Nothing funny about feldspar

I was looking at the Project Management Institute’s website, with the idle thought that I might try to get some credentials. This appeared in their “sample questions” pdf, as the background to a series of questions:

Company A and Company B merge to create a new organization, Company ABC. Both companies operated strategic business units and employed full-time project managers. Although both companies were composite matrix management organizations, their corporate and project management cultures and organizational structures differed. Company A’s project management organizations tailored their processes and tools to their assigned strategic business units; Company B’s project management organizations centralized the development of processes and tools for corporate-wide adoption. The new organization, Company ABC, retained the strategic business units, composite matrix management organization, and full- time project managers. It has a single project organization that aligns project managers with strategic units.

The whole site has this overblown use of pseudo-precise business-speak, starting with the PMI tagline: “Project Management Institute… Making project management indispensable for business results.™” and continuing with news about the new certification test:

PMI officially announces that it will deploy the updated PMP credential examination (referred to as the “2005 Examination” for purposes of this communication) globally at 14.00 GMT on 30 September 2005. Five days prior, a “black-out” period (beginning on 25 September 2005) will commence during which the PMP credential examination will be unavailable.

Can’t they just say “The old test will stop being used on September 25 2005. The new test will be available starting September 30 2005 at 14:00 GMT.”?

I appreciate the desire of the PMI to earn big bucks by creating an aura of rigor and ability about Professional Project Management (by creating a $500-or-so-a-pop test, etc), and it is obviously successful (150,000 members of PMI; 30,000 new PM certifications last year — and after all I was considering it). However, I can’t help but think that it’s all manufactured — filled with jargon and polysyllables to show that yes-indeedy, you have to speak our lingo to be a Real Project Manager™.

I used to be a project manager, but it appears I have been out of the country too long and no longer speak the language.

We had this very pretty and unusual seeming daylily pop up in our garden this year. It’s one of the ones we transplanted from Plagioclase’s mother’s garden. She didn’t recognize it, and I, naturally, have no idea what it is. So I Googled “triple daylily” and learned that it is a Hemerocallis fulva Kwanso, introduced in Japan in 1860. It apparently, naturalizes rather easily…. so if I start complaining next year about that damned orange daylily you’ll know what I’m talking about.

But it is pretty special looking, isn’t it?

Well, not really. Edison Carter had Theora and Max, of course. But over at the Online Journalism Review, they’re using a wiki to discuss the advent and promotion of Video Journalists, “‘one-man bands’ who report, film and edit their own video stories.”

It’s just starting out, but so far looks interesting. The primary promoter of the idea is Michael Rosenblum (with a not very pretty black, red and white site, but who am I to say? since I liked green and orange and now am stuck in the blues), who has “trained nearly 4,000 video journalists worldwide.”

The discussion is so far focusing on the merits of a single person doing the newsgathering vs. a two-person team (the most common TV newsgathering form). Given my total ignorance of the subject, I’ll just be reading it rather than posting. But I do have to wonder if the local news outlets see this as a move simply to cut costs, and ignore the opportunity to bring local news back to the local station. That’s one of the reasons I don’t watch local news shows — they’re rife with clips from events outside of the state, let alone outside of driving distance.

The discussion lasts for two days. Read it if you get the chance.

(via The Lenslinger — one of the participants)

Nothing funny about feldspar has a new favicon courtesy of the cool folks at chami.com and their html kit.

Though if you’re using Safari, you may have to delete the icon cache and restart. Silly Safari!

Ack! I have less than three weeks to do my taxes! “But, Orthoclase,” you say, “the tax returns were due four months ago!”

Yeah, well. The IRS makes it really easy to get a four month extension. And dear Plagioclase has been a real trooper about taking care of the paperwork of our lives, but he doesn’t do it the way I do it. (To give him complete credit, he’s been keeping everything held together while I’ve been away and he’s been rushing around like a maniac to support me, his mother, and go to school. It’s fabulous, and I love him dearly for it.) So I also have to sort through the accumulated bills and receipts and piles of Important Papers to make sure I’ve only got last year’s items, and then I can do the taxes.

The stupidest thing is, I think we get refunds. Which don’t earn interest. If we have to pay, we’d pay a penalty and interest. Rassin’ frassin’ IRS.