Inspiration -- Pass it On!

One of the things that I've learned to look forward to is the upside surprise of Friday afternoon. For a number of weeks, I have found that good things have surfaced on Friday. (Note: it may make sense to start expecting good things to happen every day, and then to start looking for them!) This Friday was no exception and I'm glad the trend is still intact.

I found myself "pushing" pretty hard this week, which really isn't as effective as "flowing" through the week. I suppose that one sprints at the finish, but I'm not really in a race right now. In my sprint, I finished "Good to Great" this week. I started my next book, "Seeing What's Next" which is my third Clayton M. Christensen book. In addition, I'm making good progress with my XML project. I've learned the basics of CSS, XPath, and have a reasonable data structure that may lead me to a database format. I also learned the idiosyncrasies of MS Word (the double quote is not a real double quote) and I saw the black diamond with a question mark in it on the N&O RSS feed. In case you're interested, that's the display of the "special character" in XML, the apostrophe. If you want an apostrophe in XML, you type '. I've now given up on using contractions!

Even with my accomplishments this week, the Friday afternoon upside started with the most glowing report from a customer on the work that one of my team performed. It wasn't just "thank you for doing a good job," but "thank you for sending somone with exceptional talent...I will remember many of the lessons taught for a long time." Wow. It wasn't just a job done, but changes were made driven by outstanding leadership.

I read on Sage's blog that she found a bountiful music source for her podcast and that she is revelling in the production of her third podcast. I'm very happy to know this is working for her.

And, I enjoyed seeing Jenn honored at the school board meeting last night for being a National Merit Finalist.

This was a long and arduous week, but it has really endidly splendidly.