Sunday, September 10, 2006

PromptPM Project Management Software

Now available in beta, PromptPM Project Management software will soon be launching its production version. Here's a quick rundown of the advantages of this powerful software:



It has features geared specifically toward Project Managers, Business Managers, Business Analysts, Developers, QA Managers, Business Users, and Client Relationship Managers.

It allows your project team to create collaborative areas, such as discussion forums. Individuals on the team can make use of ideas they've submitted with an "Idea Tracker."

An extensive time sheet management tool allows members to have their time connected to specific parts of a project, and to specific meetings they've attended, rather than just to the project.

It helps you manage team productivity by eliminating members' stretches of time when they are waiting for an assignment.

It's also geared toward helping teams who want to use the best practices from the Project Management Framework and Six Sigma.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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Friday, September 8, 2006

Red Cross Fined for Blood Safety Violations

The fact that the FDA has fined the Red Cross is one of the scariest headlines I've read today, and also one of the most surprizing.

The government said Friday it was fining the American Red Cross $4.2 million for violating blood-safety laws. The violations include failing to ask appropriate questions of potential donors and not following test procedures, said the Food and Drug Administration.


I used to give blood religiously every two months from the time I was old enough to do so, until just a few years ago. The only reason I stopped was that the Red Cross instituted new eligibility guidelines for blood donors that precluded my donating because I have spent too moooo-ch, er, much, time in Europe. I begrudgingly did so, since the percentage of blood donors in America is very low (in the low singles, I seem to recall).

Every single time I gave blood, I had to fill out a questionnaire certifying my eligibility, and that was always followed by a personal interview with a nurse who made a point of double-checking the most crucial questions.

Just to give me an out in case some sort of peer pressure had driven me to donate blood that I knew should never be given to anybody else, they gave me a way to silently indicate that. Two visually indistinguishable bar code stickers and a private booth were given to me, and I would affix either the one labeled "use" or the one labeled "don't use" directly on my paperwork. I always thought that this was a bit of overkill, since all the peer pressure I had ever encountered was decidedly against giving blood.

So, in light of those experiences, I'm truly baffled as to how the Red Cross could have been so negligent in so many cases.

Peace,

Tor

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Ya Ya's Baby, RIP

This story from China will just make any animal lover's heart ache. In times like this, you have to wonder to what extent Ya Ya realizes how her cub died. It's obvious that she's feeling grief; does she feel guilt?

Peace,

Tor

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Cameras and Camcorders at PC World

If you're in the market for a new digital camera, you had best check out the new Digital Cameras from PC World. They offer quite a range of brands and models, including the recommended Sony DSC-W50, the Samsung D362 MINIDV Camcorder, and the Vivitar Vivicam.

Most of the products include free standard shipping. An easy-to-use search box lets you choose brand and price range.

One particularly cool camcorder: the JVC GZMG26EK Hard Disc Drive Camcorder. With 32x optical zoom, 800x digital zoom, and an image stabilizer, you'll be able to take close up vids of ants on the side of the road as you drive by!

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but those specs are still pretty darn impressive. The hard drive is 20gig, so you know you will be able to record for a long time before having to upload to your computer.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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Ellsworth Withholds Salaries of Public Servants

One of the more closely read sections of Ellsworth's annual report has gone missing this year: the salaries of municipal and school employees.

City Manager Stephen Gunty said the salary listings were omitted because of a problem the printing company had formatting the salary data.

Gunty said reporting the salaries in the annual report is not a requirement.

"It was more work than we thought it was worth," Gunty said.


Whether it's legally required or not is beside the point. (At least they are going to prepare a copy of the information to one citizen who asked for it.) The fact that it's been included in the report as a convenience for the citizens of Ellsworth for many years makes its omission now a severe inconvenience for those who are trying to see how their money is being spent.

Salaries are one of the largest parts of any governmental budget, so being able to gauge the extent to which overpaid employees are contributing to budget difficulties is a basic necessity for the taxpaying public.

Educating the public on how its money's being spent is always "worth the work."

Peace,

Tor

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TABOR Update

At least one town council has decided the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights is a good idea.

Peace,

Tor

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Cheap Scrubs

This entry is just for the nurses who read this blog (I know a few of you personally, and see the IP logs from the rest of you.)

You really need to check out this site for Scrubs. It's really easy to navigate: just use drop-downs for Scrub Type, Top Style, Coordinating Color and Fabric Type. You'll save money, and your purchase is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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Amazon.com Enters the Internet Video Fray

Amazon.com has decided to get a piece of the future of American entertainment delivery.

Amazon.com Inc. launched a digital video downloading service Thursday, ending months of speculation that the Internet retailer would be getting into the online TV and movie business.

The service, dubbed Amazon Unbox, will offer thousands of television shows, movies and other videos from more than 30 studios and networks, the company said.

TV shows will cost $1.99 per episode, and most movies will go for $7.99 to $14.99; movies can also be rented for $3.99.


Can you hear the cable and satellite TV providers shaking in their boots? It's only a matter of time before Amazon and its competitors buy the rights for live streaming sports events. Imagine paying Amazon.com a few bucks to watch the Superbowl, or the World Series.

Peace,

Tor

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A Problem with Education Vouchers that Nobody Foresaw

Of those who support abandoning the current overwhelmingly socialist American educational system in favor of one that meets the needs of students and parents in a free market milieu, many have suggested government-supplied educational vouchers as a transitional method.

Well, what happens when the socialist education system is so rotten to the core that no or few academic institutions currently exist for which vouchers could be used? The Washington Post reports that Washington, D.C. is about to find out.

Only 28 of the District of Columbia's 146 public schools last year met academic benchmarks on a new city test, a situation that will require massive intervention efforts to reverse, school system officials said yesterday.

....

Parents who want to move their child to a better public school now will have almost no place to go. Until now, the school system's main remedy for students in failing schools was a provision in federal law that allows them to transfer to a higher-performing school in the city.


We're entering a situation in our nation's large cities' public schools that mirrors the state of affairs when the Soviet Union collapsed. Many will suffer when the educational system collapses, but many more will suffer if more money is poured down the drain.

Peace,

Tor

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Luxury Affair

If you're looking to add a little Luxury to your life, here's the blog for you.

Whether you're looking for a platinum princess cut diamond solitaire pendant, a Father Christmas heirloom egg, or would like to enter a contest for a Luxury Backyard Makeover, check out Luxury Affair.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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More SAT Nonsense in Maine

To my great horror, it seems that Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron might be successful in continuing to use the SAT as an evaluation tool for Maine's high school juniors.

Gendron told lawmakers on Thursday that the state plans to add a science component to the test in the spring, and it will include mathematics measurements that are lacking from the current test.

Although the federal government has been critical of the state's initial switch from the MEA to the SAT, Gendron said there is "a different tone" now and some federal education bureaucrats "are working with us and really trying to help us."


I don't have much more to add to this than I already said here and here. It's a real slow-motion disaster that's been in the making for decades.

Peace,

Tor

Linking to the following blogs with open trackback posts: Pirate's Cove, Dan Mancini, MacBros' Place, Gospel Fiction, People Are Idiots, Woman Honor Thyself

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Thursday, September 7, 2006

Jon Cheston and the Belfast Shopping Survey

The Republican Journal has gotten ahold of the Belfast Retail Review Commission's survey results, which commission member Jon Cheston tried to hide from the eyes of the public (despite their being public information). No wonder. A fairly decisive majority of respondents to the survey were against his position.

When asked, "Are you able to buy most everything you need here in Belfast?", 77 said yes while 103 said no.

The next question said, "If not; do you believe that Belfast stores lack adequate..." and then listed specific items.

A total of 87 said Belfast lacks adequate food and supplies; 123 said it lacks enough clothing options; 86 listed the need for household furnishings; 48 felt city businesses do not have convenient hours; and 32 felt it lacked easy access.


Cheston does have a good point that these results are far from a representative statistical sampling, and that the survey was therefore far from scientific. But the commission knew this at the start, when it designed the newspaper survey. A largely self-selected group of respondents won't tell you much about what folks in and around Belfast really think about the issue.

But since the BRRC is a governmental body, every piece of paper it collects in its files is a public document. The public is guaranteed access to those documents by Maine law, unless those documents fall into a handful of well-defined categories. Survey results about shopping do not fall into any of those categories. The extreme arrogance that Cheston evidenced in his assumption that the commission should be able to keep this information from the public should instantly exclude him from consideration to any other governmental body.

Peace,

Tor

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Taking Online Dating to the Next Level

My lovely wife Rowan and I met thru an internet dating site. I gave my advice for those interested in a good online dating experience about a year ago.

Now there's another tool that will increase the likelihood of finding a good match thru online dating: www.moreProfiles.com

It's a newly launched site that's the first of its kind for online dating. It's a meta-search and profile submission site for many of the top online dating sites, including Match, Yahoo Personals, American Singles, Love Happens, True and more. And it's free.

You can search all of the profiles in all of these services simultaneously. You can create one profile, which www.moreProfiles.com will automatically process into a suitable format and submit to each site.

If only I had had www.moreProfiles.com back in the day! You kids these days have it so easy.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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Thursday Night Maine Link Dump

Without further ado:

The windmills are coming! Flee to the hills!

Windmills? We ain't afraid of no stinkin' windmills!

For once, a factory closes, and it's not in Maine!

A cabinet factory in Spruce Pine, N.C., will close and an upholstery plant in Atoka, Okla., will be converted to a distribution center. The North Carolina plant’s work is being sent to other company factories that make cabinets, including those in Orleans and Beecher Falls and another in Andover, Maine, said company spokeswoman Peg Lupton.


Blame the weatherman? That's so cliché.

Speaking of clichés, isn't the very idea of a restaurant formulaic? I mean, they make food, we pay them to let us eat it under their roof. The impulse to stop others from doing what they want to do knows no end.

Here's a standing headline: Government Does Things Slower Than Expected.

Peace,

Tor

Linking to the following blogs with open trackback posts: TMH's Bacon Bits, Sed Vitae, Robinik's Open Blog

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Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Slublog on Baldacci's Campaign Ad

Slublog has caught an appearance by a revisionist historian in John Baldacci's latest campaign ad. I knew the Democrats were trying to make every race a referendum on Bush (and in many of their points, I am in agreement), but this is ridiculous.

Peace,

Tor

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Borowitz on NCLB

Andy Borowitz nails the hit on the head. Or something like that.

h/t Maine.com

Peace,

Tor

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Adventures in Kitchen Lighting

Here in Maine, as the fall days begin to grow shorter, our thoughts turn to Kitchen lighting. Is it adequate for us to see the dishes we're washing and the food we're cooking? If we installed new kitchen light fixtures, would we perhaps find some of the utensils lost long ago, which slid between our appliances? If we never install the lights, and never see the utensils, are they still there?

It's a koan for modern times.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

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Belfast City Manager's Retirement Plans

It's nice that a lifelong public servant has decided to try the private sector on for size when he retires:

City Manager Terry St. Peter said Tuesday he will become a business owner after he retires from City Hall next June.

The manager will purchase three adjacent lower Main Street businesses -- Maine Coast Photo and Digital, County Copy and Mark's Printing House -- on Nov. 1 and serve as a "passive" owner until spring.


The best part of the story comes at the very end.

St. Peter, who will be almost 65 when he retires, has spent most of his professional life in public service. "It will be interesting to see if I can run a business," he said.


It would have been nice to have found that out before he took a job for a cool $77k per year in which almost everything he did impacted businesses negatively. It should be a prerequisite of any bureaucrat that they have tried to make it in the private sector before feeding at the public trough and doling out the goodies to their friends.

Peace,

Tor

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The Left-Liberals in Maine Can't Get Their Story Straight

Lance Dutson of Maine Web Report has an anti-Baldacci rant worthy of reading. In general, I'd like to say, "What he said!"

The remarkable thing is that Lance references a report from the liberal advocacy group Maine Center for Economic Policy, which seems to undercut Baldacci's recent claims of economic progress in the state. I guess Christopher St. John didn't get the memo from Jack Cashman that all bad news about the economy should be withheld till after the election.

Peace,

Tor

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A Great New Search Engine for Puzzle and Riddle Lovers

Trumalia Search is a wonderful new search engine that's right up your alley if you enjoy Riddles and Puzzles. It's an especially wonderful site to visit if you like quirky and humorous artwork of a puzzling nature.

But Trumalia is more than just a search engine: it's also a forum for people who want to discuss current events, art or anything else. That anything else includes enigmas that will lead to buried treasure. Read about the first enigma solvers. As a member of Quest4Treasure, I could seriously get into that.

The Trumalia database includes one of the largest repositories of riddles written before the 20th century, so anyone with any curiosity about the history of riddles should check it out. If you're a Da Vinci code-cracking wannabee, there's plenty here for you, too.

Peace,

Tor

Tor has been paid to blog about the above topic via PayPerPost. If you are a blogger who would be interested in being paid to blog, please sign up at PayPerPost and fill in tor at torsrants dot com as your referral.

Linking to the following blogs with open trackback posts: Third World County, Diane's Stuff, Stuck on Stupid, Jack of All Trades

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