HP released another commerical today featuring Serena Williams. This ad campaign feature all kinds of stars with their passions revealed. And as with all of the commercials the star never reveals their face.
You can watch them all online today!
A very cool video from YouTube - Paintjam Dan Dunn. Since I have no artistic tendencies whatsoever, this video is very impressive to me. I wonder what an artsy fartsy person would say?
For all you 80's hair band fans out there, the new Bon Jovi single, (You Want To) Make a Memory is out. And thank god, the going country rumors were false.
While on the topic of music, last year around this same time the alternative band that crossed over and made it big I think was Simple Plan. Is there any doubt that this year that title belongs to My Chemical Romance?
My song of the week that I just keep playing over and over is Brandi Carlile and The Story. Definitely worth the 99 cents.
Last week it was My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade. The kids still love this one. If you like Queen you'll love this song.
The Mellencamp Our Country song just won't go away. You can't watch a football game without hearing it at least 20 times. I'm sure you all know the words...
From the east coast to the west coast Down the Dixie Highway Back home This is our country
The Sports Guy mentions it often in his blog. A couple classics:
Yo, Sports Guy, me and my friends tried to do a drinking game where we did a shot every time we saw the Melencamp commercial. Two of us died from alcohol poisoning, one choked on his own vomit and my liver exploded by halftime of the 4 p.m. game. This really is our country.
and
Let's flip "This is ourrrrrrr country" around for a second. Isn't the goal of any commercial to get people to notice your product? When ads come on, we're either flicking channels or zoning out into a three-minute coma until the game comes back on, so there are only four ways we'd ever notice an ad: if it's a fantastic commercial (which rarely, if ever, happens); if they happen to startle us (like those Jetta ads that show car accidents and people crashing into air bags); if there's a good-looking woman (like the saucy brunette in the Mercury ads); or if they annoy us to the point that we start reacting like a dog listening to a fireworks display (like the Mellencamp ads). Which leads me to believe that the most effective commercial possible would feature the saucy brunette from the Mercury ads driving a Jetta while singing along to that Mellencamp song, then crashing into another car and slamming face-first into an air bag. This is ourrrrrr country.
If you are missing a bunch of album covers in your iTunes music library try this neat shareware program called TuneSleeve. It isn't the quickest program around but it did a pretty good job on my library. It didn't do them all but it got most of them.
Whenever my wife leaves for a business trip I always charge and sync up her iPod. I think it is my job now. After this last trip she came home with questions about a specific song I bought. I can honestly say I just liked the tune and never paid much attention to the words, but I think I should start paying more attention to avoid the discussions this one created.
The song is called Lips of an Angel (need iTunes for these song links to work), by Hinder
You hear the words "Lips of an Angel" over and over again in the chorus and you think it is a great love song. But as soon as you throw in some of the other lyrics it goes down hill fast:
Can you feel the love now? I'm thinking with the next iPod sync I'll add Crazy Bitch, Battleship Chains and I Write Sins Not Tragedies
I just finished reading the book The Secret: What Great Leaders Know -- And Do by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller. Everyone should recognize Ken Blanchard as the author of The One Minute Manager. This is another short read and it follows the same style as his other books. In this story he follows the day-to-day life of a fictional manager, Debbie, who is on the management/leadership fast track. Debbie is assigned a mentor who happens to be the CEO of the company and he shares his SERVE principal with her.
Great leaders SERVE their team. They:
| See the Future | |
| Engage and Develop Others | |
| Reinvent Continuously | |
| Value Results and Relationships | |
| Embody the Values |
If you want more details on the five parts of the SERVE principal then read the book (borrow mine if you like). I took away two things that I think I need to work on. The first was how little time I spend just chatting with my team on a personal level. I don’t need to dive deep and become a close personal friend with each of them, but I definitely need to spend more time taking an interest in what they do outside of work. I’m genuinely interested; I plan to do better; And I think if I have a strong relationship with everyone they’ll know when I’m passionate about a goal and vice versa.
The second thing dealt with the interview process. I’ve already made a mistake or two in my hiring practices and those mistakes are painful. If I make a mistake and hire the wrong person that person becomes a liability and a complete drain on my resources. With each bad hire I have to spend precious time dealing with their inabilities when I should be focusing on the business and the customer. They recommend 4 interviews. That is 3 more than I ever do! They suggest that the candidate actually interview the manager. Give her a copy of your resume and your references and let her check you out. Spend time on the last interview trying to talk her out of the job and if she still wants it you’ve found the right person. To build a strong working relationship both parties have to be comfortable with each other and the only way to do that is to spend a significant amount of time with one another and one interview isn’t enough time.
So am I going to start interviewing each of my prospective candidates 4 times? Probably not face-to-face, but I can certainly collaborate with them in many other ways outside of the first interview (e-mail, IM, and of course a Google search) to get a better feel for how well they'll fit on our team.