In late October of this year my wife and I purchased a 2009 Acura MDX to replace her aging Honda Accord. Obligatory plug: we took delivery via Harper Acura who worked diligently to procure the car from another state and ensure they left us as happy customers. I’ve been going to Harper VW and Harper Acura since 2002ish and they’ve never disappointed me. If you’re in the market give Shannon a call at the Porsche building and he’ll hook you up with the right person.

Just like my TSX, I am tracking every tank of gas that goes into the MDX. Today, I recorded the tenth fill-up in my Excel spreadsheet and the numbers are on par with what I expected from this tankesque SUV.

The average MPGs are coming in at 19.10 with an average fill-up size of 15.13 gallons. The average price per tank is $39.98 with an average of $2.64 per gallon. Total miles tracked is 2,891.40 which equates to $0.13 per mile.

In 2010 I hope to put up more posts like this one so stay tuned. In the meantime, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

• The Project Management Hut. Always updating, the PM Hut is stuffed with PM articles covering just about every topic you could imagine. The collection of authors do an excellent job relating to various industries as well, making sure not to cover one sector too strongly.
• Project Shrink. This site does a great job of mixing the sometimes boring semantics of PM work with the real world human aspects of working on projects. The author, Bas de Baar, intermittently updates the site with informative videos, thoughtful advice and a drizzle of social media info.
• Scope crêpe. Rich Maltzman, PMP, updates his site Scope crêpe about once a month. He tends to focus on showcasing tools and processes that will help any project manager, novice or pro.
• Fear No Project. The FNP blog is written by Bruce McGraw and is focused on covering real world project scenarios. He recently posted a timely read called “What to do when everyone leaves town for the Holiday” which I’m sure is on every PM’s mind about this time of year.

Simply click and grab the dark blue portion of the sliding bar and drag left to right. This will expose links to every single page of my little home on the Web. I’d love it if you left me feedback in the comments. Thanks.

All of this courtesy of Volkswagen. Yes, the car manufacturer.

The Eric Berry for Heisman video which looked even better on the jumbotron in Neyland Stadium last night. The rapper is none other than UT’s own Renaldo Woolridge aka Swiperboy.

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

The story of the video from the author: “Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.

I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.

Here I’ve posted a short video made with the photo, the music and the score (composed by the birds).

Music made with Logic. Video made with After Effects.

The newspaper story about my work (O Estado de São Paulo): http://tinyurl.com/l4qdbg”

Anything Rob Dyrdek does is funny. Period. But when he brings Ken Block in on the action it gets even better.

“Our ability to succeed at what we do is powerfully bound up with where we’re from…

— Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers: The Story of Success

“Yield is what matters, and yield comes from getting through the Dip.

— Seth Godin

A fascinating look at how the Dodge Charger has evolved over time. I didn’t realize the Charger model had withstood the test of time so well.