Credentials!

I have had the good fortune over the years to work with a lot of different people.  I've traveled near and far and met many characters.

I've worked with high achievers, low achievers, and everything in between.  I've worked with pedigreed high achievers and pedigreed low achievers.  The pedigreed low achievers with the giant paychecks are usually the start of a re-occuring conversation.  What is the real world value of an education?

There have been several of those overpaid, highly decorated and documented but low achievers.  Often times, they are book smart people lacking real world experience.  Sometimes it is the lack of physical experience, dexterity, and useful knowledge that drives them to academics.  Being lacking in one skill set provides the fuel to achieve in another.  Amongst these academic high achievers is another subset.

Some people are naturally motivated to be people pleasers.  One subset of academic high achievers fits this mold.  They figure out the best way to satisfy their immediate report: the Boss!

In college, the boss is the instructor.  The first priority is satisfying the desires of the instructor.  So you end up with a high grade achiever that struggles with application of knowledge.  Those people come out of school with a mis-guided sense of confidence.  They are very good at following a map, but lack in problem solving and creative thinking.

My college experience that best illustrated this for me was the microprocessors final project.  The goal was to build our own microprocessor from component level.  I was paired with a perfect student with a 4.0 gpa.  I was an average student with and average gpa. 

From the very start,  my partner had trouble keeping up.  During the whole process, he would take my lab notebook home with him at night.  He would take his time at home to transcribe the information neat and orderly into his own notebook.  During the lab, he would painstakingly re-assemble every prototype circuit by laying the trace wires nice and flat and bend every corner to perfect right angles.

We always had the best dressed circuits in progress.  And although my notebook was a little messy, I thought that was to be expected by a work in progress.  The instructor told us in the beginning that he wanted to see our work in progress contained inside the journal.

Nevertheless, my partner's notebook was perfect.  No lines drawn through corrections.  No scrambled ideas or failed circuit drawings.  It was neat and clean. 

The typical day's work started with the goal of a sub-circuit.  I was always asking his opinion and trying to involve him with the build, but it seemed that he was always one step behind.  It became how our team operated: I would lead the way, solve the problems, and he would polish our presentation.  We were the first team to have an operating final circuit and it was stylish!

When the grades came out, my lab partner scored a perfect A.  My efforts earned me a B.  If you were to sit down with us individually, I would have been able to answer every question about the finer workings and design of every sub-circuit.  My lab partner would have had great difficulty doing the same, but he got a higher grade.

And so it is in life:  Pedigreed people get a break with expectations.  They often develop better people skills to compensate for their lack of technical ability.  This allows them to partner with the doers in the world and add their pleasing polish to the project.

Education is highly valued.  However, all education is not going to be worthwhile.  And it should not be the only tool that you rely upon.  Education is the best substitute for experience, but that's all.

In life's adventures, you can get a lot of free advice.  But advice from even well meaning people is not always good advice.  So if you get good advice and you get bad advice, how are you going to know the difference? 

"Wisdom is wasted on the elderly."  By the time in life that you have had enough experience to know the difference between good and bad advice, you're probably too old to act on it.  What can you do in the mean time?  Educate yourself where your experience is lacking.

How do I educate myself?  Start with learning the fundamentals of communication.  The more people you can communicate with and at higher levels, the more you can learn from others.  You have to  learn to learn.  Formal education makes a valiant effort at this so you can continue your informal education.  And that is what will really determine what you are able to achieve in life.

I Heart Hay!

I have never seen such a bumper sticker.  I don't think there are too many people that care than much about hay?  To most people, I think it's just a simple necessity.  A plain old commodity.  But to me, it is so much more.

What other crop can a farmer grow that is as multi-dimensional as hay?  Bean, grains, potatoes?  Seen one, you've seen them all.  I know there are going to be some objective measures.  But you mostly just load it on a truck and send it to market.  It's not as personal and individual as hay.

Maybe vegetable or fruit growers can relate?  Surely the customer can appreciate the qualities of a perfect tomato or peach?  The grower beams with pride when the customer comments the many finer attributes of a superior specimen.  In that brief moment, all the painstaking details and labors that created that result seem worthwhile.

The same attention to details and efforts goes into creating the ultimate hay bale.  In some cases, maybe more.  The right ingredients, texture, nutrition, and palatability are no less appreciated by livestock than the most discriminating connisseur!

Growing up around hay, I didn't take interest in it right away.  It was a gradual thing as I handled it more and more.  I began to notice the subtle differences.  I learned to recognize higher quality and enjoyed everything about it.  I liked the color, texture, the aroma, and I'm not too embarrassed to admit I've tasted it a time or two - on purpose.

I even grew to enjoy handling it.  My first job was working on a hay crew.  Although too much of any good thing can be overwhelming, like hand stacking 120# bales in an elevated and dusty loft during a hot summer.  Despite those negative experiences, I never lost my enthusiasm.

All of my teenaged years, I handled hay regularly feeding beef livestock and horses.  I would watch the animals consumption idiosyncrasies.  I would learn their preferences and habits. It was all observation for me in those days, as I didn't know about all of the science behind the industry.

When I finally realized the opportunity to gain my own place in the country, I was naturally inclined to grow hay.  The one acre next to the house was already in alfalfa (and it was a gorgeous stand!)  But I had to exercise extreme patience as I was not financially ready to do any farming yet.

It was nothing short of torture to watch somebody else harvest hay off of my new property!  It wasn't my hay, but I would still walk out into it every opportunity that I had.  I was just monitoring the progress and looking at the contents.  I learned appreciation for the people that were harvesting it.  Their timing and ability to package a quality product was to my admiration.  But Oh! How I envied them!  Especially when they were on the swather making perfect cuts through the lush vegetation.

I would go out and estimate the weight and number of bales made and write it on my calendar.  I could get a good estimate of their yields and I was impressed again.  Compared to what I was used to seeing as a youngster, it was some good stuff and a lot of it.  It was near dairy quality hay and huge yields!

I tried to make note of everything that they did.  The month and day of their cuts, the time of day, how long they dried (or tried to), their raking, and baling.  The irrigation timing and frequency.  How long their sets were.  Anything that I could observe.  I talked to the farmer about planting techniques, variety, and density.  I was going to emulate this obvious success the best I could to start with.

I found numerous books on the subject and a whole lot more information on line.  I've learned about laboratory testing and various numerical representations of quality analysis.  And I learned of a home method for accurately measuring percent moisture using the microwave.

I put a lot of emphasis on getting the moisture correct.  When you get it right, it's analogous to a perfect medium cooked steak.  It melts in the mouth.  Too much moisture poises the risk of unacceptable mold.  Not enough moisture and it's like an overcooked steak. The flavor is missing, it's hard to chew, it swells bigger in the mouth and it's hard to swallow.

There is a lot of science involved in making and grading hay, but there is not and likely never will be enough to discount the art of haymaking.  Try as you might to follow the best recommended practices to the number, but every cut situation is different.  Anybody that starts to think they have all the answers is one cutting away from a heaping serving of humble pie!

I've had my share of humble pie, and I don't like it.  I'd rather have peach cobbler!  But it's part of the game.  All you can do is try to fail better the next time.  It's a constant challenge, but it's all worth it for those magical times you know there's a few near perfect hay bales in the stack.

Modern Health

Today, it's more important than ever to play the lead part in directing your health care.  Health care costs are out of control.  The mult-billion dollar industry is riddled with corruption.  Your health has become a monetary instrument driven by ideas of greed rather than your well being.

"So tell me something that I don't already know!"

Working for corporate America has taught me a lot about managing problems and costs associated with problems.  Big multi billion dollar corporations have a lot of resources.  They employ people of the likes that are the smartest in thier field, so its very fitting that we should learn a lot from how they do things.

The most beneficial of these techniques that we should all know about is tiered drug costs.  So much about drug prescriptions is wrong!  Like any other problem, the solution should be driven by data driven decisions (the 3 D's).  Too many times, drugs are prescribed without that consideration. 

The fact that prescription drugs are advertised to the general public on television is one big red flag.  After they go on for at least twenty seconds of the one minute ad about side effects, they always end with a suggestion: "Ask your doctor if our product is right for you!"  You can believe that this has a significant effect, or else the expensive advertising would not happen.

Pharmaceutical representatives are another ever present force at every available clinic outlet in America.  Their purpose is to "educate" the practitioners of their latest drug offerings.  They even go so far as to leave a few free samples.  The next one is going to cost you though.  Sound familiar?

And then you have the doctors own experience to contend with.  In their mind, they've had X number of patients really benefit from the prescribed drug and particular brand, so it becomes their prominent first choice.

It is also common place for practitioners to prescribe a pain killer along with the treatment. What have we become? A nation of wussies? I've heard the usual idea that if you are not in pain, your body can recover easier.  No wonder deaths from overdose on pain meds has reached epidemic proportions!

And antibiotics are another shotgun approach. The flawed reasoning behind that is it could cure a secondary infection, just in case it arises. And we wonder how superbugs get antibiotics resistance?

The mega corporations in partnership with the mega insurers work together to manage those type of problems.  Based upon data and research, they come up with a listing of drugs prescribed for ailments.  Then they went to the trouble to list those drugs in order of most effective, lowest cost first and in cascading order to least effective and greatest cost.  But they skip an entire industry and fundamental treatment all together!

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration...

"Why the hell not!"

You see the disclaimer on every vitamin, mineral, herb, or natural supplement sold.  These are remedies that have been known for decades and in some cases centuries, but the FDA hasn't gotten around to evaluating them?  I think I can tell you why: there's not billions of dollars available in it.

But it doesn't change the fact that there is a whole myriad of natural supplements available that stand a good chance of helping your problem.  They are a fraction of the cost and with fewer side effects ( if taken at the correct dosage.) Dosage should be a concern with anything that enters your body.  "Poison is in the dosage."

You can often read government warnings about side effects associated with natural remedies.  How can this be if they have not been evaluated?  Nevertheless, there are plenty of negative side effects associated with just about anything.  In many cases, though you find those are with overdoses.  If you overdose on a pharmacuetical recommended by your doctor what do you think will happen?

Thankfully there are highly trained (but often underutilized) people that can help you sort all of this out.  Pharmacists can do a whole lot more than fill prescriptions.  They can recommend natural supplements and correct dosages.  They get a lot of formal training on everything available.  If you can find a good one and establish a working relationship with them, they should be your first line of response.

There's a whole lot of other people with a wealth of knowledge about alternative and natural remedies.  They are not rigidly regulated as the medical community, but a little bit of experience and learning on your own part can overcome those problems.  Health food stores can employ experts, chiropractors are an excellent source, as well as naturopathy and homeopathy.

So what I am suggesting is developing your own hierarchy for directing your own health care.  List your options and order them.  It doesn't matter who you are, and it's not a matter of if, but when you will need it!  Much better to plan your work before you work your plan. 

Gone are the days when you can just dump your personal responsibility on the closest, most readily available doc in the box. Take control. Ask questions. And make decisions. You will thank yourself for it.

Farm Cats

Living in the country has its share of inconvenience.  Our home on the range is close to nature. Nature can benefit too much from man in some ways.  The hay fields, fields of grain and orchard serve to support life so well it becomes problematic.

There were a few barn cats left behind by the previous occupants.  I made an effort to keep them around by leaving a torn open full bag of cat food. But the transition went on for too long.  (I even threatened to drop the deal at one point.)

When I finally got possession, there was only two half starving cats left. I did my best to feed them back to health, but the next thing I knew there was only one left. It was appearing to be on the upswing and showing some signs of friendliness. Then my dad came by with his usual pack of unruly dogs. Before I knew what was happening, they killed the only remaining cat!

I felt so bad for the struggling creature.  And things got worse with the rodents population unchecked. The field mice started showing up everywhere. And they were taking over the farm house!

My mother gave me a house broken calico.  She was a great mouser and made an immediate improvement.  She would eat the whole mouse except for the head. I would find mouse heads all over the house.

The rodents infestation was still going rampant everywhere else.  Somebody dumped three cats nearby and I was happy to take them on.  They were half starving and part wild when I found them.  I began feeding them regularly and they gained confidence in me.

There was one male and two females.  My first priority was to fix them so that I would not end up with another overpopulation of another sort.  As we got to know them, we'd name them Nina, Scratchy, and Lost Juevos. Nina would grow to deserve my favouritism. I even tried to bring her in the house, but she valued her independence too much for that.

Four healthy, hard working cats are a force to reckon with.  They did an excellent job of maintaining the rodents population. But they were not perfect, and nor did I expect perfection.

On one occasion, an industrious mouse chewed into our pantry from the back wall.  It made a big mess randomly chewing into the contents of our pantry.  Then I realized that it wasn't random; the mouse was selective.  It passed on the marshmallows and sugar puffed cereal crap in favor of the oatmeal, rice, and dried beans! What is this? Some kind of health nut mouse?

When I cleaned out the pantry, I threw all of the contaminated stuff to the chickens.  They would not touch the marshmallows either. And they had to think twice about the sugar puffed crap.  And chickens will just about eat anything. They are a great country alternative to pigs.  Maybe we could learn from the bird brains about eating synthetic food stuffs?

Back to the pantry problem: I found that you can mouse proof a cabinet by lining it with tinfoil type insulation. There's something about tinfoil that mice don't like to chew through?

On another occasion, we had mouse get into the trunk of our car.  When I discovered the mess, I left the lid open and thought to round up the cats for a meeting.  I was planning on demonstrating my expert learned management techniques on negative re-enforcement!  Before I could finish planning my speech about all the immigrant cats out there that wanted their jobs, I turned around to see one of the cats jumping out of the trunk with mouse in mouth.

If there's a second place on the farm for destructive rodents, that would be where I place the pocket gophers.  Mouses can wreak havoc in the house and upon vehicles by chewing through wiring, and building nests in bad places, but gophers can hit you in the pocket too!

They do the most damage where you are trying to flood irrigate.  They dig mounds and tunnels ad the water can get hopelessly lost.  That can result is substantial production losses.  Thankfully, sprinkler irrigation minimizes that problem.  But left unchecked, they populate exponentially and can literally turn a field upside down.  A couple of our cats learned to catch those vermins.

And for third place nuisance, I place all those fruit pecking birds.  They never get their fill on one piece of fruit.  They peck one hole and move on to the next piece.  The bugs take full advantage of the holes in the fruit and the next thing you know, most of the cherries, apricots, peaches, grapes, berries, apples, and pears are rotting on the trees.

When we realized that one of our cats was specializing in birds, we were optimistic.  But out optimism was dashed when we saw her catch a humming bird!  We couldn't translate our prejudice of good birds and bad birds for the cats.  She'd methodically mastered catching the seemingly un-catchable hummingbirds. 

The genius of her evil started by waiting in the shadows of the rose bushes.  She'd wait for the hummingbird to go for the trumpet vine flowers intertwined in the rose bushes.  Patient and perfectly still, she'd wait until the bird got closer to her.  And when the bird stuck its head all the way into the flower, she'd pounce!

We'd shoot her with the bb gun when we saw her under the trumpets, but she just learned to avoid us sneaking around.  We had to trim all but the very highest trumpet flowers to save the hummingbirds.

That's life on the farm.  There are no perfect solutions.  Especially when it's man against nature or nature against nature.  The best we can strive for is our interpretation of balance and coexistence.

Bad bosses series #2 - The Gamer's Triumph

It was my first experience in a leadership position.  I was the official/unofficial (no extra pay for it) "senior tech".  There were four crews to cover the 24/7 manufacturing.  Each crew had three guys.  On our end of the week, during the time of this story, my crew was on day shift, opposite of Cooper's crew who covered nights.  We all worked 12 hours shifts and had some overlapping time for means of communication.

The balance of the work load was fair to begin with, but I could detect a change happening.  It was a gradual change that didn't warrant any particular alarm.  We all rotated shifts and it was professional courtesy to allow the night guys some time to adapt to the overnight shift.  It was understandable that performance could be affected.  We all went through it and we gave each other slack.  It was a team effort.

But somehow, the contribution of the night crew continued to wane.  It kept getting worse to the point that my crew began to comment about it.  I tried to make subtle hints using humor during our passover meetings in the morning.  Everybody laughed over my comments and I thought that I was getting the point across. "Many an honest word is spoken in jest!"

Things just got worse.  So I became a bit more direct and pointed at our little verbal meeting.  They laughed all the more; I was a funny guy.  They were not getting the message?  So I started to include a little more detail on our written report.  Naive was I to think that our superior might take the time from his golf game to detect the trouble brewing!

The night crew began spinning my attempts to bring attention to their slacking into portraying me as a grumpy ogre.  When my golfing supervisor found it amusing to join in with one of their jokes to poke fun at me, I just plain gave up the fight.

The "good ole boys" were firmly entrenched.  The supervisor had brought Cooper into our group from production.  They were both chummy with the supervisor's boss, the department manager.  Their "good ole boys" club was rooted deeper than I could have imagined!  Their bond was akin to what Chief Joseph referred to as "white man's magic".

It was fitting that I would fight no more forever.  The ridiculous grew where I demonstrated to my crew by pulling hairs off of my head and placing them on the subassemblies.  After the twelve hour night shift, we returned to find every strand of hair exactly where I had left them.

They had progressed to the point that zero was expected from them.  We were packing their weight.  Nothing that we could do about it, but grit our teeth and do the best that we could.  Not having the time or the man power, we fell behind.  We had to start prioritizing our activity.  We didn't know how long this could go on before somebody noticed?

The security department must have had a random route?  I guess that if it wasn't random, the bad guys would detect a pattern and avoid detection?  I saw security on occasion, but didn't ever think about their duty.  But this fateful night for Cooper's crew was coming.

Security personnel had walked past the supervisor's office late that night.  It was suspicious to see three men in the office surrounding the computer.  They were all so engrossed in the battle of the computer game that they didn't notice security watching over their shoulder!  They'd been had!  Not only red handed, but the game was progressive and logged all the time they had spent on it.

It was big news.  They'd spent all their working hours playing a computer game.  It was also known to be Cooper's game the he'd brought from home.  We were finally vindicated!

Imagine our surprise upon hearing of the crew getting fired.  That part came as no surprise, but the fact the Cooper was NOT fired just floored us!  It was his game, he was participating, and he was the senior tech - How could he be spared of the axe!?

Oh, and how the "white man's magic" ran deep in that department.  He was "re-assigned" for awhile.  During the years that I had transferred to another department, I learned that Cooper was promoted.  And then he was promoted again!  He had gained the title of department manager.  Now that guy had the right stuff!

The story doesn't end here, unfortunately.  While all of this was going on, I had progressed to a position that I had grown to love.  It was an especially challenging position, but one that I seemed to be a near perfect fit for.  The equipment that I supported was specialized and complex.

We would support machines that were spread all over the far reaches of the manufacturing complex.  The unique functions of the machines and their complexity made it challenging to keep up with the technology and the physical demands of their locations added to the difficulties.  I wore a pedometer on one typical shift and logged six miles answering trouble calls.

As a specialized group, we were stretched thin.  There was only one tech per shift.  When somebody was sick or on vacation, it was very demanding for us to fill in.  I was never sick or took a day off during the two years that I did that job.  A lot of overtime was available for anybody dumb enough to take it.

The big shots took notice of our situation.  They decided to re-structure, but couldn't compartmentalize our specialized group.  We were a unique entity, but we needed additional resources for back-up.  At least they came to understand that the pace we were working was not sustainable.

Finally, they had identified a department in which we could fit and could benefit from some overstaffing?  And who might you guess was to be my new boss's boss?  You guessed it, Cooper!

I couldn't believe it!  My existing boss was being converted to area coordinator, so now I had another level of supervision.  I was direct report to the department shift supervisor, dotted line to the coordinator, and of course Cooper was over top all of us.

I tried to stay optimistic because I was really enjoying my job.  And my hopes were high when they told me that they wanted another guy on shift to back me up.  Maybe Cooper had forgotten about our animosity?

It had been awhile since the restructuring and nothing had changed.  Expecting some relief, I held on as long as I could, but I was getting tired.  I'd had a difficult week and was pretty fried before going to the super to ask for help.

"I'm taking about sixteen trouble calls a shift.  I am walking almost six miles every shift.  I miss as many scheduled breaks as I get.  I've been doing this for a long time, is there any help on the horizon?"

He looked at me sympathetically, but he must have believed that I was exaggerating.

"I hear what you are saying, but I just don't have any extra man power."

"I thought that was the purpose of the new structure?  If nothing is going to change, why did they go to all this trouble?"

"I don't know.  All that I can tell you is that my guys are strapped.  I can't do anything to help you."

"If that's the way it is, I will have to move on.  I'm not making this stuff up.  I am burned out."

"I am sorry to hear that."

He wasn't very convincing.  I was reluctant to apply for a transfer.  I loved my job, but it was too much of a good thing!  I saw no hope in remaining.  By the end of that week, I had a new offer.

It was the beginning of the next work week and I went to tell my super:

"I got a new job.  I am transferring immediately, like the next couple of days."

"What!? You can't do that!  We don't have anybody that knows anything about your job."

"Not my problem."

"Well, I'm going to talk to Cooper about this.  He'll put a stop to it."

And he did.  The big shots decided that I must stay for two weeks to train somebody else.  I laughed at that presumption!  It would take about two YEARS for somebody to gain proficiency at that position.

The super chose his good buddy, Devin to trail me for two weeks.  Their "good ole boy" affiliation was sharing a dart league.  I knew Devin and had worked with him in the past.  I respected his smarts, but he was a heavy set guy and I knew that he was not up to the physical demands of the job.  Especially if he was to follow me for the next two weeks.

After the first week, the super stopped me in the hall.

"How's Devin doing?"

"He's a smart guy.  He's learning quickly."

"He told me that you guys take like 16 calls a shift?"

I nodded.

"He said you guys have to hustle six miles a shift to take those calls?"

This all sounded very familiar to me.

"I don't think he's going to be able to do it.  So I put in a requisition to get him a helper."

I felt the blood boiling into my head!  My hands were taking shape to place around his neck.  I couldn't say a thing.  I just turned an left, but that really torques my nuts!

Bad Bosses Series: #1 Intro

Absurd leadership.  I've experienced it and lived it.  Many years later, it still riles me!  The level of ridiculous is unfathomable.  And then I realized: there's some good stuff here; fiction writers can not come up with stories like these!

I listed the stories of bad bosses over a 23 year career, and there were so many that I have to write it as a series.  I hope that you can find some enjoyment in them if you are suffering a bad boss right now.  You are not alone!

It should go without saying that a maintenance supervisor should know something about maintenance.  But unfortunately, this is not so.  Be it nepotism, negligence, or just plain ignorance, it often happens that the boss man knows very little about what he's bossing people to do.

Ahmed had good intentions of leading the maintenance department full of skilled laborers.  One of his first ideas was to arrange for a class on splicing belts.  He knew that there was a lot of that going on, so surely everybody would benefit from the class?

We'd all been there and done that.  We just had a class a couple of years prior on splicing belts.  Funny thing happened, we ended up teaching the teacher.  We had pioneered a technique that proved to be easier and result in a splice that never failed.  It probably should have been a trade secret, but we ended up training the consultants on our superior technique.

As it happened, it was the same company with a new instructor coming to school us on belt splicing.  The instructor was so excited to show us their new "state of the art" process of splicing.  We had to play along by pretending to be interested in the methods that we had pioneered!

Ahmed was so gratified watching us knuckleheads learn from the class leader.  Now, we could all be finally splicing belts the correct way! I hope he didn't choke on the free lunch the consultant gave him.

One day, Ahmed realized that I rode a motorcycle to work.  He rode a motorcycle too!  He was proud to share how he'd masterminded his machine so he could cover one hundred miles non-stop.  He'd calculated, after that distance he'd have to stop and tighten the drain plug. 

"And you'd better have a glove on!" He informed me, because he discovered it would be hot on an air cooled internal combustion engine.

I pitied him, but I wanted to help him.  I explained that stripped drain plugs were not uncommon and the repair for it was common.  I went to the trouble of finding the appropriate insert and printing the page with the item description, price and instructions.  Furthermore, I cautioned him to prevent the problem in the future, by using a torque wrench.

"Okay, but what is a torque wrench?"

And that question struck my like a ton of bricks.  I was having this conversation with my superior?  The maintenance supervisor?

At least, he started to entrust us for making efforts for the success of the company.  He wasn't ever helpful, but he didn't add to our difficulties either, which is more than I can say for other bosses I've had.

Another boss man knew what tools were, mostly.  His problem was the lack of knowing how to use them.

He'd offered to help another employee with the front disk brakes on her suv.  "Those tire stores are a rip off!  I'll help you out in a couple of minutes after work tonight."

When I walked by and looked over his shoulder, he was using the heavy end of a pair of channel locks to hammer the new brake pads into the caliper!  I remarked to my buddy how glad I was that those were not my brakes.

One day, he was late in the office and me and my sole companion suddenly became swamped with work.  He pitched in to help, which we later regretted.  Of the few things he helped with that we had to soon re-visit, the most ridiculous was the forklift radiator.  The bottom of the radiator had sprung a pin-hole leak and he'd shoved a handful of plumber's putty on it and sent it back to the warehouse.

The bigger flubs were when he'd order the wrong parts for a major machine.  This particular instance, we'd scheduled plant down time, a 50 ton crane, and four guys for the job.  When we got it apart and set the old parts next to the new parts we were dumb founded!  Two guys were overly frustrated and cussing as they dropped everything and went to lunch.

Me and my pard saw it fit to work through our lunch break to minimize the error and get the plant operating again.  The plant manager came by mid-way and we kept out head down working because we didn't want to rat our boss out.  He couldn't tell the difference that we were putting all the old parts back.  We had to modify and finagle temporary solutions, working until late into the afternoon.

The next day, my boss called me up to his office.  He made no bones about deriding me for leaving a menial task undone the previous day.  I was fit to be tied!

"Do you know what I was doing for most of the day?"

He just sat there motionless, looking at me.

"I was doing my best, working with Jason, just the two of us, skipped our lunch, jerry rigging the plant so production could continue.  Things did not go well.  Do you even know why?"

He was just looking at me.  No reply.  He didn't have a clue.  I could feel my blood pressure rising!

"YOU had ordered the wrong parts! Again!  We trusted you; we didn't check it until it was too late.  We had it all apart.  It was screwed up!  That's probably why you ordered the parts?  It wouldn't go back together because it was AFU!"

He just sat there.  Didn't offer anything.  Certainly not an apology!  His setting there watching me just made me all the more angry.

"We sacrified for you!  Skipped out lunch, worked our asses off to cover your ass!  And you don't even have a clue?  You're worried about a computer that didn't get moved eight feet?"

He just sat there.  And finally, I calmed down.  I had my say, but that really torques my nuts.

Hoarding Information

Switzerland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, California, and Washington State were some of the destinations of business trips I did.  In most cases, I was sent for classes on new equipment.  I had a reputation as a good scribe and recording every detail.  I had the ability of reproducing information in concise written form and I could demonstrate it in a class.

Sharing information has brought me many benefits.  My willingness and capability of sharing information often put me on the top of the short list to go new places and learn new things.  But I have always marched to the beat of my own drummer.

Even in the most modern corporations, there exists old school ideas.  "It's not in my benefit to share the knowledge that I've gained.  If they had my knowledge and experience, what reason would they have to keep me around?"

My employers appreciated my efforts to bring everybody up to speed on new equipment or processes.  And I always tried to represent my employer well.  I did my utmost to be attentive, honest, professional, and fiscally responsible.

When I made the trip to Switzerland, I didn't have a credit card (still don't and never will!)  We worked around that and I was issued a cash advance.  When I returned two weeks laster with over a thousand dollars left, I was greeted incredulously.  "Nobody ever brings money back!  Couldn't you find anything to spend it on?"

"There's only so much lobster and wine that a guy can take." I explained.

I tried my best to exceed my expectations.  I was usually at the top of the class and gained rapport with the instructors.  The "old school" information hoarders were easy to identify.  The first clue was where they would sit - at the very back of the class room.  I would arrive early and get front and center.

The most exciting part of the class for the guys in the back was the free doughnuts.  And the free lunch.  This was not high school!  This was not public funded education, yet there were plenty of grown men behaving like half interested school children.  I felt so poorly for their employers.  Those guys would offer nothing more than the bare minimum required to draw a salary.

That typifies the mindset of the information hoarders.  Do as little, contribute only what is required to just get by.  They believe that the winners in life are the ones that have done the least amount of work.

The fear of failure?  Getting zero credit for a maximum effort?  I've tried to understand their attitude.  It's not been my experience to immediately reap the rewards for every effort that you make.  But the laws of averages are such that if you keep doing your best, some day, some body is going to notice!

I was assistant coach for my son's soccer team.  Growing up in rural Oregon, American football was king.  I didn't know that much about soccer, but I gained interest in it because everybody on the field was engaged during the game. 

Those two years taught me a lot about soccer and how well it emulated life.  The game is structured to be a low scoring affair.  You've got to coordinate a continuous effort to keep the ball on your opponents side of the field.  Then you have to overcome a myriad of defenders just to get close to your goal.  To make matters worse, there's a player specifically assigned to protect the goal!  And the goalie is usually the mentally toughest kid with the best reflexes on the whole team!

So you overcome all those obstacles to take your shot and it gets stopped.  Time and time again!  "What's the use?"

Imagine the whole team just laying down and giving up.  "This is futility!"

But they keep trying.  A funny thing happens, and eventually one goes in.  The more shots they keep taking, the more that sneak in.

The more the ball is shared, the greater the odds of getting a good shot.  It's a team sport.  You can't have a player holding the ball every time they get it.  Pass it on.

Early Retirement - country style

What sense does it make to work for the "man" until you're eligible for government assistance?  What's the retirement age for now? Like 62?

They just keep raising the age limit as the government keeps spending money that was originally an insurance plan.  Yeah, that's right, it was social security insurance.  They dropped the "I" and stopped referring to it as insurance entitlement, because they didn't want the payers to wake up and say, "Hey, where did all the money go that I paid into my own future welfare?"

The drunken sailors in government will be like, "uh, sorry. We didn't know that was your money.  Shouldn't you be dead by now?"

The perfect government scenario is to have the total populace working, earning, paying into the coffers, and then dying before anything is taken out.  In reality, we can't get everybody to work and pay, so we have a class of payers and a class of takers.  The whole thing gets out of balance and you end up with more takers than payers.

So how can the government increase the amount of payers?  How can they create a happy, long term workforce of tax payers? Well, an educated populace has a greater earning potential, so the government sponsors education.  Corporations are great at creating taxable income, so they subsidize some of that. But, we really need something to motivate the bulk of the population in the middle class.

What does the middle class work for?  What do they spend their money on? Consumables.  The latest, greatest shiny example.  There are scores of marketers, studying human psychology, watching trends, and gathering scientific data.  The middle class is constantly inundated with suggestive news that the latest, greatest shiny consumable will finally satisfy your insatiable desire.  Desire can drive the economy.

Many people happily spend their whole life maintaining their updated desire.  "Here lies Jane Doe, she always wore the latest fashion."  It becomes their life purpose.  All of their friends are trendy and fashionable.  They all fit, it's natural and they're happy.

There's always an exception to the rule.  We have some people that are not gratified with the pursuit of the latest, greatest consumable. People with a different calling and a different purpose in life.

People who are mortified by the idea of working for somebody else until the day they die. To them, this sounds remarkably familiar to slavery.  It's voluntary slavery.  Or brainwashed slavery?

During these peoples' lifetime, they come to the realization that they have little control over their own time.  They fall into the routine of servitude.  They find comfort and security in the familiarity.  They get paid for time.

Then, something happens as a catalyst for change.  An awakening.  They wonder what is this futile drive for the evolving object of desire?  Isn't there more to life than this ever repeating quest for things?  My whole existence to benefit the "man"?

When was the last time that I did something fulfilling for my being?  I have a need to create and participate in a life.  I can't do that while I'm on the timeclock!  Or preparing to be on the timeclock!  Is there a way to freedom?

Then the arithmetic starts.  If you add more than you subtract, you won't run out of money.  It's a simple concept, but a little more complex in application.

The first thing that I learned was the difference between a liability and an asset.  A liability takes money and an asset puts it back.  Liabilities are easy to come by and outnumber assets in the world by at least 1000:1.  There are literally armies of people who will help you spend money, but only a few who will help you make money. Somewhere between liabilities and assets you have  grey area called investments.

Investments are time based gambles.  The shorter your time base, the greater your gamble.  Long term investments are less risky.  A very popular investment is a security - a share of a company (stock).  If the company is successful, the share that you own will eventually gain in value.  That's about as fundamental as it gets.  The stock market is driven by people trading.  People are fickle and unpredictable.  The fundamentals of good business are predictable, but it takes time for fundamentals to trump emotions.

If acquiring assets and good investments is difficult, it is also difficult to keep your earnings.  If you consider taxes and expenses to do business, you have to make two dollars in order to keep one dollar!  That realization concludes the importance of controlling spending.  A dollar saved is actually two dollars earned.

What does it take to control spending?  In simplest terms, it takes self discipline.  Don't give in to the armies of marketers.  Ignore the psychology at work and recognize things for what they are.  Separate your needs from your desires.  Learn the difference between form and function. If you can only remember three things to get ahead in life: save, save, save.  An hour spent saving money is worth four hours earning it.

No matter how large your income, controlling your spending is important!  Look at the tabloids that love to publicize the fall of the rich and famous. Easy made millions are even easier to spend, leaving celebrities in dire straits.

A funny thing happens during your efforts to control spending.  You start to hate liabilities because they are working against you.  Naturally, you start weeding out liabilities from your life.  The payback is fast and you start to realize that you need very little.  We've all been programmed to accept corruption and spending.  We accept that life is insanely expensive, but it's a lie.

Once you have come to realize the actual cost of your legitimate needs, it becomes a little more realistic to determine what your income should be in order to outpace your expenses.  Financial independence or retiring early is a realistic and achievable goal.

What if I do realize this goal?  What will I do with all my spare time?  What will become of my work ethic?  Many people continue to work after achieving financial independence, but the work is better.  It's so much more fulfilling when you have the choice and are not bound to the same reasons for suffering the toil.  Freedom!

I did a lot of studying toward my goal of freedom.  I've read a lot of books on finance and investing, and I attended online forums to learn from like minded people.  I've read books on business and accounting.  All the while, I was working my plan and obtaining assets and selling liabilities.

Country life was also a long term goal.   In agriculture, there is ranching and then there is farming.  I grew up around ranching and had a little fear of the unknown with farming.  But the more that I learned about farming, the better I saw how I could apply some of my talents.  I quickly lost interest in my original plan of starting a cattle ranch.

Farmers don't generally know much about securities and investing.  Early retired folks don't have much interest in farm work.  Urban money ideas don't always work in a rural environment.  Ranchers don't know too much about farming.  There's been many a time that I felt like a pioneer.

Small scale farmers are typically organic vegetable growers.  Hay and grain farmers are usually big time operators.  I wanted to grow hay and grain on the small scale.  The first problem with that was the cost of all the conventional equipment needed.

Equipment capital for the average farm is over a million dollars!  It takes a lot of land to cover that expense.  So I have to find a way to make old and obsolete equipment work on a small scale.  I can't afford to do things conventionally like the big timers, so I've made a concerted effort to lean more about unconventional methods.

Naturally, the re-newed trend of no-till farming has great appeal for me.  Conventional tilling is expensive.  Start with the multitude of equipment needed for the various tasks, and the cost of operating and maintaining all that.  It's metal against dirt and dirt always wins in the long run.  It's the hardest work to do on a farm.  If you can find a way around tilling, you stand to reduce your expense by a wide margin.

The first problem with no-till is the difficulty in irrigating it.  Sprinklers can be cost justified for that reason.  The other thing of challenge is controlling weeds.  It will require more learning about chemical applications since the weeds won't be plowed under.

The right region, climate, and crop rotations have shown huge successes for no-till.  It's complicated to put it mildly, but the benefits of sustainability, lower cost, soil health, and erosion control appear to be worth all the effort.  There's always a risk in trying something new. I've tried to manage that risk by implementing no-till techniques incrementally.

"There is a certain way of doing things.  If there was a better way, don't you think I'm smart enough to be doing it?"  And that is how somebody with a new idea is shunned.  The pioneer has to go alone, explore new territory.  The traditionalists expect him to fail, they wish it upon him.  They don't want to question their time proven paradigm.

So I have plodded along carefully.  Trying to limit the risk so that the failure will just be a learning experience.  Live to play another day and fail better next time.  Applying the mind first to each problem.  Using creative thinking to come up with new solutions.  Often a solution can be found with zero monetary expenditure.  If it doesn't work, don't automatically scrap the whole plan.  Examine the details.

So that's my recipe for country fried early retirement.  Most country folk learn to love their work too much to ever retire in the sense of city folk.  Maybe it's because life in the country is a participant sport as long as we live?

"What you ritin' fer?"

A leading neurologist, on the subject of brain exercise, highlighted the one thing that most people can do is handwrite.  Something about the process of thinking, writing, and handwriting words that fires neurons and keeps them healthy.

I started to enjoy writing during the advanced US History course that I took in High School.  It was such an effective medium of self expression! The course work of history inspired a lot of interpretation of what meanings were held in the significant stories of the past.  Naturally being a passionate fellow, I loved the ability of putting my thoughts on paper. We wrote a lot of essays and the teacher read them!

I was hooked.  I wanted to learn more about it and improve at it.  I don't know of any better way to share my thoughts and ideas without commercial interruption.  The art of conveying thought in words requires vocabulary, grammar, and spelling.  And there are so many other techniques to the organization, presentation, and creation of a reader friendly format.

Applying myself to college writing classes helped a lot.  I also found opportunities to practice the written art in every workplace that I encountered.

My first employment after college required my active participation in written communication.  I excelled at it and became the default person to go to with information for the daily log.  That had immediate returns, because I was green and  the piling of information on me brought me up to speed faster.  I took greater interest in all of the goings on so my report would be legitimate.  I would plan the organization of the day in my head as it went along, and put it into a helpful format for the next shift's benefit.

I wanted people to want to read my reports.  I tried to keep the log as short and fact filled as possible, but I would add a random bit of humor just to keep everybody interested.  They never knew where the comedy would occur, so they'd read the whole thing just for the daily laugh.

Those periods of employment that I had superiors whom were awake, interested, and sober, would have them search me out to ask questions.  The single skill of written communication offered me many new and exciting opportunities.

A common re- occurring opportunity was an offer into a management position.  That kind of move never interested me.  In my field, there were tech oriented people and there were people oriented people.  It's very rare that a person was both, and I was not that rare individual. I was alway technically motivated and shied away from people dominant positions.  If I was to have a leadership role, I preferred it to be unofficial and try to lead by example.

I was getting paid well to write back then, but why do I still do it?  Mostly due to the need for self expression.  I often think that it would be nice to have an audience for my writing.  But, I'm sure that is not my main motivation.  I am sure that I have enlightening and fascinating stories to tell, but I'm not sure who my audience will be.

I've never had much interest in reading fiction.  On my bookshelf, the non-fiction outnumbers the fiction 10:1.  So I don't expect that I will dwell much in writing fiction.  It seems that the main stream audience of this time is chiefly interested in entertainment.  Those who read non-fiction are the minority.  Maybe that's because non-fiction hasn't been presented in an exciting way?  It has ALL of the potential.

I've decided to keep on writing for my own selfish benefit.  I'm still organizing thoughts in my head as the day goes on and putting ideas on paper.  I still have a dictionary close at hand to expand my vocabulary and improve my spelling.  I still re-read my own writing, sometimes editing when I can think of clarifying or re-stating an idea in a better way.  If nothing else, It's great calisthentics for the brain!

The Difficult Act of Sportsmanship

It was their first basketball game ever.  Many of the girls on the team had never tried to dribble or even shoot a basketball.  We could tell.  All of us parents in the stands were patiently waiting for something to happen that we could cheer about.

It was a ridiculous one-sided contest. With one minute left on the clock, the opposing coach called a time out.  Her girls were up 30-0.  She instructed her team to let the other girls score. It was an unselfish attempt at good sportsmanship.

One minute left on the clock, our girls in-bounded the ball without any trouble. The other girls didn't disguise their intentions very well and did their best to stay out of the way.  But they still had to stay on the court. Un-impeded, the ball was dribbled right up to the basket.

The shot went up and rimmed off.  Our girls scrambled for the rebound and shot again.  Another miss!  Time was ticking away!

It bounced off the rim again, right into the arms of one of the oponents.  She put her arms out to protect herself and inadvertently caught the ball.  She apoligizingly handed the ball to one of our girls standing close to her.

Time was running out!  She hurried to shoot the ball again.  This time it hit the side of the rim and was going to roll out of bounds.  A referee standing there non-challantly kicked the ball to keep it in play.  Our girls scrambled to the ball and shot again, and missed again!

Three seconds left! Two! One!

The last shot was in the air!  "Waaaah!"

The buzzer went off!  The ball dropped in!

It was pademonium!

All of us parents were cheering and falling down laughing at the same time.

The Christmas Struggle

As long as I can remember, my dad has dreaded the coming of Christmas.  He was compelled to meet everybody's expectations, but he never really knew how to go about that.  Most of the time, it meant that you had to go to town and buy a bunch of stuff that you ordinarily wouldn't have use for.  Of course, the top of his list was my mother.

The most memorable year, he had procrastinated until the last possible minute until Christmas Eve.  It had snowed overnight, a lot of snow, and then the wind blew.  The four foot tall white wooden fence that bordered our lane was drifted completely full of the white stuff!  The fields surrounding the house had four foot drifts spaced about every hundred feet.

We were pretty well snowed in. But Christmas was still coming!  My dad studied our situation and immediately surmised that our chances of making it out the lane were zero, but we might be able to make it across the field?

We put tire chains on all four tires of our 3/4 ton ranch pickup.  We locked the hubs and shifted the differential into 4L, and out we went. We got stuck in the first snow drift. We got out the shovels and dug out enough that we could back out our own tracks.

This time, we got a run at it and hit the drift going fast.  As a teenager, I was loving the excitement of this part!  The old v8 was roaring, wheels spinning, chains whipping up snow high in the air and all around us, bouncing up and down, and thrashing side to side and we made it! I was grinning, my dad was gritting and we hit the next drift.

Poof! Wasn't a lot of drama coming to an abrubt halt again.  The old Ford just spun the wheels, but wouldn't budge.  Get the shovels out again and dig more snow.  My dad was starting to show how he got nicknamed "the mad Basco". His choices of magic words were not helping our situation, but we dug out backwards again.

My favorite part again! We hit that snow drift with fury, engine loud, spinning, and thrashing around!  We made it a few feet farther into the snow drift.

My dad must've had faith in his magic words, repeating them as much as he did?  Maybe he just needed to say them ever louder and more forceful? It wasn't working. Nothing else we could do, but dig out backwards again.

It was about mid afternoon when we'd made it about half way across the field. Our neighbors were driving by on the road and stopped to check on us. I think that got my dad's hopes up because we'd pulled them out twice before and this was an opportunity for them to return the favor.  They must have thought it was pointless to try and make it out to us. After looking down at us for awhile, they left without saying anything.

We kept at it and eventually made it to the road.  After getting the chains off, we made it to town about the time most of the stores were already closed.

With the grocery store being the only place open, my mother got a box of Tide for Christmas that year (and some chocolates).

Origins

"Where you from?"

I love it when I hear this question. The tale of my grandfather coming to America is one of action, tragedy, and hope. It's the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster.

My grandfather was a landowner in the Basque country of northern Spain. His status got him rank of Captain of his own ship during the civil war.

He was bringing arms to support the Republican effort against the fascists. The Italian Navy stopped them. My grandfather ordered his men to open fire if they were forced to pull the tarps concealing the cargo. And that was how it went down.

The Italians won the battle at sea and sunk my grandfather's ship, leaving the survivors to die in the ocean. My grandfather and his first mate endured four days before being rescued by a French fishing boat. They were taken to a refugee camp in Tunisia Africa.

When my grandmother got word, she made the trip to Africa while she was pregnant with my father. My father was born in Tunisia.

When the war was over, my grandfather could not return home since the fascists were now in  power. His brother had already left the country for America and told him that he could get a job for him in the same sheep camp. And so it was.

When my father came of age, he wrote to my grandfather that he was thinking of joining the military. My grandfather was incredulous of the idea, and responded "if you are going to be that stupid, you might as well come to America and herd sheep!" And so he did.

A couple of years later, he would meet my mother at a country Grange hall dance in southern Idaho. They fell in love and married.

My father never liked sheep. His first opportunity to improve his conditions came after his best friend had moved to a booming mill town in eastern Oregon. He got my dad a job at the same mill where he made good money and got the nickname of the mad basco. I was born there soon after.