Please Don't Califoriate Colorado Any Further

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2016/08/11/welcome-newbies-californians-pack-bags-bring-baggage-to-colorado/

If you are middle class with middle class values (work, small government) welcome!

If you are rich, especially Silicon Valley rich, with (P)regressive values, please eat shit and die. 

Wild Hawgs and Such

Just when one hazard of the job tapers off, we get another, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

For the past six weeks or so the harvesting crews have been active. A convoy of one or more huge over wide combines on trailers, each followed by a truck pulling the harvester head, some 30’ wide, on another trailer. Several grain haulers, truck and 53’ trailer, followed by one of more RV’s, and miscellaneous vehicles moving from field to field. They can be difficult to pass.

Add the traffic going to and from Sturgis, SD, and the drive can be interesting.

One can admire those who make the trip all the way on motorcycles. Less so those pulling their motorcycles on trailers, and there are probably more of those than the riders. Posers.

A wet winter and spring is a blessing but……… Now a hot summer has arrived and the prairie is drying out just in time for the monsoon season. 

Those thunderstorms produce a narrow, but intense,  path of moisture while the lightning goes everywhere. Lots of work for the fire crews. Lots of flash floods to trap the unwary. The Platte at Gurnsey is at near flood stage and the water muddy.

For larger pictures.  https://www.dropbox.com/sc/5pebjbm9hschwxf/AADLZQsN9w3gzVrUuAzyVSqRa

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/vwbfekssypk50du/AADe4PgSVqbWbrPM5uqM91fJa

NOTE: Having a few problems mastering Dropbox. Please have patience.

Bashing the Press? Not Always

For all the complaining many of us do about the press interjecting opinion into news stories, there are times when it is appropriate.

Several lives were forever changed Thursday, July 28 as the result of a fatal car accident on Washington County roads.

http://www.fortmorgantimes.com/fort-morgan-local-news/ci_30206787/14-year-old-killed-car-crash

1960 saw the death of a close friend in a dumb car wreck. It is about 42 miles from Steamboat Springs, CO to Craig, CO. How fast you could drive it was a local tradition. Boasts of doing it in 22 minutes abounded but were probably bullshit. There are few straight sections more than two miles in length, two small towns along the way (three at that time), and a section along a cliff prone to rock slides.

My friend, Tad Brown, was one of two passengers in a red 1960 Chevy convertible. The driver’s parents were wealthy. The driver was going to set a new record. Just outside of Steamboat, westbound, he hit a mailbox set in a milk can  full of cement,  dead center of his steering column,  breaking it. The car went into the ditch and started rolling. The driver and one passenger survived. Tad didn’t.

Tad was one of my first friends when my parents settled in Steamboat. His sister, Ginger, was my first crush. His father, a Chiropractor, moved his practice to Craig. Despite the distance, Tad, Ginger and I stayed in touch. Alas, Ginger found a boyfriend in Craig.

Tad’s parents held an open casket funeral. The Mortuary did not do any cosmetic work. We high schoolers walked by and saw a face so battered as to be unrecognizable. You can only guess how many attitudes were adjusted that afternoon. I know mine was. While I never talked to his parents, I’m sure that was the effect they wanted; to keep some other parents from knowing their grief.

We humans never know why fate takes one of us and not another, or us. Maybe we must die to find out. My hope is I will never bury one of my children.

American Media Maggots + Trump

h/t to BZ for the descriptive label for what passes for news reporting in this country.

http://bloviatingzeppelin.net/horror-all-lives-matter-on-back-of-police-cars/

Story after story has Trump doing something wrong even if the press needs to make it up (Trump has crying baby removed from rally). Trump is slipping in the polls. Blah, blah, blah. The Republican Party insiders are in a panic. Trump may drop out. If the story isn't blatantly anti-Trump, there always seems to be an undertone of glee for anything Trump negative. Obvious the "media" is frustrated that all us dummies can't be taught anything by them. Why won't we listen?

Let me say I'm not an enthusiastic Trump supporter. I'm an enthusiastic, "Anybody  but Shillary" supporter. 

Going back to the start of the primaries, the media has been saying all this crap. Didn't stop him from winning the nomination. What it does is get his name out in front of more people at no financial cost to him. Oh, isn't he dumb?

I'm spared all the TV advertising. Unless the Seahawks are on (not often in Bronco country), I don't turn it on. I'm serious. The TV hasn't been turned on for months. Comcast shoves the TV down my throat as part of my internet connection. My sympathy for those of you who must endure all those ads.

This internet gadget has screwed the media out of their monopoly. Beats the hell out of Letters to The Editor. Beats the old mimeograph tracks circulated in the 60's.  Even a grumpy old senior like myself can get his opinions out to the fifty or so readers of this blog. Many bloggers reach a thousand or more a day. Maybe that is why the (P)regressives keep bleating about "net neutrality".

Nothing brilliant here, and I'm certainly not the first to point out how the internet has castrated the American Media Maggots. I'm just hoping Trump is smart enough to use all the tools at his disposal to defeat the most corrupt politician ever to run for President.

H/R Guide II

Judging from comments, some must have found the original post “interesting”. Hoped to amuse people.

On a serious note, I would like to expand on my management practices. In one of my college classes, the textbook author discussed, “The Industrial Law of Effect”. This was in the 1960’s and I have long since forgotten the author and book title.  The author may have been inspired by the classic, Law of Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_effect

As modified, the author said that in any organization, the employees will intuitively learn what management’s dominant desire is, not expressed desire,  and give it to them. As an illustration, a bank teller is rude to a customer knowing management’s  dominant desire was for the teller’s till balance exactly each day. Rude to a customer? Tsk, tsk. Till not balance? Look for another job. I’ve forgotten a lot from those classes but that has stuck with me over the years.

Tank’s variation. You better damn well know what you want in very specific terms or you will have a bunch of unhappy and unproductive employees. In the case of the skylight firm, I wanted a quality product produced on time with minimum waste and rework. On a personal level, I didn’t expect, or want, anyone to kiss my ass.

As stated, I hired and promoted on ability. My usual crew had many people others wouldn’t hire. Within the day to day operation, I wouldn’t stand for cliques. Every employee’s dignity was to be respected. Should I walk by the break room and see employees being shunned or ignored (not included in the lunch group) you can believe the foremen/women would soon have an unpleasant closed door meeting in my office. That policy extended to the occasional “temp”. They may be with us for a short time but their impressions, as communicated to their social circles, would persist for weeks or longer.

One example of how this worked. We had an order for 10,000 residential DIY type skylights from Pay n Pac Stores (since acquired by Lowe’s). We had exactly three returned as defective and it was clear they had been dropped.

The skylight company owner was an absentee type from “Cali” who was involved with “the industry”. In other words he was financing art films and the like. Soon he sold out to a large company whose main business was suspended ceiling systems. Their management soon started trying to make my square peg operation fit their round holes. Never understood that. If you have highly productive square pegs, make some square holes. Worse, everything they did was fucked up and needed reworked. As an example, they provided a ceiling system for an Alaska State Ferry without ever insuring the ceiling panels met USCG requirements. I had to pull my crew off our work and spend six weeks redoing the ferry during winter layup in Seattle. Oh yah, the ferry was also the winter hotel for ferry employees. My folks did a great job to the point the ferry employees invited them to their Christmas party. Super party. Several Seattle Bondsmen had a good week.

I could see the writing on the wall. Got a chance to work the season putting in modular condos in Kodiak so we parted ways. Other than the usual brown bottle flu, the Kodiak job went well. The old military P’s. Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

Once had a boss that taught me many valuable lessons. He was an asshole’s asshole but when you put your ass on the line every day you earned his respect. One lesson. “ We have procedures for 90% of our business. This is so we don’t reinvent the wheel every week. The way we handle the other 10% is the difference between a profitable business and a bureaucracy.  As long as I’m running this place, it will never be a bureaucracy”. He was a recovering Boeing engineer with a Harvard MBA.

Over the years my methods didn’t make me many friends. What I can look back with some satisfaction is the respect given to me by several individuals whose accomplishments in business far over shadow mine. Always, I prefer to be respected more than liked.

How Many Postmasters?

How many Postmasters does it take to fill a pothole?

Two $4.00 sacks of Quickcrete from Home Depot, fifteen minutes with a shovel, and done. Been this way for weeks.

Things I don't understand.

Is there some advantage to these big tires?

H/R Guide

Ami has a post up about what to wear to a job interview.

http://amimental.blogspot.com/2016/07/i-need-something-to-wear.html

Prior to selling cars (1986) I bounced around the construction and related industries in management and sales. At one point I was hired by a skylight manufacturer (great job, things were always looking up). Walked into a bad situation as the general manager and the production manager were stealing as much as they could. Sexual favors from the female employees were demanded. They got caught and I was suddenly the big cheese.

Back story. I always had a problem with not being from the right background, right education, right social circles, etc. and was often passed over or held back in favor of people who were less talented and effective but were the “right sort”.

My criteria was to hire and promote those who could do the job. Other than not stealing and being reliable, I didn’t care about appearance (bathing was encouraged), race, age, or sex.  Catching a couple of breaks, the business rapidly expanded from about three production workers to twelve. One of my early hires, a woman (as described in Ami’s blog remarks) became the production foreman. We had a retired career Army 11B (no one would hire a Vietnam killer), a laid off Boeing engineer (over qualified with many advanced degrees and too old) , a burned out cop,  and three other women among others. They were a rowdy bunch with lots of joking around.  I didn’t care because they worked their butts off.

Summer came around. The factory was always hot from the ovens heating sheets of acrylic and was hotter in the summer even with lots of ventilation and fans. The clothing got scantier as the days went by. Calling all the women into the break room, I explained they needed to cover up a bit before some man stuck his hand into a saw. “Ladies, men can’t help looking. Please keep that in mind as you dress for work”. My words seem to be well received and I was rather pleased with myself. Little did I know.

Two days later the production foreman said she and the other women wanted a meeting. Oh, shit! Gathering in the break room, she asked me if I approved of their clothing? Seeing them all in sweatshirts and T-shirts with sleeves I said, “Yes, that is perfect’.

“Good”, she said. “We wouldn’t want you to be distracted”.

She gave a signal and all the women raised their tops. All were braless.  My reaction, and shocked expression, must have had the desired effect judging from the gales of laughter.

My blog title has been earned many times over.