Don’t you ever forget that YOU TOO are a result of billions of years of evolution.

This is an obligation – can you imagine if it was all just a waste of time?!

Sometime ago, I read a quotation somewhere, which belongs to Savielly Tartakower, if I am not mistaken. The one I read mentions chess players, but it refers to people in general, I think:

There are chess players, who play poorly, but who know they play poorly. They are reasonable – help them.

There are chess players, who play poorly, but who don’t know they play poorly. They are ignorant – avoid them.

There are chess players, who play good and who don’t know they play good. They are modest – respect them.

There are chess players, who play good and who know they play good. They are the chess gurus – follow them.

In this case it is not important to label people and to classify them, in my opinion. Much more important it is to take a moment and answer a very simple question – which are you from?[/english]

The short-sightedness of the Bulgarian managers in the restaurants astounds me. Are these guys thinking or scratching their … The goal is extremely simple – bigger turnover, which leads to bigger profit. And optimizations are doable in almost any restaurant, and they can easily be applied. Here are some ideas from my direct observations:

• “Something to drink?”

This, in my opinion, is the most ridiculous thing in Bulgaria – there are just a few places where they do it. Besides that the menu should be brought fast, it is absolutely natural to order a drink for a start, so that you won’t be sitting on an empty table. In most cases, the customer knows what he wants to drink before he chooses a meal – “Something to drink?” with the menu would significantly increase the consumption of all alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. If you go in the US, this is like a God’s commandment – the question “Can I get you something to drink?” always accompanies the menu, simple and effective.

• Prompt servicing

First, you wait 20 minutes for the menu, then 20 minutes to order. Until you get what you’ve ordered and consume it, every desire to come back is gone. When the customer wants to order, he should be able to do it fast and easy, and not to wait for the waiter to come around indefinite amount of time. After all, the more orders are served, the bigger the turnover – respectively the bigger the profit. Not to mention that if you force your customers to wait, they will get nervous and might leave – you loose all the orders they could have made. Additionally, every restaurant has limited capacity – number of tables for customers. The faster the servicing, the earlier the customers will finish their meal and will vacate the table for the next customers.

There is no formula how to be assigned to a management position, it depends on several things – the company, your colleagues, your superiors and favorable circumstances. The fact that you are assigned to this position, however, does not mean that you are a manager already, just a chance. I’ve seen enough accidental people holding high posts (and I am sure you met a few as well) to have illusions about this being based on merits or abilities. Anyway, if you happen to hold such position and you are willing to listen to what I have to say, here are several advices to make it easier for you (I sincerely hope that they will help). Here’s how to get started:

• Delegate

Regardless of who you think you are, you will not be able to complete everything yourself. That is why your team exists, to work with you, under your coordination – the objective is to complete the tasks together. Trust your team-mates – believe me, they will do the technical tasks much better than you, and you will have the time to do the work for which you are paid for. That is to help the people, doing the actual work, to do it better.

I received the newsletter from Sourceforge today and found several interesting things there. First, I found out that 2007 Community Choice Awards are over – you can see the winners and the nominees here. I took a look, as well as in Top 25 Projects and found interesting stuff – some of it I will mention below:

• Launchy – indisputable hit for me. A tool that allows you to start applications without searching through the Start menu of Windows and shortcuts on your desktop. Install the application, launch it and click Alt+Space. Then write a few letters from the name of the application you want to start, and Launchy will let you choose it from a list without having to search for it. And this is not all – you can open a path in Explorer or even write a mathematical expression, Launchy will calculate it for you! Simple but genious :).

• Stylebase for Eclipse – I did not have time to try it, but it looks promising. As it is said on the site:

Stylebase is a reuse repository for architectural models and design patterns and it assists in applying quality-driven architecture design into software engineering.