James Dimmer III

Soup, the thoughts of soup just don’t really bode well..  You know, it’s ok, but what soup really satisfies ?

We found it !  This recipe from Tony Bourdain and Les Halles is fantastic ! Don’t bother with the oven proof crocks, just grab your propane torch and torch the cheese, it’s too much fun !

For the broth:

1. In a large pot, heat the butter over medium heat until it is melted and begins to brown. Add the onions and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until they are soft and browned (about 20 minutes). Onion soup, unsurprisingly, is all about the onions. Make damn sure the onions are a nice, dark, even brown color.
2. Increase the heat to medium high and stir in the port wine and the vinegar, scraping all that brown goodness from the bottom of the pot into the liquid. Add the chicken stock. Note that the better and more intense your stock, the better the soup’s going to be. This soup, in particular, is a very good argument for making your own. Add the bacon and the bouquet garni, and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce to a simmer, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, skimming any foam off the top with a ladle. Remove the bouquet garni.

For the croutons and cheese:

1. When the soup is finished cooking, ladle it into the individual crocks. Float two croutons side by side on top of each. Spread a generous, even heaping amount of cheese over the top of the soup. You want some extra to hang over the edges as the crispy, near-burnt stuff that sticks to the outer sides of the crocks is often the best part, once it comes out from under the heat.
2. Place each crock under a preheated, rip-roaring broiler until the cheese melts, bubbles, browns, and even scorches slightly in isolated spots. The finished cheese should be a panorama of molten brown hues ranging from golden brown to dark brown to a few black spots where the cheese blistered and burned. Serve immediately—and carefully. You don’t know pain until you’ve spilled one of these things.
3. If your broiler is too small or too weak to pull this off, you can try it in a preheated 425°F/220°C oven until the cheese is melted. A nice optional move: Once the mound of grated cheese starts to flatten out in the oven, remove each crock and, with a propane torch, blast the cheese until you get the colors you want.

Alfredo is not necessarily Alfred from Naples, (although it may be and he is probably a nice fellow) it’s the key to self discovery and a way to express your love or gratitude for those you care about.  Really, it’s a true expression of love from the kitchen.  To help you improve the quality of your life, let me share my recipe for success.

Ingredients:

1 dose of Pavarotti courtesy of www.pandora.com (cranked loudly)

3 Candles

1/2 cup butter

1 - 8 ounce package of cream cheese

2 pieces of garlic

4 ounces mozzarella cheese

2 cups milk

3-6 ounces of mozzarella cheese

Black pepper to taste

Bacon crumbles - salad bacon bits are fine but ONLY real bacon

2 bottles of quality local white wine

1/4 cup white wine for the recipe the rest is to show love for your guests..

(Make sure you have 2 bottles, one for the preparation time and one for dinner)

Surf to pandora.com and create a Luciano Pavarotti station.  Crank speakers up so the opera vocals fill the house.  Light candles one in the kitchen and two others near your guests.

Set the tone with a glass of wine, pinot grigio is a  good choice.  If you are local to Michigan there are a few good wines like a Traminette from Sandhill Crane *

Melt butter in medium saucepan taking care not to burn with too much heat. Add cream cheese and squeeze garlic with garlic press while whisking mixture until melted and smooth in texture.  Slowly dribble the milk in as if you were making gravy.  Smooth out solid chunks as cheese melts.  Stir in your cubed Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese whisking violently until the mixture is smooth.  Monitor temperature and make sure that the heat is low just melting the mixture.

Prepare your pasta al dente ahead of the Alfredo, and allow it to rest while making the sauce.  When the sauce is ready (smooth) all of the butter will be absorbed into the mixture, and you are ready to add the bacon and 1/4 cup of white wine.

Whisk wine and crumbled bacon into sauce and remove from heat.  Serve with al dente pasta and you can even mix in some cooked vegetables for a fantastic feast !

Chill wine glasses, and serve !

If your guests don’t smile, turn the Pavarotti up louder and serve more wine !

* According to the sandhill crane website …

Gold medals - 2007 Taster’s Guild Int’l. Competition & 2007 Michigan Wine & Spirits Competition & 2006 Jefferson Cup Invitational -American Example of Greatness award. Fruit forward flavors with hints of lychee, other tropical fruits, and citrus, along with the spicy sweetness of its parent, Gewürztraminer. $15.95

Ever wonder why companies are pushing so hard to outsource and move services outside the business location ?

Some say that these moves are meant to decrease costs…  this may be so, however in many cases it makes sense to move the data off site.  Think about centralized computing as a reallocation of resources closer to the core or backbone of the internet.

The closer your data and centralized computing is to the internet, the faster the speeds of throughput and the lesser the amount of delay in computing and data transfer from ANY location.  The idea is to push the computing away from “edge” sites on the network and provide these services from the backbone allowing for greater flexibility.

Imagine a world where all Ip Centric services are delivered by the data center at lightning fast speeds to any location via the internet !

Voice, video, data, IM, Presence, chat…   Any service developed and delivered via IP is able to be utilized with minimal hardware on the remote site.  Even VPN can be delivered from the data center to a remote user allowing smart devices to serve remote employees and offer a full suite of services to communicate with.

In the event that the IT staff desires to offer offsite backup a copy can be maintained easier from data center to data center via fiber to another data center on the fiber map.  The costs of services once the data lives on the backbone is decreased by moving to the core or backbone.

Data center tactics are alive and well let me know if I can help.

Telco Joe

What a great article on BCP.  Enough time cannot be spent planning your BCP and implementing such.  Take a moment, review the article and then let me know how I can help you.

http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0724.html

Have a great day !

It sounds crazy but it’s true…

You cannot lead if you don’t have fresh ideas.  Fresh ideas spring from a fresh mind.  The supporting article from Harvard is below…

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/trapani/2009/10/increase-your-productivity-by.html

Drop me an email if you need Internet or Data advice.

James

If you have had some exposure to networking you realize it’s value, or maybe you feel that networking is not effective. Whether or not you have experienced the value of networking, you should make an effort to adopt at least a networking mindset.

In order to get something, you have to give something. Successful networking is nothing more than giving and expecting a return, without specifically expecting it immediately. This is similar to the idea of “pay it forward”. Let’s take a look at some examples.

On a sales call you realize that your prospect or client needs a service immediately that you cannot provide. What do you do ? There are a few options. You could decide to do nothing. Or you could reach into your network, Linkedin, facebook, etc, and find a solution provider FOR your client.

Why would you risk this relationship ? How do you know if the recommended provider will do a good job ? Truthfully that is important, but not as important as YOU becoming the source for valuable information.

My old sales manager told me once, that he wanted to be on speed dial for his clients for his product.
He was half right, you want to be on speed dial for ALL of your clients needs. Imagine your value to other service providers…. and the warm leads you will get in return..

Warm leads will light and pave your way to success. Share your network, grow it, and help your clients to make your success real. Imagine success by helping others…. On a Business mission to succeed.

Happy Selling !

James J Dimmer III
www.jamesdimmer3.com
888-352-6563

Who likes meetings ?

Do you go for the donuts or bagels ?

What is the point of meetings any how ?

To be frank … I HATE meetings that waste my productive time.  So why don’t more businesses use tools to communicate with their teams all of the time ?  Meetings are a necessary evil.  There must be a better way.

America is one of the most efficient countries in the world … So how can we continue to gain more productivity and efficiency ?  If we are already one of the most productive countries …. How do we get better?

How do we improve in soft economic conditions ?  We have to get BETTER !  We must work together !

Let me share a word with you ..  Collaboration

I know… that’s it ?  Sure you tried this before, like card scanners* or other efficiency drivers that were suppose to revolutionize your marketing and sales departments.  But wait - Don’t jump to hasty conclusion. These items work and have most of the “bugs” solved.  Just because you tried something once and it was crap…  does not mean that it has not improved.  That’s the beauty of software.

Collaboration is defined as “working together”.

Sounds like we are already collaborating… right ?

If you consider conducting meetings like we did in the 1950’s….  The only thing that has changed is the addition of power point…  and the white board.

Let’s look at this from a different angle ..

If you could have a meeting without disturbing your teams daily schedule would it create more efficiency ?  What about feedback on ideas and concepts in real time ?How about eliminating travel and reducing that wasted time ?  What about interrupted customer contact during the “out of office experience”.  This brings us to “presence” but we will address this in another post.

Collaboration today is working together more closely and communicating through mediums supported by the internet.  It can be a connection at home, a coffee shop (where I am now), or from a remote office.  With a wireless card from your cellular carrier you can collaborate from anywhere (there is cell coverage).  It involves email, bulletin style board posts, and real time communications.

Try thinking in different terms.  Video conferencing, web conferencing, even voice conferencing can assist your team in coming together with a common purpose to accomplish the goal.  And the kicker is, when someone has a new idea… they can SHARE it with everyone in a closed forum.  When you have a few minutes you can respond and share your idea.  it is not simply email, this is a discussion forum for the ideas and success or failure of the common team goal.

Imagine having a feedback forum for your choice clients.  What would your best clients think ?  “excuse me Mr./Ms. Big Client, can we please get your input on some new products we would like to Beta ?”

How many sales would you make BEFORE you roll the product out… and what great feedback would you receive from the Beta test with these tools?  You would become an asset to these clients…  Releasing products as a SOLUTION to business challenges.

Where would your team take your objectives or mission given a small amount of input and respect for their individual ideas ?

This is revolutionary and being adopted more readily than most people realize.  Help your team by giving them tools to collaborate and set them out to accomplish your mission statement.

We are in business to hit our goals…. or we are OUT of business.

Let me help you hit YOUR goals through optimizing your network to support collaboration tools.

Have a profitable day !

James J Dimmer III

email@jamesdimmer3.com

888-352-6563

* I use a card scanner made by neat and it works wonderfully.  Neat Co. has a wonderful software package and is really easy to use.  Get yourself one today !

SIP (session initialization protocol) is a buzz word around Voip (voice over internet protocol).

What is it ?

SIP is simply the ability to set up and tear down a call path over a data connection using QOS (quality of service).

Why do I care ?

Sip allows virtual movement of call paths from essentially virtual phone numbers that can be pointed to different IP (internet protocol) addresses.  This allows the phone call to be directed to wherever and whatever device the person being called chooses.

Who benefits from SIP ?

Many users who mix multiple devices such as desk phones, cell phones, etc can benefit from SIP.  In addition those who need an phone line and have a data connection but dont wish to pay for an added line can add SIP and use the data connection as an extra phone line.

Who can use SIP ?

Basically anyone who has a device capable of SIP on both ends of a data connection, and a data provider who supports SIP.

Call me if you want this functionality for your company, it is not as expensive as you think and in many cases we can re deploy other assets to decrease the overall long term cost to your enterprise !

James J Dimmer III

www.jamesdimmer3.com

email@jamesdimmer3.com

888.352.6563

This morning I found a fantastic article that summarizes the correlation between the military and civilian worlds.

Take a minute, enjoy the read and hire a veteran.   You will not be dissappointed if you match their skills with the correct job.

read the Harvard article here

OK so I signed up for twitter….

My twitter ID is

jamesdimmer3

go figure

I guess it will take time to see if this actually benefits the business model.  In the future my goal is to endeavor to update my blog followers on the success or failure of this new tool.

Happy selling !