The images taken under microscope are amazing.

Microscope insects

Duke football beats Virginia Tech!

Absolutely ecstatic that Duke beat Virginia Tech today, its first win against a ranked opponent since 1994. I've been watching and suffering with Duke football since 1998, and I've never felt the kind of excitement about the program that I do now.

The game was ugly to watch. Virginia Tech has an outstanding defense, and Duke's offense couldn't get the ball to Jameson Crowder, its best playmaker, in the second half. But what was really encouraging was that the defense held up. I've been used to good offenses shredding the defense with big plays, but tonight Virgina Tech was held to just one. The combination of an explosive offense with a decent defense that limits big plays means Duke could be going to bowl games for the near future.

Kudos to Brandon Connette. I still can't believe he stayed on his feet after getting hit twice on the 4th and 1 in the 4th quarter. That play clinched the game. Connette has proven he's clutch for much of this season, and that play was a microcosm of his play this whole season.

Lots of games left this season. But most, except for possibly the Miami game, are winnable. Time to make plans for going to bowl game this year!

Duke beats VA Tech

Rack and Stack

Every company I've ever worked for has used stack ranking for performance appraisals. Each company had their own method, but there was always a bell curve and you were fit into it somehow. Although I never saw anyone fired because of poor rankings, a poor ranking generally meant you should start looking for another job.

This article makes a good point that what might have worked for GE in a given time doesn't mean it will work for every other company. It's really hard to objectively measure performance if there are no metrics to be measured by. Sure, utilization is a useful metric, but so much of your utilization is out of your control: at a lower level, you can't totally control the projects you're staffed on and the work you're assigned. The last thing you want to do is create more unnecessary internal politicking in an organization, and ranking employees against each other promotes exactly that.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/07/13/why-stack-ranking-worked-better-at-ge-than-microsoft/

Government Contracting at Year-End

The end of the fiscal year is always a busy time for proposals. But like this article states, it's usually the big companies that are most able to take advantage. Big companies are better able to pull together a proposal team quickly and respond with quality. However, 8(a)s and other special small business have a great opportunity to attach as sub-contractors to companies that need them to comply with contracting requirements.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-21/its-christmastime-for-big-government-contractors-dot-for-small-firms-not-so-much

I always seem to look forward to Shark Tank on NBC. There's something intriguing about a set of uber-investors vying to invest in regular people with great ideas. I think one great aspect of the show is that it gives potential and current entrepreneurs without business educations a view into how businesses are assessed and valued.

I had some background in valuation going into my private equity project in Afghanistan because it was covered in my MBA curriculum. But it always surprised me how traditional valuation translated to emerging (or rather, war-zone) markets, and the super high discount rates they required! It was generally my responsibility to explain this to Afghan entrepreneurs who had virtually no idea what I was talking about. But that was the fun, right?

Passed the PMP Exam

I passed the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam last Saturday. It was extremely long (200 questions) and took me the full four hours to complete. I studied for it for about 4 months during the evenings, which included the 35 hours of mandatory education that PMI requires. I crammed the content in rapidly during the last two weeks as I realized that the content of the exam included information that was not in the PMBOK. I used the PM Prepcast which featured the effusive Cornelius Fichtner as the narrator. It was a very thorough way to study for it, and I highly recommend it.

What I really liked about the exam was that I was able to go back to review questions. So if I was unsure of an answer in the initial part of the exam, but more sure of an answer to a similar concept in a later part of the exam, I could go back and change the previous answer I would say I probably changed 5-6 answers in this way. I was also able to go back and figure out some of the network diagram questions that confused me initially, until I was able to figure out the concept they were testing later in the exam.

Anyway, I'm happy the PMP exam is over and vert pleased that I passed. I feel very comfortable now with project management concepts. Now I just need to put this certification to good use.

Created a new website for myself. Learning PHP and brushing up on my HTML. The template files I downloaded were in PHP format, and I tried to use Dreamweaver to edit them, but I couldn't figure out how to set up a testing server. So I had to upload to my live hosting site every time I made a change...so frustrating! Now I'm having problems with compatibility in Chrome and Firefox, and I have no idea what the issue is. I don't know why, but the scrollbars and images aren't appearing in some instances, and sizing is off sometimes. Probably could have had a professional do it, but it was fun nonetheless...

www.ramizheman.com

I was a big baseball fan back in the late 90s. The Astros were great, but my favorite players were juiced up. I still remember watching Luis Gonzalez's early years, where he hit in the .260s and had a max of 23 home runs. Then he goes to Arizona and hits 57. 

To me what Chris Davis is doing is unreal.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/chris-davis-should-be-chasing-bondss-home-run-record-not-mariss/277857/

Chocolate Milk Recovery Drink

Just saw Hines Ward promoting chocolate milk in a commercial during the Tour de France. This represents an interesting new marketing campaign for milk producers. Soy and almond milk producers like Silk have been marketing heavily to the mass market on taste. But they apparently haven't realized the potential of the sports drink recovery market. And milk producers have jumped quickly. Soy chocolate milk is just as beneficial as chocolate milk, but does tend to be a bit more expensive. I love chocolate soy milk, and drink it for recovery after every workout, but only if I remember to buy it!

Hines Ward, as of July this year, is training for an Ironman. He completed Ironman 70.3 Kansas in June 2013.

Here's the Hines Ward commercial:

Here's a link to a scholarly article on chocolate milk as a recovery drink. Perfect blend of carbs and protein: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://oakbrooksc.com/docs/stager_chocmilk_study.pdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm2qfI1_JIkJfp1Qbjkg9tmg9LSH4Q&oi=scholarr

USDA Mobility Use-Case. I attended a talk by an IBM VP who said mobility will be key to delivering faster service and value to citizens. It will be interesting to see how mobility comes to fruition across other federal agencies in the coming years.

http://fcw.com/articles/2013/07/10/usda-ipad.aspx

Spectacular. Especially like the bobsleigh track in Sarajevo and the Bulgarian communist party HQ

http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/04/14/the-33-most-beautiful-abandoned-places-in-the-world/

In many ways B&N is fighting a losing battle. I remember the CEO stating on the news a few years ago that sales at brick and mortar stores still comprised 80% of revenue and that they planned to slowly transition to ebook sales. I guess that number is falling faster than he thought it would. The Nook will never have the same aura as the Kindle or iPad.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/08/news/companies/barnes-noble-ceo/index.html?source=googleplus 

Interested to see what might happen in that corner of Alexandria...

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/breaking_ground/2013/06/massive-sports-entertainment-complex.html

 

Moving to a smarter, tech-friendly government

 

http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2013/07/technology-heart-obamas-second-term-management-agenda/66185/ 

The cloud storage wars begin...

http://dashburst.com/cloud-storage-report-google-drive-dropbox/ 

I do feel sorry for people who live on the Orange line. My train experiences when I lived in Ballston in Arlington were pretty miserable, and caused me to give up metro in favor of driving through traffic. I got sick of regularly having my head lodged in someone's armpit. The Yellow line is much more comfortable. I always get a seat in the morning, and I only wait a couple of stops in the evening. But my wife still prefers the VRE and rides it every day despite the added cost. In the words of her boss, "the VRE is just civilized"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dr-gridlock/wp/2013/07/10/disabled-metro-train-causes-massive-delays-on-orange-and-blue-lines/

More about the government's initiative to move to a cloud-first policy and promote IT consolidation and shared services. I've worked on a couple of technology strategy projects within IBM that have focused on these efforts. Right now I'm setting up a project portfolio management capability at FAA to help eliminate duplicate systems and better rationalize IT investments. But adoption is slow and transformation is complicated. It always helps when there are powerful people in the upper reaches leading the charge.

http://fcw.com/Articles/2013/07/10/path-to-cloud.aspx?Page=1

Heart Rate Training

I’ve had a lot of success with heart rate training, primarily for long-distance races. However, there is considerable debate over how much training is actually required to achieve good results. Some say you can’t really get the benefits with only 15-20 miles of running. Others say the distinction between fat and carb-burning zones is incorrect, and that energy systems are more of a spectrum rather than divided into zones. The question for most athletes is, how do I achieve maximum results in minimum training time without getting injured?

Mark Allen's boiler-plate heart training blog.
https://www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=2

Mark Allen's base training phase:
https://www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=4