I saw this on  this.rand() and thought I would share with you.

A cowboy from Texas attends a social function where Barack Obama is trying to gather support for his Health Care Plan.  Once he discovers the cowboy is from President Bush’s home area, he starts to belittle him by talking in a southern drawl and single syllable words.

As he was doing that, he kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around his head. The cowboy says, “Y’all havin’ some problem with them circle flies?”

Obama stopped talking and said, ”Well, yes, if that’s what they’re called, but I’ve never heard of circle flies.”

“Well, sir,” the cowboy replies, “Circle flies hang around ranches.  They’re called circle flies because they’re almost always found circling around the back end of a horse.”

“Oh,” Obama replies as he goes back to rambling.  But, a moment later he stops and bluntly asks, “Are you calling me a horse’s ass?”

“No, sir,” the cowboy replies, “I have too much respect for the citizens of this country to call their president a horse’s ass.”

“That’s a good thing,” Obama responds and begins rambling on once more.

After a long pause, the cowboy, in his best  Texas  drawl says,  “Hard to fool them flies, though.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

I hear the notification tone that I have a new email and admittedly I am one of those that will invaribly check to see who it is from.  It wouldn’t matter that I was driving down the road… at least until I saw this video.   If you are a frequent texter or you twitter from your mobile phone I suggest you want the video above and perhaps reconsider.   Many states now have laws about using your mobile phone while driving.  I know it is illegal here in Washington state.   If it isn’t illegal it should be and there should be stiff penalties… the lives you destroy may not be your own… “Why won’t mommy and daddy wake up?”

Needless to say at $6.93 I have to take a loan against future payouts in order to be able to do anything.  Our dinner at the local Mexican restaurant was more that 5 times that amount (with tip of course), the movie tickets were $9.25 each and the popcorn and soda pop to go with them cost more than many 3rd world families have to spend in an entire month.

I figure at this rate I am going to need to have between 9 and 10 more paychecks to cover the evening out.  I got a little caught up in the moment of having that money to spend which encouraged me to do just as our government is doing… deficit spending!!!   Fortunate for me personally, I only need 10 more paychecks to cover my little splurge…

Put into perspective… our 700 BILLION dollar stimulus package divided by approximately 350 MILLION Americans is about 2000 dollars for each man woman and child in this country. (Tax payer or not.)  If I gave the government back their $6.93 per paycheck I would need about 289 paychecks to cover my $2000 of their stimulus spending.  (That’s 11 years for me!) An you know what that doesn’t include any interest.  The money doesn’t grow on trees.  It has to come from somewhere and that somewhere is typically going to get an interest payment as well.

The article that I link to below includes the top 50 which was derived from more than 11,000 companies based on approximately 75,000 employees responses to a survey.

What I really like about this survey is that in order to even be eligible for the list a company had to have a certain number of respondents, they had to have an overall satisfied rating, and the CEO of the company had to have at least a 50% approval rating.    Unlike other surveys I have seen this one also focused on employee attitude about the workplace, work/life balance, fair and equitable treatment, respect, recognition, compensation, etc…   In the 20 questions they really tried to discover a “true” understanding of all aspects of a job.

Granted, you can make a survey’s results say anything you want them to say, and there are probably many companies not included on this list because they were too small, their employees didn’t know about it, etc…

So who are the top companies?  I’ll give you the top 10 and let you go take a look at the rest for yourself…

1. General Mills
2. Bain and Company
3. Netflix
4. Adobe
5. Northwestern Mutual
6. Whole Foods
7. Google
8. SAP
9. Continental Airlines
10. NetApp

The entire article and list (complete with linked reviews) is available at this link… Best Places to Work | Glassdoor.com.

Effective project managers know how to get the job done, and get it done right. Success comes not only from wise selection of the team members and utilization of the best project management software tools; effective managers know how to lead, and how to encourage project team members to do their best. This includes clearly setting and communicating project goals, providing proper training and/or equipment, as well as other necessary items and expertise. Effective project management also requires constant re-evaluation of your performance as the project leader. The most effective form of leadership is by example. If your team members see that you strive to live up to the high standards you require from the project team, they will inevitably be more productive.

Set Attainable goals. Project managers should clearly define the objectives of the assignment and then see that each stage of the project plan has reasonable milestones that mark the accomplishment of the included tasks. All project team members should be aware of the project goals, and understand what his or her part is in accomplishing these goals. Break the project down into sections that allow members to see real progress being made at each stage.

Provide Training & Equipment. Project Team members should be chosen for roles according to their areas of exper

Read the rest: Informative Articles » Project Management, A Forgotten Perspective.

Creating basic highlight reports which clients and management can comprehend.

Letting people know how a project is coming along is obviously a key responsibility of any project manager. With so many methodologies to choose from these days, it becomes hard to determine which key pieces of information will be useful to those involved in the project. These methodologies often come with a tangled mass of cryptic terminology, often only recognizable to practitioners of the system (e.g. burn down chart, sprint backlog, concession, story points, etc).

Let’s say for instance your client is in the food transport business and is getting your company to build them an ERP application. Chances are they wont understand concepts from Agile or PRINCE2, and why should they, they are in a totally different industry.

The issue then becomes; what information do you present when creating a status report that will be useful to the broadest audience (e.g. client, senior management, non-technical user advocates, etc). The project information maintained internally for planning and day-to-day management is one thing, but what gets shown to non-technical stake-holders is something entirely different.

via Project Management for the Web: Project Status Reports Everyone Can Understand.

As you all know I use ClearContext’s Outlook Addon to help me manage my email… and below you will find a snippet of an article and a link to help with the management of vacation email.  If you don’t use ClearContext I would encourage you to take a look while you are there… they have a free version that you can download to give it a try.  Once you’ve gone ClearContext you won’t go back… at least I never did!

“Here are some tips to help you cope with an avalanche of email after a vacation:

Use ClearContext’s AutoAssign rules to quickly categorize and file messages. We all receive informational messages from the usual suspects; email that we like to review such as newsletters and company updates, but is not time sensitive. Upon your return, create some rules to quickly file newsletters, bulk mail, non-critical corporate updates, etc.. Put them out of the way and review at your leisure after you’ve had the chance to catch up on your important email.

Delete or file unimportant messages. After you’ve cleared out the informational emails, use ClearContext’s Prioritized view to see your email listed in priority order. Utilizing CC’s default scoring parameters, the gray messages at the bottom of your Inbox can almost certainly be deleted with little or no review – all of these emails are from unknown senders, are not addressed directly to you, and are likely spam. If you’re worried about bulk deleting, move them to a review file for consumption after you’ve had the chance to…”

ClearContext Corporate Blog: Vacation Email Triage.

 ”It is time for us to set aside our partisan hats and put on our American ones.

As a country, we still have huge problems to solve, including the economic crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This will take alignment and, most of all, leadership. This is not going to be easy.

I want to do my part. Therefore, starting today, I am publicly making four commitments to President-Elect Barack Obama:”

1. Pray for him and our country
2. Assume his motives are good, giving him the benefit of the doubt

Michael Hyatt operates a great blog… you can view the entire article here: My Four Commitments to Barack Obama – Michael Hyatt.

Use the email traffic reduction tips below to combat spam and carbon copy bloat and secure the sanctity of the inbox.

1. Maintain multiple email addresses.

Set up personal and public email account(s) in addition to work email. Use the personal account for friends and family and the public account for online shopping, newsletters, etc.. Never give out the work address for non-work related reasons.

2. Don’t post an email address in public places.

Marketing companies harvest email from public places on the net. Refrain from posting an address on websites, in newsletters, or in email groups to avoid identification by these companies. When posting is inevitable, use the public email address.

Read more via ClearContext Corporate Blog: Top 5 Ways to Reduce Email Traffic.