Yearly Archives: 2012

New 1 year Petroleum Production Ops Technician Skill Set Certification

In response to Halliburton’s request for a 1 yr Petro Production Ops Certification that satisfied their entry level production tech needs, Dr. Galiotos, Houston Community College Energy Institute, developed a 1 year hands-on skill set certification program that we are now also asking the rest of the Petroleum Industry to provide commentary on. Is theRead… Read more »

I’m So Sick of Happy Hours

I’m so sick of happy hour being the universally acceptable way to socialize with your co-workers. I’ve had more than my share of experiences with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde over the years and I’m so tired of being a spectator of this transformation. Alcohol (even the tiniest bit) can change a person’s personality andRead… Read more »

Trends on Tuesday: Phone a Friend

More than half of adult cellphone owners used their phones in stores this holiday season while deciding what to buy, according to new research released by Pew Internet. They called friends for advice, looked up product reviews and even comparison shopped–sometimes skipping the in-store purchase and buying online. While these purchasing trends are not exactlyRead… Read more »

Sunlight Foundation: Progress Made in Increasing Transparency of U.S. Foreign Aid

This blog post was written in conjunction with Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey. The Brookings Institution hosted an event in conjunction with Publish What You Fund on Thursday, January 19th to discuss progress made in regards to foreign aid transparency. Video of the event is available here. The event featured a keynote address from USAID AdministratorRead… Read more »

Sunlight Foundation: 2Day in #OpenGov 1/31/2012

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. Here is Tuesday’s take on transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Campaign Finance CREDO Mobile, which donates some of its revenue to progressive causes and supports efforts to repeal Citizens United, launched a super PAC to target 10Read… Read more »

Think Like a Banker, Extending credit to customers requires strong policies

by my friend Mike Selfridge of Silicon Valley Bank: The CFOs I know don’t typically think of themselves as bankers, but a walk in wingtips would serve them well. Paramount to a bank’s success is the chief credit officer, responsible for the institution’s credit portfolio, lending practices, and overall risk management. Successful policies established byRead… Read more »

How Can We Recruit Veterans to Government Service?

This morning I was able to attend an event sponsored by FedInsider News: To Honor and to Serve: Recruiting Veterans to Government Service. The event provided an overview of President Obama’s Executive Order to improve how the federal government hires veterans and assists during the transition from military to civilian life. The event specifically focusedRead… Read more »

Improving Hadoop Performance with Optimization, CDH3 Update 3, and CDH4

Mahout is a machine learning library that will be included in CDH4 At Cloudera Day, Cloudera software engineed Todd Lipcon Delivered a Deep Dive on the Core of Cloudera’s Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH), detailing tweaks and planned improvements to the Hadoop core. Just a few days later, some of these planned improvements were implementedRead… Read more »

Want to Go Futher on Hydrogen?

Scientists at Berkeley Lab do. One DOE-funded project at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab takes Berkeley scientists and pairs them with expertise from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and General Motors (GM). The net result? A plan to develop a cost-effective hydrogen storage system for vehicles. The basic idea is to make aRead… Read more »