Awesome sunset

Last night was an awesome sunset here in beautiful Cedar Park, TX.
The storms coming up from the southwest just missed us (as usual) but setup the sky for an awesome sunset.

Three things you didn't know about Bryan Karp

Found this the other day looking for something...that now I can't recall what that was.  Anyway it was pretty neat in that it told you how likely there were other people with your same name.

Did you know that Bryan Karp...

1. Translates to the number 7 in numerology
2. Has the Blast-Ended Skrewt as their Power Animal
3. Shares their name with a guesstimated 13 Americans?

See more at http://www.isthisyour.name

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New FB layout stinks

It is going to be rough but I am going to try and avoid posting a status update on my FB or twitter account.  The new layout is horrible and aggravates the heck out of me every time I try to use the new layout.  It does not appear that FB consulted anyone prior to making the change except maybe themselves.  Just a quick little look at a new application developed by someone shows how bad the new layout has been received http://apps.facebook.com/layoutvote/.  As of this posting the vote is 1.23M against vs. 80K for the new layout.

Current list of books in my queue

As usual, I buy too many books and inevitably have too many things going on or, just plain forget I even own them. I am going to try and change that habit by spending at least 1 - 2 hours per night reading vs. watching tv, surfing the web, etc. To that end, the present list of books I have started or recently acquired (in no particular order) to read are:

Title	Author(s)	Brief purpose (pre-reading)	Status
Six Disciplines Execution Revolution	Gary Harpst	Gain insight and improve skills around operational execution and leadership	100% Read
The Forgotten Man	Amity Shales	Received as a gift in '07. Learn about the great depression and problems created by Hoover and Roosevelt	50% Read
Blue Ocean Strategy	W.Chan Kim Rene'e Mauborgne	Understand how to increase differentiation in existing markets and create new markets	25% Read
Selling is Dead	Marc Miller Jason Sinkovitz	Different approach for selling, enabling cultural shift in business approach to sales	15% Read
Lean Six Sigma for Service	Michael L George	Looking for ways to improve my department's operations, reduce waste and improve quality	25% Read
Freakonomics	Steven D. Levitt Stephen J. Dubner	Suggested by a friend as an interesting read and twist on economics	50% Read
The Intelligent Investor	Benjamin Grahm	Looking for interesting insight and ideas on value investing and the thoughts from the father of long-term investing	25% Read
The Balanced Scorecard	Robert S. Kaplan David P. Norton	Trying to improve visibility into current operations and understand how scorecards can help.	0% Read
Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies	Robert S. Kaplan David P. Norton	Coupled with 'The Balanced Scorecard' believe this book might provide insight into the creation and execution of 'balanced scorecards' in our organization.	0% Read

Ugh…sometimes MSFT just irritates the heck out of me

So, I was doing some research the other night for various topics and noticed I still had the MS RSS feeds in Outlook.  I deleted the MS @Home feed and thought for $4its and giggles would just quickly look at the MS @Work RSS feed.  One post stood out amongst the others which really irritated me http://tinyurl.com/cztlrf.  This link talked about how to make your life easier using accessibility features within MS.  Unfortunately MS did not listen to their own advice because they removed numerous short-cut keys when they released MS office 2007.  One of the biggest items they removed is the E,S,P when sending email which I used very frequently.
In the end I have learned to work-around, which really means I just curse every time I need to paste special in an outlook email. I only hope that MS does a better job next time they push a major release for office.

Good Iron Chef last night

We watched a good episode of Iron Chef last night (Sunday March 22nd). The secret ingredient was coffee beans which would have been an 'oh crap' moment if it was me. I am contiously amazed at how the chefs on the show are able to take the secret ingredient and make amazong dishes. This one however; takes the cup ;-). At almost every turn both chefs were making excellent dishes which I might even try to recreate myself.

http://www.talkaboutcoffee.com/kitchen-stadium.html

Moving posts to custom site at www.bryankarp.com

Well, I'm trying to move my posts to my name site (www.bryankarp.com), plus add a few widgets and adSense.  It seems like it is taking longer than I expected to have the site show up.  I think when it is all finished it will be a lot easier to post updates, etc.

Bryan's first post

Just continuing to add to my web presence.  I registered my wife and two kids yesterday with their own domain names.  During that time I remembered that I needed to create a simple blog so I decided to give blogger a try.