Monthly Archives: July 2008

Parfrey’s Glen, Wisconsin

Posted on July 30, 2008 by John Hunter

See more photos from my visit to Parfrey’s Glen Natural Area in Wisconsin, about an hour outside of Madison. It really was amazingly beautiful – the pictures do not do it justice. The Parfrey’s Glen trail is under a mile … Continue reading →

Posted in curiouscat.com, Travel photos | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Parfrey’s Glen, Wisconsin

Full and Fractional Factorial Test Design

Posted on July 29, 2008 by John Hunter

I am a fan of design of experiments as long time readers know (see posts on design of experiments). Continue reading →

Posted in Design of Experiments, Process improvement, Statistics | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Do What You Say You Will

Posted on July 28, 2008 by John Hunter

In Keeping Good Employees I talked about asking some simple questions. The biggest mistake I see managers make is to fail to deliver on what they say in such meetings. There is the saying “It is better to be thought … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Process improvement, Respect, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Amazon S3 Failure Analysis

Posted on July 26, 2008 by John Hunter

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is a service providing web hosting. The cloud computing solution has been used by many organizations successfully. However the solution has experienced some problems including failing for much of the day on July 20th. Amazon … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, IT, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Keeping Good Employees

Posted on July 24, 2008 by John Hunter

Understanding Why Good Workers Quit [the broken link was removed] “What do you need to want to stay?” Most managers, she acknowledges, are afraid to ask this question and that is a reason why their companies have to do plenty … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, IT, Management, quote, Respect | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Not Exactly Lean Packaging

Posted on July 23, 2008 by John Hunter

HP shatters excessive packaging world record (17 boxes to protect 32 A4 sheets of paper) Stephen said: “Imagine our excitement as we opened it, hoping against hope that it might contain a copy of some c-class virtual connect firmware that … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Lean thinking, Management, Process improvement | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Some Good IT Business Ideas

Posted on July 22, 2008 by John Hunter

Paul Graham has some excellent ideas. I have written about some of them previously: Innovation Strategy, What Business Can Learn from Open Source and Google and Paul Graham’s Latest Essay. Y Combinator, which he founded, provides seed funding. Here are … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, IT, Software Development | Tagged , | 1 Comment

“Pay for Performance” is a Bad Idea

Posted on July 21, 2008 by John Hunter

Pay for performance is a bad investment [the broken link was removed] by Pete Waters “Teacher pay set by the results” was the headline of a (Baltimore) Sun article I read the other day which suggested that “performance-based bonuses (were) … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Rhode Island Manufacturing

Posted on July 19, 2008 by John Hunter

Manufacturing has new look in R.I. [the broken link was removed] She used the auto industry as an example, pointing out that in the early years of the last century Henry Ford manufactured Model-T’s that were all the same. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Economics, Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Comments Off on Rhode Island Manufacturing

California Uses More Gas than China

Posted on July 17, 2008 by John Hunter

Amazing Stat: California Uses More Gas than China [the broken link was removed]: California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and … Continue reading →

Posted in China, Data, Economics | Tagged , | Comments Off on California Uses More Gas than China