Several unexpected, critical issues and tasks came up today which required me to drop my planned activities to handle. At times, in several different jobs, I've moaned and complained, or even railed at the injustice, inefficiency, or sheer stupidity of having things like this happen. These types of reactions have never had a positive impact on my career.

Unemployment among computer-related jobs hovers near historic lows as the U.S. information technology workforce tops 4 million for the first time.

The flip side of this is that it can sometimes be tough to find good IT talent.

O'Reilly Safari books online has been an excellent source of technical books for me. I really appreciate Hawthorne footing the bill for my subscription. It has almost completely eliminated what used to be a hefty personal and company spending buying physical technical books.

It's a beautiful summer in Iowa, except if you're under water. I've been enjoying riding my bike to work. I do it mainly for the fresh air and exercise although it feels good not to be paying $3.89/gallon. On my way back for lunch, I saw two other members of our IT department riding their bikes. Hey, get outside and enjoy!

Here's a screenshot of one of our sites at #3 for a Google search on DRTV. Personally I'm rooting for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage TV to capture the top spot for DRTV.

Saturday, 3May08, was Hawthorne Direct's first event in a new program of community service. Employees and family planted trees at the Soccer field near Dexter plant on Grimes. Here are some pictures taken by Adam Pohren of the planting.

Any suggestions?

I had the opportunity on Tuesday to attend a seminar (on company time at company expense, thanks!) with Marc Freemon on Renegotiating with Integrity which I completely enjoyed. Check out Marc's website at http://www.renegotiate.tv. Marc is an excellent and entertaining speaker. As well as learning specific skills and techniques of renegotiation, what I enjoyed most was Marc's insights into renegotiation as a fundamental activity in all relationships.

Tim got a new webcam yesterday so we had fun testing some of the free videoconferencing systems like Tokbox, Oovoo and Skype. View this post to see a recording of part of our Oovoo conference. My impression is that Videoconferencing has come a long way since I've last tried it, especially in how easy it is to get it set up and get working. However, audio and video quality is still hit or miss, especially on the Internet.