I’m posting an additional blog this week asking for some advice from all you fine folks on GovLoop for a friend of mine. He too is a government employee of long standing. He works in an agency known as a dumping ground for outgoing political appointees who now need government jobs and unfortunately he isRead… Read more »
Having been on travel to conferences and training sessions (more “back in the day”; recently we’ve been told we can have nearly any training we like if we can take it online or get there on the Metro) I have noticed several things about Government travel. For notoriously getting the cheapest seats, you know, theRead… Read more »
I was tooling down a back road Saturday morning on my way to Wal-Mart to pick up an exercise bike. I had NPR on the radio. They were interviewing this kid who placed third in American Idol a few years ago. He was doing well as a singer; he had just released another album. TheyRead… Read more »
Taken any training classes recently? Being in IT we take classes every year to keep abreast of the new technology, even if it’s only to learn a new Microsoft operating system that will be gone in three years. We also get management courses. How to manage people, projects, time, whatever. The instructors aren’t called “instructors”Read… Read more »
Last week my blog was going to be about the pirate situation in east African waters but after I started writing, I opted to write a plug for the cruise industry instead. Yeah, I wimped out. As it turns out my younger son, the filmmaker, forced me to face my conscience on this one. HeRead… Read more »
I as get older and my work involves more thinking, decision-making, and responsibility, I find I like vacations more. And I want them to be longer. In 2005 my wife talked me into a cruise. From what I had seen and read I wasn’t sure I would like this sort of thing, it looked regimented.Read… Read more »
It must be apparent to anyone following my blogs (if that is indeed anyone at all), that I don’t usually blog about work related things. Even Web 2.0, which is a fun thing. Somehow when you institutionalize something, it takes all the fun out of it. For instance, reading Melville’s MOBY DICK can be fun,Read… Read more »
Now that I have been in Government service for nearly thirty years I can comment with authority on trends I have seen. And they come and go. Remember Total Quality Management (TQM)? Remember ISO 9000? Various Government Departments embraced these systems like couch potatoes embrace the latest fad on the Home Shopping Network. They loveRead… Read more »
Why have public political discussions gotten so rude? Working for the Federal Government, most of us have learned to keep our political allegiances private, at least at work. At home I have good friends on both sides of the aisle, so I practice keeping a civil tongue in my head there as well, at leastRead… Read more »
In replying to a discussion to an article in which the author predicts the institutionalization of social networking sites by businesses (oh yuck!) it struck me that social networking sites are the new computer bulletin boards. For those too young to have been active in the computer community in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s,Read… Read more »