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Tailgating at Gillette Stadium

New England Patriot fans take their tailgating pretty seriously.  In inclement weather, folks use portable, collapsible canopies and propane space-heaters to carve out a little comfort.

Geek Christmas

In 1843, the first Christmas cards were printed and placed on sale in London.  Relatively new technologies - printing and railroads - were enablers to the tradition of sending out cards for the holidays.

For me, relatively new technologies help me with my holiday traditions.  An Excel spreadsheet with my holiday address list along with Word’s mail-merge function allows me to print-out my card envelopes with ease.  The spreadsheet is something I keep up to date all year as I add new friends and as others change addresses.

The second new technology is the Internet.  My 19 month old niece in London and I use a program called iVisit for web-conferencing.  It doesn’t compare to a live visit, but it beats a phone call.  Everyone with a broadband connection, a $400 PC (or $6000 Mac) ;) and a $30 web-cam (for MAC ~$700) can now video conference with anyone on the planet.

In some ways, these technologies allow us to spread out a little more, so that's a downside, but at the same time, it keeps those real connections going.

Good stuff.  Merry Christmas.

Happy Blog Day

This blog is now a year old.  Nobody reads it, but I’m enjoying it as a way to chronicle my doings.  I also use it as a collection-point for interesting content and tips that I can find easily and point people to.

As a side note, the number of birthday-cake clip-art options that come with Microsoft Office, is truly staggering. 

LA Hotel

I've been working at Toyota in LA for the past few weeks, and found a great hotel: www.hotelportofino.com.  When I'm lucky, I get an ocean-side room.  This is the view from my balcony.

REDSOX License Plate Spotted

The one and only Massachusetts REDSOX license plate has been spotted!  Those who know me know that I'm a fan, and that I drove around with the NOMAR plate for years.  I'm still a Garciaparra fan, but when he left for the Cubs, I had to change my plate.  The best I could come up with is WEDSOX.  Hats off to the owner who was kind enough to come out and say hello as I was snapping a pic of his plate with my camera phone.

A quote from me

For those of you waiting for a quote from yours truly:

"Incompetence will expand to fill the space allotted."

Palladium Turbo Class

This month I started my new position at Palladium Group, Inc., a merger between the shareholders of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc., Painted Word Inc., and ThinkFast Consulting, Inc. The new company forms the largest professional services firm solely focused on strategy execution, the complementary combination of strategy-focused organizations and corporate performance management.

New hires are given a project to complete as part of a training / acclimation exercise.  This photo (sent from my mobile phone) was taken in our project team's "war room" late on day two of the three day project.

Star Wars III in DLP

So I finally got to see STAR WARS III on a digital screen at the Century cinemas in San Jose, CA.  If you can find a digital screen (DLP) in your area that's showing the film, be sure to get out and see it.

The audio is going to be spectacular in a DLP theater, and the animated scenes really come to life without the added "noise" of a film transfer.

A Site for News Junkies

The "newseum" is a site you can visit to view scans of 300+ newspaper front-pages from around the world.  It's updated daily.

Yankee Stadium

A pic from my camera phone from the Red Sox May 28th 17-1 romp over the Yankees.  (Have you ever had seats where you looked down on the foul pole?)