My obsession with Sanrio doesn’t stop at my Hello Kitty Cakes. In fact, Hello Kitty isn’t my favorite Sanrio character. I’m a big fan of Badtz-Maru…partly because we’re both born in April but there’s more.

Over the years I’ve watched Badtz-Maru go through a couple of cycles. He likes to travel, loves space, into chemistry, plays guitar, plays bass guitar, runs around in a crown and cape, and dreams of greatness. These are things that I’ve been doing for most of my life too. In fact, I’ll visit a Sanrio store just to see what’s he’s doing to see if we’re still in sync. I’ve been tempted to buy the Badtz-Maru bass guitar that they sell in the stores but it’s a little short for me. Instead, I decided to build a custom guitar of my own.

I’ve had a Squire Bullet for a couple years that has been collecting dust and I figured it was about time to put it to some good use. I haven’t decided on the electronics yet but when I do, I’ll feature this guitar in my music section. For now, it’s a glorified art project. Squire Bullets are famous for people buying them and then changing the electronics. Taking a $99 guitar and making it a $500 guitar. For a little history, the bullets before 2007 were made from plywood and the ones after 2007 are solid basswood. The one I modified is pre 2007.

Sanding down the original finish took a while. I wasn’t aware of the thick coat of clear coat. Removing the clear coat took a while.

Guitars are almost like artists’ canvass. After sanding, I used 80, 100, 160, 220 grit, I put on a layer of black and left it like that for a few days because I didn’t have a bigger plan. I ended up commissioning my brother-in-law to help me out with design. After a few hours of brainstorming, we came up with the design below.

He went for it and I clear coated it. The next step is to setup new electronics.

My plan is to throw in some Dimarzio pickups. Stay tuned.

I was looking around for wedding programs and I couldn’t find a good example of one that would fit my needs. Also, I didn’t like the way most wedding programs out there didn’t list the entourage.

Here’s a Wedding Program for you to use if needed. As a heads up, it’s really simple.

I’m doing some research to find a distant relative. Please let me know if you’re related to the person in the picture. Here’s a description of who he is:

Name: Felipe Sese

Known History: Moved from the Philippines to Hawaii. Jumped on a ship in Hawaii and landed in New York.

Contact me if you have any information or if you think you might be related. Maybe some of you Sese’s in Hawaii can help me out.

Here’s a system to help create a streamlined process to organize a weekly menu in your household. This menu planner is broken down into breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. The other part of this system is the grocery list. The grocery list is also broken down into days of the week.

I’m not sure about you but I like my ingredients fresh. The consequence is that I have to go grocery shopping mid-week (sometimes 3 times a week) to gain a certain level of freshness. Also, I rarely buy frozen foods.

I tried to categorize the grocery list but ran out of room. That’s why I have “other” at the bottom.

Give it a try. Let me know if this works for you.

Enjoy!

Downloads:
Weekly Menu and Grocery List – PDF
Weekly Menu and Grocery List – Excel 2010

I had bacon on my mind all day. Not sure why or what. It could have been a combination of memories: Saturday morning, cartoons, orange juice, and bacon.

Surprisingly I only have about a slice of bacon on top of a pizza today. Nothing too extravagant but at least I had a taste.

Normally I get in good 6-12 slices in. To compensate, I made this t-shirt. I was going to make a t-shirt that said, “I love bacon” but I noticed that there are already a couple of shirts and apparel that had it.

I decided to go whole hog and make the bacon university shirt (and more) with the thinking that one of these days I’ll open a university dedicated to bacon and all the other tasty parts.

I figured I should throw it up on Café Press just in case there are other bacon lovers out there. Take a look at the store. Buy the shirt if you’re a bacon lover like me.

I have yet to make my own bacon. A coworker of mine sent me this link: http://ruhlman.com/2010/10/home-cured-bacon-2.html. I hope to do this at some point when the weather starts getting cooler.

Oh, I almost forgot why I wanted to blog this. It took me 20 minutes to setup my store. 10 minutes to create the graphic and 10 minutes to walk through the instructions on Cafe Press. Yes, there are other websites out there that allow you to upload your graphic and throw it on anything but I decided to use Cafe Press because of all their “plug-in” support for things like WordPress. I’m sure they have other plug-ins for other applications. The other reason why I chose Cafe Press is because they are the only ones I found who will print on a Sigg bottle. Please take time to browse the store and buy. I’ll be making more bacon related items soon. Maybe I’ll throw up my other stuff.

Thanks for your support!

Store:
http://www.cafepress.com/EdelAlon

I’ve been dragging my feet around for the whole summer to a point where some people were worried about me. I’m not sure why or what caused the drag but there definitely was a drag. The other day one of my buddies sent me a link to a blog. I read a couple articles and I fell in love with the organizational tools (it remind me of some of the tools I’ve made for you on this site).

More importantly, there is an article on team building that talks about the different ingredients needed to form a great team.

Here are some point from the article:

• There are people who are driven intensely by the ambition to create exceptional experiences. The key word here is ambition, and I could see it in the face of everyone I interacted with. Ambition is one of the prerequisites for effective action. There are many times where the desire for exception experience is expressed, but when the ambition is lacking there just i no personal investment driving the action forward.

  Expressing the ambition is the mission. I think a good team knows that it’s the magic that they’re creating that’s important, and removing barriers to letting the ambition express itself fluidly is one of the prime metrics of a good team. By “expression”, I mean that ideas and desires are made visible so they can be directly experienced by another person. Another way of putting this: “the good of the project is greater than the individual interests of the team members”. If this mentality isn’t shared among all team members, you have a broken team.

• A great team shares the same ambitions, and reinforces this with every action taken. In the past, I would have evaluated teams by looking at personalities, communication, mutual respect, and other such indicators of a healthy social group. Many such teams are quite pleasant to work with in a social sense, but never quite reach the heights of productivity they imagine. The key indicator may be, for teams I’m interested in working with, is the level of shared ambition.

I’ve been lucky with most of the teams I work with. There’s definitely a sense of ambition. Right now, I’m stuck in the cycle of trying to keep it all going.

References:
http://davidseah.com/2010/07/finding-ambition/

California's Largest Bridal Faires

I day dreamed and realized it’s a new year and over the holidays many men had the courage to pop the “marry me” question to their significant others. There’s a formula, right? Holidays, family, good times, and talk about weddings. On my commute this morning I bought a newspaper and sure enough, it’s time for bridal fairs and wedding shows!

Modern Bridal put out a nice spread in the newspaper and announced their 30th year in the industry. After visiting other shows out there, they are one of the largest shows in California.  This year they have six shows scheduled from today. The dates are:

• January 17th at the Plesanton Hilton
• January 24th at the Claremont Resort & Spa
• February 21st at the San Ramon Marriot
• February 28th at the San Francisco Concourse
• March 28th at the San Jose Convention Center
• August 15th at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco

I was late on my wedding show stuff and missed the January 10th show at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. I was really tired of weddings in 2009.  Tickets are $12 except for the ones at the Ritz-Carlton which are $20.

I’ve rated the Modern Bridal shows in terms of accessibility, vendors, and overall atmosphere (Yes, I’ve been to all of them, in the previous years).

Pleasanton – 8 stars
Pleasanton has easy parking and the vendors are really happy to help you out. The brides are generally fresh at this time and don’t have any ideas on what they want. The vendors are down to earth and friendly.

Claremot – 6 stars
Parking is hard. The layout is crowded. The vendors are good but I never left there feeling like I found a great deal. It’s really quiet in the hotel and I think people are afraid to make noise or there are rules on sound levels.

San Ramon – 7 stars
The San Ramon show is just like the Pleasanton show.

San Francisco Concourse – 8 stars
I really like the San Francisco Concourse show. The layout is good and the vendors are really nice and helpful. Much better than the one that happens at the Ritz (I’ll get into that later). If I had to divide San Francisco, the concourse is where you go if you want to learn how to spend less than $50K on your wedding and the Ritz is where you go if you want to spend more than $50K.

San Jose - 9 stars
I had to think of the other bridal show companies out there and after thinking about it, the San Jose show is really great. The walk from the garage to the show is little away but not too bad. The vendors are happy and helpful. Make sure you take advantage of the rest of San Jose while down there like TheTech. The San Jose show is probably one of the best shows that Modern Bridal puts on.

Ritz-Carlton SF – 5 stars
Parking sucks and the vendors are stuffed into small rooms. I’d avoid this show. The only reason I did was to find some cool vendors in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I was wearing jeans and they didn’t really want to tal k to me.

One thing to remember is that the locations are vendor specific. In other words, don’t go to the San Ramon show looking for vendors who can help you out in Redwood City. If you’re looking for venues, definitely attend the shows. My other tip is to check out the websites for some of these shows, they usually give discounts. Also, by ordering your tickets early, you skip the long lines at the registration table.

It’s wedding season!

References:
Modern Bridal

WordPress 2.8.2 autoupdate went smooth.  No hiccups.

I was reading this article from HP on successful project management.   While there are more ways for successful project completion I think that they summed up the top 5 on my list of important factors for any project.

The first thing is to make a definite goal.  It’s the alpha and omega.  When you start anything (this goes for life too), you need to set up your expectation of what the project is going to look like in the end.  One of my favorite questions that I ask is, “What would you like to see at the end of the day/project?”

Having the right team is key but I think that having the right leader to figure out if the team is competent is better.  While the technical abilities of the team matter, the direction of the team matters more.  The article says to pick members for their skill and ability–This is good but building a team that can actually work together is harder.

Plan, plan, plan.  The projects that I’ve worked, on a good majority of time is spent on planning.  What happens without a plan?  Countless hours of collaboration are spent on follow ups and new direction.  What’s the difference between project scope and planning?  The scope will puts a boundary on what the project is supposed to look like in the end while the plan lays out how your are going to do it.  This is mainly for the team performing the work.

For me, out of this list, communication is #1.  We all communicate in different ways and sometimes different languages.  The article I wrote, “Managing Customer Expectations,” is not only for customers.  You want to do this with your team members and with people you interact with daily.

Learning new technology is good but not key for IT projects.  I think this is an exercise that the team members should go through.  From my experience, the only situation where this is handy is when your CEO walks up to you and says, “Did you hear about _____?  I just read about it in ‘CEO type magazine’.  We should implement it.”  Alarms go off and then I usually come back with some pros and cons about the product.  I’ve also been in a situation where I was caught off guard and had nothing to say–it was very awkward.

Here’s a snippet from the article:

1. Make sure the project scope is justified and supported
Before starting any project, there should be evidence to support that the project will have or promote value. Once that has been established, a “project champion” should be assigned to ensure the project can be justified and managed throughout its lifecycle. Then, ensure the project has support across the organization before building the actual project team. Even in smaller businesses, gaining a common understanding and across-the-board commitment before undertaking a project helps prevent inter-departmental sparring over resources, priorities and commitments.

2. Put the right people on the team
When selecting project team members, pick them for their skills and abilities as they apply to your particular project, and strive for a mix of different sets of skills and abilities that together represent all you need to complete the project. In your first team meeting, make sure everyone is clear about their role and responsibilities, and delegate tasks as appropriate.

3. Plan ahead to ensure a successful project
It’s been said so many times it’s nearly lost its meaning, but the fact is that comprehensive project planning is absolutely crucial to success – even in projects with tight timelines. Figure out what deliverables you really need, then prioritize them to keep the project team tightly focused on specific issues – determine short-term “must-haves” (e.g. one to three months) and long-term goals (e.g. one to three years).

4. Keep communicating and collaborating
Regular communication between project team members and stakeholders is vital to keeping a project on track. Team members should hold weekly meetings to discuss issues and potential solutions; if the team is geographically diverse, use collaboration tools to hold meetings and share information. Make use of project management software tools that keep project managers and team members informed of progress and help avoid miscommunication.

5. Never stop learning
Successful project management can sometimes be based on trial and error, so you should be keeping track of your own internal best practices for future reference. Conduct project “post-mortem meetings” to understand what worked, what went wrong, and how successful the project was, based on your internal metrics.

References: http://h30458.www3.hp.com/us/us/smb/822382.html?jumpid=em_di_505454_US_US_0_000_hpc_us_822382_across-bg&dimid=1059170958&dicid=taw_Jul09&mrm=1-4BVUP

Here’s a boutonniere I made (yes, hand crafted).  Look closely and you’ll see that it’s made of a pineapple leaf, rosemary sprig, habanero, and some baby breath.  100% edible, well, maybe not the baby breath. The idea here is to capture a theme.  There’s only so much a guy can do to dress up an outfit and the boutonniere is definitely one of the highlights.

I’ve seen some crazy non-floral boutonnieres out there.  The way I see it, if a guy has to wear one, why not match his personality?  How about making a boutonniere out of nuts and bolts or computer parts?  My next boutonniere might have one of those hidden cameras with a little decoration from other techie gadgets.

Recipes?  I’d add a quarter of this pepper to any chili recipe to add heat.  Yes, only a quarter.  I tried using the whole and even half of the pepper and it burns.  Or add a little to your favorite salsa recipe.

Notes: Use caution if you do decide to use a habanero because they are the hottest peppers out there.  You should also warn the wearers.  I found this video.  It was the only decent video I could find because the rest were mostly about people who were dared to eat it.  Mind you I’ve paid to watch people eat a habanero.  I’m not sure if it’s worth the $20.