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One of my favorite concepts is that the manager ought not define what shows appreciation for excellent performance, but the person doing the performing ought to decide. For some people, a public announcement is pretty exciting, but for others it can be an embarassing downer. Some people would appreciate a gift certificate to Borders, while others would rather have cash or a candy bar. I can tell you here in the blog that I appreciate the many ITS staff that are picking up the pace to deliver important services to our customers, but until I get to know people as individuals, I won’t know how to really show y’all that I mean it. So colleagues, post a comment here, or send me an email — what does a really good “THANK YOU” look like?

The giglet was lots of fun, and thanks to R and A and L for coming out. Grandaughter Ashlyn also made her first attendance at a live music show ever, and on the same day she got her first tooth! The music was tolerable for her, but the applause… No Bueno Por Nada. So, she listened from the safe distance of the sidewalk on the other side of the plate glass window. The Quiet Boys were as good as I’ve ever heard, and in search of a new name. Quiet No More is my nomination.

Inspired by the Quiets, I went to i-tunes this morning looking for Guster’s song “Careful.” Found it, and also something else. Seemed on the album, there are 12 tracks, then some silence, and then a final song. However, on i-tunes, the 13th track gets its own price tag, so if you are so inclined, you can buy 30 seconds of silence by Guster for 99 cents. I am not making this up. Is this what Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet?

There are reliable rumors that Quiet No More will be appearing at Into The Bean on first and third Fridays in the months ahead.

Go here and click Enter, and then Find Us to get a map. I’ll be opening for the Quiet Boys, and they say I can play 20 minutes, or 4 songs, whichever comes FIRST. Saturday, August 20th, 730pm. I can live with that, so THANKS QB.

Maricopa’s long enduring project to replace the various student systems is entering the final push phase. I’m a recent arrival on the scene, but I do remember coming to District Office more than ten years ago to represent my previous employer on the Apollo Project’s Steering Committee. (Could it have been 1993?) So, I can barely imagine how restless many of the Maricopa veterans must be to GET DONE, PLEASE?! I can feel a growing urgency, throughout the entire district, that we need to pick up the pace and make sure it happens this time. I couldn’t agree more.

Yes, it will be scary. Yes, there will be uncertainty. However, the time is now. A friend told me this week, “you won’t go live, you will grow live.” That phrase means that President’s Day weekend, when we do the production conversion, is just the start. Many good, committed staff will worry about coming up that weekend, and it will feel great when the system does come alive. And then we’ll learn of some unusual results, and we’ll move along from issue to issue, and even start to look ahead to May when we’ll start to use the new system in unfamiliar ways to register students for summer. And during May we will move forward, resolving issue after issue, until we begin to wonder how our fledgling system will perform under the heavy volume of August semester startup.

None of this is doom and gloom, instead it is exactly the kind of success that we want and need to have for Maricopa. That’s why we have taken a good look at the calendar, and the many college CIT teams and various leadership groups as well as many college and district office subteams are dedicating themselves to being as solid as we can be by October 31st. (less than eleven weeks from today.) It’s a Monday, it’s a day for costumes, and it is a natural time when our leaders will want to ask us if we are “ready”. I am confident that Maricopa will collectively say “yes, we are ready to grow live in February.”

Cheers to the teams! The students and faculty and staff of Maricopa will owe you a debt of gratitude for the improved services to come.

One of the “most wanted” items on the ITS wish list is a way to sync Corporate Time calendars to Blackberry PDAs. Are there any wizards or gurus reading this blog that have a way to do it? As a plan B, I am wondering if Gateway could host some DO accounts on their Exchange Server, and graciously engineer maricopa.edu as the email address domain? Or maybe South Mountain could do it?

Take a look at Jeff Black’s podcast (searchable from ITunes or at his site.) He updates it every Tuesday, and most of the music comes from bootlegs that his listeners have recorded over the years. It’s simple, direct, and makes you think you are sitting on a couch at the back of the coffee house.

Today I finished hauling the topsoil to fill in where the redwood deck used to be in my backyard. It has been some mighty fine non-work work. When it’s an optional shovel, with a 40-something’s optional backache, it’s recreation.