StarTether

Conflict is Essential for Teamwork

I read a great book a few years ago called The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team. This book talks about how companies can build up their teams through showing the 5 big things that cause teams to work less effectively. I don't remember 4 of the dysfunctions...

Differences Matter

I've been getting a lot of material lately from various Democrats in Utah. One thing I notice is how conservative Utah Democrats are. This is a good thing. But it also means that the differences between Republicans and Democrats in Utah are even more...

Hidden Meanness

One of the problems that I am seeing more frequently than ever in Democratic politics is a hidden meanness. I was finally able to put a name on it when I got a robo-call from Claralyn Hill. She's a Democrat running for State Representative here in Utah....

Give a Hoot: Write a Book

If carbon emissions are really hurting the environment, then trees are cleaning up the environment, and just writing a book can help the environment. So can building houses and furniture. Trees breath in carbon dioxide and sunlight and breath out...

McCain: Rudy Giuliani on Spending

McCain regularly talks about ear-marks, and how he wants to stop them. Barack keeps saying that the waste that they represent is worth ignoring. Now, what does this have to do with Rudy Giuliani? Reducing ear-marks is precisely the way to drastically...

Stop Saying "Sorry"

A year or two I got to thinking about how I negotiate my way around complete strangers in the store. I tend to use the phrase "sorry" a lot as I stop my cart, try and get around people, etc. When other people say "sorry",...

Government Borrowing: The Simple Source of the Problem

I was listening to Michael Medved recently, and he made what seemed to be an off-hand remark about our economic crisis: The problem is Government Spending, not sub-prime loans. Basically, because the government is borrowing money, it is harder for the...

Conservation Costs More

I regularly hear about Barack Obama's plan to help our energy crisis, and it is basically to reduce consumption. This sounds good, because if we use less, the resulting higher supply will cause prices to go down, and we will produce less greenhouse...

The Economic Crisis: Making Enemies Where There Are None

When we create an enemy out of someone, we usually become their enemy as well. Some would say this applies to the war on terror, which it does: The terrorists made an enemy out of us, so we made an enemy out of them. But this is not the point of this...

Windows Vista CTP 5231

So, I downloaded the newest CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Windows Vista. My apartment complex has such a narrow pipe to the Internet, it took forever (literally, several days at a high of about 20K/sec, and lows of 5 K/sec or less). But I wanted...

64 Bit Windows

Intel made a 64 bit processor a few years ago (the Itanium), but it was nearly incompatible with 32 bit code. It would emulate a 32 bit Pentium processor (probably using the Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer [HAL]), so you could run applications written...

Windows Vista Fun

I have been having a lot of fun just installing Windows Vista Beta 1, and wanted to document all the hassle involved. Preparing For the Installation These are my initial machine specs AMD64 3000+ processor 160 GB SATA hard drive on a RAID controller....