Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

I think…therefore I’m dangerous.

Heat

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Phoenix residents snicker.

A heat wave is spreading across the country, giving people in the west, midwest, and northeast a taste of what Phoenix residents experience from June through September every single year.

Heat is serious business in northern latitudes. Many homes were built long before central air conditioning became a “necessity” of American life. The “lucky” people in those older homes have window air conditioning units that they install and remove on the same schedule they use to store and unpack their winter clothes. In some areas of the northwest, air conditioning is rare — since serious heat waves are also rare. And in low income homes, even the window air conditioner isn’t an option since the occupants often can’t afford to purchase such a luxury item. People are being overcome by the heat, getting sick, and dying.

To make matters worse, air conditioners use power and the power suppliers in these areas aren’t accustomed to meeting the additional demands of air conditioner users. Brownouts and rolling blackouts are all too real. You know things are bad when the media recommends unplugging cell phone chargers and televisions when not in use to limit the amount of “vampire power” these devices suck from the grid — an estimated 10% of all power use.

Meanwhile, Phoenix temperatures are below normal, in the high 90s and low 100s. The other day, it was hotter in South Dakota than it was in Phoenix. How’s that for a switch? It has some people in Phoenix snickering. After all, we tease people up north about their snowfalls and low temperatures in winter and they tease us about our hellish summers. Now we can tease them about hellish summers, too.

I’m still up at Howard Mesa where I went to escape WIckenburg’s heat — which is slightly more bearable than Phoenix’s. It’s 20° cooler here — in the 70s every day lately. Relaxing in the sun is actually something I like to do here. The other evening, as I lounged reading a book, I kind of wished I had a little blanket to tuck around me. (My blood certainly has thinned out since I left New Jersey 10 years ago.)

Yet every day, as I listen to the news on NPR, I hear about the “sizzling” heat in one place or another and the emergency cooling centers and the efforts to check on elderly people living alone. Hard to think about such heat when you’re not experiencing it.

I remember those 80/80 days in New York — that’s 80° with 80% humidity. That heat was brutal and I’d prefer a spot of shade in Phoenix in August over that. Now it’s over 100° in New York. Those people must be melting.

One thing for sure: none of my family or friends back east are teasing me about the Arizona heat right now.

Working on a Schedule

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Making a plan and sticking to it.

I just made the 3-hour drive from Wickenburg to Howard Mesa. Once again, I was driving Mike’s big Chevy diesel truck and pulling the horse trailer with both horses inside. Alex the bird was riding up front with me (in his lucite box, of course) and Jack the dog had the whole back seat area to himself, with the seat pushed up out of his way.

My last trip up here was interrupted by some personal business down in the Phoenix area. Mike and I had to load all the critters up and bring them home. There was nothing pressing this past week at the office — I’m between computer books and don’t need to start my next one (a revision of an Excel for Windows book) for about a month. But in all honesty, I dreaded making that long trip again. Finally, today I could put it off no longer. Mike went to work and I loaded everything up again. (And believe me, it isn’t easy hooking up a horse trailer by yourself, with no one to help you get the ball right under the hitch. The trailer weighs about 3500 empty, so nudging it with your foot is not an option.) We left Wickenburg at 7:45 AM.

I made two stops along the way.

The first was at the Cornerstone Bakery in Yarnell. This is a great little family-owned bakery that’s generally open on weekdays until the fresh-baked goodies run out.There’s seating inside and out and it’s a really pleasant place, with good food. Today, I picked up four things: a slice of pumpkin roll to eat in the car, a huge cinnamon bun, an “energy bar,” and a piece of peach bread pudding for dessert tonight.

The second stop was at the Safeway Supermarket gas station in Chino Valley. There I paid only (read that word with sarcasm) $3.01 per gallon for diesel. That’s still at least 8 cents per gallon cheaper than Wickenburg.) The pump shuts off at $75 automatically and that’s a good thing. Next week, if I take the truck into Flagstaff, I’ll fill up at the Maverick station on the west side of town, near Home Depot. Last week I bought diesel there for less than $3.00 per gallon.

On the way, I listened to podcasts. I went through all the NPR Business Story of the Day stories on my iPod — about a week’s worth. One of the stories was about Best Buy, which is trying a new working schedule system. Rather than forcing their office workers to sit at a desk from nine to five every day, they established the amount of work each employee must finish in a week and let their employees work any time they want — even at home.

It’s about time someone figured it out.

I played the corporate game for eight years — first with the New York City Comptroller’s Office Bureau of Financial Audit (5 years) and then with Automatic Data Processing (3 years) as an Auditor and Financial Analyst. People would show up for work on time then sit in their cubes or offices most of the day, with breaks for coffee, lunch, and bull and gossip sessions. It was difficult to get much done if you were a popular person around the office. People would be constantly coming to your door to chat about the weekend or what whosherface in the whatsit department was saying behind her boss’s back or the latest company-wide rumor or “How about those Mets!” Then there were always the people who were at their desks at 5:30 or 6:00 PM so that the boss would see them “working hard” long after “quitting time.” I wasn’t one of those people. I worked 8 to 4 when I worked for the City of New York and when I wasn’t on an audit in the field, I worked 8 to 4 at ADP. The only reason I knew about those people is when I occasionally had to stay late for a meeting. (I had one boss at ADP who liked to call meetings that started at 4:30 PM. Sometimes on Fridays.)

When I left Corporate America for a freelance career, I didn’t have to work on a schedule. I could work whenever I wanted to. The trick, of course, was to get the work done. When you’re a freelancer, if you don’t work, you don’t make money.

I’m fortunate in that I can get most things done very quickly. I routinely start article assignments on the day they’re due and turn them in before 2 PM. If I could write and sell one article a day, I’d make a very nice living — that’s because I’d write a week’s worth in 3 days and spend the other 4 days doing something else.

(I used to write articles for Informit when I worked for Papillon at the Grand Canyon. Every day I was a spare pilot, I’d sit in the “training room” with my laptop and knock off a couple of articles between control holds and lunchtime flights. I made more money on the days I was a spare pilot than on the days I actually flew all day. Go figure.)

People who can’t get things done at a reasonable pace or can’t get started because they have some kind of discipline problem should not be freelancers. In fact, they’d starve if they didn’t have a regular job.

Of course a freelance career has other challenges — like getting the work to do. Some people can’t do that either. It’s not always as easy at it might seem to be your own boss.

This Best Buy thing is good — if managers can set reasonable goals and employees can get the work done on time. Imagine the benefit to a single parent with a child in half-day kindergarten. Mom (or Dad) can work her (or his) butt off while the kid’s in school, then spend the rest of the day doing things with the kid. And what about those folks who do their best work late in the day or at night? Or people who live 60 miles from the office (as I did for a short while) and are driving a gas-guzzling SUV? (Don’t look at me; my car got 30 MPG, even back in 1992.)

Imagine the savings to businesses that adopt programs like this. If employees can work at home, they can reduce the amount of office space needed. The cost savings are incredible. Employees would save on commuting costs if they came to the office less often. (My sister spends over $250/month to commute from Hackensack, NJ, to her office on lower Broadway in Manhattan.) They’d also save money by buying less work clothes. Employers could even hire new people at a slightly lower wage because the employee’s cost of living would decrease — and his or her lifestyle would improve.

In the Best Buy piece, the reporter said that people had actually turned down promotions because the new job wasn’t on the new work program. That’s saying something.

It’s a tough pill for some managers to swallow. Managers are accustomed to seeing their employees at work — or at least being in touch with them directly throughout the workday. Some managers assume that employees aren’t capable of getting the job done without being watched over. For some employees, they might be right. Employees who need a babysitter to watch them work at the office shouldn’t be on a program like this. Only good workers who can discipline themselves to work when they have to and get the job done should be rewarded with this ultimate grant of flexibility.

I’m all for flexible work programs and telecommuting. Anything to give families more time together, give people more time for healthful recreational activities, and reduce our use of fossil fuels and highway traffic. (You would not believe how bad traffic in the Phoenix area can get; and I thought New York was bad!)

I hope Best Buy succeeds in their efforts and makes itself a model for other businesses.

In the meantime, the story gave me some food for thought. While it’s true that I don’t have access to the Internet at Howard Mesa, I do have my laptop. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t produce something while I’m up here getting away from the heat. So I set a goal for myself to write a how-to piece or other blog entry for this site at least once a day. And at least two articles for publication per week. When I meet my quota, I can goof off.

I pulled though the gates to my place a little after noon today. I unloaded the horses and let them loose to graze on the 40 acres of high desert grass. I set up the hose to fill their water trough. I unloaded the car, put Alex in his cage, and gave Jack some water. Then I made lunch. As I sit at the table writing this, a thunderstorm is moving in. It’s only 75° outside, I’m the only one around for miles, and I’m at peace with the world.

Tomorrow I’ll get to work.

As for this and other blog entries…don’t’ expect to see them appear on the site the day they’re written. I have a 20-mile drive to the nearest wi-fi hotspot. I’ll come down off the mesa every few days to send in my daily dispatches.

So I guess I’ll be commuting once in a while after all.

[composed at the top of a mesa in the middle of nowhere with ecto]

The Wisdom of Warren Buffett

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Why it’s a good thing that the second richest man in the world is giving his fortune to the richest man in the world.

Warren Buffett, the 75-year-old billionaire who made his fortune as an investor, has given $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. A very interesting article on Slate.com, “Wealthy and Wise” by Jacob Weisberg, provides some of Buffett’s rationale for doing such a thing.

Two things from the article that really struck me are:

Buffett’s views on the political subject of wealth are deeply American. Wealth like his can be justified temporarily as an expression of how much opportunity our social system affords. But passing it down across generations, he says, “flies in the face of a meritocratic society” and threatens to create the sort of aristocracy the founding fathers sought to prevent.

and

One of his [Buffett’s] aphorisms is that you should leave your kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.

I couldn’t agree more.

Ground Zero, In Passing

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I finally pass by an area I’d been avoiding.

We passed by Ground Zero in New York City the other day while going to the movies. I’d been avoiding lower Manhattan — something that’s pretty easy to do when you live 2,400 miles away and visit New York infrequently — since the World Trade Center’s twin towers disappeared from the skyline.

Ground ZeroBut Sunday I was there.

It’s amazing how much you can see of the area with the buildings gone. I could see Trinity Church and the old Woolworth Building (the tallest building in the world for 13 years, topped by the Chrysler Building and later the Empire State Building in 1934). We were on the west side of Ground Zero; evidently, the tourist stuff is on the east side. From our view, it just looked like a big construction site. Very big — four city blocks. Of course, I didn’t get a picture of it from the theater’s windows; the shot here is from the car.

I feel kind of weird about the way Ground Zero is being treated as a tourist attraction. I hope most people are very respectful to the site in remembrance of the thousands who died there. I don’t think that people who don’t know New York can understand the significance of the attack and buildings’ collapse. Lower Manhattan is occupied by literally hundreds of thousands of people on a typical workday morning. Those buildings were each 1/4 mile tall. If they had fallen any way but straight down, the body count and damage to New York would have been far, far worse. Any New Yorker can tell you how lucky the city is that the buildings came almost straight down. And any New Yorker who was in lower Manhattan that day can tell you, without exaggeration, how lucky they are to be alive.