Recent Reading: The Food Network, And The White House!

I haven’t posted much on books lately, here are two that are different: Inside the Food Network. Definitely some gossip, but also a look at how businesses evolve and how the people that made them in the beginning couldn’t keep up with that evolution. A common problem/pattern. Bobby Flay seems to have been the most […]

Review: The Phoenix Project

Back in April Steve Jones mentioned reading a review of The Phoenix Project by mutual friend Thomas LaRock. It’s a book about IT written as a story that covers the trials and mishaps that all of us will identify with – corrupted data, SAN failure, too many projects, unrealistic demands, etc. The goal is to […]

Book Review: American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company

American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company ($18 at Amazon) was a good read, with some good background on the history of Ford making good decisions and bad ones, ultimately leading to Ford truly being in a fight to survive. Bill Ford (of the Ford family of course) understood that […]

Book Review: Sixkill

Sixkill is the 39th Spencer novel, and the last that was written by Robert Parker before his death. The plot isn’t bad, repugnant movie star accused of crime and everyone thinks he is guilty, so local cop Quirk asks Spencer to check into it, doesn’t want anyone railroaded into prison. The case has the usual […]

Book Review: Highest Duty, My Search For What Really Matters

Highest Duty, My Search For What Really Matters by Chesley Sullenberger is the autobiography of the pilot who landed Flight 1549 in the Hudson. I listened to it as an audio book and was pleasantly surprised, it was a well done effort that covered a lot more than just the landing in the Hudson, though […]

Book Review: Moneyball

With the movie coming out I realized somehow I’d missed reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It’s the story of how the Oakland A’s, a team with a very small budget, are able to compete with teams that have the money to get the best players. It’s about statistics which might seem dry, but it’s really […]

Conference Calls Are Hard

Conference calls are a fact of life for most of us. Remote offices, remote workers, clients – lots of reasons to do a call. Hard to argue with the cost, definitely a money saver. For some things they work well, for situations requiring a lot of collaboration though, they take a lot of extra effort […]