply along to be able to use my Mac on both ways (I must use a customer computer at work). So today I looked for a possibility to put the Mac into hibernate. A quick googling session brought up in DeepSleep, a freeware Dashboard widget. I installed it, tested it once so far – seems to work ok. Of course the start up takes a little longer than from normal sleep (about 15s) but that is worth the power saving.

What do you use? Any alternatives?

Project Management, Children and Borders

A thought after a meeting I was attending today.

Do you know the situation, where the release date for your software project gets closer, you are already working overtime and actually you don’t really see how you manage. And even better nobody in the team can actually tell what the chances are. You just know that everybody needs to work even harder. And you do it because you don’t want (the project) to fail. And if you succeed you are proud. Even if you say that the next project need to be different.

But it won’t.

When having children that’s one of the first thing you learn (or you suffer): As long as they don’t fail they do not change. As long as you don’t let them experience the consequences of their behaviour, they don’t stop to misbehave. As long as a no is not a no they don’t believe you. And the longer you wait the harder it is to teach it.

As long as we comply with unrealistic planning, work overtime, get the impossible done things won’t change. Not the next time, not ever. In the long shot not releasing on time once can lead to more satisfying projects. If (and only if) the lessons are learned.