Selling

I was blessed during my career to function at various times as an in-house consultant. I had no real authority and the only way I could add value was to "sell" my advice to the people who did have authority.

Since being an in-house consultant is a great gig, I made a study of "selling". Not just so I could add more value but because I realized that the product that I sold the most often was the idea that "Joe is a great employee who always adds value when he is hired".

Who holds the switch?

I quickly realized that the organization chart only represents the flow of authority. It does not tell you who is the pivot man when it comes to "who makes the decision" regarding some aspect of a project.

The pivot person could be the boss, the boss's boss, a trusted worker, the bean-counter, a supplier, the trucker who delivers items, some times is was a maintenance person who could just make it happen... Any sales pitch you make must address their needs or your product will not be accepted.

The sales points that I consider most compelling might be unimportant to the decision-maker. My job as a consultant was to learn what attributes mattered most to the pivot person and customize the solution so it also addresses their priorities.

What is in it for me

If you are a boss and you are selling a change-in-behavior, then you could just say "I will discipline you if you don't do it the way I tell you to do it". 

That only ensures compliance when they think you are watching.

A more effective way is to also paint a word-picture, a scenario, where a generic employee does it the wrong way and there is a bad outcome.

"We need to stay within the lines of the pathways when traveling across the factory floor. I know that sometimes people are might overstay their break and take shortcuts through the material stacks to get back to their workstation when the line starts. The problem is that the material delivery people use the break-times to take material to the lines and they cannot stop if you suddenly pop-out from between two stacks of pallets."

If you ever worked in an automobile factory, you know exactly the scenario I am talking about.

Key points in the scenario: Most people can relate to the story. Marc wanted to finish a joke in the smokers shed outside. You need to get back to the line (which is a virtue). There is a very strong temptation to cut through the material stacks and you tell yourself "Just this time won't hurt"...

Your audience can visualize themself as the person in the story.

That meme

Decisionmaker: The mother carrying that child is the decision-maker and she is getting pummeled with advice. Sometimes it is the father of that child. Sometimes it is the mother of that father (yeah, actually happens all the time). Often it is from the "cool girls" in her posse. It is difficult to resist getting swept away by the waves of advice.

Visualization potential: Most of us avoid visualizing situations where we are powerless; in a cave, in a submarine, in a sleeping-bag with a broken zipper...in a womb. Attempting to create empathy for her unborn child is an uphill push if you try to create an empathy bond and your model is something she actively resists.

However, most young woman can relate to getting on an airplane and flying to Cancun or Hawaii. Those are aspirational goals. She can also envision some amoral lunatic blowing up that plane (the aluminum womb in the sky) and is horrified by the prospect.

A lot of moral behavior is driven by "Yes, except for the grace of God, that could have been me."

Is the meme sticky?

The image that serves as the background for the meme is memorable. We see planes every time we look upward on a clear day. Only time will tell us if the meme is sticky and provides another frame-of-reference to mothers confronted with circumstances that pressure them to kill their baby.

Buckets and the cost of polyethylene

 

I was using one of these seven gallon water jugs to hold the water I use to mix herbicides.

Nope, I don't just run a hose to fill my sprayers. For one thing, the outside faucets are plumbed into the line before the water softener so the water contains lots of calcium and a bit of dissolved iron.

Since some herbicides combine with calcium and iron, I am throwing money away because the expensive herbicide I bought is busy dancing with Ca++, Fe++ or Fe+++ rather than being available to enter the plant.

The "water" still has some dissolved minerals. I deal with that by adding ammonium sulfate to the water. The sulfate scavenges the ++ minerals by tightly bonding with them. The ammonium sulfate also reduces the pH of the spray mix which for some reason makes the active ingredients pass through the surface of the leaf more quickly.

A secondary advantage of lowering the pH is that it can extend the tank-life of the active ingredient. 

Finally, I add a wetting agent. Many leaves are covered with fine hairs or with a waxy texture that causes water to bead up and run off of them. The wetting agent defeats that and causes the enter surface of the leaf to be exposed to the active ingredients.

I dispense the prepared water into the sprayer, add my active ingredient and the am off to the races. 

Not only do I save money by fiddling with my spray water but I end up spraying far less active ingredient into the environment to achieve the desired end.

I had one of these in the back of my truck. It is a very convenient place to have it when I am spraying.

I went for a drive and another item rolled into it and put a star-burst into its top.

I think I paid $7.99 for the original jug. Do you want to guess what they cost now?

 Do you see the number that was crossed off? $28.00!

Much of that is probably due to the increase in the price of blow-molding grade polyethylene. Prices doubled due to the issues in the Persian Gulf.

The situation with the Persian Gulf is very dynamic and the prices seesaw dramatically. Manufacturers and retailers have to cover their costs but they don't want to lose business by over-price. Consequently, consumers get whiplash trying to catch a sale or bite the bullet and just pay the spot price when we need something. 

I will probably buy another one but will wince when I do it. I hate spending money.

Buckets

I splurged and bought to new 5 gallon buckets for "humping" water in the orchard.

The hand protector is circled in red

The weak link in the buckets are the plastic hand-protectors on the bucket's bail. I suspect UV damage.

I wrapped the hand-protector with tape. Maybe I can increase their life-span. 

Weather, work-notes and planning ahead

I got off to a slow start today. For some reason I have a lot of sore muscles.

The big news is that starting Monday, the weather-guessers are predicting peak heat-indexes over a hundred degrees (F) for four days in a row. I know my readers in TX, OK, LA, AZ etc. are chortling. For you guys, that is a balmy day in April.

Heat indexes over 95(F) get my attention and I plan my work to avoid them.

That means that Joe is a busy-beaver this weekend.

I watered the new trees in the Upper Orchard today. They don't need it now but the models predict that the heat-dome event will suck 1.5" out of the upper soil levels. So, I gave each new tree a 4 gallon drink of water with 300 PPM of nitrogen fertilizer.

I put out some new 110 body-grip traps to let them rust and to get the squirrels used to them. I smeared some peanut butter on the posts where they are mounted. The traps were mounted but not armed. 

I will be pulling weeds in the potato patch tomorrow. I am keeping a close eye on the soil moisture and may till tomorrow afternoon.

I will be erecting a cattle panel for the cucumbers to climb on.

If I get exceptionally motivated I will cut some grass. I really need to take a break from physically demanding work to recover.

I am thinking of watering the gardens on Sunday. The heat-dome will stress the power grid and there is no point in putting it off.

On the plus side, the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, squash and cucumbers should explode in size. They all love heat.

Grafting notes

The TB hazelnut grafts are already pushing buds but the Grand Traverse are not.

The Stearn mulberries I grafted above the Upper Orchard are not pushing buds. The Silk Hope I grafted in Eaton Rapids are.

The peaches (Indian Free) grafts are not breaking bud. The scion I got from (name of nursery redacted) were puny.

Most of my walnut grafts are sulking or dead. The first successful walnut graft I ever made didn't break-bud until July, an honest six weeks after I made it. I was very surprised!.

The pear trees (and the grafts on them) on the bottom-half of the Hill Orchard died. I suspect walnut toxicity. 

The quince that were planted in the rows with the pears seem to be alive, so that warrants attention. Quince is very late blooming and avoids frosts. It is way too soon to make any generalizations, but it would be valuable to have a late-blooming fruit tree that is tolerant of walnuts and produces fruit that stores well. I read somewhere that in some places it was common to put a quince (fruit) in the closet or dresser drawers to make the clothes smell nice. Also, one thin slice of quince in an apple pie adds an interesting dimension to its aroma. 

All of the Golden Russet I grafted on Liberty for pollination have at least 8" of shoot extension. King David on Hazen has 6" of shoot extension.

Only one of the plums I grafted rootstock purchased from (name redacted) is alive. I suspect the rootstock is dead since they aren't pushing shoots from the root collar. 

  

Fake News Friday: Dallas Cowboys edition

"Come on, guys. I just need two more yards"

Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys Football team vehemently denied that they were engaged in serious negotiations with Kamala Harris as the replacement for current head coach Brian Schottenheimer.

"Lookit," Mr. Jones said "the Cowboys organization is results-oriented and we don't accept excuses. Our next coach will be a PROVEN winner and will be the kind of coach who motivates players and generates passion in our fans. He or she will have the deepest and most detailed understanding of everything related to American football."

"I mean, VP Harris is like a perfect fit but she is more of a lacrosse or soccer head-coach than a football coach." 

Polymarket is currently listing Harris as the leading contender as the next Cowboy's coach with 6:13 odds of securing the job. 

Miss Daisy report and "What is a gallon of gas worth?"

Driving Miss Daisy went fine.

I was able to negotiate the hazards of East Lansing traffic and I killed some of the time in the bagel shop next to the PT shop. I ate a chocolate-cheesecake muffin and people-watched while waiting.

Miss Daisy is very pleased with the intake session and with her PT person. The PT person was overwhelmingly positive. "Oh! You have excellent muscle tone." and "Very good baseline range-of-motion".

It is awesome when a patient goes into PT and they are not starting from 200 yards behind the starting-line.

Oil

I got to thinking about what five gallons of gasoline or diesel fuel is worth.

Back in the middle-1980s, automotive engines that had BSFC numbers of 0.40 pound of fuel consumption per horsepower-hour were as common as house-flies. Small engines are inherently less efficient because they lose more heat to heads and cylinder walls relative to engines with larger cylinders. The "adiabatic" i.e., no heat loss, expansion of the heated gasses in the cylinder are less-adiabatic.

Since I am too time-stressed to research BSFC numbers for small engines, let's assume that the best you can do is about 0.60 pounds of fuel per horse-power hour.

A gallon of gas weighs about six pounds.  Six divided by 0.60 gives you an upper-limit of 10 horsepower-hours of work. 

A gallon of diesel weights seven pounds and the engines are potentially more efficient because their greater compression ratio can squeeze more "adiabatic expansion" out of each cycle.

This is not a traditional BSFC map. It charts thermodynamic efficiency. Most efficient region is the gray plateau on the upper-right portion of the surface. Idling and partial load are the narrow strips in the lower-center portion.

Matching the load to the engine's output is a major issue. Peak efficiency is only achieved at relatively high loading. That is, near open throttle at medium-to-high RPM. 

A motor powering a generator that has little load will not give you 10 hp-hr per gallon of gas! A motor running an irrigation-pump (continuous duty) that is intelligently sized for the application will come close to giving you 10 hp-hr per gallon. Most other applications will fall somewhere in the middle.

Food/gardening

The decal on the engine that drives my rototiller claims to be a 6.5hp engine.

It rarely takes all 6.5hp to move the tines of the tiller through the soil. Consequently, I am not going to get the work of one-horse cultivating soil for ten hours out of one gallon of gas.

However, I might get the equivalent amount of work of a horse working for three hours cultivating. An added bonus of the tiller is that it takes less space to maneuver it at the ends of the rows. That is a big deal when you have to fence your garden against wildlife.

And that jibes fairly closely to what I see in terms of how often I have to fill the gas tank. I need to refill the gallon tank after every three times I use it for weed-control where it is a quick, shallow pass and the soil is not laced with mature, woody, plant roots.

Five gallons of fuel, if dedicated to running a tiller, would be more than enough to keep a very large garden mostly weed-free for the growing season. How large? 

If two gallons of gas is enough for six passes with the tiller over 6000 square feet of midwestern loam, then five gallons of gas would suffice for 15,000 square-feet or 1/3 of an acre. That should be more than enough to keep a family of six in vegetables even if the rains were not-the-best.

If the rains ARE good, there will also be a surplus that can be shared with family or traded for other items that are needed. 

Presented without comment

 

Tired. And when it happens a second time, it is called "re-tired"

 

A rare (very rare) picture of Eaton Rapids Joe in action

Yesterday's adventure was disassembling and transporting a combination swing-set and playhouse. There were several complications.

One of those complications was that a real, live princess was in the play house performing the sound-tracks of Moana and Zootopia 2  the entire time it was being disassembled. Who needs a radio when they have a four-year-old entertaining them.

Another complication was that Southern Belle, the buyer of the playhouse, struggled to find a vehicle that could pull the trailer she had borrowed.

First she was going to use her van, but then the owner of the trailer nixed that idea. Her minivan can pull 2000 pounds. The trailer, dry, weighed 2400 pounds.

Then we were going to use my truck but I couldn't get the cover off of the connector for the trailer harness.

At that point, I figured the mission was scrubbed for the day and went back home to work.

An hour later I got a call. Southern Belle had driven to Handsome Hombre's place of employment, found his truck in the parking lot and swapped vehicles.

"Persistence" is one of Southern Belle's super-powers. 

Since there are only two seats in HH's truck and since there were three of us, Southern Belle, Quicksilver and me, we took two vehicles.

Quicksilver was enchanted with the structure. Within seconds she was had climbed inside and was acting out Moana's swinging from the mast of her catamaran while belting out the song that went with that scene. She sang the entire time we were working.

"Able to entertain herself" is one of Quicksilver's super-powers. 

Disassembling the structure required a specific sequence and many awkward positions. Some of the bolts required an Allen wrench on one end and a 9/16" hex on the other. Southern Belle wanted to leave the structure in modules, so we split the two-story structure into its two, separate towers and lugged them up-grade from the back-yard to the road.

Not to belabor the point, but the yard was landscaped with pine trees and shrubberies and a red maple, all of which impeded our progress.

I am only guessing, but I suspect my end of the towers (the roof ends) was in the neighborhood of 125 pounds and SB and Justin's end was heavier. 

Justin is the son of the home owner and a recent college grad. He was awesome. He ran and found us tools we had not thought to bring...like a shovel. He helped carry the towers to the road. He even chuckled at some pretty awful "Dad jokes".

The swing-set, slide and other frippery and one tower went into the trailer.

The other tower went into the back of my truck. I had to put a flag on it because 36" stuck out of the back end of the 8' bed.

The home-owner gave us juice boxes to celebrate the sale of the structure and he gave Quicksilver a new-in-box mermaid doll!

The drive to Southern Belle's house was uneventful. We took back-roads and stayed below 50 mph.

Today's work ticket

Today's work ticket involves Driving Miss Daisy.

The family friend who had surgery last week needs to be driven to an assessment. Since the friend is not cleared for driving and since her husband needs to work...I got the job.

I can use a day of light-duty.