Small Business Hazard From the Sky

Farmer's Market Damage

Paint Can Missile

We've done farmer's markets for eighteen years.  It's an outgrowth of being a beekeeper for fifty years.  There's only so much honey you can use or give away.  The money is not really that good, it's often raining, people can be unpleasant and cheap, dragging your stuff around is a pain and a bunch of other reasons.  We were tired of moving all our stuff, loading, unloading, packing, unpacking, etc., and that's why we opened a small cafe.  We wanted a permanent roof.  Good ideas do not always follow bad.

At times we did as much as five markets a week.  Since the recession...thank you savings and loan policies and derivatives...the financial return has diminished.  People have few dollars to spend and there are too many markets and the commercial retail outlets have begun to figure out and feature "local," "organic" and all those other woods.

Today it was very windy and gusty, probably in the 35-45 MPH category.  These are not good days to put up tents so I decided to forego the tent, put out fewer products and broil in the sun.  Shortly after the starting whistle I was standing at the back of my truck digging out a few products.  I took five steps the the table and the sky went dark and I heard a loud crash.  A vendor's two tents had gone airborne, flown over his cargo van and collided with my truck.  Weighting the corners of your tent is important on all days.  His had four paint cans filled with concrete, probably about thirty pounds each.  That's what collided with my truck and landed where I had been moments before.  One was swinging by it's cord from my tailgate as much as saying "almost got you."

Later I had a string of customers who wanted to debate prices.  It passed through my mind that perhaps I should throw a paint can full of concrete over their heads.

Miscellaneous Frustrations in Not-Working

Real Estate...
The upgrade of the house is done and it's on the market.  The house is located in a great neighborhood (also desirable), looks good, and staged right but no one is offering.

My mother died two years ago and I've started the upgrade of her condo to put on the market.  It's a long story of why it's been empty but that does not really matter.  Demo is underway with a goal of having it on the market by the end of August which means some time in September.

Outplacement Frustration...
My executive coach is no longer with the outplacement firm.  They have a policy, or did, of letting a client take a leave of absence from the service.  We did that informally rather than formally and my online resources are no longer available.  Now not only do I feel a bit thrown under the bus by employers but also by the provided safety net, the outplacement firm.  This week I'll get on the phone and do my best (I am at my best on the phone) to get three months of online access.  My perspective on time has changed greatly since not working at a real job full time.  Everything takes more time than you think.

This noon I started a casual conversation with the CFO of a large corporation about a mile from my home.  Working there would be great for a couple of years.  My intent is to get in as some sort of project manager in the IT space.  The outplacement online resources would be helpful to refresh my knowledge in a few areas.

Technology...
I run into people 50+ all the time who seem locked into a technology time warp.  Once they figured out email, sort of, that was it.  They don't use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or read or write any blogs.  I'm not really sure how they communicate.  The younger crowd considers email as archaic as a home phone line.

For whatever reason I've dug a big of a 'too much technology' hole.  My password file has over a hundred entries (I avoid all those 'log in as Facebook' options) and while I have one or two primary email accounts there are many others for selective successful and unsuccessful projects and there are at least a dozen blogs of which two or three are active.  Yesterday I spent an hour configuring my iPhone to do an IMAP connection to an email account that I use to communicate with people that I really don't want to communicate with.  Recently I've been motivated by a tenant in the same commercial building who is less than thirty and netting about $30k a month from very astute blog monetization.  It's easy to avoid technology and avoid those kind of income streams and it's easy to get caught up in technology busywork like too many devices, to many software applications, too many geewhiz things and technology innovation dark holes.  Focus.  Really I should be using Wordpress since that's what all the really successful bloggers use and I have several implementations and profiles but it all takes time and when I feel like writing I gravitate to blogger and lament my lack of better branding, personal, theme, etc.  It's on the list.

We have DSL service at home.  I'd like to upgrade and get rid of our landline but my better half seems to like older phone technology like phones that don't need to be charged (I know, it sits in a charger).  The DSL service has flakey moments.  Our house has bad 1969 phone wiring.  It if rains DSL is flakey.  Other times it's flakey for whatever reason.  It's possible that it's the switch that feeds all of the access points and non-wired devices.  The other night I was having a technology meltdown and wanted to replace the switch.  It was 11:15 PM.  Everything was closed except WalMart which of course had what I needed because WalMart has what middle Americans need to live.  I decided to sleep on it but dreamt about computer crap.  It all worked in the AM.  If I replaced the switch with a new router I could eliminate three devices with one, free up space in the adjacent power strips and simplify my life when "reboot this1, this2, this3, etc." is the logical step.  Of course my life would also be simpler if it did not include IOS, Chrome, XP, Windows 7, Ubuntu and at least two other Linux distributions.  It's an interesting contrast that all the hardware and tools that cause me distress are Chinese.  Perhaps I need to start looking for old IBM and Compaq (USA made) PC's when prowling the garage sales for USA made tools, but perhaps not; China is our future.

About a decade ago I noticed that where ever I went people were talking about computer things, what they bought, what software working, gaming craps, etc.  For whatever reason I felt above that, that I knew more, and I probably did, already leveraging those sorts of things on an enterprise level, actually effectively.  Now, unemployed more or less, I'm bound up in devices, hardware, web abs, RSS feeds, archaic email, app development and content aggregation and publishing tools, cloud tools, archival and restoration issues, etc.

There are days that I just want to sit with my carving tools, a few brushes and a box of paints.  Actually that's what I'd like to do every day.

Finding the right (door) opening...

Small Business...

On Tuesday the commercial freezer at the cafe started to be noisy...I thought.  When you work around equipment you get used to the chaotic rhythm of compressors, fans, ice machines, etc., all compounded by customer conversation and your better half providing minute-to-minute instruction and evaluation.  Small business is the heart of America, according to many, actually the few who have also been instrumental is transferring our manufacturing might overseas.  They have jobs.  I don't.

It sounded like the compressor.  There was an unusual amount of vibration and the thing seemed to be banging.  Our repair guy showed up on WED right during the noon rush.  There is no extra space and we were climbing over him to get to the meat slicer, supplies, etc.  He's really good.  There are two evaporator fans inside the unit and two fans that provide airflow across the cooling coil.  The fans near the compressor seemed to have a bit of end play.  He only had one replacement with him.  We spent about an hour trying to get that to fit before deciding that was a dead end and that cleaning off the fan blades and the coil may have solved the issue.

Before we put it back together...this was the busiest Tuesday we've had for a while...we ran out of food at 1:30...the fire alarm went off and one of our suppliers made a large delivery.  It was a bit of chaos.  After the repair guy left I listened to the din of equipment and concluded that the freezer was much quieter. Good.

We close at 3:00 on Tuesdays.  About 9:15 PM I decided to stop and see if the freezer was making noise.  The fans were running and it was pretty quiet, quiet because the compressor had failed.  Checking the temperature it was clear that 49 cubic feet of frozen meat and supplies were going to thaw.  I walked into Menard's at 9:55 PM and bought two freezers. They close at 10:00 PM.  When I opened the back of the truck it was clear that that was where I'd thrown all the tools and supplies from the recent house remodeling project.

By 10:30 PM I was back at the cafe, had unloaded and unboxed the two freezers and made space for them.  At 11:15 PM there were cold enough to transfer contents.  I hung around until 1:30 AM to make sure the new freezers were cooling adequate.  I was tired and obviously had no options and there was no point in watching them.  What was I going to do at 1:30 AM?

At 9:15 PM when this was discovered we called three or four 24 hours emergency refrigeration companies.  Only one called back and it was ten hours later.  Apparently there is capacity for another firm in the Twin Cities who wish to work evenings and nights and charge whatever they want to save people like us.

Back at the cafe at 7:00 AM I started the quest to find a replacement freezer. These things retail at $11,000 but are frequently discounted to $3500-$4500.  There were three in the Twin Cities but all the delivery/install firms were booked for four to five days.  There must have been a desperate look on my face because one of the vendors gave a decent price of $3600, took off an additional $200 because of my stress and found someone who would do a same-day delivery to the curb for $85.

Later in the day we have a 485 pound crated freezer sitting outside the door.  My daughter and I wheeled the old one to the front door, the 83" front door and pondered the 84 1/2" 485 freezer.  That was the point where I started to lose it.  The freezers were 54" wide.  My better half knows some weird people but had assured me that she'd found someone who would show up and install the freezer, including moving it.  He called and I expressed my concerns.  Before I brought up the dimensions he said "I know it's taller than the door.  I've done this before."  My inclination was a sawzall.  He showed up with two wrenches and a channellock.  The it played out was this.  We used a 2x4 to lift up one end of the old freezer to remove the casters, repeated that on the other end and laid it on edge on a $14.95 four wheel dolly.  The process of getting it to the horizontal was foreboding.

The guy said "go on the other side and push it toward me.  I'll lower it onto the cart."  We'd taken out the shelves but this was still a solid 400 pounds.  My daughter had the job of placing the cart and steadying it under this load.  It worked.  We wheeled it out the door.  Bringing in the new one was a repeat, but in reverse.  The only downside was a second doorway.  This freezer was about 1/4" taller than the old removed one.  Once again I thought sawzall and offered to just make the doorway taller.   The final solution was removal of an apparently unnecessary 1/16" spacer on each caster.  This process involved the 2x4 once again and the guy in good position to be crushed or have parts crushed.

The electrical requirements were the same.  We plugged it in. It worked.

Small business, the heart of America...the American dream.  Yes.  At a 5% net profit we'll have to sell about 12,000  bowls of soup (more or less) to pay for the new freezer.

Part Time Less Than Minimum Wage Challenge
My son , through some of his work with the R programming language, made me aware of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).  Computers can do a great amount of work (I've recently watched the backlog of Mad Men and was intrigued with the 1950's ad agency's compulsion to show it's progressiveness by purchasing a computer to do I don't know what) but they do need help.  MTurk is a component of Amazon Web Services, a broad and extension range of computing resources, services and platforms.  People like me can sign up to complete services that computers may not be able to complete correctly like assigning attributes to photographs, selecting the funnier of two comical images, transcribe scripts, etc.  These are know as HITs, Human Intelligence Tasks.

I've now signed up as a worker and can review the thousands of options to complete work.  Prior to this I surveyed several articles by journalists who tested the waters of MTurk to see if you can actually make any money.  The bottom line is that you won't.  You might make minimum wage.  I'll provide an update.

Uber

MTurk has received much of the same criticism given to Uber.  Everyone is a contractor, responsible for their own supplies, tax obligations, etc., and the representation that as an independent contractor that you are responsible for your own inevitable success is mis-representative.  Were I not driving a full size pickup I might log into Uber once in a while.  They do have a great web site.  I'm short of time right now but it's on the list.

Outplacement Service...
I've given up on LHH.

A timeout from looking for work to do some real work.

One of my favorite blogs is written by a guy who farms with legacy equipment and daily ponders the logic and economic return of his work.  I've found it inspiring.  It's as much about diagnosis and repair as it is about farming.  At some level I feel bad that his equipment fails but I've found inspiration in his repairs, and of course I know that following each repair something is happening the field and he's productive.

My career was primarily as an IT executive.  Certainly there was a history of being able to code, build networks, lace together telecommunication solutions, conceive and write strategic plans, lobby for budgetary support, etc., but as I frequently say "I was an executive.  I had 'people' who did real work."

The past couple of months were spent on a house project.  The purpose and economics of that were detailed and complex but the bottom line was that it was a good personal journey, one that connected me with a real lasting product.  My art is creative and good, too, but probably lacks the conventional appreciation that this house project will receive.


During the IT career I implemented solutions that will last for a while, like an on-time, on-budget ERP system.  It's likely that no one knows or remembers my role in that.  The house project is interesting in that it's going away.  I can walk through a couple of more times but the work is really for the new owners, as of yet unknown.  It's something that I can feel good about, just as I feel good about the ERP project.  This one is probably good for at least a decade before someone decides to toss it out.

I'd really like to be able to tear apart a tractor engine and put it back together.  That might happen.  My 1952 (1951?) Ford 8N awaits my attention.

Who Asked For That?

It's possible that I've written about this before but it's time for a refresher.

Set Godin reminded me of this with his post on "press the busser"

It has to do with timing and intuition.  You can replace your car battery when you think it's about to die or you can replace it when it's -20 F.  Maintenance schedules are good but they don't preclude doing the right thing when it comes to you.

My best work during the 27-year gig were the projects that just seemed like the right thing to do.  Upon completion each one received the standard owner/executive/budgetary criticism/interrogation of "who asked for this?"  I've come to the conclusion that that is question that I choose to never respectfully answer again.  The user community loved the work, the products that they never asked for bu which made their work easier.

I'm looking for another buzzer to hit, right now.

Remodeling, Reflecting, Avoiding Real Jobs

Avoidence
It's not that I've been avoiding jobs.  There have been two really appropriate project management jobs but of course that involves putting on good clothes and showing up five days per week.  A third position is a CIO job at Gander Mountain.  My friends suggest I'm a perfect fit providing that I show up for the interview in camo.  It's really been a scheduling issue.

Remodeling
The last eight weeks are history, three at my daughter's new house and five at her old house.  It's a long story without explanation.

Reflection
During the remodeling I ceremonially used a tool of my father (circa 1954), my uncle (circa 1965) and my paternal grandfather (circa 1940).  The folding Lufkin wooden rule with brass ends caused me to think of my grandfather who also used to stress keeping your fingers out of the power saw.

A childhood friend from Columbus Avenue posted a recent photo of the flooded street on Facebook. Back in the day that simply meant playing in the water. She also commented about my grandfather 'Pop' Leeper. It was a pleasant memory. He had many stories that he shared with the neighborhood kids. It's probably appropriate to share. Father's day has recently come and gone and he was a special person for many people.

Columbus Avenue in the 1950’s was comprised of working class and retired households. All of the homes were small. No one had air conditioning and having a fan was sort of special. In the evenings people would bring out their lawn chairs and sit outside until the mosquitoes drove them back inside. “Pop” (Addison C. Leeper) and Ollie (Olive Blanche Leeper, Addison’s daughter) would sit outside and neighbors and especially children would stop and chat. Pop always had a story. I’ll do my best to share a Pop story.

"We haven’t had water the street like this since the war years. Do you remember that Ollie? Yes, perhaps I should look for an elephant to see what I could do about this. My family lived in Neenah, Nebraska. I was young and wanted to see what the world was about. Neenah was the winter home of the Archibald Animal Circus. One winter I started to go to their camp ground to talk with some of the men. Well the elephant trainer drank a bit too much and just didn’t take care of the elephants. Their trumpeting woke me up every morning. You can hear an elephant trumpet five miles away. When I heard that I went to the place where the elephants were staked out and started feeding them hay. One day the boss came walking by and told me he’d pay me five cents a day to feed the elephants and clean up after them since the trainer was worthless. I don’t think I would have agreed to that if I’d known how much clean up is needed for a family of elephants.

When you make a commitment it’s important to keep it, to keep your word. None of those elephants were very friendly and I noticed that one of them was limping. Finally I got up the nerve to walk up to the limping one and touch it’s leg. He turned his head around and put that great big trunk right up to my face. He smelled me and then lifted up his leg. Right in the middle of his foot was a big nail...all the way in. My dad had a pliers at home and I knew where he kept it. It’s important to take care of your tools and put them where they belong. I walked home, put the pliers in my pocket walked back and then went right up to the elephant. He lifted up his foot without smelling me. It was hard to get a hold of that rusty nail but I pulled it right out. Doing the right thing sometimes hurts. That elephant knew that. They’re just as smart as people and have great memories.

My grandfather had lived with the Iroquois Indians in New York and they taught him all about plants that you could eat and use to make you feel better. My grandfather passed on what he knew to my father and I learned from him. All of you have something to learn from your fathers and mothers, too. I knew that foot would be sore so I gathered some plants and some special berries and mixed it with some bacon grease from the circus cook. You should really use fat from beaver tails but there weren't any beavers in Nebraska. Every day I rubbed that salve into the elephants foot and in short order the infection was gone. It was pretty good stuff. I called it Pachyderm Salve. Don’t we still have some around here Ollie?

That was in 1912. Shortly after that my father, who worked for the railroad was transferred to Fairmont, MN. That was the end of my circus days. In Fairmont I went to school but got a job at the power plant when I was sixteen. It’s important for all you children to finish school. After we adopted Ollie we moved to Albert Lea. During the war years all the boys were off fighting. Two of my boys were in the Army. The only men around town were too old to work or they were just worthless.

It was June of 1943 and we had water in the street just like this, maybe higher. There were some pretty big fish going up and down the street. Didn’t we go fishing right next to the driveway Ollie? There wasn’t much to do during those years and there were shortages of everything. I called the city and asked if they could come grade the street but the grader was broken and all the replacement parts were going to fix graders in the War. I did know that there was a small circus traveling through town. During the night I heard the circus train pass by the back yard and I knew they had a couple of elephants.

We’d used all our gas ration coupons so I walked down to the train yard. It was not much of a circus. Everything needed paint and the animals were pretty skinny. I don’t think the lions had enough energy to eat me. The elephants were staked out in a field. There were posts driven into the ground with chains on them and then a metal collar around the elephant’s leg. They’d been there a few hours and had eaten everything they could reach. The name of the circus was hard to read on the rail cars since they needed paint. I think it was Clyde’s New Century Circus & Exhibition. As I walked toward the elephants they became all upset, one of them in particular. That elephant looked familiar and as I approached it smelled me and lifted the same foot I’d healed thirty one years earlier. I said they had great memories. All of the elephants had sores on their legs from those steel collars. They just weren’t being treated right. All of you children know it’s important to take care of your dogs and elephants are even smarter. I walked back home and went into the garage. There on the wall was my father’s pliers. Putting it in my pocket I headed back down to the rail yard. I brought some bacon grease and along the Rock Island tracks I picked a few berries and a couple of plants as best as I could remember. When I got to the elephants I told the one that recognized me that he had to be quiet. Just like that he turned to the other elephants, made a few elephant words...I know a few elephant words, and the others all became quiet. One by one I used my father’s pliers to remove the steel collars. My friend the elephant nudged the others into a straight line and there they stood. That Pachyderm Salve was just as good in 1943 as it was in 1912 and the pain from those sores went away just like that.

It was still night so we walked down the Rock Island tracks back toward Columbus. Halfway back the Rock Island Rocket came through and we stood just off the tracks. I always wonder if anyone noticed me and six elephants standing there. We came right up through the back yard between these two houses. The water was even higher in the street. The first thing those elephants did was take a big drink of water. They can drink fifty gallons. That was three hundred gallons gone right there. Then I had the elephants walk up and down the street. I remembered the elephant word for “elephant shuffle” from my days in the circus and I had those pachyderms go up and down the street for an hour and we filled in all the potholes and cleared the debris from the storm sewer grates and even dragged a big tree limb down the road to smooth it out. Before dawn our work was done. The water was gone.

This was my friend and you help friends when they need it. Elephants have a good sense of time. The measure it in days. I told that elephant to walk to the southwest for twenty days, only at night. I had a subscription to the Neenah Gazette and in the fall of 1943 there was a front page article that said the War was going well and everyone had a good time because six elephants showed up in town and everyone got to ride one.

If you kids want to go swimming in the street you should go today because tonight I’m going to look for elephants.”

That was as close to the story Pop told us on one of many hot summer evenings as I can recall, now sixty years later. If I were an elephant I'd probably remember it word for word. This reminds me that I need to tell my children how to make Pachyderm Salve. 

Copyright 2015 John F. Leeper

99 & Counting

Today started early with a few tasks on 'the house project' followed by a 100 mile drive for lunch.  My remaining aunt, Vi, turns 99 tomorrow.  Her father and two of his sisters lived to 100.  As a child I thought everyone lived to 100.  Vi's sisters left at 98, 98 and 93 respectively.  She's still pretty independent and complains that her hearing, sight and teeth are all rotten.

We ate with my cousin and her husband.  I suggested the local Asian buffet.  For years that was "China Wok."  WalMart recently moved and a new buffet came to town, located near the new WalMart and the China Wok became history.  The new buffet, "Wok & Roll" is not as good, the workers are surly and the bathrooms met the minimal mainland China hygiene standard.

The drive was down 35W south from the Twin Cities.   A long time ago I worked for the MN Department of Public Safety which worked hand in hand with the Department of Transportation which worked with the federal people.  It's clear that  more federal money has come down the road that has in a long time.  Certainly it has something to do with a Presidential election in the future.  Republicans and Democrats alike are going to beat the drums of putting people to work, improving roads, etc.

Minnesota consists of two seasons: 1) snow and ice and 2) road construction.  That's in a good year.

This farm belonged to my mother's cousin, Norval Nelsen.  He and his wife, Helen, moved there in the 1930's, first living in the settler's log cabin.  Along with raising two children it was a traditional farm with a few milk cows, hogs, chickens and enough field crops to sell and feed the livestock.  When my mother was small they'd visit be sent out in the fields to flip cow pies which were used for fuel.  Even in the 1980's Norval resisted propane and continued to burn wood.  As a kid I was overwhelmed by the animals, the annoying chickens and the smells but loved playing in the hayloft of the barn.  Now it's like many farms, a house, the barn is gone, the machine shed empty or storing someone else's boat or RV and a few leftover buildings not really re-purposed and surrounded by field corn and soybeans.

This past week I read about the new University of Minnesota Bee Research Lab.  The most eminnent of the people there, Marla Spivak, has done remarkable work in defense of the Varroa mite infestations in bee colonies.  Of particular note is the development of the Minnesota Hygenic Queen which provides a non-drug approach.  We all know that pesticides result in pesticide-resistent insect.

Dr. Spivak now is focused on colony collapse.  I've been losing colonies in the summer since 2008 which coincides with the release of neonicotinoid pesticides.  I don't have a PhD but from a practical perspective I know that bee colonies next to corn fields doesn't work any more.  The newspaper article said that the vast majority of Minnesota crops require honeybees for pollination.  Corn and soy beans don't need bees.  The farm that Norval and Helen had needed honeybees.  Minnesota agriculture is really an agri-business monoculture (actually corn, soy beans, potatoes and sugar beets). Honeybees are, of course, not native to the United States, and as such are an invasive species and have in many areas been a player in the depletion of native pollinators of which there are thousands.  Native plants tend to lose out to those which thrive under honeybee pollination.  I'm not sure how to argue this.  Moving forward I'll focus on organizations and information technology.