Experience the smooth ride and easy driving of the third generation Nissan Altima in this unique lightly-owned car. 2005 was a facelift year for the Altima with a new grill and an updated rear, so there’s already a lot to like. This car, however, isn’t just any Altima. This burgundy red Altima includes the SL luxury package and has spent the last decade being driven by a librarian.
Read more...Two years ago I first entered the world of iPad note taking. I was starting my first semester at VDS and had purchased a first generation iPad Air a few months before. My intent was to use my iPad to take notes during lectures and in my many meetings at work. — I was still rocking a giant, heavy HP Elitebook 8760w 17" portable workstation at the office. — I started down the path of pen input, but quickly realized that wasn’t the best way to go. Pen input wasn’t supported well by iOS and wasn’t automatically converted to plain-text like my beloved Newton would. For plain-text note taking, keyboard entry was still the best. I went to Amazon, purchased a bluetooth keyboard, and started carrying my iPad to meetings at work and lectures at school.
Read more...I have long been a skeptic of AgileTM. There is no doubt that team-based, flexible, and product/value-focused software development is the best way we’ve discovered so far to build great, useful software. That, I believe, is fairly established even in the most corporate of environments. What I remain skeptical of is “methodologies” and processes which claim to “govern” and “better manage” the agile software development team and process. In my career I’ve found most of these techniques to serve MBAs’ and project managers’ need to track and quantify rather than to serve the team or improve the craft or quality of software. On the contrary, many AgileTM methodologies I’ve experienced over the years have slowed the development process, hurt developer moral, and led to software that was behind schedule and didn’t provide the full value needed.
Read more...Having recently left one employer for another, the topic of talent retention is fresh on my mind. When I started my new job at LifeWay the director over my department asked me to read The Alliance by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and and Chris Yeh. At first glance The Alliance looked like the typical IT management book. At only about 150 pages with a largish font and a trendy cover, my expectations where not high. Luckily, however, I was surprised by what I found inside. It is not a weighty book. It doesn’t go super deep. It does waste a lot of paper and ink – especially the later chapters. But, even though the content of this book would make a better blog post than a full publication, The Alliance makes some important points and gives useful guidance for the contemporary IT leader.
Read more...Whether we realize it or not we all have expectations. When a football player enters the end-zone after a game-changing interception we expect a big team celebration. Presidential candidates are expected to kiss babies. When an application gets updated on your phone you expect new features and a new look. These and so many of the expectations of our daily lives are unspoken. No one really notices they even exist until they are not met. If a team casually walked away from the end-zone after a touchdown or a presidential candidate refused a baby, it would make the news. Take a moment sometime and read the reviews on the App Store. There are lots of unmet expectations being communicated – at varying degrees of eloquence and rationality – there.
Read more...Mary Magdalene and the other women disciples with her had followed the dead body of their Rabbi from the foot of the cross to the tomb on that Friday. On the Sabbath they mourned the loss of their great friend and teacher and prepared for the task of making Jesus’ body ready for burial at the new week. Early the first Sunday morning after the death of Jesus Mary expected to find the tortured body of her great mentor. She expected the difficult task of preparing a loved one’s body for burial. Though she was a disciple of Jesus, though she had seen him do many miracles, though she called him Lord, Mary did not fully understand who Jesus was. In the garden where the tomb Joseph of Arimathea had provided lay, Mary’s expectations of Jesus collided with the reality of who he truly was and her entire world changed.
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