(Faber Piano Adventures ). An exciting collection for the elementary pianist that offers performance pieces "with a challenge." As the title "Gold Star" suggests, these pieces are especially appropriate for recitals and other musical events. The long awaited addition to the Piano Adventures series contains songs and pieces like: Pterodactyls, Really Neat * Cartoon Stories * Squinchy-Pinchy Shoes * Roller Skate Ride * and more. Includes online access to Gold Star Performance audio for both listening and play-along.

The STAR model integrates intelligent planning with proactive doing to allow peak performance. Planning involves defining and communicating a strong strategy and sound tactics, and doing is all about taking intelligent action and getting the desired results. Excelling in the processes of both planning and doing is what it takes to achieve STAR Performance. This leadership process begins with a strategy that defines purpose, principles that establish the values that will govern our operation, and a vision for the future that inspires passion. It builds with a tactical plan that combines preparation, planning, and prioritization to set the course forward. Execution is achieved through action that involves practice, persistence in the face of adversity, and good old-fashioned perspiration. Finally, results are achieved and improved with patience, a focus on productivity, and honestly introspective probing that leads to corrective actions and improvements. When all of these elements are in place, properly communicated, and focused on the same target, the result is continually improving performance that makes the team shine like the STAR they were meant to be.

It is taken for granted in the knowledge economy that companies must employ the most talented performers to compete and succeed. Many firms try to buy stars by luring them away from competitors. But Boris Groysberg shows what an uncertain and disastrous practice this can be. Chasing Stars offers profound insights into the fundamental nature of outstanding performance. It also offers practical guidance to individuals on how to manage their careers strategically, and to companies on how to identify, develop, and keep talent. --Publisher's description.

This is the first book to provide in-depth coverage of star schema aggregates used in dimensional modeling-from selection and design, to loading and usage, to specific tasks and deliverables for implementation projects Covers the principles of aggregate schema design and the pros and cons of various types of commercial solutions for navigating and building aggregates Discusses how to include aggregates in data warehouse development projects that focus on incremental development, iterative builds, and early data loads

A collection of previously published works on performance and stardom, examining the relationship between genre and performance, the position of the star within ideology, the construction of a semiotics of performance and stardom, the function of the actor within experimental or independent cinema, and the distinction between performance and everyday behavior. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the 2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux(R) and Unix(R) performance, while illuminating performance issues that are relevant to all operating systems. You'll gain deep insight into how systems work and perform, and learn methodologies for analyzing and improving system and application performance. Gregg presents examples from bare-metal systems and virtualized cloud tenants running Linux-based Ubuntu(R), Fedora(R), CentOS, and the illumos-based Joyent(R) SmartOS(TM) and OmniTI OmniOS(R). He systematically covers modern systems performance, including the "traditional" analysis of CPUs, memory, disks, and networks, and new areas including cloud computing and dynamic tracing. This book also helps you identify and fix the "unknown unknowns" of complex performance: bottlenecks that emerge from elements and interactions you were not aware of. The text concludes with a detailed case study, showing how a real cloud customer issue was analyzed from start to finish. Coverage includes - Modern performance analysis and tuning: terminology, concepts, models, methods, and techniques - Dynamic tracing techniques and tools, including examples of DTrace, SystemTap, and perf - Kernel internals: uncovering what the OS is doing - Using system observability tools, interfaces, and frameworks - Understanding and monitoring application performance - Optimizing CPUs: processors, cores, hardware threads, caches, interconnects, and kernel scheduling - Memory optimization: virtual memory, paging, swapping, memory architectures, busses, address spaces, and allocators - File system I/O, including caching - Storage devices/controllers, disk I/O workloads, RAID, and kernel I/O - Network-related performance issues: protocols, sockets, interfaces, and physical connections - Performance implications of OS and hardware-based virtualization, and new issues encountered with cloud computing - Benchmarking: getting accurate results and avoiding common mistakes This guide is indispensable for anyone who operates enterprise or cloud environments: system, network, database, and web admins; developers; and other professionals. For students and others new to optimization, it also provides exercises reflecting Gregg's extensive instructional experience.

Praise for Exemplary Performance "I have seen the transformative power of human performance improvement in the power industry where it has produced measurable results in areas such as safety performance. Executives, managers, and other leaders will benefit from this approach, enabling exemplary performance by replicating the results of their stars." Carl English, vice-chairman (retired), American Electric Power "A must-read for anyone accountable for producing and leading high-performing individuals or teams." Jamie Torchiana, learning implementation leader, Sales Strategy, AstraZeneca "Uniquely captures profound ideas, frames them concisely, and explains how they work in the real world in a powerful way. If you want to link your business's capability development to actual business outcome, this book might be all you need. A fantastic read." Don Shoultz, head of learning and development, BP Upstream Learning