The Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment

Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to dedicate funding to protect our drinking water sources; to protect, enhance, and restore our wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; to preserve our arts and cultural heritage; to support our parks and trails; and to protect, enhance, and restore our lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater by increasing the sales and use tax rate beginning July 1, 2009, by three-eighths of one percent on taxable sales until the year 2034

Gooseberry falls

It rained buckets all the way down route 61, we stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse, but could not see the light house through the low cloud and rain. After a brief gift shop stop we continued south to Gooseberry Falls where we braved the rain and walked down to the lower falls.

I managed to get up close enough to the falls to see behind the water, the gap was not big enough to crawl in without getting even wetter so I chickened out.


We drove south stopping once for fuel and lunch in Duluth before joining the throng heading into the twin-cities. The last 25 miles were busy, the occasional stop start moment, but basically much smoother than the ride was out on Friday. The rain stopped about 80 miles north of home and we arrived home in plenty of time to catch the last of the day's sun for a brief game of volley ball.

Chaos in nature

Tettegouch and others...

The forecast was not good, rain and thunder in the mid afternoon, we drive south to Tettegouch and hiked to the upper falls and then retraced our steps to Two Step Falls, both had more water coming over them that we had ever seen. K reveled in the scene, leaping across the rocks and skimming stones at every opportunity.


After the falls we hiked back to the car and the rain started, we made it back without becoming completely drowned rats and then went north in search of better weather. We stopped at Cross River but failed to find the start of the hike we were looking for and then despite the protests from the back seat we stopped at Temperance River and strolled arround the falls for a while.


The rain was continuing to fall so we drove north and went to Oberg Mountain where the sun finally broke through again.


We hiked the circular cliff top path taking in the views all the way whilst playing an alphabet memory game which required us to remember the 26 things we would pack in a suitcase, everyone was done byt the time we descended back to the car.


Dinner back in Grand Marais (the only place with cell phone reception in the area) and then back to the swimming pool, feet up in front of a roaring fire, fell asleep and dragged ourselves to bed. Rain out the window now, packing bags and heading south in the hopes of seeing Split Rock Lighthouse.

Cascade River and Grand Marais

K's first hiking experience could not have been better, we had bright sunshine upper sixty degree temperatures. We took her to Cascade River State Park and walked up to the top of Lookout Mountain. Along the way we passed the spectacular falls (cascades) and saw the wonderful Root Beer water flowing down them:


When we reached the summit K was convinced that is the view was so pretty we could print a photograph of the view on canvas, sign it and call it art.


We sat on the rocks for some time and then eventually descended back to the car, and returned to our house where we threw K in the pool for an hour. Once revived we headed up to Grand Marais and browsed the few shops, got frozen walking out to sea the light house, and then ate a great dinner at the Angry Trout. Afterwards we made our way south a a co-worker of J's parents house where there was a small birthday celebration going on. K got to experience her first ever Coke from a glass bottle and to ride bareback on the most magnificent working horse which had that morning been pulling logs out of the Boundary Water area.

When we finally crawled into bed smelling of log fires and exhausted from all the fresh air we all slept like logs, waking at 8:30 an unheard of event..

Duluth

We're up on the North Shore of Lake Superior for the long weekend. Took us 45 minutes to drive the 10 miles out of the city, and a total up 6 hours 55 minutes door to door. We are staying in Lutsen, where we got married. The only sounds we can hear are the running water over stones from the stream at the bottom on the valley, the sky is blue, and the air is crisp. Today is a big day Katelyn is going to come hiking with us, its her first ever attempt, she is very excited.....



Here is the fabulous view from the rest stop just prior to Duluth..... amazing place to Kayak, said Katelyn....

Two Harbors, MN

Nuff Said.

Role of the Architect

Thank you Denny this made me fall off my chair from laughing so much.



http://blog.dennyboynton.com/post/Monty-Python-and-quot3bThe-Role-of-the-Architectquot3b.aspx

Airfoil - Give your music wings

Thanks to Mark for this link, I am going to play with this tonight and see how good it is:

With Airfoil you can take audio from any application and send to your AirPort Express units, as well as Apple TVs, and even other Macs and PCs running Airfoil Speakers! Transmit audio from RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player, and other media players. Send audio from web-based applications like Pandora, Last.fm, and more. You can even stream audio from audio devices like RadioSHARK, XM and Sirius radios, all around your house. "Wire" your whole house wirelessly and give your audio wings with Airfoil!

Bacon

This is awesome, thanks Eric know I will always know when I need to eat Bacon:

David Chappell

Had dinner with the man himself, and we (J & I) talked until the restaurant closed. Go listen to him if you get the chance, he is an engaging, enthusiastic knowledgeable evangelist.... He has some fascinating perspectives and ways of articulating tough technologies problems. SOA is dead long live emergent architectures ;)

LEADERS AT ALL LEVELS

Deepening Your Talent Pool To Solve the Succession Crisis
Focusing on the Essentials


Do you think you know a leader when you see one? Most companies have the wrong notion of what a leader really is and does. Yet all the development efforts in the world can't deepen the leadership pool if they're focused on the wrong people to begin with.

The brilliant strategist, the creative genius, the financial engineer, and other bright people command attention and respect, and rightfully so. People recognize such individuals' knowledge and intelligence, respect their opinions and ideas, and appear willing to follow them. Combine that great mental ability with a strong work ethic and drive to achieve, and no wonder people are impressed. Unaware of their own shortcomings and driven to succeed, these experts push for leadership jobs at higher and higher levels, persuading -- sometimes even intimidating -- their bosses to promote them. But many lack essential leadership traits. Although they may succeed for a while when put in charge of other people, without a natural ability to lead, they are unlikely to ever succeed as CEOs or high-level leaders outside their domains of expertise.

What does a natural leader look like at the age of twenty-five or thirty? The usual attempts to answer that question take the form of laundry lists of personal qualities. These are important, but on their own they can be misleading, especially because the same wonderful personal qualities can be found in political leaders, spiritual leaders, and leaders in sports, many of whom don't have an ounce of talent for business. Besides, many personal traits and capabilities associated with leadership in the past are insufficient today. You have to go beyond the list of personal traits you're looking for to include other indications that a person can succeed in leading a business function, business unit, or whole company in the emerging business context.

One way to think about the raw talent or inner engine of a business leader is to think of two strands of a helix: people acumen (the ability to harness people's energy) and business acumen (understanding the essence of how a business makes money). The beginnings of these strands are pretty much in place in individuals by the time they reach their twenties. After that, we can test someone's people acumen and business acumen and give them opportunities to expand them. But we don't yet know how to implant them in mature people who lack them entirely. That's why spotting these strands, however undeveloped they may be, should be central to any effort to identify leadership potential. People who lack them are unlikely to ever reach the highest leadership levels, no matter how many other leadership traits they possess. Only when people acumen and business acumen are present in some degree should personal traits come into play.

It's fruitless to argue whether those talents and personal traits are born or made. We know they begin to manifest themselves early in life and are firmly in place in some people by the time they join the workforce. Some of those qualities may be latent and come to the surface only later under certain conditions -- such as when a person who is not the official leader suddenly takes charge of a crisis. But it is unlikely you can implant them into a mature person without inherent leadership abilities to make him or her a leader.

Copyright © 2007 Ram Charan

OMG....

Did you see this/her?

I am on Simon's side, his face says it all....

Ginger Court

A couple of my colleagues had pinged me asking why I had not written more about my trip to India, I plead lack of sleep :) Any way I thought I would comment on a couple of things. I had thought that I had discovered the world’s worst airport two years ago in Mumbai, but that one has been topped by the delights of New Delhi International terminal. First I don’t know how it would be possible to make an airport less organized, fuller of people, and frankly less efficient at getting from the front to the gate. I was left feeling that there was a reason behind the madness because the longer they could keep you in line to more opportunities there were for pan handlers…. My second learning of trip through Delhi is to travel with more cash, cash works…. It opens doors it speeds up lines, and without it I would not have made my flight, that said it was not a good feeling to reach the gate penniless. You would think from these notes that I had a bad trip, but that is not so. Beyond that appalling three hours on the way back it was a tremendous trip. The highlight of which was being taken out to lunch in Hyderabad by the team. We went to a local restaurant, Ginger Court, frequented by multitudes of technologists it had a buffet which smelt fabulous but we instead had a room to ourselves and Raja S. selected a series of great dishes. We had a peppered papadum flat bread, a series of skewered seasoned chickens, some great Kemah Naan bread, and then a series of mutton and chicken curries and lovely Biryani . This picture of the merry lunch group was taken by Maddy, who in hence missing from the picture. Hopefully I will be able to upload a complete picture of the group later. Next time I go to Hyderabad I intend to insist on more Biryani and less Chinese food, I learnt on this trip that Hyderabad is renowned for the Biryani and this is one of my favourite dishes, it clearly was meant to be....

The food and company was great and ride to the airport was uneventful and the flight from Hyderabad to Delhi on Kingfisher Airlines was very pleasant. Hyderabad airport is very new, clean, and efficient. I was completely unable to get the Wi-Fi to work.... but more on my new solution to that later on..... I would bore you by telling you that the flight from Delhi to Chicago was great, and it was apart from being incredibly long, but I rested, watched movies read tons and generally arrived in one piece. I had a very strange experience in Chicago, our landing was delayed but not to the point where I was in danger of missing my flight I thought, as I walked off the plane and down to immigration I could hear my name being called, this is rarely a good thing in the immigration line... A lady was standing at the bottom of the escalator waiting for me and she promptly whisked me through security, customs, and across the airport to the departure terminal, drove me on an electric cart to my gate and basically treated me like a king. It was a very relaxing way to make sure I got to my flight, which then got canceled ;) but that's just the start of my weekend of canceled flights... more later after I have cleared out my inbox from the evening deluge.

Taj Krishna Hotel

We arrived last night just before 1am local time, of course everyone back home was wide awake and pinging me via SMS email and phone. Jay and I raced to the hotel in our own matching Toyota Corollas, I won just. The hotel is lovely, highly opulent and in a nice enough neighborhood. The architecture is very grand, lots of wood, the gardens are spectacular and there is a fabulous swimming pool which I plan on utilizing this afternoon. Dinner is planned at the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. Ok so call me a stick in the mud, but what he heck are we doing going to a Chinese restaurant when we are surrounded by stunning Indian cuisine in every direction, tomorrow night we are going our with the larger team here and I hope we are able to experience some local fare instead.

Leg 3: Frankfurt to Hyderabad

I met up with my five colleagues in the business lounge, unfortunately I walked to the alternative lounge first, but we finally found each other after an exchange of emails. We went to the main eatery, a table service café and had breakfast together, I had Munich Veal sausages and a pretzel, very Germanic and reasonably tasty. I logged onto the Wi-Fi and sent the few emails I had written on the previous flight, outrageously expensive, 8 Euros for 60 minutes. I attempted to tether my Blackjack to the new Mac I am traveling with but with no success. The boarding process in Frankfurt was very strange. The area by the boarding gates was reached by proceeding through a manned gate where the boarding passes were scanned an then you were al held in a pen, then an automated voice made announcements asking different seat rows to board, but they never once mentioned business class so we all just decided to walk onto the plane anyway, no one stopped us so I guess that was the right thing to do. The flight to Hyderabad is on a two class configuration of an Airbus A340-300, the seats up front were capable of being flat but not horizontal, and they had a small privacy dome around the head end. The video system is less sophisticated than the one in the 747, the video was looped rater than on-demand. I just flicked over to the map monitor and saw that we are flying over Tehran; it looks like we are two thirds of the way there now and are heading towards Karachi. This is my first trip using my iPhone as an iPod, its battery has been holding up well, the interface is very nice with the touch screen replacing all the functions of the wheel on the traditional interface. I listened to Oscar Lopez for a while and closed my eyes.
Watched an awesome movie Keinohrhasen (Rabbit Without Ears), it was in German about a paparazzi photographer who gets community service for some stunt, and subsequently falls in love with the nerdy kindergarten teacher for whom he has to work. Why is it that German movies can be so stylish and classy? Even the music was great, I will be hunting for it on iTunes when we get to the hotel.
One great feature of the iPhone is the word clock; I have it set to Home, India, and London. Given the strange 10 hours and 30 minutes time zone difference between Central Day Light and India Standard Time it is very helpful to not have to think!
Two hours left to go I think, there is some uncertainty as we had engine trouble in Frankfurt and were delayed while it was worked on. We were scheduled to land at 11:15pm but I expect us to land around midnight now.

Leg 1: Minneapolis to Chicago

Arrived at Minneapolis St Paul international airport good and early as is my preference for long international trips. I browsed the stores and found a good book to read. I then walked into the NWA lounge to see if I could find any of my traveling colleagues. I discovered Harold, and through that discovered I uncovered that I was traveling a different way then the rest of the party. Unbeknownst to me I was flying through Chicago and everyone else was flying through Detroit. In reality I think this may be an advantage, I will explain: When traveling through 10+ time zones the challenge going east is making sure you can get to sleep quickly, this becomes critical because the last thing you want to do is sleep on the final leg of the flights into India as you land at midnight and need to be able to sleep on arrival. So the flight to Europe the time to get to sleep, and if I was traveling with the pack I know I would be tempted to stay up and socialize. Rob is planning on finding a god place for breakfast in Frankfurt airport and is going to text me the location so I can go straight there, the main gang will be an hour earlier than me so they will no doubt be eating by the time I arrive. This was a challenging flight even to check in for, United did not have a record of my seat, but we eventually found it via an American Airlines record locator, I did not ask why, I was simply grateful that the first flight did not turn into a raging disaster. One bright thing about this flight I was able to get my favorite seat 1B, the bulkhead at the very front of the plane. Bulkheads are my favorite, no seat reclining on top of your laptop…..

Leg 2: Chicago to Frankfurt

Okay so plan A worked I fell straight to sleep on the flight to Chicago, didn’t even feel the wheels leave the ground. But OMG Chicago, what a screw up the lines were. Due to changing airlines I was required to check in and get boarding passes here. When I got to the general area of the gate there was a crowd of probably close to one thousand people milling around like ants on a hill. No lines just a crowd. Basically everyone was waiting to board a series of monstrously big planes to Japan and Germany. I was thankful when a few minutes later they opened the doors and around 500 people got on the flight to Japan. I approached a desk with no one in line and got growled at by a frauline who informed me that I needed to join the “line” for gate B16….. well by then there actually was a line and the gate had finally opened. I lined up for 45 minutes in the business class line and eventually got my boarding pass all the way through to Hyderabad. It is amazing that in this day and age there is not a more efficient way of dealing with this. There were ten automated check in machines but none of them would let us check in we had to use a human, who simply scanned our passports anyway. Now I am sitting crossed leg on the floor near the gate waiting to board in 30 minutes. In reality this experience is nothing new, air travel on multiple un-associated airlines is a risky and usually painful process. The plane has pulled up the gate it is massive, two floors up front I cant wait to get my head down and close my eyes. Seat 81K – not bad, upstairs bulkhead, window, for sleep windows are best as your fellow passenger will not disturb you when he gets up. So I guess I got the perfect seat. I watched a couple of movies, ate some dinner and nodded off for at least 4 hours. I woke up as we were descending into Frankfurt and watched a series of massive wind turbines rotating in the lush green farmlands outside the city.

Thomson Reuters Reports First-Quarter 2008 Results

The Thomson Corporation reports GAAP revenue growth of 10%; 7% organic. Thomson Reuters pro forma revenues increase 12%; organic growth up 8% on strong customer demand
Strong pro forma underlying operating profit. Results reflect strong performance in both Markets and Professional Divisions. Thomson Reuters expects 2008 pro forma revenue growth of 6% - 8%; nearly all organic. Integration plan accelerated; targets raised.

Read all the detaails here.

Not a bad message to have to deliver!

Awesome

Thanks to Kevin for the link:

Transitioned!

Yesterday my old team held an impromptu farewell party to mark the official end of my transition out of their group and into the new role. It seemed rather surreal given the past two weeks I feel like I have been fully engaged in learning about the new people and functions we all perform. But the almond flavored cake with vivid frosting certainly made for a great sugar rush.
There was another small gathering yesterday, one to celebrate the great efforts of a team member who demonstrated what great customer service is all about, by persevering through an integration project and turning around the attitude of a customer, I quote:

“My sincere thanks to all parties concerned. Fantastic example of …….. , superb team work and collaboration.”

Receiving feedback from a customer like this lets me know that I am surrounded by the type of people that are going to be able to help me transform our organization into the highly efficient and effective team we need to be to execute on our leaders vision for our Division.
Busy is the best adjective to describe the past two week, followed by exciting. I don't know how everyone else felt but I know I felt a sense of excitement and buzz around me as the two companies became one, a time of both tremendous change and opportunity.
The past several weeks have provided me insight into the diversity of projects underway, I have witnessed (via email) the trials and tribulations of weekend and night time deployments, of great collaboration between my dispersed colleagues across the globe, and of individuals going above and beyond to make sure we are all effective.
Even without the 'day one' activities going on there were a huge number of activities in motion. In total last week I had forty two separate scheduled meetings, including meetings with seven vendors and three of our internal customers. I met and presented the Line-of-sight to the majority of our Eagan based team members, and remotely with the team in India. I have scheduled a trip to India, and I am looking forward to shaking the hand of each of our India team member next week. As we move forward and Execute on commitments I hope that the Line of Sight will help the team members relate how their activities are supporting the overall objectives of our Division.
By collaborating with our customers to ensure we are all focused on Executing the right goals, by measuring our individual performance and by sharing this with our customers, I am sure we can be an extremely valued service provider and partner to our business unit customers.