Author: Lewis Pinault

Inside the Unscrupulous World of Global Corporate Consulting

Rating: 4/5

Inside Jacket Snippet: ‘… an unvarnished look at the life of a consultant, with essential, darkly revealing guidelines on how to get ahead and an enlightening perspective on the brutal infighting …’

Comments:
I almost skipped this book because of the odd demon cover art, but I tried it anyways, and it turned out to be very entertaining. Less detailed/informative than expected, but a more light-hearted/skimming the surface of darkness type of adventure book. Like he is hinting there is even more consulting shadiness than what he can actually write about, but I’m not sure…

The above mentioned guidelines that follow every chapter are great. More book should have this feature.

The book is a well done starter guide to global consulting… but afterwards you might not be in a rush to continue on with it.

Author: Masaru Emoto

Rating: 4/5

Inside Jacket Snippet: ‘…Using high-speed photography, Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward them. …’

Comments: The book has interesting high quality ideas, but the writing style is definitely fluffy and rough around the edges. It’s great how in the book he gives props to Rupert Sheldrake and his morphogenic fields work. Also I have been trying to web search for ‘water from space’ as mentioned in the book, but the closest I can find so far is Megacryometeors. And finally I want to check Dr. Emoto’s site to see if he offer any advice for people to check their own water crystal formations. Test out my own drinking water… and maybe put a big ‘Thank-You’ on my water bottle. All of this great material from such a small book.

Authors: Richard Leblanc and James Gillies

How Boards Really Work and the Coming Revolution in Corporate Governance

Rating: 4/5

Inside Jacket Snippet: ‘… Based on a five-year study, this book goes behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of boards of directors, …’

Comments: I’m not involved in creating or guiding the creation of any company boards… so other than that… this book is a read-able, informative, interesting, 4/5 rating type of book. If I am one day involved in building/designing a board of directors I will plan to re-read this book and likely rate it a top 5/5.

While reading this book I sometimes get flashbacks to the Arrested Development show and the dysfunctional Bluth family board of directors. Also it is  great how the authors once relate board management to the General Manager of a hockey team… concerned with building the right team chemistry and not just the best individual skill level. Overall the book is pretty good with no ‘grind’ reading required that I was kind of unfairly expecting.

Finally done day 100 of this long challenge… phew… info here. Overall it has been fine, just once I hit the mid 80’s it turned into a grind. Doing the burpess in sets of 12 still takes a while. Plus I think I semi-hurt my left should side over time by slightly being off balance… so when I jump down for the push-up part a little  more weight goes on the left arm than the right. With no recovery days this has slightly added up each day to cause some damage. But I’m done and there is a pretty strong chance I won’t do this again. The 100 day burpeee challenge combined with the gym and running I normally do is causing me to show symptoms of over-training. Time for a back-off week.

Author: Howard Behar – former President Starbucks International, with Janet Goldstein

Leadership Principles From a Life at Starbucks

Rating: 4/5

Inside Jacket Clip: ‘…Behar shares turning points in the company’s history as it fought to hang onto this culture while growing exponentially. He discusses the importance of building trust, facing challenges, daring to dream, and other key principles, …’

Comments: The book was pretty good, but not 5/5 awesome. It is too much entertainment and not enough serious-ness for me.  The quotes leading into each chapter are well chosen. The brief high level insider Starbuck stories are nice, but sort of feel like insider jokes and the reader is left outside. But still a well made/fun book to read.I go to Starbucks about twice a week and think the stores are great. Plus  Starbucks coffee is my drink of choice before a half marathons.

If this UFC was instead a free Spike TV broadcast it would be an awesome show, but since it actually was  a weird time of day pay-per-view purchase it was probably only a decent-to-good UFC show.

Rich Franklin beats Wanderlei Silva

Rich won the fight through keeping his distance and getting judges points through tactical striking. Kinda boring to see. Wanderlei changed up his style a bit, tried pumping up the crowd near the end, went on straight ahead charging attacks… Silva lost, but I definitely liked him more out of these two fighters.

Cheick Kongo loses Cain Velasquez

Not only did Cheick lose, but he spent a large number of minutes ‘turtled’ trying not to be choked or knocked out. Devastating to see… Cain looked rusty, but very talented. Go Cain!

Mike Swick beats Ben Saunders

Mike finished strong, but this fight was some-how pretty boring until then. Maybe Ben was intimidated by Mike’s fight history and just didn’t want to get hurt when he lost.

Marcus Davis loses to Dan Hardy

A somewhat close fight. If Marcus’s face wasn’t covered in blood he might have got the decision.

Mirko Cro Cop beats Mostapha Al Turk

Mirko wins by a slight eye-poke combo-attack, but even with no eye-poke he was going on to win anyway. Mostapha was fast and entertaining for the first round though.

Overall a pretty good UFC show, but now awesome. UFC 100 is so close….