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Alfred E Neuman state
My personal life, for the moment, is improving and my usual umbrage about the state of the world is merely at a simmer. Undoubtedly that will change. For the moment, my focus is inward.
Surveillance State
Coal and Electricity
David Moffat’s Denver, Salt Lake, and Pacific railroad reached Craig in 1913. He ran out of investor money. The Denver and Rio Grande acquired the company and later the Union Pacific acquired the D&RG (fuck you Fred Anschutz).
Now, 40 miles to the west a mammoth power line is under construction that will send solar and wind generated electricity, in Wyoming, to Las Vegas and California.
Who supplies electricity (and natural gas) to the region is a hodgepodge of co-ops, for profit companies, and local independent operations all tied into the regional grid. Xcel, a Minnesota headquartered company established in 1903 wants to dominate the system. Being woke and green (and arrogant), constant re-alignments by other ‘stakeholders’ who are not in agreement keep lawyers and reporters busy.
I will say the Xcel ‘boots on the ground’ employees are as good as you will find.
About 4% of electricity produced in Colorado is by hydro. There is a lot of potential. That won’t happen with the environazies calling the shots. Add the unofficial Colorado motto, “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting”, and you have political gridlock.
Of passing interest, Boulder, CO receives electricity from hydro built in 1906. You don’t hear any proposals to “free” Boulder Creek by tearing down the dam.
Television
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One channel had some talking head proclaiming, in a sky is falling tone of voice, that if Trump is elected, he will never leave office and will cancel future elections. If only.
Cheyenne + Facebook?
Personal Relief
Alignment Scam
The tire store I use recommended a small shop. Busy, I had to wait two weeks for an appointment. Arrived, one hour and $150 later, I drove away with a proper alignment. As a bonus, Banner got a treat!
This will be the last time the car will meet specs. While the mileage is 81,000, age is always a factor.
Because of my background I knew I was being scammed. I have left proper Goggle reviews, for what that is worth, on the two scam shop sites. Their response is, “We have reached out to him”. Yeah, go fuck yourselves.
As always, YMMV
19 comments:
Alignments are definitely a way for tire shops to make a lot of money without doing much. I needed an alignment when I was first assigned to Malmstrom AFB back in 1975 and I was introduced to the guys at this run down place by my boss at the time. These guys worked in a dump, old tires held the tarpaper roof on and one guy was ancient (probably about 60) and the other guy was less ancient, probably about 40 or so. They charged me a rousing 29.95 and the car drove better than it had when it I first bought it. Staid with those guys for all the time I was stationed there so until 1980. Fast forward to 1995 and I am again assigned to Malmstrom. The old place was still open. Heck, I think they still had the same old tires holding down the same tarpaper. I stopped in just to see if it was still open and it was with the same two guys still doing alignments. All they did was alignments and brakes. The old guy was in his 80s and the young guy was in his 60s or so. When I mentioned to them that I used to have them do alignments on my vehicles way back when they apologized for the price increase, to all of 34.95. They said that that was what the amount of effort an alignment should cost.
Ed C
In my misspent youth I did my own alignments with a tape measure. Maybe not the best alignment but the cost was low. The youngster doing the job is a recent community college graduate. Twice he needed help rebooting the computer. ot a problem - we all need to start somewhere.
I loath scammers. That may sound strange coming from a car salesman. I never, not once, lied to someone to sell them a car. Lying by omission? That is a debatable point.
Customers? One time a man on my crew was getting nowhere and I took the turn. After a few moments of conversation, I said something along this line. "Folks, you are telling us the literal truth about everything. We seldom encounter that." The sale was made.
Glad to hear your son is in a better place! Hope it works out for him! And yes, scammers are definitely out there!
Old NFO
The lad is excited. Unless you have a long term relationship with a shop, always get two or more opinions.
Banner's a happy, well cared for dog. I trust his guardian with his care.
More green nonsense. We had huge "strip mines" where I grew up, where the coal was easy to get. They were reclaimed and turned into recreational areas, and the small lakes were stocked with fish.
My son works with Xcel a lot in Weld County. They're pulling in new services, upgrading services, adding and replacing poles, boring new underground cable runs, and lots of typical electric-utility stuff. He says the same about the work crews and how they know their stuff.
Excellent to hear your son has a better place to live. I know you were always worried about him, so this is much better for both of you.
I'm glad you have a mechanic you trust. I've had the same thing happen to me, and I said no thanks and found a different shop. SLW had it happen to her before she knew me.
DrJim
Banner has a few behavior problems, like eating grass, that will change. I've bought a remote control training collar. Now I need to read the (**(instructions. Sisty has volunteered to read them for me.
Son moved today. He is, for the moment, happy.
The road to inner peace begins with "not my problem", but sometimes that doesn't work as well as it oughten to.
Customers. Heh. My policy was if they lie to me, try to throw me under the bus for something that was their own fault, failed to pay their bills and/or failed to pay their bills on time, they were not good customers and I fired 'em. Over time I learned the 80:20 rule. May not be transferrable to the car business, I don't know, but works with manufacturers selling to the same customer base over and over. But anyway: you get 80% of your business from 20% of your customers. There is also what I call WWW's Corollary: you get 90% of your problems from 10% of your customers. Fire 'em and spend the extra time with that aforementioned 20% and you'll bounce that 80% up to 90% with better profits and less work.
W.W.W
Wise words. In the car biz, as a salesman, I didn't care. They bought or they didn't. When I became a manager the entitled assholes had ever scrap of their paperwork double checked before they got the keys. Everywhere I worked was a version of a "WE OWE' where all promises were written down and the customer signed it.
In my day college business classes taught every year you needed to replace 10-20% of your customer. Some died, some went broke, some found another source and some you told to fuck off. (not actual words used by the profs)
A cherished memory is from my days of selling UBC compliant modular homes. My main competitor was Max Phelps, a good friend who got his start selling coffins direct to customers by driving around Mormon country with his inventory in a pickup. One jerk had access to a WATTS line )https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Telephone_Service) I "lost" his purchase to Max's company. One day having lunch with Max in Kanab, UT just after he had taken a bite, I asked, "How are your getting along with Mr Asshole?" Evidently, not too well.
Ooopsie, think that was me. Should I attempt to reconstitute it?
Please do.
Well OK, second attempt.
The story about waiting for the right time to ask about Mr. Asshole was surgical! People tend to get a reputation in whatever industry, some good, some bad, and everyone knows who they are. And while I never thought about it before, looking back that figure of having to replace 10 - 20% of customers each year for various reasons is pretty accurate.
Regarding Mormons. I've had some dealings with some of those folks. Some are highly ethical and a pleasure to deal with. Some are not. For your reading pleasure, Google up something like "Kingston Brothers Renewable Energy Credits" but before you do, make sure to take Banner for a walk and then drain your own bladder because there's a lot there. Anytime you combine the FBI, federal prosecutors, informants, tip-offs, fraudulent trading of non-existent products, expensive sports cars, attempted flight to Turkey to avoid prosecution, and multi-generational plural marriage on an industrial scale with the resulting army of offspring, it's an interesting story. Epic, really. Worth a look.
Along the line of replacing customers, on a smaller scale, is you need to replace suppliers. Service, quality, on time and lastly, price. Getting used cars "front line ready" involved lots of batteries, windshields, and tires. Our policy was to pay, by check, on the spot. In exchange, we had high expectations.
Mainstream Mormons take great pride in having no debt on their ward houses and stake centers. They also try to get a 10% discount from their member suppliers. When I worked for the Wade brothers in Ogden, UT they would send me to collect. It went something like this,"Brother White......." Followed by, "I'm not a brother, I'm not LDS".
I've had dealing with polygamists. The way their women are forced to live, and the 'marriage' of teenage girls, bothers me a lot.
Washakie Renewables suck in some people I knew. Ponzi schemes, big and small, seem to thrive in the Great Basin.
We never got worked for special discounts which was surprising given the size of our scope of supply. The whole Washakie thing never made sense to me when a consultant we knew really well brought us into it. You don't build an oilseeds crush plant where there aren't any oilseeds available locally to crush, yet that was their plan, allegedly. The consultant's response was, they have the money and they've been successful with biofuels so along we went. They became slow pay part way thru the project, so we quit shipping machines until they got paid up. There was a different son rotated thru every few weeks and then the revised terms (cash at the cattle guard, so to speak) had to be explained again and again. By all their suppliers as well, or anyway, the ones I talked to.
Eventually the crush plant got built but we never got the call to come out for start-up supervision and anyway, when oilseeds are processed to get the oil out of them, the resulting meal has to be stored someplace before it can sold. But they never got around to building meal storage. Pretty much that means they weren't producing the oil they were taking renewable credits for, and eventually hilarity ensued. Oooopsie!
Yet they spent a metric crap-ton of money building a big set of silos to store the seedstock and all the crush machinery in the crush plant didn't come cheap. A lot of trouble for the final result. Hard to believe they planned it that way, maybe things just got away from them, not that it matters inasmuch as they didn't get away from the FBI, so.....
W.W.W
"Cash at the cattle guard". I like that. For years I drove a 1884 Mitsubishi Mighty Max 4x4 Turbo Diesel. Circa 2000 there were a few bio-diesel stations. I remember there was one off I-84 near Tremonton. The Mitsu ran better on bio than anything else and went 300,000 miles before starting to spew oil.
That's an expression from my oilfield trash days, and it means just exactly what it sounds like. Pay us up front or we don't deliver. Simple as that.
"Cash On The Barrelhead" comes to mind.....
This is a long and engaging post and I especially like the photo of the black cowboy, though it's all good.
I had NO idea they existed 'til I came here. But there it is, good boys for the most part, in my limited experience.
LSP
He is no cowboy - just has the hat. Post War of Northern Aggression blacks were nearly a majority among cowpunchers and frontier soldiers.
A friend, Charles Sampson, was the first modern era World Champion Bull Rider. He was raised in Compton, CA.
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