Reconnecting on Facebook

You don't get to be 50 years old without meeting a few people along the way...and some of them you might even like to visit with again...if only you could reconnect with them.

So, a week or so ago I joined the Facebook crowd. It took a little (okay, a lot of) help from my son Derek, but "presto" and I'm there with the hip, cool crowd. - creating photo albums, instant messaging, wall-to-wall conversations, etc.

Well, the saying goes, if you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Two weeks ago, my only tool was a blog -- which allows me to unburden myself of these majestic thoughts -- but now I have a new tool. This one helps me reconnect with old high school and college buddies.

Once upon a time, I was young and playing tuba in the high school band. In fact, I played the tuba for six years...and for all six years the boy playing next to me was Anthony Perrella. This friendship was made even more interesting because when my dad was in high school, one of his best friends was Anthony's dad. In fact, they were boxers together on the Roundup team.

Anyway, I reconnected with Anthony through Facebook...and I got a call from him last night when I had come home early from work. Anthony is now in Billings and works for a company that is a contractor for the lignite-based power plants in North Dakota and the Tesoro refinery north of Mandan.

I also reconnected with my favorite roommate when I went to college in Missoula. His name is Tony Apa. Since getting his baccalaureate degree from the University of Montana in wildlife biology, he has earned his master's and doctorate degrees as well.

I never would have known this about Tony -- who now lives in Colorado -- if it hadn't been for Facebook.

So, new tool, new reacquaintenances. Remember the Oldsmobile commercial that said, "It's not just your father's car." Well, when it comes to Facebook, maybe the slogan should be, "It's not just for your kids anymore."

Or in the words of Seinfeld's Kramer, "I'm out there Jerry...and I'm loving it."

Thank you fellow bloggers for your support....

On Saturday morning I picked up my second win with my Toastmasters speech about customer service. Once again I was the only contestant.

But what made the contest so special was the support shone by my fellow bloggers - Randy Meissner of "More Words to Ponder"; Gary Van Dyke of "What a World"; and DVD of "Number One Cubs Fan." And while he doesn't have his own blog, my brother Ar Vee -- who is a frequent commenter on almost everyone else's blogs -- was also in attendance.

I now advance to the divisional competition which will be at Basin Electric's headquarters in a couple of weeks. This will give me the home court advantage as my Toastmasters meetings are generally at Basin Electric.

I don't know why there are no other contestants. When I was in Toastmasters 10 years ago, participation in these contests was a lot better. Somehow, they must have fallen out of vogue. Well, I hope I'm leading by example and that next year there are several more participants.

Contests are important because they are not only fun, but the competition helps you improve. You can watch how someone better than you performs and then try to learn from them.

Even though I was the only contestant on Saturday, I felt great about the win because I thought I did a great job....and in the end, you are really only competing against yourself.

Now...onward and upward. The photo is of me with my brother Randy (Ar Vee) and my dad helping me hold up the hardware -- first place!

The purple paint was peeling

For give me, I couldn't resist the alliteration. Tonight after work, Grandpa and I removed all the Christmas lights from the house and fence that had been up there since about Thanksgiving. I can't remember if we put them up before or after. But I remember that they had been up a long, long time.

We wanted to open our front windows this weekend and couldn't open them very far because of the little colored lights that we're hanging over the window.

A couple of nights ago, I tried to pick up an extension cord that had sat in the snow for four months and found out that although the snow had melted, it was still frozen to the ground.

Well, tonight was the night. The lights on the window came down and the extension got rolled up and stuck in a box in the garage for next Christmas.

One thing I noticed, however, is that the purple Christmas lights on the fence were all starting to peel. The glass wasn't peeling, the purple paint on the lights were. Now what caused it flake off? Was it the heat? Was it poor paint? Or was it the fact that they had to endure one of the toughest winters on record?

I don't know the answer, but I know we'll have to replace the purple lights before next year.

In case you forgot what our house looked like when it was decorated and deluged with snow (more alliteration), I'ved posted this picture. I think there are even a couple of visible purple lights before they lost their paint.

Please, Lord, no more winters like this one.

Grandpa and I were so delighted to have the darn Christmas lights down that we celebrated with a dinner out at Bonanza!

We're getting old honey...

Last night as Belinda and I stood in our driveway waving goodbye to Derek and Camila...the truth hit me again. I'm getting old.

The first time I remember waving goodbye to someone...and really hating to see them go...was when we lived on the hill in Roundup. Janet and her husband David had come to visit from Mankato, Minnesota, where he attended seminary. At the time, I had no idea where Mankato was. It seemed like it was on the other side of the moon. Having driven there a time or two from Bismarck, it is a long ways away...but even longer if you were driving from Roundup to Mankato.

Anyway, I remember standing there waving goodbye with the rest of my family. I had a little tear in my eye as my oldest sister left us again after too short a visit.

Jump ahead a few years to when our kids were little and we were the ones visiting my folks in Roundup or Belinda's folks in Glendive. Now it was me packing the luggage and the kids in the car and heading east...always east. I have always liked traveling west better. I didn't care if the setting sun was in my eyes for the last 100 miles of the trip, or even if I hit every bug between Forsyth and Roundup, I liked heading west the best.

And yet at the end of every visit, there was always that time when Grandma and Grandpa would come outside and wave goodbye to us.

Now yesterday it was Belinda and I staying home and Derek and Camila leaving. But not before I got a couple of nice hugs from Derek and we had eaten some apple pan dowdy.

Yet, I still had a tear in my eye and the thought -- that visit was just too short. Nothing had changed in 40 years.

This morning in the funny papers, read the "Family Circle." One of the kids has curled up in his mother's lap and says "Thank goodness we're not too old for hugs."

Amen and amen.

This Thursday my brother Randy and his family are coming for a visit. I already know it's going to be too short. And I'm not looking forward to waving goodbye. I miss them already and they haven't even arrived yet.

And then I look at Grandpa. How many times has he waved goodbye. When my mom was dying, he slept in a bed next to mom's hospital bed and held her hand night after night...until the morning of June 19, 2006, when she left Roundup for heaven. That's the goodbye that is going to be the toughest.

Whoops, I'm tearing up again. Well, all we can do is make our welcomes all the more cheery and the time we spend together the best we can.

More Obamanomics - this time cap and trade

Yesterday the President defended his position to support a "cap and trade" mechanism to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In addressing a CEO of a company who said the added costs would hurt his company financially, the president answered in "political speak" saying that the cap and trade system needs to raise money but not punish people. (Our president is a master of the doublespeak. Remember ArVee's band "The Underwater Fire System?" Obama would be all for that.)

Since I know a few things about cap and trade...let me give you my opinion.

First, listing CO2 as a pollutant reminds me of the old pork producers' commercials about calling pork "the other white meat." Remember, that we exhale CO2 and plants use it during photosynthesis to create green leaves and fruits and vegetables.

Second, a cap and trade system raises money by setting a cap on how much CO2 can be produced and then allocations are made as to how much a ton of CO2 is going to cost. As the cap is reduced, presumably the cost of allocations rise. However, the downturn in the economy can turn this scheme on its head. For instance, in Europe, which already has a cap and trade system, the economy is so bad that the allocations sell for a lot less than than they once did. So if the U.S. were to set up a cap and trade today, companies would want to buy "affordable" allocations from European countries who would be more than willing to trade paper for American dollars.

A quote from Dr. Robert Peltier, who is editor of Power magazine, brings this point to light: "How does the president convince voters that shipping boat loads of money to Europe is good for the U.S.? That's a stimulus package we should avoid."

Nevertheless, the U.S. House is already holding hearings on a cap and trade system and a spokesperson for the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office told the subcommittee that reducing nationwide carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent could cost the average household roughly $1,600 annually. "Those price increases would impose a larger burden on low- and moderate-income households than on higher-income households, relative to either their income or total spending," the CBO spokesman said. And it should be noted that the President's plan is to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent, not 15 percent.

Well, one legislator (Jim McDermett, D-Washington) at the committee hearing said that isn't fair, but if utilities are going to insist on passing these hidden costs on to consumers -- like this is first time that has ever happened -- then it is up to government to collect the cap and trade money from everyone and give some of it back to the poor....while using some of it to pay for healthcare reform, education reform, the down trodden, the depressed, the illegal aliens, etc....and maybe even some for the study of rats in San Francisco.

Where have we heard that before? More wealth redistribution.

A better alternative to cap and trade is simply to impose a tiny tax on each ton of carbon. So instead of paying 6.9 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, you would pay 7 cents. Since America uses so much electricity, that little 10th of a cent would represent billions of dollars that could be used to retrofit the 600 coal-based electricity generating stations in the United States with equipment that can capture carbon, build the pipelines to transport it and store the CO2 in deep underground geological formations, such as unmineable coal seams that act as a sponge for the CO2. (A point to remember here is that underneath the two coal seams that are mined near Beulah, North Dakota, lie at least another 17 that are too deep to mine economically.)

When the plants are all retrofitted, the tax can be removed. And the electric utility industry will be making a huge contribution to reducing greenhouse gases -- which is really what Americans want, not wealth redistribution.

However, if cap and trade passes, it will never go away because it will become another government entitlement program to help redistribute wealth from those dead beat millionaires (who farm, own businesses, go to college to hold professional positions at companies and buy stock) to those hard working bums.

I don't believe there is any way for any of us to stop this runaway "cap and trade" train. Not with Obama in the White House along with Pelosi and Reid running the Congress. However, Americans, some of you voted for these folks. So open wide, the medicine tastes pretty bitter....at least to me. And kiss your outdoor barbecue away...it produces CO2.

Woody Allen and "Mad Money" Jim Cramer

Well, I won the club speech contest today...I was the only contestant. Last Friday there were three contestants, but by Monday two dropped out. Must have been a tough weekend.

However, it's good that I thought there would be two additional competitors. Otherwise, I wouldn't have practiced this weekend and my speech wouldn't have been as good. As it was, I practiced last night between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. -- after my nap but before dinner.

Winning (by default) put me in mind of one of my favorite quotes. Director, actor and humorist Woody Allen once said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up."

I can't tell you how many times that has been true in my life. My evaluator thought I did a good job and thanked me for competing. Since I'm the club winner, my next contest is Saturday, March 21st, at 9:30 a.m. in the basement of the Bismarck library.

I doubt I'll be the only contestant there, so I'll have to keep practicing. The hard part now is honing your speech so it gets better, without practicing it so much that you get tired of it. And while Belinda and Scott will probably tire of listening to it, Grandpa will think it's fresh every time he hears it. He's a very appreciative audience.

However, let's return to talking about favorite quotes...although I certainly won't memorize this one...I did find it very telling. As you know, CNBC's Jim Cramer has been critical of late regarding the economic decisions of President Obama and his so-called team of experts. So, this is part of his rebuttal.

President Obama's team, unlike Bush's team, demonstrates a thinness of skin that shocks me. When I somewhat obviously and empirically judged that the populist Obama administration is exacerbating the crisis with its budget and policies, as evidenced by the incredible decline in the averages since his inauguration, I was met immediately with condescension and ridicule rather than constructive debate or even just benign dismissal. I said to myself, "What the heck? Are they really that blind to the Great Wealth Destruction they are causing with their decisions to demonize the bankers, raise taxes for the wealthy, advocate draconian cap-and-trade policies and upend the health care system? Do they really believe that only the rich own stocks? What do they think we have our retirement accounts in, CDs? Where did they think that the money saved for college went, our mattresses?

So, I'm following what I learned in journalism school. Quote people only when you can't say it better yourself.

Does anyone watch MSNBC? I can't stomach it, but I'm wondering if the commentators are willing to attack Cramer who works for their sister station, just as they do Rush Limbaugh and others who disagree with the President.

How's my customer service?

Note: The following is the text of my speech for next Monday's Toastmasters' Contest. I won't be reading the speech and I won't be using any notes, so this probably contains more detail than what will actually be delivered, but my speech will follow this outline.

If you ask me, customer service has been in a steady decline for years. Whether it’s waiting endlessly to see a doctor…being treated like a number at your bank…or standing in line at a store because the customers far out number the cashiers…good customer service is fast becoming only a memory.

Mr. Toastmaster and fellow Toastmasters…imagine my surprise when I recently went to one of our local diners for breakfast on Saturday morning with a group including three of my wife’s uncles. After ordering and waiting for 30 minutes…to my surprise…only eight of the 12 people at our table were served their breakfast. I was one of the four that had to re-order…and wait another 30 minutes while plates of sausages, pancakes and eggs were served to people sitting at tables next to me who came in later than us.

In my profession, I’m not a doctor, a bank teller, a cashier or a server…but still I have customers. They often are the people I work with in my office, but sometimes it’s the media or people who work at utilities and mines.

At home, I also have customers. They include my wife, my children and my father.

At my church, my customers include my Sunday School class and others.

Even at Toastmasters, I have customers. I’m not a club officer, but I’m a club member and I have the responsibility to be prepared for the duties given me at the meetings.

So what can I learn from the poor customer service that I receive from others?

First, I need to listen to my customers. How much better my breakfast experience would have been if the server would have actually listened to me. Luckily for us, my family is in the habit of eating together. We’re a three-generational family with my father living with us…so meal time is special. In a way, every meal is a family reunion.

We have two sons in college, so it’s not every day that I can eat with my children. However, when they are home, it is fun to hear about college and their friends. Their stories remind me of my youthful days at college but their stories are also important because college is preparing them for their lives away from our home and our children like to talk about their challenges and their successes.

So I can’t help but wonder how much better would be the service in a restaurant if the server considered every group of people as a special gathering – like I do around our dinner table. And if it’s special, you’ll listen.

Second, not only is my family important but so are my co-workers, my church family and my fellow Toastmasters. Take a woman at my church for example…her name is Althea. She is in her 80s and requires a walker to get around…but she still gets around. Althea is part of the Q-tip generation. You know, white hair and white shoes. She puts me in mind of my own mother who died a few years ago of congestive heart failure. My mom needed a walker because of her weak heart and a proclivity to falling. So when I see Althea, I instantly think of my mom. While other people may look at Althea and see an older woman who takes a long time to get from point A to point B, I see my mom and her determination not to die of heart failure but to live in spite of it. So when Althea comes to church and needs some help as she navigates the steps, I'm more than happy to help her.

How much better would it be if we treated everyone as if they were our mom? Would we make our mom wait an hour before we saw them? No, we would make them welcome right away and be happy that they came to our office.

Third, remember that when you are busy, others are busy also…so don’t make being busy an excuse for not delivering good customer service. Thirty years ago I worked as a printer in eastern Montana. A cowboy came through the door and asked me when I could get some sales bills printed for his upcoming bull sale. I told him tomorrow. He looked at me and said these unforgettable words, “If I wanted them tomorrow, I would have come in tomorrow.”

Now, in fairness, he probably lived an hour or so a way from town and didn’t want to drive back in a day to get his printing. But knowing that he wanted them in an hour -- instead of a day --may have put a little pressure on me and the typesetter, but we were able to meet his expectations and he walked away from our office that day with his package and a smile on his face.

So how’s my customer service? Honestly, it could probably use a little work but if I stick to listening to others, treating others like they are my mom and remembering that meeting customer's expectations counts…I hope I can deliver the kind of service to others that I would like to receive as well.