Join Me in Dissing Google

I am not one to get riled up very often.

But this morning, while reading the Wall Street Journal, I came across the article at this link:
 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

The article says that Google has been, secretly I assume, inserting code into the Safari web browser that allows Google to bypass the privacy settings you have set on your browser and track your browsing habits.  Apparently the Safari browser in iPhones and iPads is the primary target of Google's mischief.

I value my privacy.  Not that anyone would want to track the browsing habits of a person my age and lifestyle -  I belong to a very small market segment - but I still value my privacy.  Google has invaded that, probably not  for the first time.

Fighting back, I switched my primary search engine to Bing, and will in time close my gmail account, and quit using Google calendar as the way to synchronize between my iPhone and iPad.

Now I know Google will not feel the impact of my change.  If a groundswell of public opinion turns against Google though, perhaps they will feel the impact.

Rise up Americans!

A New Leaf

For the last few years I have been hanging out, lazy, not working hard, drinking too much coffee...

Something changed in me over the last two weeks though, and I am energized to do more, stretch myself, get busy. Not the stretch of 20 to 30 years ago, but a kinder, gentler stretch appropriate for my age. Tearing around the country on airplanes no longer excites me!

Why, all of a sudden, am I doing this? I know, and will let you wonder.

Missing the satisfaction felt in the past, perhaps, is a driver. A little more money and feeling good about myself, are also drivers.

In addition to advising and mentoring owners of small businesses, I will seek engagements in business research and analysis. Frankly, I am an excellent business analyst. I enjoy the work and feel good about my ability. I'm not quitting as a small business advisor and mentor. In fact, in the next month to six weeks I will present a workshop for business owners. (Get your tickets now!)

Life offers more than hanging out and being lazy. I will grab some!

Comments and suggestions are invited.

My Diabetic Dog

Have you ever lived with a diabetic dog?

Neither had I until about six months ago, at which time my dog Combo was diagnosed with diabetes. She had been moping around a little, not keeping up on hikes, looking bad (according to neighbors) and just plain “off” a little. I also noticed the water bowls needed filling much more frequently than in the past, a diabetes symptom but something I had assumed was because of the hot weather.

After the neighbor's comment, and thinking about the water she drank, I took Combo to the vet. A test revealed sky-high glucose readings in her blood, and so I started living with and treating a diabetic dog.

Essentially that means giving her insulin shots every 12 h ours, jabbing her before breakfast to draw blood, testing it in a meter, and feeding her expensive prescription food.

Between the cost of syringes, insulin, test strips and food, the bill runs about $80 to $100 a month. That is after the original expense of some $600 for the veterinarian, including various blood and urine testing, weekly blood tests while we adjusted her insulin dose, exams and whatever. The glucose test meter was kindly given to me by a neighbor whose diabetic dog had died from the disease. Otherwise another $150 or so would have been needed.

Cost aside, Combo, approaching her eighth birthday, now is more or less her normal self – and that in itself justifies the cost.  She is a great friend, and would be sorely missed if she was not with me.  And, after all, when I bought her at the animal shelter in Arizona, I agreed to take care of her (for better, for worse, etc.)

Now, she squeaks only about once every two weeks when I inject insulin, and no longer hides behind the bed when I get the glucose meter from the drawer.

I have arranged my schedule to be home for her shots every twelve hours.  That is the hardest part of the program!

But Combo is good, and we are happy.

The Consulting World

Years ago I earned a nice income from consulting.  I left that world, though, in 2003 when offered the job as CFO of a small electronic components company.  It did not take long for me to realize, again, that going to the office, at more or less the same time every day, did little to stimulate or satisfy my psyche.

It took a good bit longer for me to decide to leave the company, which I did three years later.  Then I moved to Denver, and then Boulder, assuming my consulting practice could be re-started without much problem. 

Bad assumption!

First, although I had good contacts in Phoenix, I had practically none in Boulder and Denver.  Second, I seemed to have grown considerable older, and only slightly smarter.  Third, 90% of the executives to whom I was introduced were about 25 years younger than me.  And then, I finally realized, finding consulting engagements at age 65+ is even more difficult than finding a good job at that age.

I did find low priced, somewhat uninteresting work.  Nothing else came my way.

After simplifying my lifestyle, reducing expenses, keeping the old car, etc. I was able to live on the work I could get, plus a boost from Social Security.  Not being very busy, I felt semi-retired.

Most people thought I had either fully retired or otherwise disappeared.

Now I am moving out of semi-retirement.  No, not to full retirement, but back into the fray as a consultant.  We old farts have the advantage of great business wisdom, and I will promote it.

The focus: Business Intelligence.   No, unlike Military Intelligence, an oxymoron, Business Intelligence is information, systematically collected and analyzed, and provided to clients of all sorts for all sorts of purposes. Is that vague enough?

If after six months I am still not busy and continue to work for low fees, I promise to fully retire, burn my shingle, and go live with family or friends.

Any suggestions, other than "Don't do it." are welcome.  Referrals are even better.

Your good wishes will boost my morale.

Later Model Wheels

Over the last three months I have agonized over spending money on my old car versus trading it in for a later, different model.

The latter won. Last week I traded my trusty but lately unreliable, 10 year old, fast and fun car, when running, for a three year newer vehicle.

The not so new one, a 2005 Subaru Forester, like the old car, is fun to drive too, in a different way. I doubt it will go 105 mph like my old one, but it will go in the snow, unlike my old one. The old car had leather seats and many fancy options, but took two or three tries to get into my garage. The Forester, the plain version, has cloth seats and goes into the garage the first try.

In all, the trade-off makes sense. People my age should not drive 105mph. I will miss that excitement, and may live a little longer for missing it. I also may live a little longer by having all wheel drive. Living in Colorado it makes sense to have a car that goes in the snow. I remember the 360 degree turn I spun through on packed, slick snow in the old car. Now that was exciting. However, I would rather not do that again, and perhaps the Forester will keep me from it.

Also remembered is the terrible drive over Berthoud Pass in a storm, making it safely through a white-knuckle trip in the old two wheel drive, rear wheel drive vehicle without a positive drive axle. I saw no cars for an hour as I crept through the pass. Fortunately I learned snow driving at a young age, otherwise I may still be in the wrecked car at the bottom of some embankment of the Berthoud Pass road. Should I get into that winter driving situation again, in the Forester, I will fear no evil. Frankly, I would rather not get into the situation.

I will not miss filling the old car's gas tank, every 10 days, for $50 or more. I will enjoy filling the Forester on about the same schedule, but for $35. 

The dogs like the new vehicle. The rear space is adequate, and lower to the ground, making for easier injumping (is that a word?). From time to time Cue, my 78 pound Chocolate Lab, refuses the jump, like a horse in a jumping show, and I lift her into the car. Maybe I won't need to do that so often. And the lift IS shorter. She is not lighter though.

So, if all goes well, the Forester will last at least 10 years.

I will too.

The Giant's Fall

No, this is not about football and the New York Giants.

This is about the fall of the great Eastman Kodak Company.  The company, founded in 1880, that was for so long the king of film photography; the company that introduced the Kodak Brownie camera in 1900; the company that developed the first digital camera and could have marketed it in 1993, but did not; and the company that lost its way when the paradigm changed from film to digital photography, today filed for bankruptcy.

I could philosophize about changing paradigms, and how companies deeply entrenched in the old paradigm, usually are not the leaders in the new paradigm.  But I will not.

Kodak drew me into photography.  The Kodak Brownie was my first camera (not in 1900, but in the late 1940's.)  The Brownie introduced me to amateur photography.  I can remember using my Brownie, shooting through the window, early in my photography life, taking a photo of snow piled high on tree branches.  That was in January, 1949.  I remember the picture, and the month and year, because the camera was a gift, and with it I took every possible picture!  If I dig deeply enough in old boxes I may even find the picture.

In college, with a more sophisticated Kodak camera, I met the late Joel Levinson.  Our shared interest in photography may have been the initial bond as Joel and I became close friends for life.  (Joel became an truly fine photographer, leaving me far behind.  He had an artistic eye, great camera skill, and a deft processing technique.)

Since then I have owned many other cameras, processed my own black and white film, and produced a few good pictures.  Kodak drew me in. 

My thanks to them.  I am saddened to see them bankrupt.

Happy Trails.

Colorado throws magnificent days at us from time to time, and today (Sunday) was one of them.

Saturday an inch or so of snow fell, Saturday night was cold and clear, today the thermometer hovers near 32 degrees, the sun shines intensely, and the wind is calm. 

Perfect!

The dogs and I took a walk – about three miles in open space where the they allowed off-leash, only a little ice shows itself; the snow soft; and the mud frozen. 

Perfect!

Combo

Cue

Combo, a seriously mixed mutt (or as she prefers, “One of a kind,”) and Cue, a chocolate lab my daughter resCUEd and gave to me, seem to love these walks. They stay near me, usually, because I carry a bit of their dog foods for rewards when they occasionally obey a command. They do not obey instructions all the time, especially if something especially obnoxious becomes available to roll in, or if the scent  of anything possibly edible wafts through the air. (Even more obnoxious is the gunk that Combo rolls in and Cue eats.  Yuk!)

My dogs are my pals.  Of course I have people pals too.  Not like the dogs though.  I grew up with dogs - they are part of my life. 

Almost perfect!

My iPhone captured several pictures along the way. One is a panorama of the Flatirons, our local mountains. You won't need descriptions of the other shots, and yes, those black things in the lower photo really are cows.

The Flatirons

The road

Happy trails.

K-cups Versus Recycling

K-cups are wonderful.

They make good coffee. Quickly, without a mess. They are easy to store.

Unfortunately...

They don't recycle.

The cup is a non-recyclable plastic. The coffee inside doesn't recycle. The aluminum foil lid does, but that is all.

Once again we gain convenience while draining the resources of the world.

However...

Let's insist on having K-cups we can compost. Of course, the coffee inside the K-cup is already compostable. If the cup itself, and the lid, were made of compostable material, we could throw the whole thing into a compost pile and make something useful of it.

I am sending a letter to coffee companies and to K-cup manufacturers and fillers.

Americans, unite, rise up, insist on compostable K-cups!

PS: My spell-checker does not include compostable or compostible. Suggestions?

K-cup Coffee

Recently a good friend surprised me with the gift of a Keurig coffee maker. Very nice!

For those of you not familiar with the Keurig system, coffee for the Keurig is contained in K-cups – small plastic cups containing a single serving of ground coffee and sealed with an aluminum foil top. It's a great system. The Keurig machine rumbles around a bit, coughs, and pours out freshly brewed coffee in about 90 seconds. There is a large variety of coffee types, flavors, strengths, including decaf. Many teas are available as well. I like the sweet Chai tea latte (sweet being the operative word.) Each morning I select a coffee or tea, depending on my mood, the amount of sunshine, the depth of snow, the work ahead of me, the cleanliness/neatness of my condo, etc. So far, in my cabinet are three regular coffees, one decaf, and one tea.

Being a former, mostly recovered engineer, I calculated the cost of a K-cup versus a regular cup of coffee, brewed from ground premium/gourmet beans (not including the cost of electricity to grind them.)  Depending on K-cup brand and flavor, and where purchased, the K-cup cost per cup ranges from a penny or two up to $0.20 more than my home ground coffee. Essentially, using K-cups can cost (me) about $150 a year. I can deal with it.

Summarizing, K-cups are convenient, offer many choices, do not spill grounds on the kitchen counter like my grinder, require no external filter and seem generally wonderful.

Next time I will write about the somewhat less than wonderful environmental aspect of K-cups, and discuss the dilemma posed.

Snow and Wind

Six days ago some 16" of new snow fell on about five inches remaining from the last few weeks.  We had a white Christmas, for sure.

Today the temperature is around 50 degrees (how do I make the little degree symbol?) and the wind is blowing almost as hard.  Gusting to 40mph. 

Snow is not so bad.  Wind is so bad.  Inside it is noisy (makes me feel cozy) but outside it is not fun.  I hate the word "hate" but I do hate the wind.  Also, raw eel, which I never eat when I am out for sushi.

Back to the weather though, it is one of the things I like about living in Boulder, because if I don't like it today, tomorrow it will be different.  

Is variety really the spice of life?  Probably so, except for eel.