Touch Me!

Touch rugby at Ke'ehi Lagoon Park.

Saturday, 9:30 am

Ke'ehi Lagoon Park is by the Honolulu Airport, on Lagoon Drive.

Now the sad part - I'm not sure where my boots are! Not that having proper boots would affect my performance in any way. When you move as slow as I do, cleats don't make that much difference. More sad parts - I'm not sure if I can even make it.

Hawaii Youth Rugby Recognized

Certificate Honoring and Commending SFC Dana L. Mueller on his outstanding work with the Hawaii Youth Rugby Association

Through the efforts of SFC Dana L. Mueller, Marketing & Advertising Director-HIARNG, the Hawaii Youth Rugby Association has been able to receive nearly $100,000 worth of rugby uniforms and equipment kits, the use of National Guard facilities free of charge to offset costs of room and board for neighbor island teams, and enabled HIARNG to host a true State Rugby Championship Tournament for the last two years in a row.

The Rugby Kit Program was initially intended for High School and Collegiate Rugby teams across America. Realizing that Hawaii Rugby leagues were struggling to stay organized, SFC Dana Mueller, with the assistance of David Ma'afu Wendt, Kevin Perry, Siuaki Livai, and Jack Breen, petitioned the National Guard Bureau and USA Rugby to extend this program to HYR. This allowed HYR to become the only youth rugby league in the country to be awarded the National Guard/USA Rugby Kit Program in 2008, and it has continued to thrive and grow on the islands of Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island.

The mission of this program is to provide teams with the necessary apparel and equipment to enjoy a higher level of rugby, and to help grow the sport within the state of Hawaii. While creating relationships between these young athletes and HIARNG Soldiers, this program instills the values of Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless-Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage.

In 20098 the Hawaii Youth Rugby "All-Star" team competed, and finished fourth in the U19 National Championships held at Stanford University in California. Immediately recognizing Hawaii's young talent, Mr. Nigel Melville, President of USA Rugby, sent USA Rugby's current Back-line Coach, Mr. Matt Sherman, to recruit four HYR athletes (Lopaka Morris, Apelu So'oalu, Mafileo Lauhingoa, Semisi Vehikite) to compete on USA Rugby's U18/U19 teams. Not only did these young men represent the state of Hawaii, but also the United States as they competed against national team from Canada and England.

Other important catalysts who shared in this vision, and have made immeasurable contributions to this program's success include both Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Douglas K. Jackson, and Major (MAJ) Loren Penney.

Therefore, the Council on behalf of the people of the City and County of Honolulu, honors and commends SFC Dana L. Mueller. Further, the Council extends its best wishes for his continued success in all future endeavors.

Dated: November 18, 2009

ANN H KOBAYASHI, Introducer
CHARLES K. DJOU, Co-Introducer
DONOVAN M. DELA CRUZ, Co-Introducer
TODD K. APO, Chair

Hard Times Offer Chance To Improve

The headline reads "Hard times offer chance to improve through IT". The article is well written and I agree with most of it, but I have to disagree on a couple of key points. This article is in the Sunday (December 6, 2009) edition of the Honolulu Star Bulletin, written my John Agsalud.

The article starts off with a very important, and very true, point, "...it's that this is a good time for organizations to innovate and improve their business processes,..." John is right, this is the best time for organizations to make improvements. It's not only the best time, it is absolutely vital for many organizations if they are going to continue to survive. In good times, waste inevitably creeps into every organization. You're doing well, things are moving fast, you don't have time to worry about the little things. But all those little things add up over time, and even in the best of times it is important for organizations to continuously improve their Operations and drive the waste out of the system. In these tough economic times you can't afford to wait to make the improvements, you have to do it now.

The end of the above quoted sentence is where I have my disagreement; "...improve their business processes, usually through the use of technology."

The proper use of technology is very important to the Operations of an organization, and Mr. Agsalud points out many of the benefits in his article. My disagreement is that you do not always need technology, and oftentimes shouldn't use it, to make improvements to your Operations and your business processes.

There are many improvements that can be made without investing in technology. Many times simply examining the flow or steps of a process can reveal surprising insights that lead to simple changes that result in great improvements. Too many organizations (and I've seen some of them personally) immediately jump to a technology "fix" to their problems without ever even analyzing the causes of the problems in the first place. Find out what is causing you to be less than excellent, or what is causing you to perform lower than you want or expect, then craft a solution. You can decide at this point whether the solution includes the use of technology or not.

Technology has a high cost, in time, money, and other resources. You have to make sure you approach a technology implementation as an investment, and you have to be very clear on what the return on that investment will be. You also have to be very clear on what the actual and total investment is before you begin.

Use technology when appropriate. Use it to improve your organization. Just don't use it as a crutch and expect technology to help you when it's not the lack of technology that is causing your problems now.

Hawaii Youth Rugby Update

It looks like Hawaii Youth Rugby is really picking up steam. Just received an update today:

Starting December 17th we will have games in Maui against the U17 California All Star team, Honolulu on Saturday Dec.19th and the Big Island (TBA).

Saturday, February 13th ..... Papakura HS. from New Zealand vs Hawaii U17's

March 14th til the 20th .... St Marys and St Johns HS from Canada are here in Honolulu.

Tuesday, April 13th ..... Napier HS. from New Zealand vs Hawaii U17's

... a possible 3 mainland teams to play in the Hawaii Youth Rugby Invitational, March 24th to the 27th 2010.

Hawaii Youth Rugby season on Oahu starts January 9, 2010.

Keep up the good work everyone!


*pinched this photo off the web from some blog.

Lights Out

In case you haven’t heard, the power went out across the entire island of Oahu Friday night. Now I’m not going to get into the question of how this could possibly happen only two years after it happened before, that’s been asked enough already in the press. No, what I’m going to talk about is how some businesses stepped up during and after the blackout – and others didn’t. Think about your own business and how you’d react in adverse conditions (such as the sour economy we’re going through?).

My first shout of high praise goes to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the smaller of the two local newspapers (yes, Honolulu, a city of only about a million people has two daily newspapers). I generally read the papers every day, and I usually try to read them both. The fact that I primarily am interested in the comics, and that they each publish different ones, is irrelevant to this discussion.

On Saturday morning, after power had been restored, I was very interested in finding out about the power outage. I didn’t know the extent of the outage at the time, or how long it lasted (what do you do at night when the power goes out? Sleep), so I figured I’d get the paper and find out. I knew, of course, that the papers might have some trouble, but, again, I didn’t know the extent of the outage. There were no papers in the morning. OK. There were no papers into the afternoon. OK, must have been worse than I thought. Then, finally, late in the afternoon there was a paper.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, perpetual underdog in the local newspaper market, had managed to get out an edition. Not only did they manage to out maneuver their larger rival, I like the way they did it. Because the blackout was island-wide and lasted about 12 hours, they were very limited on what they could get out. So what they did was print a one-section edition. But within that one section, they printed one to two pages from every section of their normal paper. They had the blackout covered, of course, on the front page and a couple of pages inside, but they also had a couple pages of national and international news, business, sports, and even the comics. Sweet!

The larger paper (Honolulu Advertiser, if you must know), did nothing. So, while I’ve always enjoyed the Star-Bulletin, I am now a raving fan. That’s what business is all about; being flexible and adapting to the situation, out maneuvering the competition, and getting your product or service to the market even in the most extreme circumstances. I’m going to be writing about some other Honolulu businesses that stepped up, and others that didn’t, so come back.

In Training

I am officially In-Training for this year's Honolulu Marathon. Training is going very well, which is a bit of a surprise after taking 3 years off and gaining 30 pounds. But so far I've dropped about 15 pounds (maybe 20 depending on which scale at Don Quixote's is accurate), am not afraid to look at my naked self in the mirror, and my endurance is picking up. On Sunday I ran for 1 hr. 40 min, then walked home for a total of 2 hrs. out. On Monday I ran on the beach with a friend, mixing a relatively short (about 1-1/2 miles) run in soft sand with sprints and various other exercises. Then yesterday I ran a fast (for me) 50 minutes. Couldn't make my 1-hour, but needed a faster paced long run even if for a shorter time. Today is a rest day. Trying to mix in some weight lifting workouts, rope jumping, and other things for variety. Oh, and Sunday nights I'm back in dance class (which I've also missed for 3 years). All that and back on a healthy diet too. Not one bit of junk food in over a month, smaller meals, no between meal snacks, and cut down on the beer. In fact, I haven't had a beer in a week now, but I don't want to get too carried away.

Now I've got to start looking at some races to start getting more prepared for the marathon (this will be my 4th, by the way). I'm going to sign up for the Marathon Readiness Series of races, as it's the perfect marathon prep. It sure made a huge difference in my performance the one year I did it. The series of 5 races starts in August and runs through early November, with the marathon in early December. Race distances are 15K (9.3 mi), 20K (12.4 mi), 25K (15.5 mi), 30K (18.6 mi), and Half-Marathon (13.1 mi). Marathon distance is 26.2 mi, if you don't know (and those last point-two miles are killer!).

So, wish me luck, and send donations for new (smaller) clothes, since my fat boy clothes are too loose on me now.