A little over a year ago, I put out a blog entry called The College CBA. Recently, Vox Day put out a post called More doubts about college. Then, there is an interesting discussion on the Promised Land blog for the post called Where Have All The Daughters Gone?. In it, the observation is made that college and career seems to be the preferred path for homeschooled daughters. Not to leave the sons out, based on my experience, there are many opportunities in the trades. (If you are service-oriented and do a good job at what you promise, you will do well.) I think it is most important that a young man prepare himself to support a wife and children, if he plans to get married. Once again, the bar is not very high for a young man to excel and set himself apart. A job well done or a quality product, or service, are not well known any more. A lot of opportunity is waiting and I do not believe that many of those opportunities absolutely require a college degree.
I received this in a chain email. Normally, I don’t do much with chain emails, but this one had enough common sense in it to be useful. It doesn’t say who wrote it. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can give proper credit.
TIPS ON PUMPING GAS
I don’t know what you guys are paying for gasoline…. but here in California we are also paying higher, up to $3.50 per gallon. But my line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money’s worth for every gallon..Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose, CA we deliver about 4 million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline. One day is diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons.
Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening… your gallon i s not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.
A 1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.
When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. In slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some other liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank, so you’re getting less worth for your money.
One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that every gallon is actually the exact amount.
Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up — most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom. Hope this will help you get the most value for your money.
Oh, how I have neglected you! It’s not that I haven’t been busy the first four months of this year! I started twonew websites. I kept busy trying to establish my e-commerce business and keep my eBay business growing. Not to mention my family, regular job, 80 mile commute, and new farm!
This is not the typical blogger’s confession. I promise to spend more time with you. Will you forgive me?
I needed to create a simple Gantt Chart to communicate a high-level project plan and found this great little tutorial on YouTube.
This is a useful technique to remember. Often project management tools such as Primavera or Microsoft Project are too heavy for communicating at a high level. Most of you stakeholder community needs an easy to understand picture of the project. Excel fits the bill for this.
There are now two “Mikesmind”s blogging. I monitor blog posts related to my name and the blogs I write. I have a blog-search defined in Google Reader for mikesmind. Click here to look at the other mikesmind blog. He is from Singapore, while I am from Iowa, USA.
I have confessed to my peers that it is hard to assess the effectiveness and performance of a project manager in our organization. It is probably hard in other organizations too. “On time” and “under budget” are hard to quantify on information technology projects. Some may argue this point, but I find that no one really knows what a project will be when these two metrics are established.
I read an interesting post by Scott Berkun. It is titled Are you a leader or a tracker?. In it, Scott lists a group of questions to ask a project manager in order to understand what that person really does. I summarize the questions into a couple key ideas.
“Professionalizing” project managers has left many of them without relevant, hands-on roles. I am finding that information technology executives (CIO, CTO) are wanting more hands-on project managers. In other words, PMs who have a deeper understanding of the projects they are tasked with completing.
Leading the team to the goal is more important than pushing them from behind. If the focus is on tracking, what leadership value are you bringing? It is easier to track. (Hindsight is 20/20.) Most teams need a leader who can put the next steps and the ultimate goal into better focus.
At the very least, if you are in a project management role, do a self-assessment using Scott’s questions. Your answers may point you in a better direction that will increase your effectiveness and value.
Out of all the publications I receive as an IT professional, Computerworld is the best. How can I tell? It is because rarely can I finish an issue in one sitting. I will try to skim through it first, but usually get stuck on Don Tennant’s editorial. Then I get caught reading an article and then dog-earring several others to read later. This magazine is full of valuable information and insight week after week.
One piece of technology that has made my life easier is Google Reader. It is simple to use and convenient. The main time-saving advantage to an RSS reader is that is automatically checks websites for you and displays new posts. You can then choose what to look at, saving time because you didn’t have to browse all these websites to determine what is new.
Above is an image of my Google Reader, so you can see how it works. The left column shows the sites I monitor and indicates new articles by bolding the link and showing the number of new posts. You can click on one of these links to display the most recent posts for that specific site, or look at the middle column for the most recently updated content.
The sign-up process is easy, as is setting up Google Reader. All you need to do is follow the instructions!
Metrics for project management is an interesting topic. I have experimented with different forms of metrics, depending on what was important at the time. For example, when we were first establishing our project management practice, our metrics focused on adhering to the process. This worked well when the project managers had a specific objective on their annual review for this metric. We have also tried budget and scheduling variance in the past. However, this was difficult to make meaningful for several reasons.
Project managers learn how to fool the system and beat the metrics.
Often times, estimates are experienced guesses at best. The practice that project schedules are typically built in a top down or bottom up approach, results in the accumulation of errors from the estimates.
It’s not typical that projects have the luxury of right to left planning. Usually there is a business need driving the project schedule to a date. Determining what can be accomplished in that timeframe is the realistic approach.
Although I have not had the opportunity to try this, I believe there is a better way to evaluate the effectiveness of project managers. Each project should have a satisfaction score sheet to quantify the success of each project. (This can be done on a 1 to 5 scale of satisfaction with a space for specific comments.)
Rate the sponsor’s satisfaction with the project outcome.
List specific business goals that the project was trying to impact and score each one.
Poll project team members on the project manager’s effectiveness.
Ask the project stakeholders about the effectiveness of communication on the project.
The size of a project also matters when looking at metrics. Small initiatives are easier to control and complete “on time.” Large, multi-year efforts with sub-projects are more difficult to manage and measure.
If your organization is disciplined in terms of establishing timelines and budgets, you may be able to measure schedule and budget performance. I am most interested in customer satisfaction.
