Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man. (English Standard Version)Kathy Sierra writes that angry/negative people can be bad for your brain as well as your soul (but, really, the two are so closely knit that distinguishing them may be impossible at times).
In my posting on Synergy, I wrote of how I tie three (or four) screens together, spanning two (or three, with my laptop) computers. This gives me the ability to monitor the peripheral things (the second screen on my Linux workstation) like time reporting, system logs, support requests, and reference documentation while focusing on my primary interests (development, debugging, documents) on the main screen.
Apparently, there are others who find similar setups help in their productivity (albeit we have much different tastes in software).
If you look at this office, there isn't much paper in it. On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you'll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
The screen on the left has my list of e-mails. On the center screen is usually the specific e-mail I'm reading and responding to. And my browser is on the right-hand screen. This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an e-mail and look at it while the e-mail is still in front of me.
Nothing is more powerful than a community of talented people working on related problems.
Fortunately for startups, big companies are extremely good at denial. If you take the trouble to attack them from an oblique angle, they'll meet you half-way and maneuver to keep you in their blind spot. To sue a startup would mean admitting it was dangerous, and that often means seeing something the big company doesn't want to see.
What intrigued me was the advice in the second sentence: “If you take the trouble to attack them from an oblique angle, they'll meet you half-way and maneuver to keep you in their blind spot.” It reads frighteningly (not for companies: for Christians) like something from The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis, the advice of a senior tempter to a junior one on how to tempt a human soul to destruction.