Apple Puffed Pancakes

• 1.5 cups milk
• 6 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 3 tablespoon sugar
• .5 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 3-4 large apples (peeled, quartered and thinly sliced)
• 3-4 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 425
2. Place milk, eggs, vanilla, flour, sugar and salt into a blender and mix together.
3. In a 2 ½ – 3 qt round or oval ovenproof dish melt the butter in the oven.
4. Carefully place the sliced apples into the butter and stir.
5. Sprinkle about ½ of the brown sugar and cinnamon over the apples and bake for about 10 min (the apples will sizzle).
6. Take the dish out of the oven and gently pour the blended milk ingredients over the apples.
7. Sprinkle the rest of brown sugar and cinnamon over the top. Bake an additional 20 – 23 minutes.
8. Serve hot with maple syrup.

Ursula Gabryjelski

My Transition To No Cable TV

So I was tired of paying for cable.  Having a DVR from Comcast was great.  Until it started missing the shows that I wanted to watch, not following the schedule of the few shows that I actually want to watch.  Plus cable TV is expensive.  I get my Cable TV and Internet from Comcast at about $140/month.  Internet only is about $60/month, so I decided to cut cable TV from my monthly expense.  I have a Netflix subscription (I have a Wii, Xbox, and Apple TV capable of streaming Netflix) for $8/month to stream all the movies and TV Shows I want.  Still, I wanted to get SOME TV, so I started to look at antennas to get my Over The Air (OTA) broadcasted channels.

A Bit About Comcast (New Hampshire)

So Comcast has 458 stations available for viewing.  Sounds great.  Until you break it down as follows:

• 120 are duplicate stations (Standard Definition and High Definition of the same programming)
• 77 Premium Channels (HBO, Starz, Showtime, etc)
• 45 Radio Stations
• 65 Foreign Language Stations
• 149 Stations that require MORE than a basic cable subscription.

That leaves 22 stations on basic cable (I checked this by connecting the cable to my  TV directly, and not using the cable box they provided me).  Now, the package I had listed about 220 stations available, but taking out the junk that I don’t want, such as QVC, duplicate stations, foreign language stations and whatnot, I ended up with 65 stations that I might actually watch.  Even then I only really put on 4 or 5 stations consistently.  There is my rationale for dumping Cable TV.

Learn About Digital TV Antennas & Broadcast TV

So one of the first things I learned is that an antenna is an antenna.  Old analog antennas that might still be on your roof from the 1960′s will still work, though some of the newer antennas may keep distortion (or signal noise) down.  So if you have an existing antenna still up on the roof, try that out before buying a new antenna.  You may be surprised by the result (so I have read).  I did not have an antenna on my house, so I had to learn about and buy an antenna.

What Stations In My Area Broadcast Television?

There are a few places to go to get information about what television is broadcasted over the air in your area.  They all work in the same manner, but have different outputs.  I liked the output from AntennaWeb.org, but let me list the others that I have used too, but first, let me show you the relevant output that I got which I found useful.  Some sites will include some of this information, other will include this and more, but this is what I found useful.

• Sign – The station letters
  e.g. – WFXT is Boston, MA FOX affiliate
• Virtual Channel – The Digital TV Station Channel
  Channels in Digital TV are in the form of #-#   This means Fox would be 25-1 in the Boston, MA area.  Some channels may have many substations (the -1 in the previous example).  Boston has WGBH 44 (PBS) has 5 stations for Over The Air broadcast, listed as 44-1, 44-2, 44-3, 44-4, each with different programming available.
• Band – UHF or VHF signal Broadcast
  We will get into this more under antenna selection, but there are essentially 2 bands of reception.  Just remember for later, I bought a UHF antenna, and receive VHF stations as well as the UHF stations.
• Power – How strong the broadcast signal is from the station
  e.g. 5kW or 1,000 KW.  This will vary for all stations and areas.  The thing to remember here is that a station that broadcasts at 500 kW that is 10 miles away, may provide you with the same reception as one that broadcasts at 1,000 KW that is 20 miles away.  This doesn’t scale linearly exactly, but the example is pretty solid.
• City – Where the Broadcast tower is located
  e.g. Boston, MA
• Distance – How far away the broadcast tower is from your hom
  e.g. 12.3 miles
• Heading – Which direction is the tower, so I can point the antenna in the right direction
  e.g. 90.8º (which is just about due East) or 181.9º (which is just about due South)

How to find this information about your home?  Hit some of these sites, and get some information.  One thing to note about the output here, is that you may not get a full listing of stations in your area unless you lie to the website, and say the antenna is 30 feet above structures.  When I lied to the site, I got a list that is more representative of what I actually receive for stations over the air.

I am in zip code 03079, so you can use this to compare what my results are to what you are seeing at your zip code and antenna selection.

AntennaWeb
Where I got my information (listed above).  Had to lie to this site and say my antenna was 30 feet above structure.  Start by clicking Choose An Antenna

AntennaPoint
Another site to do the same thing.   Provides all the information listed above, with only your zip code.  A Better Bet.

RabbitEars
A site that will list stations that are broadcast in your area.  Pretty inclusive for research, so you can find which stations exist in your area, not necessarily what you will receive like the prior two sites linked just above.

What Antennas Type Should I Buy?

AntennasDirect have quite a few good links about station listings, intro to Over The Air Broadcasts, and Intro to Antennas.  I found that these are pretty good reading, as they are validated by may of the searches I have done to find this information out myself.  Look up the Learning Center from their Home Page.

So in my instance, most of my stations are either directly south, or directly north.  That makes my decision to buy an antenna pretty simple.  Still, I did not want to put up an antenna that I would ever need to rotate to receive a signal.  I wanted to put up an antenna and leave it alone once it was up.  So let’s go through the major things to decide when selecting an antenna.

We’ll discuss:

• UHF vs VHF
• Directional vs. Multi-Directional
• Short vs. Medium vs Long Range
• Indoor vs. Attic vs. Roof Mount

UHF vs VHF

So if most of you stations come in UHF, you would want a UHF antenna.   Most of mine are UHF, so I choose UHF.  I have 2 stations that matter that are broadcast in VHF, and they are receive in my antenna.  Cool.

Not all people will have that result, so there are solutions that stack a UHF on top of a VHF antenna, and combine the cabling so only a single RG6 cable is run to the TV.

Assume you will only need 1 antenna type, and accept the fact that you MIGHT need to buy the other type of antenna, stack them, and combine the signal if you have no reception.

Directional vs. Multi-Directional

Depending where you live, depends on where the stations are broadcast from (Heading).  If all stations are in 1 direction, a directional antenna may work best.  My stations are either north or south from me (11 south, 4 north).  I still bought a Multi-Directional antenna, and ended up getting enough stations to make me happy.  Your needs and functionality may vary, but lean towards Multi, based on my experience.

Multi-Directional does not mean universal reception, just a broader range than Directional.  I don’t see a reason to buy directional unless you live in Montana with stations 100 miles away.  Then again, you may disagree and want Directional if that 1 station you want just doesn’t come in.

Short vs. Medium vs. Long Rang Antenna & Indoor vs. Attic vs. Roof Mounted Antenna

So here are some basics as far as distance is concerned:

• Indoor:  0-15 miles
• Short:  0-25 miles
• Medium:  10-55 miles
• Long:  50 – 75+ miles

The further indoors you are, the more interference you will have.

You will get great reception if it is on the roof, and mounted 30 feet in the air.  Now you have to get it wired correctly (have an electrician ground the new antenna, as it IS a lightning rod), and now weather (high winds, falling trees, etc) can hurt the antenna.

I put mine in my attic, and am very happy with the reception.  I have asphalt shingles on my roof.  So I figured I would buy a long range antenna, put it in the attic, and live with the lost reception in the attic, but haven’t really had any negative thoughts on that yet.

I figure that a long range antenna in the attic is equivalent to a medium range antenna on the roof.

What Equipment Did I Get?

I ended up with the ClearStream4 Antenna, with an Attic Mount.  No pre-amplifier, no splitters.  The wire goes from the antenna directly to the TV.

The Front of the Antenna is pointed south.
I used RG6 cable to get the signal to the TV.  ( no splitters just yet…that’ll be this winter)

What Stations Do I Get?

Use AntennaPoint to enter 03079 (my zip code).  I  receive all the stations listed EXCEPT:

• 26.1
• 46.1
• 60.1
• 66.1

But I also get a few more stations not listed.  I ended up with 21 broadcast stations.

Is it worth the $120 to get the antenna & mounting mast?  For me, yes.  If you can’t live without cable channels, and refuse to wait till those shows on Premium Channels or cable only channels (I miss It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) then this is not for you.  I can wait till those shows come on Netflix.

-Mark Gabryjelski

Starting Services

So I have decided to take this gabbs.com domain name, and start using it for consulting services.  The changes will happen sometime in the next couple of months, and it will be for my personal exploits.

It will be tough to make sure I don’t compete with my current company, but we serve different types of clients, so I’m sure it won’t be too difficult….

Stay tuned….

Funny one liners…

Found this somewhere online, but lost the link…

Good round up of people’s short texts…..

If you smacked a kid in the face with a bottle of Johnson’s No More Tears, would it create beautiful irony?

You shouldn’t say anything mean about people who can’t read. You should write it instead.

Imagine there were no hypothetical situations.

Children in the dark cause accidents, accidents in the dark cause children.

Solution to two of the world’s problems: Feed the homeless to the hungry. 

Depression is just anger without enthusiasm.

I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.

if my calculations are correct SLINKY + ESCULATOR = EVERLASTING FUN.

Who’s General Failure & why is he reading my disk? 

If your name was homework, i’de be doing you on my desk right now.

A religious war is like children fighting over who has the strongest imaginary friend.

You’re like a slinky – completely useless, but fun to push down stairs.

Hurricanes are like women: when they come, they’re wet and wild, but when they leave they take your house and car.

The reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Why do we call them buildings when they’re finished? Shouldn’t they be called Builts?

I am going to call my kids Ctrl, Alt and Delete. Then if they muck up i will just hit them all at once.

For Xmas I want Santa’s list of naughty girls.

This is almost as enthralling as a tennis match between Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.

Duct tape is like ‘the force, it has a dark side, a light side and it holds the universe together.

Don’t drink water – fish have sex in it.

The most effective copyright protection known to man: a scratched CD.

When Insults Had Class

I saw this a while ago, and do not remember where I found it, but thought it is worth sharing….

“He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
–Winston Churchill

“I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”
–Clarence Darrow

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
–William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
—Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
–Groucho Marx

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
–Mark Twain

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
–Oscar Wilde

“I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend… if you have one.”
–George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

“Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”
–Winston Churchill’s response to George Bernard Shaw

“I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here.”
–Stephen Bishop

“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
–John Bright

“I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.”
–Irvin S. Cobb

“He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.”
–Samuel Johnson

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
–Paul Keating

“He had delusions of adequacy.”
–Walter Kerr

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”
–Mark Twain

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”
–Mae West

“Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee!”
–Lady Astor to Winston Churchill at a dinner party

“Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it!”
–Winston Churchill’s response to Lady Astor

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.”
—Moses Hadas

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.”
—Jack E. Leonard

“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.”
—Robert Redford

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”
—Thomas Brackett Reed

“He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.”
—James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

“In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily.”
—Charles, Count Talleyrand

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.”
—Forrest Tucker

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any one I know.”
—Abraham Lincoln

“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts — for support rather than illumination.”
—Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.”
—Billy Wilder

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.”
–Oscar Wilde

“You, Mr. Wilkes, will die either of the pox or on the gallows.”
–The Earl of Sandwich

“That depends, my lord, whether I embrace your mistress or your principles.”
–John Wilkes’s response to The Earl of Sandwich

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”
—Winston Churchill

The 14 Most Common Mistakes IT Departments Make

Mistake No. 1: Projects lack the right resources with the right skills.

Mistake No. 2: Projects lack experienced project managers. 

Mistake No. 3: IT doesn’t follow a standard, repeatable project management process. 

Mistake No. 4: IT gets hamstrung by too much process. 

Mistake No. 5: They don’t track changes to the scope of the project. 

Mistake No. 6: They lack up-to-date data about the status of projects. 

Mistake No. 7: They ignore problems. 

Mistake No. 8: They don’t take the time to define the scope of a project. 

Mistake No. 9: They fail to see the dependencies between projects. 

Mistake No. 10: They don’t consider Murphy’s Law. 

Mistake No. 11: They give short shrift to change management.

Mistake No. 12: Project schedules are incomplete. 

Mistake No. 13: IT doesn’t push back on unreasonable deadlines. 

Mistake No. 14: They don’t communicate well with project sponsors and stakeholders. 

– Meridith Levinson, CIO 

July 23, 2008  

It’s no wonder only 29 percent of IT projects are completed successfully, according to The Standish Group. Project management consultants and software providers say they see IT departments making the same project management mistakes over and over: IT groups don’t follow standard project management processes. They don’t have the right staff working on projects. They don’t assess the risks that could imperil their projects or determine ways to mitigate those risks. The list of mistakes unrolls like a ball of yarn. 

MORE ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT 

How To Spot a Failing Project 

ABC: An Introduction to IT Project Management 

When Project Failure Is Not an Option 

How to Create a PMO and Select PM Software 

Most of the project management mistakes IT departments make boil down to either a lack of adequate planning or breakdowns in communication (either among the project team or between the project team and the project sponsors). These mistakes can be fatal. They can also be avoided. And who better to point out the most common project management mistakes than project management vendors and consultants. (They also suggest ways to avoid them.) 

The following list of the 14 most common project management mistakes ought to help you pinpoint where your projects are going wrong and measures you can take to improve them. The upside of avoiding these most common project management pitfalls is tremendous. Not only will your project success rate increase, you’ll also improve satisfaction among internal customers, IT’s stock inside the organization will increase in value, and the business will benefit from systems that make them more competitive that get delivered on time and on budget. 

Staffing Mistakes

Mistake No. 1: Projects lack the right resources with the right skills.

Impact: Proper project staffing is critical, yet improperly allocating resources tops the list of most common project management mistakes. Not having the right people on a project can kill it. “The key to getting a project successfully accomplished is getting the right people with the right skills,” says Joel Koppelman, CEO of project management software vendor Primavera. “All the planning in the world won’t overcome an insufficiency of talent.” 

Solution: IT and project managers need full visibility into the skills and workloads of all of their resources, including consultants, contractors and outsourcers, who often get left out of skills assessments even though they’re doing a “huge” proportion of work, says Koppelman. Project management software can provide such visibility into everyone’s skills and workloads. 

Once IT and project managers know who’s doing what, they have to figure out how to allocate resources across myriad projects and day-to-day work. 

“There are all kinds of organizational models,” says Richard Scannell, co-founder of IT infrastructure consultancy GlassHouse Technologies. “I’ve never seen anything that works well. There’s no easy answer [to the resource allocation question].” 

You just have to try synchronizing people and projects as best you can, says Koppelman, adding that one potential solution is to appoint a resource manager who’s responsible for figuring out who will be assigned to each project and for ensuring there’s a fair allocation of talent across projects. 

Scannell suggests setting up “tiger teams” where people get taken out of their traditional job responsibility for a year or more to work on a specific project. Ken Cheney, director of HP Software’s PPM Center, recommends assigning resources at a project level as opposed to a specific task level, which he says is much more arduous. 

If you’re still hard-pressed to adequately staff projects, you may be able to free up resources by cancelling a “discretionary” project (e.g. one that isn’t tightly tied to the business strategy), says Cheney. He suggests looking at your entire portfolio of projects your IT staff is working on to identify ones that aren’t mission-critical. “By stopping those projects and reallocating resources to projects that will have the biggest impact, the organization as a whole can be much more successful,” he says. 

Mistake No. 2: Projects lack experienced project managers. 

Impact: Projects can quickly grow out of control without a savvy project manager at the helm. 

Solution: Hire project managers with certifications and the finesse required to manage stakeholders. Matthew Strazza, vice president of services (North America) for CA, says good project managers have to have strong soft skills. They need to know how to facilitate meetings, manage risk and handle a variety of different stakeholders—the business people who are looking for functionality, the IT people who care about security, and the financial people who are worried about the budget. 

“If you’re not addressing the financials, managing the budget on a week-to-week basis and notifying the client of any change, you can get into trouble pretty quickly,” says Strazza. 

Good project managers also need to possess technical expertise in whatever technology is being deployed, he adds. 

Process Mistakes

Mistake No. 3: IT doesn’t follow a standard, repeatable project management process. 

Impact: This is the second of the most common project management mistakes. Lack of methodology increases the risk that tasks related to the project will fall through the cracks, that projects will have to be re-worked, and ultimately that a project won’t be completed on time or on budget. 

Solution: A project management methodology helps you tackle projects efficiently and makes you aware of all the activities involved in the execution of a project. 

“Having in place a baseline of standards and methodologies will remove a lot of the risk associated with IT projects,” says HP’s Cheney. 

Douglas Clark, CEO of Métier, a provider of project portfolio management solutions, recommends establishing repeatable processes for scoping, scheduling, allocating resources and communicating with stakeholders. “Those are the things you want to get a handle on first because they would probably give you the biggest payoff,” he says. 

Mistake No. 4: IT gets hamstrung by too much process. 

Impact: Too much process makes the project team inflexible, and their inflexibility frustrates stakeholders. 

Fumi Kondo, managing director of NYC-based consultancy Intellilink Solutions, once observed an exchange between a software developer and a project manager where the developer told the project manager that he could add extra features to an application with no additional effort. The project manager told the developer not to add the extra features because users hadn’t asked for them. “My response would have been, ‘Go to the users and see if those features are useful,’” says Kondo. “I see nothing wrong with over-delivering if it doesn’t impact the budget or the schedule.” 

Solution: Be flexible and communicate with project sponsors and stakeholders. 

Mistake No. 5: They don’t track changes to the scope of the project. 

Implication: The budget for the project explodes. So does the timeline. 

Solution: CA’s Strazza recommends following a formal change request process: The individual requesting the change in scope (e.g. additional features or functionality) needs to explain the specific changes on a change-in-scope document, and the project manager needs to determine how that request will impact the budget and timeline. The project sponsor has to sign off on the change-in-scope request. 

Mistake No. 6: They lack up-to-date data about the status of projects. 

Impact: You can’t manage what you can’t measure, as Peter Drucker would say. Nor can you coordinate resources or react to changes in scope, says HP’s Cheney. 

Solution: Software. 

Mistake No. 7: They ignore problems. 

Impact: Problems don’t solve themselves. They fester the longer you ignore them and ultimately compound the cost of the project. 

Solution: “If you do something wrong, it’s about how well you fix it,” says GlassHouse Technologies’ Scannell. “Most people batten down the hatches and look up in the month. Understanding when you’re starting to fail and quickly being able to engage as many stakeholders as possible to fix it is critical.” 

Planning Mistakes

Mistake No. 8: They don’t take the time to define the scope of a project. 

Impact: If a project’s scope isn’t well-defined by the business and IT up front, the project can end up ballooning like Friends actor Matthew Perry in the sitcom’s later seasons. What’s more, IT lacks the clarity and direction it needs to complete the project on time and on budget and meet the business’s expectations. 

Solution: Ill-defined projects are best served by a business case and a scoping exercise, says Intellilink Solutions’ Kondo. 

Mistake No. 9: They fail to see the dependencies between projects. 

Impact: Projects don’t happen in isolation. They’re often dependant on other projects going on at the same time. When project managers fail to see the dependencies between projects—such as staff assigned to one project are needed on another&mdashh;projects get held up. Such slowdowns can have a ripple effect on all projects. 

Solution: Take dependencies into account during project planning, says Métier’s Clark. Talking with stakeholders and diagramming the project can help uncover dependencies. 

Mistake No. 10: They don’t consider Murphy’s Law. 

Impact: Stuff happens, and IT gets surprised by it. Consequently, the project goes off-track while IT tries to clean up a mess it didn’t anticipate. 

GlassHouse Technologies’ Scannell recalls a company in the U.K. that his firm acquired, that was moving its mainframe to a new data center. The IT group devoted an entire Saturday to taking down the mainframe so that they could move it to the new data center the next day, he says. While the IT staff were en route to the new data center with the mainframe on Sunday, they ran into a gay pride parade, and they couldn’t reach their destination due to roads blocked off for the parade. They had to drive back to the original data center and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The lack of planning caused the IT staffers to do more work than was necessary. 

Solution: Perform a risk assessment as part of the project planning. With your team, brainstorm what could happen to slow or derail the project, to make it go over budget, or to prevent you from delivering the expected requirements. Then figure out ways you can mitigate those risks, says Primavera CEO Koppelman. “If they sit down and think about those risks, they’ll come up with a pretty good list,” he says. “This exercise doesn’t take a long time, and it’s enormously helpful in understanding the soft spots in a project before it even gets underway.” 

Mistake No. 11: They give short shrift to change management.

Impact: All the time, money and hard work that went into delivering a new IT-enabled capability can be for naught if users don’t adopt the new technology. 

Solution: Spend time up front during the project planning phase to consider where resistance to a project will manifest itself and ways to address it, says Métier’s Clark. Identify the stakeholders whose jobs will be impacted by the new capability, adds Intellilink Solutions’ Kondo, and plan how you’ll communicate changes to their processes and workflows with them. Not all of the changes will be negative. 

Mistake No. 12: Project schedules are incomplete. 

Impact: Project team members don’t know what is due when, which makes completing the project on time a challenge. 

Solution: Clark says a quick way to come up with a schedule for a project is to determine all the activities involved in getting the project done (e.g. scoping, getting requirements, testing and implementing) and then attaching due dates to those activities based on the deadline for the project. Project management software can also help create schedules. 

Communication Problems

Mistake No. 13: IT doesn’t push back on unreasonable deadlines. 

Impact: IT sets itself up to fail and gets a reputation for not being able to deliver projects on time. 

Clark says IT departments will scramble to accommodate project deadlines set by the CEO. But tampering with dependencies and with the plan only creates more problems that make delivering the project on time even more difficult, he says. 

Solution: IT management has to explain to the CEO what it’s going to take to meet that deadline in terms of cost and resources and has to get the CEO to choose between cost, scope and schedule, says Clark. 

Mistake No. 14: They don’t communicate well with project sponsors and stakeholders. 

Impact: IT fails to deliver the expected requirements. 

Solution: Project communications need to be catered to the audience, says Kondo. She sees misunderstandings about the scope of a project or a systems’ requirements arise when IT departments hand over a spreadsheet to the business with thousands of lines describing the systems’ functionality and specs. Because the business owners don’t have time to look over such detailed technical documents, they ignore them. 

“One side is communicating, but in a language the other side can’t understand,” says Kondo. “Then IT gets frustrated and they say, ‘We described this to them. How come this isn’t what they want?’” (Business analysts play a critical role as the liaisons between users and IT.) 

Kondo recommends giving every stakeholder who will be impacted or involved in the project on the business side a high-level overview of the entire project, from design to rollout. The overview should highlight the activities that require interaction with the business and should explain why the business is needed, she says. 

In general, IT needs to put more effort into educating the business about the steps involved in executing a project, says Kondo. 

“If you have an open dialog about what’s needed, what you’re really delivering, and you have fluidity built into the process, the budget and scope becomes a dialog so if you go over budget, it’s not necessarily a failure,” she says. 

Kondo’s firm once worked with a client that was deploying a financial system and whose employees had never been involved in a large system implementation before. When design of the system was complete and Intellilink was beginning to plan for testing, Intellilink explained to the employees why testing was important. 

“We told them about different kinds of testing and what they did and didn’t need to be involved in. We talked about why we needed user input, what kind of input we’d need and how much time it required,” says Kondo. “That gave people an idea of why it takes so long to test.”

George Carlin has Died… :(

• I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some midlevel overnmental functionary  with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.
• I’m not in touch with my feelings and I like it that way, damn it!  I believe no one ever died because of something Ozzy Osbourne, Ice-T or Marilyn Manson sang.
• I think owning a gun doesn’t make you a killer.
• I believe it’s called the Boy Scouts for a reason.
• I don’t think being a minority makes you noble or victimized.
• I believe that if you are selling me a Big Mac, you’d better do it in English.
• I don’t use the excuse “It’s for the children.” as a shield for unpopular opinions or actions.
• I think fireworks should be legal on the 4th of July.
• I think that being a student doesn’t give you any more enlightenment than working at Blockbuster.  In fact, if your parents are footing the bill to put your pansy ass through 4-7 years of college, you haven’t begun to be enlightened.
• I believe everyone has a right to pray to his or her God.
• My heroes are John Wayne, the Simpsons, and whoever canceled “Dr.Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
• I don’t hate the rich.  I don’t pity the poor.
• I know wrestling is fake and I don’t waste my time arguing about it.
• I think global warming is a big lie.  Where are all those experts now, when I am freezing my ass through a long winter? 
• I’ve never owned a slave, or was a slave; I didn’t wander forty years in the desert after getting chased out of Egypt; I haven’t burned any witches or been persecuted by the Turks and neither have you, so  shut- the-#$%!-up already.
• I want to know which church is it exactly where the Reverend Jesse Jackson preaches.  And where does he get his money.  And why is he always part of the problem and not the solution.
• I think the cops have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you’re running from them.  I also think they have the right to pull your ass over if you are breaking the law, regardless of what color you are. 
• I think if you are too stupid to know how a ballot works, I don’t want you deciding who should be running the most powerful nation in the world for the next four years.
• I hate those bastards standing in the intersections trying to sell me crap or trying to guilt me into making “donations” to their cause.  These people should be targets.
• I think if you are in the passing lane, and not passing, your license should be revoked, and you should be forced to ride the bus until you promise to never delay the rest of us again.
• I think beef jerky could quite possibly be the perfect food. 
• I believe that it doesn’t take a village to raise a child, it takes two parents.
• I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don’t pretend they are a political statement. 
• I think Dr. Seuss was a genius.
• I’m neither angry nor disenfranchised, no matter how desperately the mainstream media would like the world to believe otherwise.
• I believe if she has her lips on your Willie, it is sex, and it is sex for both of you.  This even applies when you are President of the United States.
• If all these beliefs make me a BAD American, then yes, I’m a BAD American.
• If you too are a BAD American, please forward this to everyone you know.
• We need our country back!  NOW!!!

I thank you. 

George Carlin

TPS Report Anyone?

Do you really need me to tell you what this is?

TPS Report Cover Sheet

For Those Born 1920-1979

I do not know where this came from, but I did not write it.
READ TO THE BOTTOM FOR QUOTE OF THE MONTH BY JAY LENO. IF   YOU DON’T READ ANYTHING ELSE—VERY WELL STATED.

To all the kids who survived the 1930′s, 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and 70′s!! 

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. 

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes. 

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. 

As infants &  children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. 

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. 

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. 

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. 

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because, 

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! 

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. 

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. 

We would spend hours   building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes, After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. 

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computer! s, no Internet or chat rooms……. 

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! 

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. 

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. 

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. 

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! 

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! 

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! 

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! 

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. 

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! 

If YOU are one of them CONGRATULATIONS! 

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives  for our own good . 

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were.

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:
‘With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?’ 

For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us…go ahead and delete this. 

For the rest of us…pass this ON!

The Jar & Life

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full – They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else—the small stuff. “If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand .”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.”