Google takes a stand

Some of you may have seen a news headline that Google might exit China due to censorship and human rights reasons.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aU43JmiuDJaQ

I was astonished. A company might leave a highly profitable and important market because of a belief in something other than making as much money as possible?

That is a stance which I find admirable. Props, Google. I am now switching all of my web searches to Google. Sorry, Bing.

Some Revised Boise State Thoughts

Disclaimer: Yesterday I had written a little piece on Boise State, empathizing with them about being undefeated and not being able to play for the "National Championship" (quotes intentional). Give them a chance, I said! It's not their fault they don't play "big" schools from the BCS conferences...those teams won't give them a chance to play them!

Well, I remembered today one HUGE argument why Boise State and TCU were not in the "National Championship" (quotes intentional) game. Therefore I have removed my earlier post and replaced it with this post:

While watching the Fiesta Bowl I was reading during halftime and happened to catch a little bit of the Marching Bands. Ah, Bowl Season - the one time that the marching bands get shown on television. I guess the marching band is an important part of the college football tradition. It's fun to have the band play a few songs during halftime (Full Disclosure: I played one year in the high school marching band). My mom certainly loves it when the marching band comes on and plays an old school jazz tune (In The Mood? Anyone?)

Well, both Boise State and TCU's Marching Bands were horrible. Horrible! I watched them. They were not in sync. People did not step on the beat. The lines were not straight. I'm pretty sure the American Fork High School Marching Band (shout out to Sam and Zoe Bateman) would have done a better job than them.

How can you expect to be taken seriously if your marching band is so bad?? It was a joke. Literally every picture they took of the band contianed some glaring mistake. So that's my revised blog post about Boise State (and TCU, I suppose, although the Mountain West has a couple of good marching bands. See BYU and Utah). Go get yourself a good marching band, THEN maybe I'll listen to your complaining about not being invited to the "National Championship" (quotes intentional).

New Year's Resolution 2010

People have been writing me from all over the continguous United States (no one from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, or any part of Canada, oddly enough) as to what are my New Year's Resolutions. Many of you know that I am a somewhat goal-oriented person. I certainly love to make goals, and writing down lists of those goals - although keeping them is where I sometimes find difficulties. Anyway, after much thought and internal debate I have decided on a realistic 2010 New Years Resolution. I can sum up said resolution in one picture:



This picture, cari miei, is of a Franklin Covey Planner. I am going to be using it this year. My list of goals and things I want to get accomplished this year is very long, and so my resolution is to utilize my work-provided planner to get it all accomplished. So if you happen to see me in 2010, you will most likely see my planner.

While I have consistently used some version of a planner since starting with the FDIC, I'm hoping to take it to a more consistent and focused level this year. Think "mission" planning, but a little more task-oriented, since the issue is no longer how many people can I talk to/teach, but how can I get a large variety of assorted and important tasks done.

So there you have it. I see this is as a gateway resolution - by being more organized, I can make sure I'm prioritizing my time to spend them on things that I really want to get done.

I'm looking forward to getting a lot done in 2010, and then blogging about some of it!

p.s. I don't see myself as being one of those weird planner people. You know the type. Not me. I'm just taking what is good from those weird planner people and making it my own, without being weird.