GAC Video Clips

Golfers Against Cancer - 2010 Gala

Video clip of Dan Tyminski and ensemble performance of "I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow".

Technical Notes: Uploaded from H.264 encoding, Good Quality - 30.9 MB file size.
11/28/2010 - 1:56 pm
Run time: 3 min 39 sec

My Audition for Master Chef

Last weekend I auditioned for a cooking show called Master Chef. Tomorrow I return for an on-camera interview, because I passed the cooking portion of the audition. If all goes well.....I'M GOING TO HOLLYWOOD. Not actually. I don't know where they are filming.

I posted three articles about the auditions on my cooking blog.....check them out here.

New Blog, New Life

To any of the readers who randomly stumble into this blog, and you're almost all certainly my family members or Michael5000 readers, it's time for a little update.

About a year ago I found myself on the outside of the Fortune 200 company I worked for for 14+ years. Since then I've provided some support for a small company in Houston and restored some of my old programming skills. I've also been close to landing a couple CIO positions for small companies. Close, but not close enough.

As soon as the job change occurred, I thought about opening a restaurant. But with no actual restaurant experience and a horrible economy, that got back burnered.

I did however, begin a project in the food world. I say project because it's not going to be an income producing venture for a while, but may provide a foundation for a food-related career change.

In November I launched the Weekly Recipe Review newsletter. My message is geared to the everyday cook, who wishes they more time to cook, or feel that cooking is too time consuming, or simply want to improve their cooking skills. It's not high end stuff, but rather support to make everyday tastier and more reliable.

I've got about 500 subscribers, and continue to add more each week (in fact each day).

You can find my newsletters and the associated website at http://www.recipereview.biz/. On the home page you can sign up for the email version of the newsletter, which is free and published weekly.

I also put the weekly content onto a blog, so that it can be distributed via amazon to Kindle users. That blog is at http://www.beabettercook.blogspot.com/.

People have been really enjoying the newsletter, and I've got some nice changes and additions to the website that should be helpful to my readers. I hope you check it out and sign up for the newsletter.

Report from Houston - "It's snowing like a pig down here"

Well, you just never know. It snowed in Houston last night. Not just a little, but plenty. We had an inch in our NE suburb. There were 2" or more in other eastern areas. Of course, most of the area just saw flakes in the air for a little while. But we had some big-flake, wet-packing, snowman-rolling snow last night.






Key quotes:

"Put on a sweater and your Crocs and come outside - it's snowing. "
"Can you find the remote and turn on the fireplace?"
"The hot chocolate is too rich."





A story from the past - "It's snowing like a pig out there".

My freshman year in college was spent at the Honors College at Louisiana State University. How I got there from Chicago and why I turned down several Ivy League offers cannot be easily explained. Regardless, at winter break, one of my new good fraternity friends came to visit me in Chicago.

His name was Jim Marvin, but we knew him as Chaulkie. At the time and to this day I don't know how he got that nickname. He was born and raised in New Orleans and had never been north or seen snow. I remember he had a great love for Elton John (? - OK, whatever).

So Chaulkie came up to Chicago, and on the first night, made a dozen trips outside to scan the sky for snow. I explained that it doesn't snow all the time. In fact, even if snow is forecast, it didn't necessarily mean we'd for certain get snow.

But Chaulkie was persistent. He continued to diligently check for snow. Forlorn, he saw no snow on his first night in town. Nor his second. He was getting impatient. So, when on the third night the slightest flurry was seen, he came running into the house to report it. I dutifully went out to observe an occasional, miniscule flake.

Undeterred by the lack of magnitude, Chaulkie stayed outside, ever vigilant. I returned in to watch an old movie. About an hour later, Chaulk blew the door open, and breathlessly exclaimed, "Guff, Guff. It's snowing.......". He was at a loss for description. I took it that the flurries intensified a bit.

"Guff, Guff. It's snowing like a PIG out there.".

The phrase has liven in infamy ever since.

Chaulkie never could explain the pig reference. It's ironic, as a pig reference was totally out of character for him. He wasn't a bumpkin from the bayous. He was a New Orleans city kid. Pretty darn sophisticated.

Sadly, for me, the story doesn't end there. Seeing the light dusting of white powder on our black tarmac driveway, Chaulkie expected a soft, downy landing place for me as he tackled me to the pavement. Such behavior was typical male bonding. Kind of a fraternity boy gesture of endearment. Little did he yet know that it would have taken about half a foot or more or the white stuff to ensure a painless fall.

Nonetheless, Chualkie's excitement lives on. The phrase "snowing like a pig out there" is now well known to a couple dozen of my friends who have heard this story over the years, and as of last night, to my kids.

13 Degrees of Dorkness - or – Triskaidorkaphilia

My 13 Degrees of Dorkness
- or –
Triskaidorkaphilia
A Multidimensional Proof of Personal Dork Behavior
A dork resume, if you will

Dimension 1: This description, byitsownself.
Including use of the phrase "If you will".

Dimension 2: Dorkness in the Workplace
The technical people in my department consider me not technical enough. Too managerial. There are 500 of these people. Everyone else in my company consider me a techie. There are 49,500 of these people.

Dimension 3: Community Dorkness
I oversee the largest summer youth swim team in Houston. How did I get this volunteer job? I started by running the computer systems. Now I’m in charge. Bummer.

Dimension 4: More Community Dorkness
I’m on the board of a terrific charity started at my golf club, Golfers Against Cancer. We’ve raised $16 million dollars that has been donated directly to innovative cancer research. All volunteer. Virtually no expenses. It’s awesome. All the high rollers in my town and many across Houston and beyond participate. What is my role? Website, audio visual (at the 1000 person gala dinner), documentation, PowerPoint. Oh, a few insightful ideas that have been beneficial. Half my strategic plan has been implemented. Plenty of hard partying, networking, brainstorming, and arm-twisting for big donations. But deep down, I’m the computer guy.

Dimension 5: CrossDork
I live for the NYT crossword puzzle, shirking significant daily responsibilities in order to do the puzzle. Fortunately this takes well less then 10 minutes Monday to Thursday. Yet I only complete about 1 in 5 Saturday’s. Actually, closer to 1 in 10. I consider Rex Parker my personal savior and lord.

Dimension 5: Let your Dork Flag Fly
Finalist in the M5K Oregon flag redesign contest.

I mentioned my entry to the Oregon flag contest to a golf buddy, who spends a few weeks in Oregon every summer because his wife is from there. He asks how it went.

“Well, I think I won. Kind of. Anyway, my flag was submitted to the governor. I don’t think anything’s going to happen with it though”.

Months later, golf buddy asks “Whatever happened to that Oregon flag thing?”

Me: “Well, I don’t think the governor took it seriously. He might not even really have known about it”.

Golf Buddy: “What do you mean? Wasn’t it an official contest?”.

Me: “Well, it was more an internet blog thing. This guy who has a blog ran it.”

GB: “Oh, an internet thing.”

Nonetheless, now that the contest has gone mainstream, I expect to win Oregon and begin my career as the worlds foremost flag designer, splitting my time each year between summers in the villa in Tuscany and wintering in Palm Beach. Yes, I think it’s still the 1950’s.

Oh yeah. Consider that I mentioned the flag contest to a golf buddy. Serious dorkness. Don’t do this. Possibly a dimension of its own.

Dimension 6: The Heart of Dorkness
I have purposely withheld reading other blog entries for Dorkfest 2008 in order to ensure that my entry is unadulterated and uninfluenced by any other entry. No derivatives. No embellishments. No one-upmanship. My sense of sportsmanship is unrivalled and unrealistic, as demonstrated by the following diatribe. Due to this naiveté, I will be taken advantage of repeatedly in my lifetime.

Dimension 7: Perfect Preparation Makes for Perfect Dorkness
Morgan? Ha!. Let’s roll back the clock to May. The M5K Decathlon Afterparty.

Phineas’ comment on May 17, 2008: “Initial entry for Dorkfest 2008: I actually studied for the M5K Decathlon.”

Reply from M5K: @Phineas: “Second entry for Dorkfest 2008: You are already planning for Dorkfest 2008.”

I continue to study. For the M5K Decathlon 2009.

Dimension 8: Published Dorkness
I write articles for an adoption magazine that no one reads. I’m hoping they still publish it, though I’m not sure. And I’m a subscriber.

Dimension 9: Dork Reading Material – My Current or Recently Completed Reading List
A combination of topics so diverse as to be schizophrenic. Where are those pills, anyway? I frequently ask myself – why would I want to read THAT? And the answer is always the same. THAT is so cool.

I used to read a lot related to my profession, whatever that is. I recently learned that when I transferred to Houston a number of years ago, my new boss and a coworker entered my office while I was out of town and asked each other, “Do you think he really read all those books?”. The coworker (my boss last year), now admits, “Yes, he certainly did.”

• Pnin, Nabokov
• Lolita, Nabokov. Actually, The Annotated Lolita. I read all the annotations. Twice.
• God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everytihng, Hitchens. Not original (see Betrand Russell), but interesting. Especially if you personally know (knew) more than 10 Catholic priests who are currently serving time.
• Silk Road Journeys, Colin Thubron. Highbrow travel writing. Serious. Grab-your- dictionary level highbrow writing. Poetic too. I wouldn’t believe me if I were reading this description. You really ought to check him out.
• Beyond the Great Wall, Colin Thubron
• Chances Are: Adventures in Probability. Kaplan and Kaplan. ‘Adventures’ was not the best word choice for the subtitle.
• The Match, The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, Frost. An entire book about a single golf match that took place in 1956. Got it in July. I’m reading it for a second time now.
  
• 5 books on poker. OK. I didn’t read them this year, but they’re still there next to the others on this list.
• Ulysses. Yes that one. Read it for the 11th time since 1983. How do I know this? Because I keep a log inside the front cover.
• Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell. Solid. Enjoyable. Cleverish.
• Rightful Resistance In Rural China (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics), O’Brien and Li. A sociology /political science textbook. Bought for my birthday off my amazon wishlist. This is not my field of study.
• Never Let me Go, Ishiguro
• Clasics of Western Thought: The Twentieth Century, Gochberg. Textbook from college. Twentieth century only 4/5’s over at the time. Cool to know now what happened next.
• The Mysterious Montague, A True Tale of Hollywood, Golf, and Armed Robbery, Montville. It is a true story.
• A Free Life, Ha Jin. Notice the China theme. Notice that once you make a name for yourself you can make a living writing most anything. Publishers. A mildly loyal following. Tenure. Got it made for life. Maybe not free, but made.
• The Return of the Player, Tolkin. OK – only read it because I kind of liked the movie The Player. OK. I liked Greta Scaachi a lot (who was in the NYT puzzle recently). REALLY liked the gag in the movie where Tim Robbins’ character ordered a different brand of bottled water by name, complex, long winded name, in every restaurant he entered. Never repeated a name. No waiter ever questioned his order. Classic.
• Bradbury Stories: 100 of his most Celebrated Tales.
  
• National Gallery of Art. With 315 Illustrations. It doesn’t help as much on the TMQ as you would think.
• The Alaska Reader: Voices from the North, Kremers and Hanley, eds.
• The Collected Stories, Amy Hempel
• Extreme Weather, A Guide and Record Book, Burt
• Pale Fire, Nabokov. Need Nabokov bookends on this list, seeing as how he’s the greatest writer of the latter 20th century and all.

All these books reside in, and have been read nearly in their entirety, in the water closet in my master bathroom.


Dimension 10: Dork Testimonials.
I have requested that several people write testimonials to my dorkness. None of them even remotely questioned the mission and purpose. They’ll be posted shortly. My wife and daughter squealed with glee upon being asked.

Dimension 11: Dork in the Kitchen
Despite the senseless diversity of the items described above, all I really care about is food and cooking. I write a blog that has received 2 comments lifetime. I obsess over the blog and it’s potential entries, dream of it’s popularity, envision it’s utility and purpose serving home cooks of all ilks, despite the dearth of posts and the neglect I shower upon it.

But really you ought to try the Fennel and Coriander crusted grilled tuna. And these cucumbers. And Albuquerque butter. And………….

Dimension 12: I Lied.
All I really care about is alcohol. I’m going to fix myself another Vodka Tonic. That would be an Absolut Kurrant and diet tonic, no lime.














Dimension 13: That’s Not All, Dorks The essence of my dorkness is diversity. I’ve specialized in diversity to the extant that I’m not a specialist in anything but. Pretty darn good in a few things. Maybe.

But shouldn’t one direct their talents in a manner that provides contributions to the chosen field? Shouldn’t one advance the cause? Isn’t it madness (dorkness) to obsessively commit oneself to so many disparate endeavors as to wreak identify confusion? Not among others, among me. All of the me’s.

But the dimensions described above are not all. Other things I do, with a modicum of proficiency, include the following. And in some cases, these are the things I’m spending time the majority of my time on.

• Classical Guitar playing
• Cabinet Making
• Children (making them and caring for them).
• Friendships.
• Exercise
• Music (thankfully you’ve been spared the musical diversity list).
• The Arts (outside the home).
• The anti-Arts – as in, watching crap TV. Though Iron Chef America is awesome.
• Sports – especially college football (go Hawkeyes), the Cubs, Bears, Olympics, Tour de France, and on and on.
• Golf. Oh yeah, I got this far without discussing THE MOST IMPORTANT ACTIVITY IN MY LIFE.

Enough is enough. As one twisted individual, I submit my dorkness to you.

Post Backlog

1. Evacuation from Hurricane Ike (or, How to have a hurricane party every day for a month).
2. Weekend in Austin with the Day Family
3. Wisconsin Boys Golf Weekend 2008
4. Our Family Vacation To Washington DC. It was a BLAST. Really.
5. Lolita Followup - don't wait for this post. Just read Nabokov. Anything. Now. He's unbelievable.
6. The History of the World As Told to a 10 year old boy Project

Since there are no readers of this blog, I hope an apology for laxness is not needed. If anyone (M5K) happens to stumble across this rare post, I'll promise that the Hurricane Evacuation story should prove enjoyable and is already partly composed.

Phin /Tom

360 Feedback and 360 Participation – Part 1

As I’ll reference briefly in my write up about Taos, I’ve been part of an exciting but demanding project at work known as a PLT - Performance Leadership Team. The project is being run in parallel with 3 other projects, all of which have similar dual objectives: substantial improvement in our department’s effectiveness, and personal leadership development.

The projects were chartered by the senior management team in our department, and are following a facilitated approach as laid out by a consulting partner. The partner firm has used this approach at our company over the past few years with tremendous results.

The specifics of the project are not relevant to my blog, but the personal development aspect and the techniques we’ve learned are what prompt me to jot down the following thoughts.

360 Participation

In the course of getting our project off the ground, our team of 10 people had specific planning tasks to perform in a 3 day workshop. Most of the “real work” was initiated with the following technique, which I’ve labeled “360 Participation”. This technique can be used to analyze or plan nearly anything.

• 5 to 15 minutes of individual analysis / idea generation, with each idea or comment written on to a post it note. Sometimes the notes were color coded for various purposes.

• As a group, each person supplies one post-it comment at a time to a facilitator, who collates them into groups of related items (on a flip chart, white board, window, etc.). Exact duplicate comments are often just passed forward en-masse.

• As each item is presented, it is explained, but not judged or discussed, along the lines of the traditional “brainstorming rules”.

• Work around the table / room collecting one comment per person until all comments are aired.

Once the groups of ideas /comment are assembled, the analysis phase begins. This might be selecting the top N ideas, prioritizing all ideas or mapping out interdependencies – at this point it’s based on the topic and intent of the exercise.

The value obtained by this technique is powerful for multiple reasons:

• Using written comments allows for more ideas, criticism and wild-ass fliers to be put forward without judgment

• Everyone’s voice is heard. A strong personality cannot dominate the discussion.

• No analysis is done until all comments are presented (classic brainstorming)

• Duplicate submissions of the same idea create a kind of built in voting / prioritization system (in most cases)

• The process is so simple it requires almost no explanation or preparation

• And also – it’s FAST.

• And it’s really (REALLY) effective

Right away I used this approach with one of my teams to analyze our first use of a new process - what went right, wrong, and so on. I can guarantee that the quality of the content produced was above and beyond what we normally produce in free form group discussions. Besides causing me to shut up, it brought the ideas out in an orderly fashion. We spent exactly 10 minutes to get comments written and organized, then spent 15 minute planning next steps. Very, very efficient, with much higher quality in our ideas.

I’ve since used it in other team settings, including in an executive level session related to hurricane response planning.

Summary - this is an interesting and effective technique that can be applied in many situations. All you need are a few sticky notes.