Hillbilly PhD. (part 2)

In case you missed part 1 of my interview with Rocky Noe, we talked about management advice, mentors, and the best and worst parts of managing people.

In part 2, I’ll be sharing a little deeper dive into the mind of Rocky Noe, Hillbilly PhD. Enjoy!

Phil: What’s your favorite management story?

Rocky: There are so many it is hard to decide, but one that really stands out is how Booker Noe revolutionized the bourbon industry because of his passion. He did a lot of things for his business and the stories are to numerous to mention, but one really stands out for me. Booker really had an affection for his grandfather, Jim Beam. When Booker retired from Jim Beam he was asked what he wanted. He said he wanted a lifetime supply of bourbon just way his grandfather liked it, uncut, unfiltered and hand dipped straight from the barrel. Booker was always a very generous man. He would share his retirement gift with all who visited him. It became so popular that Booker’s True Barrel Bourbon was developed. That gave birth to what is now know as the "Small Batch" industry.

Phil: Why do you keep managing people?

Rocky: Having the opportunity to lead people in learning how to work with at risk teens has increased my sphere of influence exponentially. I love to see grow and develop. I have learned that the best way for me to be successful is to help others to be successful. I cannot gain any success through the failure of others and just really enjy be a part of others journey.

Phil: What is your best advice for managers just getting started managing?

Rocky: Be patient. Take time to learn from great mentors. Develop you mission and stick with it.

Phil: What are some of your favorite management resources (books/blogs/whatever)?

Rocky: I am an avid reader. I cannot read enough. I also really enjoy blogs. They are so cool because you can have professional advice almost instantly and you can develop very meaningful professional relationships through them. There are some great resources out there. I think everyone can benefit from some of my favorites: Trevor Gay’s Simplicity is the Key, Brian Ward’s FACET Leadership model, Slacker Manager,  and the Employee Engagement Network, to name a few.

Phil: Anything else you’d like to share?

Rocky: I love your mantra of Make it Great. It is simple and direct. Everybody can do it. Most people will settle good when with a little extra effort or planning they can Make it Great. It does not take any more talent than anyone else to decide to make it Great. It just takes the belief that you can and the persistence to do it.

Phil: Thanks for making time to share your stories with us Rocky. It’s inspiring to learn from you!

Barrels photo credit to Neeta Lind

More ways to rent a prius

Fox Rent a Car has been in business since 1989, and since at least 2006 they’ve been teaming up with other car rental companies to provide their customers with hybrids. According to a friendly commenter, they now have over 4000 hybrids in their fleet. One thing I liked from the website was their lowest-price guarantee.

Renting a hybrid on a long trip makes sense money-wise (if you don’t get ripped on the rental cost … this is where Fox’s guarantee really comes in handy) but renting a hybrid before you buy is also a good idea. Especially if you haven’t had much of a chance to test drive. I’ll tell you why…

We were at a car lot looking at the new arrivals lately (yes, technically, I was supposed to buy a car on Friday but then hubby came down with the flu … I think he may be suffering from sticker shock syndrome ;P) and the salesman had a surprising message for us.

“Don’t bother with a hybrid Camry,” he said.  “They don’t get much better gas mileage for the money, and they might wind up costing you a bundle. The last guy I sold one to – an older fella – was trying to park in the garage, thought he shut the car off, then bumped the gas when he was getting out and ran into the wall. He traded it in 3 weeks after he bought it.”

I trust this story is true for two reasons. 1) The salesman was willing to forgo a bigger sale to have a happy customer. They rarely go that route, but 2) a few months ago there was a brand new but technically “used” Camry hybrid on the lot.

I know several older people who do drive hybrids so that’s not the point I’m making here. I know a woman who is reaching 90 who is finishing up her PhD in Chemistry. She may be the first, who knows, and I’ve the grand opportunity of knowing her. She could figure out a hybrid, and I know some teens and middle-aged people who might struggle with it as well. (There’s a reason I didn’t tell my sister to buy a hybrid, you guys. She’s scary behind the wheel without all the doodads to distract her.)

Renting a hybrid gives you a chance to really get to know the car before you buy it, because there is a slight learning curve.  Keeping that in mind, however, it might be a good idea to make sure you have enough insurance coverage. :D

Most of the companies that rent prius, camry hybrids, etc don’t have them at all of their locations. If you don’t live near a major airport, it can be hard to rent through Hertz or Avis, for instance. With Fox you can rent a prius, or other hybrid, at branches in Arizona, California, Florida, Missouri, Texas, Utah, Washington (state) in the United States, and in Montreal or Toronto, Canada. You can also rent a hybrid car in select locations in Costa Rica, Guam, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, United Arab Emirates, and the Netherlands Antilles.

Rocky Noe: Hillbilly PHD is the March 2008 Golden Slacker

For March 2008, it is my pleasure to honor Roger “Rocky” Noe as our Golden Slacker. Rocky is the author of the Hillbilly PHD blog, one of the most straightforward places you can get your dose of leadership.

What is Hillbilly PHD, and why is it so darn inspiring? I’ll let you read what Rocky has to say about what Hillbilly PHD is:

Through the years I have met numerous people that are very successful and have little formal education. People that live their life with certain down to earth principles seem to do very well. That is what I am calling a “Hillbilly” people with down to earth principles. Principles such as Trustworthiness, Effort, Respect, Responsibility, Integrity, Forgiveness, Initiative, and Caring. These are some of the qualities that I like to cultivate and write about.

Rocky’s recent post on the 5 Qualities of a Leader should be mandatory reading for all leaders. I can’t WAIT to see how Rocky turns this into tips, tricks and stories that we can all learn from. Rocky also wrote a wonderful post about Getting Back in the Game that you need to read and add to your leadership library.

Rocky is also the author of 3 Amigos with One Message, a book he co-authored with Trevor Gay and Felix Gerena.

Rocky – congratulations on being a Golden Slacker. Your simple message inspires us all to be better Slackers!

Cutting Sugars May CAUSE Weight Gain?

A new study actually states that Saccharin, a popular sugar substitute can cause you to gain weight. Here are a few excerpts and my own take on them.

“We found that the rats that were getting artificially sweetened yogurt gained more weight and ate more food,” said study author Susan Swithers, an associate professor of psychological sciences at the Ingestive Behavior Research Institute at Purdue University.”

Read more

Colts vs. Patriots – an offensive showdown

NFL Football at its best. NFL Football at its craziest.

Peyton was excellent on Saturday Night Live

Everyone knows that Defense Wins Championships.

It is the common wisdom, but when you break it down there are all kinds of ways to win.

Several years back the Ravens and Ray Lewis proved Defense Wins Championships by winning one with pretty much all defense.

That is not the typical case. Usually your winning teams are some of the highest scoring teams in the league.

If Indy gives up 24 points a game, but typically scores 31 points a game, is it bad defense or a case of scoring so quick that the other team is getting more shots to score.

Over the span of Manning’s 10-year career in Indianapolis, the goal has been consistent precision. It’s obvious in the way he plays the role of maestro in the offense, signaling the horns and string and the brass sections. What Manning and the Colts have built is an offense that is the gold standard in terms of consistency in the NFL. source

That is what is going to make this a great game. Indy the Gold Standard and the Patriots high scoring machine.

We have been lucky recently to Read more

Excellent Advice for Prospective Grad Students

As prospective grad student myself, I read with great interest Sean’s post offering advice on how to be a good one.

If I had to concentrate on a single useful piece of advice for grad students, it would be: Take the initiative. The deep truth of grad school is that the transition from undergrad to grad is when you go from primarily being “a student” to primarily being “a scientist.” As a student, your primary responsibility was to do what your professors told you to. As a scientist, your primary responsibility is to do good science. Many students struggle in grad school, especially in the early years, because they are implicitly waiting to be told what to do. Don’t wait — try to figure out what you should be doing, and do it. (Full Post)

I’ve noticed that among the Postdocs hired by HAO, the ones that went on to make real names for themselves were the ones deeply engrossed in their work, knew the right questions to ask, and actually completed things. These were definitely self-motivated individuals and often served as catalysts for new areas of research not previously considered before at NCAR.

I also read Sean’s post about how to get into grad school. This post was of more immediate interest to me because I’m about to start submitting applications. I’m very concerned about the GRE’s, particularly the Physics GRE. It’s been a few years since I’ve graduated with my BA and reviewing and then being tested on my entire undergraduate physics education is more than a little daunting to me.

In response to the question, Are GRE scores important? Sean writes:

Yes. At least, in the following sense: while bad GRE’s won’t kill your chances, good GRE’s make it much easier to admit you. (We’re speaking of the Physics GRE, of course; the general tests are completely irrelevant.) It stands to reason: given two applicants from similar schools with similar grades and interests, there’s no reason for a department to choose the student with lower GRE scores. At the same time, you can certainly overcome sub-par GRE’s by being outstanding in other areas; this is particularly true for students who want to do experiment. I know at Chicago that we let in students with quite a range of scores. (Full Post)

I guess this is some comfort. I’m pretty sure I won’t score among the highest percentage when I take the test, if for no other reason than it’s been so long since I’ve been exposed to many physics concepts that lie outside my areas of expertise.

I disagree that the general GRE is completely irrelevant, that test provides a good indicator of a student’s ability to express themselves and communicate effectively. These are very important skills for a scientist, and I believe many departments look at them for indications of such skills.

The good news, at least for me, is that I have extensive research experience with my work at HAO and I’ve been co-author on many papers and first author on one.

Also in my favor is I want to be an experimentalist. I’ve written before about this, and Sean’s post supports me, we need more experimentalist, and not so many modelers and theoreticians:

Because a lot of undergrads haven’t been exposed to a wide range of physics research, a large number of them want to be Richard Feynman or Stephen Hawking or Ed Witten. Which is great, since we need more people like that. But even more, we need really good experimenters. Generally the ratio of applicants to available slots is appreciably larger for theorists than for experimenters, and schools do take this into account. Also, of course, the standards are a little different: GRE’s count more for prospective theorists, and research experience counts more for prospective experimenters. And let’s be honest: many schools will accept more prospective theorists than they can possible find advisors for, in the hopes of steering them into experiment once they arrive. (Full post)

See? We need more data, not more models.

I take some comfort from the idea that I’ll may be judged more on my experience than my test scores, although I’m still stressing about the tests.

I feel much more confident about my ability to do well with the General GRE, I’ll begin by taking that in a few weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Technorati Tags: getting a PhD, graduate school, How to get a job in astronomy

iPodObserver – Logic3 Launches iPhone Portable Speakers

SpectraVideo PLC/Logic3 in the UK has launched i-Station Traveller, a compact set of speakers designed for customers there who will be getting an iPhone in the future, according to Yahoo News/UK

Sourced from: “The Mac Observer”

iPodObserver – Tips & Tricks for Getting More out of your iPhone

One of the best things about Apple’s iPhone is its interface. For those put off by the complexity of most "smart phones," the iPhone offers an extremely intuitive way to get to its powerful features. There are some very nice touches built into the phone that make it even easier to use, but aren’t readily apparent. Here’s my quick list of some of them:

Sourced from: “The Mac Observer”

iPhone getting Apple-distributed games?

It looks like iTunes is already setup to retrieve and transfer Apple-sanctioned games (presumably binaries and not Web apps) to the iPhone. DownloadSquad reports that, after digging through the iTunes localization strings, they found the following entry: “/* ===== iPhone Game Item Strings ===== */; “4329.001″ = “Are you sure you want to remove the …

Sourced from: “MacNN | The Macintosh News Network”

Julie’s Gear Diary – How one month with the iPhone has made appreciate the Treo 680 more than ever – 2007-07-29

Today is July 29th. One month ago today, I was standing in line (it was a very short line, but a line all the same) at my local AT&T; store to buy the much hyped iPhone. On that day, I remember being excited because I was getting a new toy to play with. But I also remember being pretty sure that the iPhone would not displace my Treo 680 as my everyday device. After using the iPhone exclusively for a couple of weeks and posting my review, I did in fact go back to the 680. But then I went back to the iPhone again. And then back to the 680. This flip flopping has happened more times than I can remember in the last month, but I keep coming back to the Treo and here’s why…

(read more…)

Sourced from: “The Gadgeteer”

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