SHRA 2009 Summary
The 21st annual SHRA conference has come and gone. Yellowstone National Park will never be the same. This was my 6th successive conference and like I said to the group, it is my favorite conference of the year. No offense to the other conferences, but SHRA has a intimate, unique vibe and I love seeing my HR buddies from the national parks. I always leave SHRA with either ideas and inspiration for

"One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1)
Bruce Buschel, writing for the New York Times, puts together a must-have list of dos and don'ts for servers. A few were unfortunately cringe inducing as I recognized my personal faux pas from my years of serving. Here's a link to his first 50. I'll keep an eye out for part 2.

Starr Tincup - Try Not To F**k This Up
...but if you do call us. I had to laugh. Bill emails me and says that a package arrived from Starr Tincup and should he open it. FYI, the reason that he had to ask was because I work out of my house in Seattle and he works at Cool Works worldwide headquarters in Gardiner, Montana. I say sure. He opens it up and a small book written by the dudes at Starr Tincup called Try Not To F**k This Up (

CoolWorks.com Podcasts
We're always up to something new. The latestst and greatest is that we are now dabbling in podcasts using BlogTalkRadio. Our first podcast featured Tina Brudzinski, Human Resources Manager, at Crested Butte Mountain Resort. She was as gracious as ever and a perfect guest. She answered generic questions about working for a ski resort and also told us a bit about how she got her job at Crested

Twitter, oh how I love thee
I have said before, and I'll say it again, Twitter is my favorite social network.  I love how I can just pop in, see what's happening, comment here and there and then get out.  I recently was gone for a trip to San Francisco and missed a lot of the goings on - as tends to happen when you don't have a really cool mobile device - but as soon as I came back, my twitter friends greeted me with open