Conflicted

We were driving back to the cottage from Country Dairy today when we happened upon a truck moving slowly down the road. It looked as though the driver had a load of metal to recycle, and he was moving cautiously. As we waited for a safe opportunity to pass, I noticed a "Tapout" sticker in his back window. In the event that you have no idea what Tapout is all about, just think about the guys you see pummeling each other on national television from time to time. Someone has to make gear and sponsored clothing for these guys to wear while they attempt to inflict closed head injuries upon each other. That's what Tapout does.

When we were able to safely pass the truck we did so, waving casually as we eased by. Once we were safely around him, I glanced in my rear-view mirror and noticed the truck's vanity plate. It read "Jesus".

I had forgotten that Jesus was sponsored by Tapout.

We already worked it out!

We decided it would be nice to get out of town for a couple of days, so we asked Mom if we could go to the lake house. She said sure, and here we are. Last summer Mom had a sign made that reads "Evy's Lake House". The sign is mounted prominently in front of the cottage.

Evelyn has decided that it means that the lake house is literally hers.This evening we were brushing her teeth when I said something about "Grandma's Lake House". Evelyn retorted "It's MY lake house." I suggested to her that perhaps she should work that out with Grandma as I walked out of the bathroom.

From around the corner came a defiant, impatient voice that declared "We already worked it out!"

Disciples of the Free Market

We’ve all heard of the wonders of a free market. It regulates prices, produces superior products, and protects consumers from lousy products. In theory, I’m in agreement. In practice, I’m going to point something out using Michael Porter’s five forces.

Let’s consider an example. Restaurants in Eaton Rapids where you can sit down, eat, and get a beer or glass of wine with dinner. There is the English Inn north of town, however it’s very expensive and Evelyn isn’t quite ready to go there. We’ve got Abie’s, which is completely inappropriate for Evelyn. Then there’s Darb’s. That’s effectively the only local choice. This week we went in and sat for 20 minutes before anyone came to our table. Awesome. They are always full, even though their service frequently leaves something to be desired. They are conveniently located. They are also the only “family” restaurant left in town. As a result, there are few substitutes. It took Darb’s five years to turn a profit when they came to town, which is part of the reason that there aren’t more restaurants. They have to lose money for five years first. That locks out new entrants. There is very low rivalry. In this case, the bargaining power of customers is almost non-existent. We will probably continue to reward their poor service because we’re too lazy to drive to Lansing or Mason.

A second example is the Internet company we use at the office. They are reasonably reliable and offer co-location services that we use. Once again, their sales and service are terrible. We pay them $1100 per month for services, and their salesman returns my calls after three days. At that point, I’ll ask my question. He typically returns an answer after two weeks or so, once I’ve left him a half-dozen voicemails. More often than not, he answers a question completely unrelated to what I want to know.

In the past, they tried selling us a fiber-optic connection to their office. The value wasn’t quite right for us then, but we’re about to buy a new phone system. If we roll our phone, Internet, and co-location traffic onto the same piece of fiber, we may be in a position to get higher service levels at a lower cost. The only problem is that if we do that, I’m going to have to deal with our sales representative more. I refuse to encourage this company’s insistence on making us use a sales representative who is probably too overwhelmed to handle his territory.

Much like the restaurant situation, there are very few vendors in Lansing that can provide the array of services that our current vendor can provide. Barriers to entry are high. Switching costs are tremendous. There must be tremendous economies of scale in order for a competitor to make an entry into this market. In other words, the only companies which are likely to enter the market are ginormous, just the kind of companies that aren’t well known for their superior service.

Perhaps competition regulated markets in the past, but will it in the future? It seems likely to me that specialization, economies of scale, and available funding will regulate the markets of the future much more than customers will.

Karma

I’ve done an awful lot to damage my karma. As a teenager, I was incredibly anti-social. As a matter of fact, I reviled in all things obnoxious. As an adult, I’ve tried to make up for my teenage years. I volunteer at Big Brothers\Big Sisters. I make a point of trying to be an understanding father, husband, and coworker. Sometimes it seems as though I’m making some karmic progress. Then there are other days.

This was a really long week. I came home sick on Monday afternoon. Aimee’s aunt passed away Wednesday morning. Friday we discovered a problem with a summary table that a consultant built for us at the office, and earlier today (Saturday) the firewall decided to stop working. Aimee is very, very sick today.

So, at 1:30 in the afternoon, when Aimee was finally able to rest, I sat down to work on the pile of schoolwork that I needed to get done. Just as I was easing into my chair I heard an all-too-familiar sound behind me. Perhaps the cat was identifying with Aimee; sharing her pain. Maybe the cat is evil. Perhaps my karma is getting back in touch with me.

As the cat started to settle in for a nap on Aimee’s office chair, she decided that it would be a good idea to lean over the side of the chair and vomit all over the floor. She’s a really big cat, and she can eat a lot of food. This was thoroughly evidenced by the magnitude of the mess she made all over the floor. She looked proudly down at her work, vurped a couple of times, and then nestled in and promptly fell asleep.

Compromise

Most of us are forced to compromise at one point or another, because that's the the expectation of our society. Compromise is, however, the worst form of conflict resolution because everyone loses something. Instead of arguing through the differences and devising a rock solid solution, each party gives up their claim to perfection. It ensures sub optimality.

Little Again

“How did this end up behind the toilet?” Aimee asked, holding a splintered piece of wood up for me to see. She did not ask what the piece of wood was, because she already knew what it was. Her only query was in regard to the catastrophic event which ended with the wood in such an unusual place. At this point, my ruse had unraveled.

I learned a lot this week. Check all your servos before attempting a flight. If it looks like a part is missing, it probably is. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve had an Esky Lama V4 helicopter for quite a while, and I’m reasonably good at flying it. I also have an Esky Belt CP V2 which I am terrified of. My classification method for model helicopters is to base their class on the cost of a crash. A Lama 4 is a $20 crash helicopter. The Belt CP V2 is a $50 crash helicopter. In spite of numerous attempts at flying the Belt CP, I have never gotten it to so much as hover without a spectacular crash ensuing.

Despite my terror, the helicopter was a graduation gift from my brother and sister-in-law, and it would be an insult to them for me not to master it. Keeping that in mind, I spent hours this week learning how to maintain blade pitch, align the flybar, fine tune the gyro, and make the best use of the remote control.

As it turns out, our new house has a wonderful heli-pad and workshop. We call it “the pool table”. For the Lama, it’s perfect. For the Belt CP, it’s probably best not to use the pool table for a heli pad. During my many tuning attempts, though, I needed to spin it up to check things out, and the table worked great. Aimee crabbed pretty regularly when I did this with the larger helicopter because it’s, well, huge. It’s got a 22” span on the rotor. I assured her that she need not worry.

This morning in the shower I had an “Aha!” moment. Rather than running the motor at low speed with lots of blade pitch, maximum stability could be best achieved by running the motor at a very high speed with a very small amount of pitch. This would create a gyroscopic stabilizer effect, like a spinning bike wheel. As soon as Aimee left for the store, I put my plan into action.

I set the pitch on the remote to 0 and spooled the motor up to about 50%. That doesn’t sound like much, but the main rotor blades were moving plenty fast. The torsion was tremendous, and the helicopter tried spinning in circles. This should have warned me that something was very wrong. Instead of turning the model off to consider why it was turning so much, I decided instead to find out if I finally had the pitch right on the rotor. I grabbed the tail to stop the helicopter from spinning and turned up the speed just a hair. It started taking off in earnest, which would be a bad thing in the house, so I tried to shut it down. In my panic, though, I pushed the throttle the wrong way and instead set it to full! Within a fraction of a second my arm twisted up over my head and the helicopter self-destructed into the ceiling, demolishing a hanging light in the process.

“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”

Aimee was right, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. I cleaned up the mess as best I could, just like any kid would do after destroying something while Mom is out of the house. It was only after I began taking a broken parts inventory that I noticed two things. 1) The helicopter is missing a part, and has been since the day it arrived. In fact, I had often wondered why the post coming out of the swash plate didn’t seem to attach to anything. 2) The tail servo is dead, which explains why the confounded machine was so intent on spinning in circles. Had I looked into both of these problems earlier, I probably wouldn’t have had to tell my wife how a shredded rotor blade came to rest  behind the toilet in a bathroom fifteen feet from our pool table. Yes, I learned a lot this week.

Enough?

Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!


As it turns out, this is also good advice when dealing with contractors: "Will you need more outlets in your garage?"

"Yes!"

"Do you expect to use more than 15 amps between your kitchen and garage?"

"YES!"

"Do you need more than 15 amps just for your garage?"

"YES!"

You can stop saying yes when they stop asking questions. Otherwise, just rinse and repeat. Else you might find yourself in the un-enviable position of trying to run a mill, its stepper motors, control PC, a small space heater, garage door opener, air compressor, and kitchen all at the same time on a 15 amp circuit. You can image how well that ended!

When I opened the panel and saw the 15 amp breaker, I was once again tempted to track down the scurvy rat that built our house so I could throttle him. He's a contractor though, which means he'd probably take me. A shame.

Location:S Walnut St,Lansing,United States