Personal and Professional Growth: Don't Think of a White Horse

Don't think of a White Horse.
Don't think of a White Horse galloping down the road.
Don't think of a White Horse galloping down the road, its mane flowing in the breeze. Don't think of the clippity-clop of its hooves upon the pavement.

What image comes to mind upon reading this? Even if you realized what was happening and deliberately redirected your attention to another mental image, it was there - even if only for a fleeting instant. A White Horse. After I specifically instructed you not to think of such a thing...

It is New Year's Day, a time to reflect upon the past year and to cast an eye toward the year ahead. And along with this day come New Year's Resolutions.

I have recently come across a number of posts in which the reader is offered lists such as, "Five Things you Need To Quit Doing Now," "Ten Habits to Stop For 2017," or similar. These lists all seem to present sound advice. The challenge with these posts is that they are all White Horses: each is telling you what not to do. As a result, each actively focuses your attention upon the very thing that is not desired.

Exhortations to "Don't do this," "Stop doing that," or "Avoid the other," rely on the abstract concept of negation, However, what follows is usually concrete (a White Horse). The mind - consciously and subconsciously - can easily grasp the concrete. My advice to you is to re-frame or restate such goals into a positive, concrete direction, In other words, change the wording from what the goal isn't, to what the corresponding goal is. In some cases, this may take a little bit of work and imagination. After all, what does that desired result look like?

Here are some common examples:
.
Stop Procrastinating
We will start with a simple one (though it is not an "easy" one - but that distinction is a rabbit trail for another post). We all know what procrastinating looks like: putting things off until the last minute, and having insufficient time to finish, or at least to do the task as well as desired.
Given the goal "stop procrastinating," we run into a couple of immediate questions:
What would the desired result look like (as opposed to not look like)?
Why do we procrastinate anyway?
For the first, what does "not procrastinating" look like? And while we're at it (considering pros and cons), can we call it "concrastination?"
At its simplest, "stop procrastinating" may be rephrased to something like, "I plan my work ahead, and schedule enough time to complete it." This in turn requires a system - one that works for you - to itemize tasks and schedules, and to plan work times. That way, the only work crunches you experience will be due to someone else's bad planning (or over-scheduling yourself).
On to the second question: why do we procrastinate? There are probably as many reasons as there are people. Once you start confronting your procrastination, though, you are likely to get frustrated or irritated. When that happens, take a moment for introspection and ask yourself, "Why am I feeling this way?" With that, you can start to uncover the reason (or reasons) why you have been procrastinating up to now.

Lose Weight
This one is probably the number one resolution in the United States. It is a little more slippery than the previous example, its negative phrasing being not quite so obvious. It doesn't give you anything to work toward in a positive direction. Consider phrasing this kind of resolution in the direction of what you want. For example, instead of resolving to "lose 30 pounds this year," resolve to "weigh 190 pounds by the end of the year." This gives you a specific target, around which you can plan your path to the weight loss.

Stop People-Pleasing
I bring up this example because the obvious reversal - to start living for self - contains a snare. It would rely on falsely equating "people-pleasing" with "living for others." Mother Teresa lived for others, but would never have been called a people-pleaser. People-pleasing, according to Psychology Today, is rooted in fear of rejection or failure, and grows from trying to please others at the expense of one's own needs.
It stands to reason, then, that a positive direction would involve self-care, learning to set healthy boundaries (yes, that means deliberately saying "no" to some requests or people), and choosing what service to others brings you a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. In fact, I have found that putting effort into group goals and projects (even immersing and exhausting myself in them, for a finite duration), can be tremendously fulfilling.

Are New Year's Resolutions destined to fail?
Each of the above examples can encounter temporary setbacks. You might slip into procrastinating on a project. You may notice the scales going up again after a holiday weekend. You absolutely will run into situations where you still have to do something you don't want to do. Call them setbacks, or even failures - but learn from them, refocus on your goal, and use it as a chance to "fail forward." This is precisely why I believe that you should be developing goals with positively phrased outcomes that can be implemented this year.

I had been using the White Horse example for years before I met J. Bert Freeman, former Olympic fencer and author of the book Taking Charge of Your Positive Direction. He eloquently states the how and why to implement a positive direction in all of one's speech and, ultimately, all of one's thoughts. The practical benefits seen in his instruction are outstanding.

What do you want for 2017?

Don't think of a White Horse. Think of what you do want instead.
Unless you actually want a White Horse.

SysAdmin Corner: Deploying Adobe AIR 22.0.0.153 via Group Policy

For those of you updating and maintaining application deployments in Small to Medium Business (SMB) Microsoft Windows-based networks via Active Directory and Group Policy, here is some information on the latest release of Adobe AIR:

On June 16, 2016, Adobe announced version 22.0.0.153 of Flash Player in the following Security Bulletin:
https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/air/apsb16-23.html

The download is an Executable file (.EXE), which can be extracted with archiving software such as 7-Zip (https://www.7-zip.org). The extracted Windows Installer (.MSI) package and directories can be configured for deployment.

The MSI packages cleanly upgrade previous versions without invoking a transform. Fresh installs also perform cleanly without transforms. This was tested on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional and Windows 10 Professional.

Keep up the good work!
- James Keirstead, MCSE

Notes:
AIR is the property of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
In order to distribute files in the manner described here, you must have a current, valid distribution agreement in place with Adobe. These are free, one-year renewable agreements. More information is available at https://www.adobe.com/products/air/runtime-distribution1.html

SysAdmin Corner: Deploying Adobe Flash Player 22.0.0.192 via Group Policy

For those of you updating and maintaining application deployments in Small to Medium Business (SMB) Microsoft Windows-based networks via Active Directory and Group Policy, here is some information on the latest Adobe Flash Player:

On June 16, 2016, Adobe announced version 22.0.0.192 of Flash Player in the following Security Bulletin:
https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/flash-player/apsb16-18.html

Downloads of Executable files (.EXE) and Windows Installer Packages (.MSI) are available for the ActiveX, NPAPI, and PPAPI browser extensions.

The MSI packages cleanly upgrade previous versions without invoking a transform. Fresh installs also perform cleanly without transforms. This was tested on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional and Windows 10 Professional.

Keep up the good work!
- James Keirstead, MCSE

Notes:
Flash Player is the property of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
In order to distribute files in the manner described here, you must have a current, valid distribution agreement in place with Adobe. These are free, one-year renewable agreements. More information is available at https://www.adobe.com/products/players/flash-player-distribution.html

Personal and Professional Growth: What Are You Doing To Be Ready For 2014?

In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin described the practice of identifying thirteen virtues that he wished to integrate into his life.  For each, he would spend one week deliberately focusing on that virtue and incorporating it.  He would then repeat the process three more times during the year, thereby fostering his personal growth during each of the 52 weeks of the year.

Welcome to 2014.  It is the first week in a new year.

In the style of Benjamin Franklin, I too will be working on a specific weekly track of self-improvement.  David Allen (of Getting Things Done fame) has written a book, Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done.  Throughout 2014, I will be reading one of these lessons each week, and implementing it into my life.

Lesson 1 challenges us with the following:

• Where are your potential cleanup areas?
• What is the next one to tackle, when you are not sure what else you to be doing?
• What could you forgive today?

- James

SysAdmin Corner: Autodesk DWG TrueView 2013 error when Deploying via Group Policy, Part 2

Autodesk DWG TrueView 2013 error when Deploying via Group Policy, Part 2


In my previous post, I showed how to overcome a limiting change in Autodesk DWG TrueView to allow deployment via Group Policy.  Note that you could use a variation of the same procedure to edit dwgviewr.msi instead of generating a transform:

While dwgviewr.msi is open in ORCA:
Right-click on the row with the Condition listed above
Select Drop Row
OK (the row should disappear)
File - Save (or hit the Save button)

SysAdmin Corner: Autodesk DWG TrueView 2013 error when Deploying via Group Policy

Autodesk DWG TrueView 2013 error when Deploying via Group Policy

Autodesk recently released its 2013 suite of products, and I dutifully downloaded the latest DWG TrueView and Design Review in order to upgrade the stations on our network.  However, when testing the deployments, I noticed that Autodesk has changed the MSI-based deployment for DWG TrueView so that it fails.  Specifically:
Event ID: 10005
Source: MsiInstaller
Description: Product: DWG TrueView 2013 -- Run Setup.exe to install DWG TrueView 2013.

I went to my first line of defense: I created an Administrative deployment, and installed from that.
msiexec /a dwgviewr.msi
Disturbingly, this resulted in the same error. Disturbing, because there IS no Setup.exe in an administrative deployment...

After a few gyrations, I finally opened the MSI in ORCA (a free tool from Microsoft, available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa370557%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

Once ORCA has been installed, right-click the dwgviewr.msi and choose "Edit with Orca."

I found the following line in the Section "LaunchCondition"
Condition:  ADSK_SETUP_EXE="1" OR ACAD_SECONDARY_INSTALL="1" OR PATCH
Description:  Run Setup.exe to install [ProductName].

So, I tried creating a Transform (MST) file to remove this check.

While dwgviewr.msi is open in ORCA, select:
Transform
New Transform
Right-click on the row with the Condition listed above
Select Drop Row
OK (the row should now have a green strikethrough)
Transform
Generate Transform

I called mine DontRunSetup.mst
A copy is available for download at http://www.barbarianhamster.com/Services/DontRunSetup.zip

I re-created the Group Policy Object for deployment, including the Transform file under "Modifications."  Then I re-launced my testing virtual machine, and VOILA!  It smoothly replaced DWG TrueView 2012.  I subsequently tested as a clean install, and that worked as well.

I use virtual machines of Windows XP Professional (x86 and x64) for deployment testing, and the same transform works for both the x86 and x64 versions of the software.