Love is 'Back

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Foggia '07": Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Foggia '07":


I don't feel loved anymore... the only picture of me is my back... GRRRRRRRR!!!!!! Oh well, what can us Deygos do 'bout it??? Yeah, thats what I thought, you dunno how to answer... hehehe


ciao pappa!! Ti Amo, Amore!!


d3z iZ 0uTTT

Auguri Dogs

I have been wondering a lot about your family, wishing I could hear from you soon.

Thanks for the nice email. I am rushing around at work now and will have to respond later when I have a few moments.

But I'm glad you are back safe & sound. Ange and I did get to Portland and had a great time.
More later, RIck & company

Compostholestoy, Today

Foggian

We men here, while here, Foggians do not butt heads very often. Why? Because greeting each other and salutation egress are initiated with cheek to cheek kisses. Such non-homophobic gestures require humility and genuflect. I think it is a smoother lifestyle, and small barrier to cross to be amongst in-laws.

Foggian homes with walls thick and natural circulation a must, have clothes hung outside the windows, no matter what one's status. Standi Panni is the name for the garments bearding the window sills every afternoon all over town. It is all California wants to be: Roman, cultured, prejudiced, and beautiful in mindful manners, and hard talk, and weather.

But Foggian is the real thing. What you see is what you get, unless you learn the cheek to cheek. Once you are accepted, you are allowed to sit with the women in their houses, and laces of Foggian cultural ambiguity are revealed to the stranger. My children would have had a better toddler stage had I known their southern Adriatic valley origins, and genetic coding thanks to Foggian natural selection.

Oh, yes, Foggian is also a dialect of southern Italy. I cannot understand a word of it. It is spoken in telling jokes around the grappa near midnight. But it is so distinct it is recognized as the "redneck agriculture" speech and loathed by the hoity-toity wannabes. So I can relate to the prejudice of a regional twang, or oohh in this case.

Today one lives in a sort of two block square compound as if in a single family dwelling. We stayed part way in this compound domicile and part-time in a highrise. Most apartments are stacked in block housing array, originating from Brutalism Architecture; you know, like le Courbusier, back when? Just google Brutalism.

As the evening breezes filter through the garden of the compound, gates are locked, security systems are turned on, and the lock down is akin to, well, you know, clang-clang. But real fear of burglary warrants the night time incarceration. However, as the time difference caused me to awake at 2:30 AM my first morning, I found myself pacing the floor. Outside wild dogs howled, and the half-moon cast dreamy light on the terrace garden below, now unavailable to me.

Bedtime became the darndest event at the compound, as strict mindful Foggian culture sought safety in bedrooms; each evening collapsed inward to beds made in pearl dust and cotton; pillows covered with slips that hung and drip-dried in Foggian afternoons all that day.

More is later. >>pd

Foggia '07

Arrived, well, sauntered, uh... fell into the arms of my loved ones.

Air is of Carnival. We passengers on the last leg of Gatwick to Naples, disembarked to tarmack bus, took us to our luggage... hey!

I found my family larger now as the Tuts is alive among the next generation of Foggians. Twenty-three hours eating and relaxing and the other one hour pondering the previous. Several themes ferment there.

Heat wave, worst remembered, clothes coming off. Drive around Foggia midnight to cool off (Gino Fatigato).

As I fell into the arms of my loving family, there was more of them to hug and grab. We blondes are blessed with a coarse 50 weight, five o'clock stubble, so beard burn is a major national and local competition. As Texian stubble meets fashionable Agassian jaw mascara in the retiring hour, we sit back into Foggian housing. I smother the little ones in affection, and they make hand gestures at me: "Que Fi, Zio?"

Later is more. And everyone has a flat panel. >>pd

Toney Sisk on Project Management

The History of Project Management
Project management, in its modern form, began to take root only a few decades ago. Starting in the early 1960s, businesses and other organizations began to see the benefit of organizing work around projects and to understand the critical need to communicate and integrate work across multiple departments and professions.
The Early Years: Late 19th Century
We can travel back further, though, to the latter half of the 19th century and to the rising complexities of the business world to see how project management evolved from management principles. Large-scale government projects were the impetus for making important decisions that became management decisions. In this country, the first large organization was the transcontinental railroad, which began construction in the early 1870s. Suddenly, business leaders found themselves faced with the daunting task of organizing the manual labor of thousands of workers and the manufacturing and assembly of unprecedented quantities of raw material.
Early 20th Century Efforts
Near the turn of the century, Frederick Taylor (1856–1915) began his detailed studies of work. He applied scientific reasoning to work by showing that labor can be analyzed and improved by focusing on its elementary parts. He applied his thinking to tasks found in steel mills, such as shoveling sand and lifting and moving parts. Before then, the only way to improve productivity was to demand harder and longer hours from workers. The inscription on Taylor's tomb in Philadelphia attests to his place in the history of management: "the father of scientific management."

Taylor's associate, Henry Gantt (1861–1919), studied in great detail the order of operations in work. His studies of management focused on Navy ship construction during WWI. His Gantt charts, complete with task bars and milestone markers, outline the sequence and duration of all tasks in a process. Gantt chart diagrams proved to be such a powerful analytical tool for managers that they remained virtually unchanged for nearly a hundred years. It wasn't until the early 1990s that link lines were added to these task bars depicting more precise dependencies between tasks.

Taylor, Gantt, and others helped evolve management into a distinct business function that requires study and discipline. In the decades leading up to WWII, marketing approaches, industrial psychology, and human relations began to take hold as integral parts of business management.
Mid-20th Century Efforts
After WWII, the complexities of projects and a shrinking war-time labor supply demanded new organizational structures. Complex network diagrams called PERT charts and the critical path method were introduced, giving managers greater control over massively engineered and extremely complex projects (such as military weapon systems with their huge variety of tasks and numerous interactions at many points in time).

Soon these techniques spread to all types of industries as business leaders sought new management strategies and tools to handle their growth in a quickly changing and competitive world. In the early 1960s, general system theories of science began to be applied to business interactions. Richard Johnson, Fremont Kast, and James Rosenzweig described in their book The Theory and Management of Systems how a modern business is like a human organism, with a skeletal system, a muscular system, circulatory system, nervous system, and so on.
Today
This view of business as a human organism implies that in order for a business to survive and prosper, all of its functional parts must work in concert toward specific goals, or projects. In the following decades, this approach toward project management began to take root in its modern forms. While various business models evolved during this period, they all shared a common underlying structure (especially for larger businesses): that the project is managed by a project manager, who puts together a team and ensures the integration and communication of the workflow horizontally across different departments.

—Toney Sisk (Sisk, Toney, and Knoll, Sharon. October 15, 1998; MSFT, the History of project management, Dec 31, 1997. Retrieved July 30, 2007)

Wonderful Minds

Have you seen --
Too many wonderful minds wasted?

Drug down to dullness
Not by their own account
More by the thrill-seeker River Rat
Frightened in their spoiled habitat
Causing similar pain throughout
Fouling up food supply chain fat

Writers evacuate famous beaches
Once stormed by troops advancing
Indefensible gaping holes eventuating
Bridged in the company of
Want-to-be Gays, lesbians
and studio leeches

Frightened at their own parting
Maybe never absorbed
Maybe never eaten
Perturbed at not excreted;
Could sallow sadness
Pass this way yet again?

Dumb down
Oh holy bereft and absent
Dumb sown
Sense-of-loss feeling
Dumb blown
Touch something that’s lacking

1/2006 Darnell

Improvements in the Supply Chain

Privacy, Compliance and Data Flow
By Patrick Darnell
Managing Project Risk and Opportunities
Risk Assessments
Introduction
Use of this Framework for the discovery of Innovation, Risks and Opportunity scan will help in deciding if the supply chain is full, or not, of opportunity for improvements in Project X:
Uncover and prepare for opportunities/ risks
Understand opportunity/ risk
Identify opportunities/ risks
Evaluate new products and services
Assess internal capacities to excel in schedule, assembly and delivery (paraphrased, Power Decisions Group, Inc. Dec 2006)
Use tools such as:
Online, wireless local area networking
Phone, Mail, Surveys
Hybrid Methods, Focus Groups
Qualitative Methods
Quantitative Methods
“Services for the public are designed so there is one route to perform multiple tasks with different agencies.” Gary Robinson, Washington CIO
Discussion: Opportunities
Several opportunities stand out. The following list is made in hopes that savings can be multiplied throughout the whole Project X.
1. Assembly Revisions
Major Innovations discovered by work teams while assembling the prototypes may qualify as unmistakable revisions in the final builds. Savings from on job discoveries will be touted as major events of opportune and lead to earlier delivery of products.
Privacy, Compliance, and Data Flows
2. Internet Technology Advantages
Ripping out the wires and using wireless solutions to fulfill the gamut is today a security and networking management solution industry ideally situated for key providers.
According to a recent survey by Aberdeen Group, 88% of best-in-class service organizations view the connection between the field and back office as a top strategic priority. If your company doesn’t already have some type of communication solution in place — such as calling techs via cell phones or a scheduling and optimization field service data solution — it will soon. But your solution can be more than just connectivity between the field and the office. You can leverage complementary technologies to make the most of your investment (Chapin, Khristen; October 2006).
3. Supply Chain
Unified just-in-time based delivery of piece parts and hardware can be the biggest opportunity to capture the imaginations of the work teams. In field operations the mobile voice over internet protocol can boost the delivery of dwindling supplies, and teams can be at the site of larger re-tools, or do-over’s, with the VOIP.
4. Post PERT analysis weighted averages
After the meetings to discuss worst case situations on the major headings of the WBS, opportunity is abundantly portrayed in scarcity of resources. For instance if the total project is using all the armored steel available in the next two quarters of the next year, then the major opportunity is to advise production of this condition. Opportunity does not always have to be dramatic. Many opportunities are simple good turn attitudes.
Discussion: Risks -- Let’s Call this Data Mining
Data mining -- finding gems of insight from sophisticated or basic analysis of your internal databases and WBS, and margin trend data -- is a key part in ...Development & Naming assignments, as well as New Project [Risk Management] Development.
(Power Decisions Group, Inc. Dec 2006)
The search for hidden risk elements is no less a savings when found. A dollar saved is a dollar return on investment. “Simply put, an analysis data mining effort searches for meaning and insight among the stacks of data and related data already within a project management organization. ...Thus, data mining is the search and the use of techniques that squeeze out meaning. Tools include advanced statistical tests and modeling, and the use of neural networks” (Power Decisions Group, Inc; Dec 4, 2006).
Consolidate the risks on a collaborative level and the “business as usual” in government contracts may be sarcasm of the past. Success breeds success in every knowledge base for Project X, as the project management juggling expectations of states and Uncle Sam finds relief from more companies vying for a slice of government pie. Risk Management no longer means being locked in to particular vendors with only self interest in pushing their own products, services or securities.
1. No Substitutions if untested, or not certified
In the search for austere methods for procurement of resources, there is a great risk in substituting materials. Testing may not be finished on some materials, or the testing is pending. Sometimes austerity may lead to incomparable solutions. The risk is in compromised performance, reliability and injury.
2. Security is at stake
With information being generated through the pipeline to executives outside the office, the underpinning of earlier wireless LAN was “vulnerable to security breaches and caused enterprises to be leery of the technology” (McAdams, Jennifer; November 7, 2006). McAdams reports: “’We’ve always believed management and security aren’t separate and distinct issues,’ Greg Murphy, AirWave Wireless.”
“’Balancing the needs of security and business-integration requirements is our biggest challenge,’ says Tom Jarrett, Delaware” CIO (Aitoro, Jill R; November 13, 2006). Jarrett says: “As more agencies want to collaborate, the data owners need a higher assurance of data [integrity] and its proper uses” reports Aitoro.
3. State of Distribution
While the state of distribution of products is “fairly status quo,” say the resellers and distributors, there may be hidden under radar price creep due to fuel prices and other concerns that could bust smaller distributors. For instance the often ignored distributors of the cutting-edge technology needed for Project X are not the all that established. In fact the “up and comers” who provide innovative access to emerging technologies are small specialty distributors. These are the distributors to watch in the early deliverables of the high tech Project X defense systems.
4. Political Winds
“Regardless of what changes come with November elections, states are most likely to adopt proven success models” says Aitoro ...Such as “statewide data-center-consolidation initiatives” (Aitoro, Jill R; November 13, 2006). As government may struggle to appease the many stakeholders “influencing decisions, the change in political favor is a major risk that could and will change the scope and funding of any federal or state projects. The best way to deal with political wind-shifts is to force the privates sectors to “do their homework, and take more time on risk issues, making for better partnerships” (Aitoro, Jill R; November 13, 2006, p15).
Collaboration by the companies that currently hold contracts, such as “McLean, Virginia based Northrop Grumman, San Diego based Technology Integration Group and Marketware Technologies in Sacramento” can move a project into completion by showing and proving cost savings of 30% in $100 million in contracts by those companies.
The idea is to circumnavigate the “bureaucratic process,” says Clark Kelso, CS CIO. “These were not just some general services that led to some leveraged procurements; we gave all agencies a chance to be involved in designing specifications and programs.” Surely, this will take the large out of the hands of the few.
References
Aitoro, Jill R; (November 13, 2006): By the time... government VAR, Feature, State of the states, P 9-12, GovernmentVAR com
Chapin, Khristen; (October 2006) Integrated Solutions, Three Steps to Field Service Success, retrieved date: 15 November 2006 WesP CorryPub %20PDFs ISM06
Kelso, Clark (November 13, 2006): By the time... government VAR, Feature, State of the states, P 9-12, GovernmentVAR com
McAdams, Jennifer; (November 7, 2006) Ripping out the wires, VARBusiness Tech Advantage Series, VARBusiness, article p 45-50, varbusiness com
Power Decisions Group, Inc. (Dec 4, 2006) San Francisco, Tools & Techniques

Doggone It! How much is One to Survive?

Belinda D.:
I feel like I am remote witness to your unending mystery tome. The shivers go up and down my spine when I think of "critters in the attack..." Boo!
Bold bloody critters, and critter gitt'ers in flannel shirts with unemotional snagger' poles, and cages that catch 'em live...
...you see the imagination is a terrible thing to have in here, in virtual mystery magic.

Pat Darnell
"Happy to oblige; happy to be alive; Please keep those cards and letters coming in."

From: Belinda DouganSent: Thu 5/10/2007 8:02 AMTo: Patrick.DarnellSubject: RE: Hey; critter update/ No Squatters!
Don't even go there. I think there maybe some babies up there....or maybe a little paranoid! Anycase the "critter gitter" guys are coming back over this afternoon to check it out. I've heard "chirpping" at times so better safe than sorry.

Thank heavens one more project and one more db!

Belinda

From: Patrick.DarnellSent: Thu 5/10/2007 3:23 AMTo: Belinda DouganSubject: RE: Hey; critter update/ No Squatters!
Hi Belinda:
Now that's one for the human; negative for the raccoons. I can just see that seething caught critter in its live catch'em cage. Good thing it didn't die up there.
We have rules: No Squatters!
Pat Darnell
"Happy to oblige; happy to be alive; Please keep those cards and letters coming in."

From: Belinda DouganSent: Wed 5/9/2007 8:49 AMTo: Patrick.DarnellSubject: Hey; critter update
You remember last Friday night I told you there was a "critter" that had gotten into my attic. I thought it was a squirrel. WRONG! It turned out to be a raccoon. I didn't hear it from Friday morning until Monday night. I heard it before I went to bed so it didn't have the pleasure of giving me a 1 a.m. wake up call as it did Friday morning.

Anyway, I got the "varmet getters" out to the house yesterday afternoon, they set the trap and you guessed it, that furry, four legged joker was in the trap this morning. They are going to check and see if they think there could be another one up there. Please God not!

Anyway, he was looking at me as to say, "I got in here but I can't get out." I told that joker not to look at me in that tone of voice because he had dealt me a world of misery....

Belinda

Hi Belinda:
I hope you have time to attend the Live Chat. It helps some how. Don't be shy with Prof Jeff -- he is aware of the gaps in our lessons. And, gasp, don't drop the class!

Web Page Design is similar to graphic arts design. The two are almost no different; except the method of design. Graphic Arts have been accomplished for centuries by hand with artist materials standard to the period of artist.

Only now, graphic arts of Web pages are done with electronics. I think the confusion is that it is more art than tech. Even if one is good at html, it doesn't mean a good design is going to suddenly appear. Most designs blow.

Therefore, think of a project you want to do for yourself... anything... like a story of your pet and life. I know it sounds like 7th grade, but guess what... it is when one goes from actually cutting up paper to cut /paste in electronics. The attached index may or may not work in your system, but you get the idea?
Better yet:
(Look at my friends first trial Web Site: Runhaar.com, just type in to google, The Runhaar Family Website appears) They are a large family originating in Holland; the son made this site for his college work, just like we are doing. He calls it ancient history now, since he doesn't have time to upgrade it. But there you have it.

Now you have a welcome page for a subject you know a lot about. You know where to start, and you know where it will go. Huge barrier overcome for Mrs. Dougan; stuff is now hurdled. Also, you might have a million photos of your pet... all the resource one could ask for. Make it bad, make it ugly... hey make me look! You control the html codes, as you ask "how can I make this picture of 'Thumper go on the left?"

See my attached stuff, I have been planning a site for our family Mom 2 Pop businesses, for a long time. So I just put it into this course, it's an approach I call: "No limitations Design-- Anything anyone can do, I can do ten times better and more attractive...!"

Are you smiling yet? I am
Thanks for writing. I am standing by.
Pat Darnell
"Happy to oblige; happy to be alive; Please keep those cards and letters coming in."

From: Belinda DouganSent: Wed 4/25/2007 4:29 PM
To: Patrick.DarnellSubject: Discussion Board
Hey Pat:

I read your discussion board and Candice's comments. However, I too was/am very confused. I am pretty well self taught as far as using a computer, and am totally "wierded out" by this class. I am not technically minded person especially when it comes to codes, inserting this, linking that or readinga book and knowing what it says. I am more analytical than technical, but can usually figure stuff out. But am having problems with this computer jargen. Haven't been doing to bad, but.... when it comes to inserting graphs, thumbnails, etc.... man...

I have been so frustrated these last couple of weeks, I have seriously thought about dropping out until the next go around. But, I'm like a pit bull dog to a point, when I feel like I've been backed into a corner I come out more determined and with more tenacity than every.

It was a good post...but like Candice, my mind isn't wrapping around this technical stuff.

Belinda

jillosophy: Iran and Mexico to Expand Tourism Ties

jillosophy: Iran and Mexico to Expand Tourism Ties

Spam 3924: Tide Pools, and Butter Kools

Hello, I am away until July 27, 3907 and am unable to read your message.

The Education of a Lifetime

• What inspired you to earn your degree?

• What challenges have you had to overcome to earn your degree?

  Why would you recommend Colorado Technical University Online to your friends
  and relatives?

  How has the Services Department assisted you?

  What was your most memorable experience?

Report from the Middle: the Education of Pat Darnell

At an early age I decided to reverse engineer my education.
As I wandered around campus in 1973, I found every one of the gaps that students and teachers have fallen through. The major driver of my odd fashion in 1973 was the Vietnam Conflict. It had come to a head that year.

It was the pimple in US history, seething blister on top of the boil started with an ingrown hair of reluctant authoritarians. LBJ, the teacher, took over for the patriot, JFK, and found Command distasteful, and illogical. Consequently, he quit and turned it all over to Nixon. True to his word Nixon ended the draft and the conflict, the year I turned eighteen. It is also the year I entered college for the first time. I went three years to Trinity University in San Antonio.

There was a fellow who started at the same time as I whom will not be named here. He limped. He was about my age and had returned from Vietnam as an invalid; but refused to take it easy on his stiffened right leg. He also had a drug addiction from using pain-killers. He was naturally trying to re-enter life and go to college. He didn’t say much, but to me his body language spoke volumes. He disappeared before I could make friends. He was one of the living veterans who had returned. I hope he has received the help he needed.

Later in junior English Writing class was a retired Colonel who was also taking advantage of GI funds for continuing education. Army Officers receive stipends for lifetime to attend any college anywhere in the nation. I thought that was outstanding. His name I will reveal; Colonel William Due, I think he was in his seventies. Trinity University is located near Ft. Sam Houston where many military personnel are stationed for medical training. Col. Due was the oldest soldier in my classes.

In context of returning Vietnam veterans in those early years, I felt I was living in a duel world. I could not escape my personal embarrassment that I did not enlist, after Nixon got rid of the draft. I had been preparing to go since Boy Scouts. My dad is retired Navy Lt. WWII, and given that the Vietnam draft was broader meaning to young men and women turning eighteen, we all prepared to see it through. Also, Dad did not recommend going to war, he said go to college first.

Secondly, procrastinating military was okay as I was doing well in college, and for my parents that was good enough reason to not go with the military.

Texas as one of the top twenty economies in the world has a boom bust cycle that causes major dysfunctional banking in the state economy. Starting in 1974, the thrifts all bottomed out; the reader might remember the fiasco of Savings and Loans? It was in that era many who were of real estate families experienced the worst financial difficulties as the bottom fell out. By 1976 fear and regrets left many students without enough cash to continue; me.

So I went to full-time work and part-time college at University of Houston. Unfortunately, my transfer of credits did not go in my favor back then. I could manage U of H up till 1978. Then came the Carter years and double digit inflation, stagnation, fuel lines and whatever else can go wrong; hostages. By now we were growing our family; our last is born in 1996.

In 2006 I decided it was time to return. Wow, that is too long of a time. Well, is it? If not for the Internet I could never attend classes easily, even though I live less than two miles from Texas A & M. I talked with the professors that live in our neighborhood, and they said the best route is through online university. It is difficult to manage going to classes if you are atypical to the general population of students. I think my acquaintance with the young disabled veteran from Vietnam Conflict over thirty years earlier, has a great deal to do with my decision to return to complete unfinished business. Likewise, Colonel Due proved one is never too old.

It made perfect sense. I looked into it and found my regional representing college to be CTU Online. I called and worked through the process of getting it all set up. It was not what I was expecting, and that is a good thing. I got up to speed about the second session. I finished the senior year, as I had many hours that CTU honored and transferred upfront, in my favor. Then I completed the degree plan they outlined in eighteen months.

We kept track of the work: I have estimated that I spent about 2800 hours online, and wrote over 500,000 words. My final GPA is 3.81, which makes Dean’s and Chancellor’s Lists. I am graduating about the same time my oldest daughter is finishing her Masters at DePaul, and number three son is graduating Western Illinois with his bachelors in BA. I owe my education to working up through the trades, and to my children for giving me reason to be in continual educational upgrade for thirty years. As the children have grown so has my will to improve myself. Each child is born to his or her time, and that means I must have upgrades in my own thinking. How else could we parents remain their best friends?

I owe my freedom to pursue perchance dreams and achievements of education, family and career to those who have been to war and back, and those who never made it back. That list includes my Pappy, Col. Bill Due and the mysterious young veteran who I cannot forget how he walked, as he always stubbornly left his crutches at home. >>pd

Laugh at this...!

Compostholestoy says:

Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the PostOffice? What are we supposed to do.. write to these men?
Why don't they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the mailmen could look for them while they deliver the mail?
Or better yet, arrest them while they are taking their pictures! oh, THAT Henny Youngman http://media.woub.org/ramgen/wiredbooks/HennyYoungman.rm
Richard Capotosto Zeeland, Michigan

Hey Ricardo, they're not just all men anymore! >>pd

LAWYER JOKES: The problems with lawyer jokes is that 1. lawyers don't think they're funny and, 2. the rest of us don't think they're jokes!

Warning Signs that you Might Need a Different Lawyer
He tells you that his last good case was a Budweiser. When the prosecutors see who your lawyer is, they high-five each other. He picks the jury by playing "duck-duck-goose. "He tells you that he has never told a lie. A prison guard is shaving your head.

<< http://www.mugshots.com/index.php

"My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle." Henny Youngman: US (English-born) comedian & violinist 1906-1998
- More quotations on: [Drinking]http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Henny_Youngman/