Pete and Penny live above Pizzarelli's, the family pizza parlor, in the small town of Rellaville. They're excited when their parents go out of town, leaving them in charge along with their quirky uncle. But everything goes downhill fast when the family's top-secret pizza sauce recipe is lost! Readers figure out puzzles alongside the main characters and those clues lead them to solve the mystery!

This helpful resource shows you how to transform unconvincing messages into compelling copy. The new rules for persuasive messaging. When it comes to messaging, what worked in the past won't work today. Our noisy, digital world has undermined our ability to focus. For a message to grab attention and persuade, it now must pass the SAUCE test and be: Simple, Appealing, Unexpected, Credible, and Emotional. This book comes with a 15-question SAUCE test and a Heat Gauge which allows you to precisely measure the persuasive impact of your messages. Short, easy to read, and packed with visuals, Secret Sauce provides: Clear examples of what works and what doesn't Fascinating insights from behavioral and neurological research Powerful lessons from successful and failed campaigns Less than 10 percent of marketing messages are truly compelling-engaging the head and heart. Secret Sauce helps you weed out the clutter and craft messages that stick.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.

An Expert Guide for Solving Complex Oracle Database Problems Oracle Database Problem Solving and Troubleshooting Handbook delivers comprehensive, practical, and up-to-date advice for running the Oracle Database reliably and efficiently in complex production environments. Seven leading Oracle experts have brought together an unmatched collection of proven solutions, hands-on examples, and step-by-step tips for Oracle Database 12c, 11g, and other recent versions of Oracle Database. Every solution is crafted to help experienced Oracle DBAs and DMAs understand and fix serious problems as rapidly as possible. The authors cover LOB segments, UNDO tablespaces, high GC buffer wait events, poor query response times, latch contention, indexing, XA distributed transactions, RMAN backup/recovery, and much more. They also offer in-depth coverage of a wide range of topics, including DDL optimization, VLDB tuning, database forensics, adaptive cursor sharing, data pumps, data migration, SSDs, indexes, and how to go about fixing Oracle RAC problems. Learn how to Choose the quickest path to solve high-impact problems Use modern best practices to make your day more efficient and predictable Construct your “Call 9-1-1 plan” for future database emergencies Proactively perform maintenance to improve your environment’s stability Save time with industry-standard tools and scripts Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.

Maintaining the advanced technical focus found in Developing Essbase Applications, this second volume is another collaborative effort by some of the best Essbase practitioners from around the world. The book explores technology areas that are much-discussed but still very new, including Exalytics and Hybrid Essbase. It covers the latest improvements to the Essbase engine as well as the impact of new reporting and analysis tools. It also presents advanced Essbase best practices across a variety of features, functions, and theories.

OKR Leadership -- the process for managers and leaders to practice what matters - is the secret sauce that drives transformational leadership, employee engagement and the next generation of management consulting. Join the OKR Leadership movement today with this practical guidebook from an expert business psychologist and story teller.