Today is April 3rd, therefore everything on the Internet is back to being true. But, on Saturday you couldn’t believe anything you read or heard. Even some of legitimate sounding stories turned out to be fake. A celebrity in California announced that he was moving to a neighboring Congressional district so that he could run for Congress against the incumbant. Twenty-four hours later he announced it was an April Fools joke.
Other stories were easier to spot. No, they didn’t release kangaroos in Wyoming. (Jack-a-lopes would have killed them anyway.)
It’s a harmless tradition that lets us laugh at ourselves and at each other as some get “caught” and end up believing the joke.
But, this year, I noticed a lot less involvement and even noticed some sites refusing to play along. “Fake News” has been in the news for the past year or so. It’s intentionally false stories, often designed to try to make a particular person or party look bad. The combination of the Internet, specifically Facebook, and the presidential election made for a toxic environment for the spread of fake stories.
My brother pointed out that actually this is nothing new. We’ve had fake news for centuries. It used to be called “Yellow Journalism.” And people did it 100 years ago for the same reason they are doing it today; to either discredit people or make money or both.
One of the big revelations from last week was apparent proof that Russia spread fake news to try to influence the election. They approached the issue with a modern take. They created fake Twitter accounts with words in the descriptions that they thought would appeal to President Trump. Then, they looked at his history of posting to find the times he would be online. When they knew he was online, they would use these fake accounts to promote fake news stories with the hope that President Trump would see one and retweet it. My brother asked me about it.
Do you think the Russians were really trying to influence the election?
Yeah, it looks that way.
Do you think this is the first time the Russians have attempted to influence our elections?
Well. . .
Of course not. We influence elections in other countries, and they do in ours. So, what’s the difference? The difference is that there used to be gatekeepers. It used to be you had to get a writer/editor/publisher to believe your fake news and then it got out to the masses. . and it took hours for it to get published, but more likely days.
Today, we are the writers and editors. Facebook and Twitter are the publishers. And while those platforms are attempting to crack down on fake news, I don’t have high hopes for their success. If they are successful, what’s to stop some algorithm from deciding that this site (www.staging.rodneymbliss.com) promotes fake news? Will I have to get someone to vet my stories? Will we have Facebook police or Twitter cops chasing down false stories? I hope not.
In the mean time, we are each responsible for deciding for ourselves what to believe. The Kangaroos in Wyoming? Obviously fake. A celebrity running for Congress in California? That’s a tough one.
If only everyday were April 1, it would be easy to tell which stories to ignore.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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What’s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smeall as sweet.
– Romeo And Juliet Act II Scene II
My title changed this week. My company did a small reorg. I ended up the odd man out; no longer part of my previous team and somewhat at loose ends. I now report directly to a senior vice president in IT and “dotted line” report to a vice president in operations.
My old title was no longer accurate since my previous team continued without me.
I don’t really have a title for you. See what you can come up with.
That was the direction from my new boss. I briefly considered both the grandious and the mundane.
Supreme Ruler of the Universe
was quickly rejected. Besides, I think there are already several people requesting that title.
The Other Guy
was equally dismissed. I did think it would be funny to introduce me as “Well, this Rodney the other guy.” Yeah, it would be funny exactly once and we just used up that single attempt. I arrived at a core function of “IT Operations.” My role bridges two different departments so it made sense to give a nod to each side. The challenge was in finding a noun to go with those two adjectives. My manager literally pulled up Google and started searching during our meeting.
- Director – Too much overhead. While it fit my organizational level, directors have numerous direct reposts.
- Manager – A fairly generic term, but my previous role had included the word manager and it might confuse people
- Administrator – “System Administrator” is a well known IT job role, so that almost fit. But, it lacked the gravitas that my role might need
- Specialist – It’s vauge, but serious. The role I’m in was created as a special one-off position
“I like it,” my boss declared. And so, I became the one and only “IT Operations Specialist” in my entire company. But, will people respect me? Without the weight of the organziational structure from my old team, will I be able to get the buy in from various organizations that I need?
Here’s a truism of business: If they don’t respect you, no title will change that.
I worked for Microsoft and my entire team was renamed from “Training Specialists” to “Program Managers.” In most companies, Program Manager is a respected title. In fact, several of my team mates were excited. “Now those programmers will have to talk to me.”
They assumed that if they couldn’t get on someone’s schedule, simply changing their title while maintaining their role, would make a difference. It didn’t.
You get people to help you by helping them. You get people to trust you by trusting them. You get people to care about your projects by caring about their projects. You might ask, “How can I show people I care about them and their projects before I ever meet them? Isn’t that where a title helps?”
Sure it does. But, I’ve known some people with vice president in their title who wanted resources from my team, but had no real claim on them. But, they figured since they were a “VP” I should simply do what they asked.
I’ve also had peopel in other teams say, “Rodney, I’m happy to help you out on your project. It’s not normally something my team does, but you’ve helped us in the past.”
My role hasn’t changed, just my title. I don’t imagine most people will even notice. Most of them already simply think of me as “Rodney, the other guy,” or “supreme ruler of the universe.”
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.
– Vince Lombardi
Ever watched the end of a marathon race? The runners have completed 26.2 miles. They are exhausted, but finally, after hours and hours, the goal is in sight. They stagger, sometimes crawl the last few yards and then feet and then inches, and when they finally cross the finish line, the goal that they have trained for months to achieve. . .they collapse. There’s no cheering. There’s no celebration. They simply stagger across the finish line and are happy it is over.
I’ve written a couple of books in my career. Each time, I started with great excitement. (For computer books, you get paid before you start writing it.) The process takes months. By the end, I’m slogging my way through. I’m writing new content, reviewing previous chapters and dreading that call from my editor asking where the next chapter is at. When I finally send in the last pages, there is no sense of elation. There is only a relief. I can finally stop running.
I’ve spent some time over the past week considering what it means to “win.” I’m a huge believer in win/win. If I can get what I want and you can get what you want, that’s the best solution for both of us. Just because I win doesn’t always mean you have to lose. However, sometimes it does. Sometimes it’s a direct competition, or it’s a test of wills.
I like playing the game Star Trek Attack Wing. Once a month I get together with some other players and we hold a competition. At the end of the night, after three rounds of games, someone is going to walk away as the overall winner. Last month, I was fortunate enough to be that guy. While it’s a game of chance, my win wasn’t entirely luck. I spent a lot of time practicing the scenario we were going to play that night.
The winner of the evening gets a free ship. Actually, I didn’t get a ship, I get a set of cards and tokens that represent a ship and I have to supply my own model. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t about the prize, it was about the competition. And at the end of the evening, as the clock ticked down on the last game, I realized that my weeks of planning and practice were going to pay off and I was going to win. I wasn’t exhausted. I didn’t stagger across the final “finish line” and collapse. I was excited! I acknowledged the hard fought game that my opponent had played, but I was thrilled that I had won the evening.
So, what’s the difference? When are we excited for a win and when do we simply want it to be over?
I’ve never played the lottery. (Mostly because I took statistics in college and don’t want to give away my money.) But, I have won things in a company raffle. And I can imagine what a lottery winner feels like. I’ve watched them. They are excited. They are estatic. They jump up and down. They scream out their excitement. It’s fun to watch.
The difference between the exhausted winner that Coach Lombardi refers to and the lotto winner jumping up and down on her couch is the amount of effort that went into the victory. I don’t know if I could run a marathon. I have bad knees. But, I’ve run a 10K and by the end, I nearly wanted to die. Finishing was the victory and it took all of my energy to get to the finish line. I had none left for a celebration.
Statistically, five years after winning the lottery, most people are broke. They didn’t have to earn the money, so they don’t really know how to manage it. And in a funny way, they don’t value it. Thomas Paine said, “What is too cheaply optained is too lightly esteemed.”
My books have been out of print for decades. But, I still keep a copy on my bookshelf at home. I know that the software products I was writing about haven’t been used since the 20th Century ended. But, still, I look at it and think, “I once did a really hard thing.”
This week, some changes happened at work. They are changes that I’ve looked forward to, and worked toward for many months. In fact, the stress over the past year was leading up to this week and was making me physically ill. Then we made a change and all that stress went away. I crossed a metaphorical finish line and finally could sit down. I thought about Vince Lombardi’s quote. I thought about winning the lottery. I realized that I didn’t have a feeling of elation. I wasn’t pumping my fist in the air in triumph. I simply slept the first peaceful night’s sleep in ages. I stopped hoarding every email to ensure I had documentation for my actions. I relaxed. I took a deep breath.
And then I went back to work.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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I went all the way to Scotland and didn’t visit Loch Ness (the home of the legendary Loch Ness Monster) and I’m glad I didn’t.
It wasn’t on purpose. In fact, if I’d been thinking just a little quicker, we might have headed for the Western portion of the Scottish highlands rather than taking the road East.
Tim, would we be able to visit Loch Ness today?
We would have if we’d taken a different road about 45 minutes ago. As it is, we are headed in the opposite direction and getting farther away. Not really going to work out today, I’m afraid.
I was a guest of my friend, Tim Heywood. We were in his car winding our way on a skinny two lane mountain road going just a bit faster than felt comfortable while driving on the wrong side of the road.
I’ve written before about my visit to Scotland. It was a beautiful day. We saw many historical sites and towns and visited many locations connected with Tim’s clan. We even stopped in to meet his uncle, the clan chief. But, a trip to look for the mythical Loch Ness Monster wasn’t on the agenda.
It’s possible that the passage of time has dimmed my memories of that day. Perhaps my friend subtilely steered me away from Loch Ness and toward more genuine and lasting locations. In the ensuing years, I’ve often thought about that decision and I’ve decided that whatever else I did on my three-day Scottish holiday, I’m grateful I didn’t waste a day of it succumbing to the hype of false experiences.
Loch Ness might as well be Ireland’s Blarney Stone, or “The World’s Largest Ball of Twine” off of some American highway. To me, it’s a destination simply because people say it’s a destination. Kind of like a person who is famous simply for being famous. There are no unique or historical castles or other attractions associated with Loch Ness. You’re there for the same reason everyone else is there: it was in the guide book of “Things to do in Scotland.”
Oh, you’d go to try to see the famous Nessie sea creature? Sure, and the thousands of people who were there yesterday taking pictures and the thousands of people who will be there tomorrow taking pictures missed out because the shy creature will have decided to show itself on the one day you chose to visit.
I’d have better odds playing the lottery and I don’t play the lottery. I’ve read some travel sites about Scotland since my trip all those years ago. Most of them say to avoid Loch Ness. After all, it’s a lake, like the hundreds of other lakes in the North of Scotland. It’s crowded and the area caters strictly to the crowds of tourists.
I spent three days in India a few years ago, in New Delhi. We had a spare day and our host suggested a trip to “The Taj” as she called it. You and I know it as the Taj Mahal. It’s located in Agra, about 3 hours south of our hotel in Agra. We went. The crowds were horrible. Our host suggested we hire a tour guide, but warned us about that he would try to upsell us. Our hired tour guide suggested we get a picture taken but warned us that the photographer would try to upsell us. We literally had to push our way through the beggers swarming the outside of the Taj Mahal compound to get inside.
It was absolutely worth it. And had the drive been twice as long, it would have still been worth it to take the time. I’ve seen beautiful buildings in my time, but nothing compares to the exquisite beauty of that building. And hiring the tour guide was a fantastic bargain at $2. He shared the tragic history of the doomed lovers that resulted in the creation of this memorial. He shared tales of intrigue and betrayal as the Raj who built the Taj attempted to build a second “Black Taj” and was imprisoned by his son.
So, what’s the difference between my visit to Scotland where I skipped the most famous landmark and my visit to India where I went out of my way to see it’s most famous building? If you were to strip away the marketing, remove the throngs of people, and imagine simply happening upon these two sites, in Scotland you would see a lake. An unremarkable lake, to the extent that anything in that unique country is unremarkable. In India, you would realize you are in a very special place. Even not knowing the history, no one could look at the building and not recognize its beauty and know that it was historically significant.
I don’t know if I will ever get back to Scotland. My friends, the Heywoods have offered us a standing invitation, but life gets complicated and trips to Europe are infrequent events. If I do, I would like to revisit some of the historical and family sites that my friend Tim shared with me. But,I would imagine I will never set foot on the shores of Loch Ness. I wouldn’t want to waste my time.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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He was a lawyer, and he was my friend, but I knew he was lying. Talking about a lawyer lying is almost cliche. However, the last few years, I’ve spent way more time than I would like sitting in a court room full of lawyers. And fortunately, in all of those interactions, I don’t think any of them lied, or even skirted the truth.
But, sitting in a the Orem Public Library last night, I knew that Dale Boam was lying. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. In fact, he was being somewhat brazen about it.
In fairness, the five people who spoke before Dale were also liars. They just weren’t as good at it as Dale. Of course, none of them were lawyers either. At the end of the evening, we all agreed that Dale was the biggest liar. We even gave him an award for it: Utah’s Biggest Liar.
Every spring as we shake off the winter, I look forward to the Utah’s Biggest Liar competition. I was reminded that the competition has been going on for 9 years and I’ve been involved for seven of them. I’ve missed a competition here or there due to work, but I put this on the calendar early and look forward to it all year. I’ve been the MC, but the last few years, I’ve been a judge.
Next year will be different. Next year will be the tenth anniversary. The world famous Bil Lepp, an award winning story teller will be a guest judge. And I’m giving up my judging spot.
Next year, I’ll put my money where my mouth is and actually compete. This isn’t some annual angst-post of “Maybe, next year. . .” I’ve been content to sit and enjoy the stories. (Although the judging is horrifically difficult because the winners are so good, it’s hard to pick one.)
So, I’m officially declaring myself in the race for Utah’s Biggest Liar. (If I win, maybe I’ll apply to law school.)
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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It’s really my brother’s fault. He has a tradition of giving my family a game at Thanksgiving every year. Two years ago he gave us “Star Trek Attack Wing – Starter Pack.” Conceptually, it’s a pretty simple game. In practice, it’s immensely complicated. You take control of a group of model ships, fly them around a table top and try to kill the other guy’s group of model ships.
The complexity is in designing your ships. You pick a ship (for example, the USS Enterprise) then, you pick a captain, a crew, a set of weapons and tech upgrades. The combinations are endless. The game is really two games. The second game is flying your ships around the table top, rolling dice and trying to kill the other fleet. But, before you can play that portion of the game, you must first build your fleet.
The fleet building process can take as long or longer than the actual fight itself. It’s sometimes tempting to skip the fleet building portion. But, without that step, it’s impossible to move on to the second step. I now own hundreds of the little ships and thousands of the cards, and he’s the one who got me started.
I enjoy woodworking. I have built bookshelves, footlockers and even entire portions of my house. The fun part of building anything is using the saws and hammers and power tools. But, because I design my own pieces, I first have to design the piece. A footlocker might require 20 seperate cuts. I design every single cut and board before I ever turn on a saw or don my safety glasses.
It’s the planning that is the critical piece of any successful operation. Ironically, any competent planner will agree, “The first causalty of contact with the enemy is the battle plan.” My friend Howard Tayler describes this concept as
“Don’t expect the enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement.”
– Maxim 47, “Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”
A plan in business is just as vital as a military battle plan, or a blueprint before cutting up boards. Business plans come in two flavors: company and personal. A company business plan is exactly what you expect. We are rolling out a new product next month. We need a plan for how we are going to distribute it, market it, advertise it, etc. Or, we are building a new software program. We need a design document that describes what it will do, how it will do it, what types of databases and servers it will need.
But, you should also have personal business plans. How are you going to advance your career? What is your personal 5 year plan? If another department is opposed to your latest project, how are you going to win the necessary approvals to get it pushed through?
While it is true that the battle plan never survives contact with the enemy, the objectives of the battle plan, hopefully do.
As a wise TV character once said,
“I love it when a plan comes together.”
– Hannible Smith, “The A-Team”
Actually, I think he said it more than once.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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People don’t care. Oh, they say they do, and they’ll insist they do, and I’m sure you care, and of course I care, but most people don’t care.
Good to see you, Rodney. How are you?
Unless it’s a family relative asking, and even then, only a close relative or friend, they want you to say:
I’m fine, and you?
And of course, you expect them to also say, “I’m fine,” because you don’t care. It’s a filler phrase, like the inexperienced public speaker who stumbles through “Um” and “ah” while delivering his remarks. It’s not too bad as a throw away phrase.
I was talking to my teenage daughter,
And then she was like, ‘I don’t have his number’ and like, I’m sorry, but I know he like gave it to her like a week ago and I’m like . . .
Compared to some speech patterns, it’s . . .like, fine. But, I’ve always struggled with being asked a question as a greeting. I’m not trying to change the world. I use the phrase as well. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s odd. Occasionally, I’ll answer the questions differently in my head.
Well, I’m parenting an 18 month old grandchild. Work has become a world of stress sitting on my shoulders. My son is not sure he wants to follow the curfew rules, and I had to take his phone which led to like a huge argument. . .
I’m fine. How are you?
They don’t care. And I don’t blame them. We even use the question to ask about others. . that we again don’t really care about. (I mean others, of course you and I care.)
So, how’s your mom?
There are really only two answers. The expected answer is “She’s fine,” of course. But, what if she’s not? Again, we are talking about aquaintences. If your brother calls and asks about mom, he wants more than “She’s fine.” But, for most people, that’s the answer. The only exception is if mom’s not around any more. You might not keep your aquaintences updated on mom’s hospital stay, or her declining health related to age, or the difficult decision that the family made that she was to the point where doctors couldn’t do anything more for her, and the eventual sad but poignant goodbyes.
But, you cannot answer, “She’s fine.” For aquaintences, the two answers really are “She’s fine,” or “She died.”
Author’s note: Both my mother-in-law and my mother had birthdays this month. My wonderful mother is fine. My dear mother-in-law passed away just a week before her birthday. So, if you ask me “How’s your mom?” Realize there are really only two answers.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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This is not a political post. I don’t care if you voted for the Democrat, the Republican, the Green Party, the Yellow Party or the Purple Party.
I want to talk about presidents and technology.
In 1994, I was working for Microsoft writing training materials for the Microsoft Exchange email program. As an employee, I got a discount on Exchange that made it essentially free. My mother owned a small accounting firm. They didn’t use email.
Mom, you should let me install email for your employees.
We don’t really need it. We have lots of those pink “While you were out” notes.
Tell you what, let me install it and if after a month you don’t want it, I’ll take it out.
A month later, her employees threatened to quit if she removed email.
It’s a different world than it was in the 1990’s when I was installing email systems. And the United States presidency was one of the last holdouts against technology. President Bill Clinton was the first president to send email. During his 8 years in office from 1992-2000, he sent exactly two emails. One was a test email and the other was a brief congratulatory note toward the end of his presidency.
President George Bush used email extensively as governor of Texas. However, when he became president in 2000, he stopped using email entirely.
One of the challenges that President Barack Obama’s technical team had in 2008 was that the new president wanted to continue using his Blackberry device. Ultimately, his computer guys figured out how to secure his device enough that the president could securely use it to conduct official business, including email.
You might look at this history and ask why the presidents were so slow to adopt technology? The issue is two-fold. First, was an issue with security. Presidential communications are the most important in the world. Even if the only information is what the president is doing for lunch, that information is important. Obviously, he also talks about wars, and international and domestic policy. Basically, the stuff he knows is stuff we don’t want other people to know.
The second issue with presidential electronic communications is an issue of archiving. Everything the president does or says is preserved. How do we successfully retain digital communications? Of course, we’ve been saving digital communication for decades, but is presidential email different? If someone goes to the trouble of drafting a memo, that gets preserved. If a president writes “Come see me” on a post-it note and leaves it for the vice president, I’m pretty sure no one is saving the little yellow paper rectangle. What if the president emails the VP and says, “Come see me”? Now, all of a sudden that incidental note is important enough to be preserved for posterity.
We’ve fixed these problems, of course. But, it’s been interesting to watch the evolution of our presidents’ adopting technology.
And then we had the election of 2016. President Donald Trump has rocketed presidential electronic communications into the 21st Century in a “yuge” way. Not only is he “keeping his Blackberry,” (Actually, according to the meta data on his tweets, he uses an Android device), he’s using it to communicate with other government officials and the entire world.
History will judge the correctness of his approach. Honestly, it had to come at some point. Whether now is the right point, I’ll leave to others to decide. I want to discuss what this means for your company.
The illusion of social media, and Twitter in particular, is that famous people are accessible. You can tweet at @realDonaldTrump and your message will show up in the president’s Twitter feed. You can contact not only the president, but actors, sports figures, and nearly anyone else on the planet. Social media has shrunk the world down to 140 characters.
Is your company president one of those people? Is it easier for someone to contact the president of the United States than it is for them to contact the president of your company? I’m not suggesting that your company president should spend his or her time monitoring their Twitter feed. You should have a PR team for that. But, if you want to appeal to modern consumers, your company and its leaders must at least appear to be accessible.
It should at least be as easy to contact you via social media as it is to contact the leader of the free world.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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There are bad drug combinations. I normally don’t worry about them. I don’t take drugs much. Occasionally, I’ll take a Tylenol or Advil. And I don’t drink alcohol at all, so most of the time I don’t worry about drug combinations.
I’ve now got a drug problem.
Work is stressful. I know that. It’s expected. Everyone has a stressful job and part of being an adult is to be able to work through that stress, or work with that stress. Work got a lot more stressful over the past couple of weeks. In fact, it got stressful enough that it started to affect my quality of life. My anxiety level went up. I started having trouble sleeping, which made my anxiety go even higher. It got bad and didn’t get better.
So, having a good health care provider, I went to my family doctor. . .for stress. (Yeah, I felt like a wuss.)
Rodney, I don’t see you much.
Yeah, the anxiety level has just started getting a little out of control.
Oh, I see that you’re to the age you are recommended for a prostate exam.
That’s not really helping my anxiety level!
Eventually, my doctor perscribed trazadone. A small dose, but it should help me sleep. I hate taking drugs. I don’t take ritalin for my ADHD because I don’t like taking drugs. So, I filled the perscription but then the pills sat on my bathroom counter.
Maybe I don’t need them. Maybe I just need to relax and . . .I’m fine. Why would I be such a wimp? I don’t need the drugs. That was a stupid idea. I’m fine. Or, I will be fine. Or, I want to be fine. . .I’m not fine.
My lovely wife knew I wasn’t fine. She is a light sleeper anyway, and my sleep issues were waking her up. She gently suggested that maybe I should take the doctor’s advice and at least give it a try. Some of our kids take trazadone to help them sleep. (The ones with ADHD, actually.) If they don’t take the meds, it makes a big difference.
Finally, I decided to take her advice. . .and my doctor’s advice. . and really, the advice that I knew all along was correct. I decided to start with a half tablet. I took it and went to bed, trying to console myself that I wasn’t being a wimp.
Drugs work! They work really well. I quickly dropped off to a deep and sound sleep. In fact, it was so deep and so sound that it was really hard for me to wake up when my phone started ringing at 4:55 AM the next morning. I missed the first call and tried to fight my way through the fog that was my brain to call them back. Like a car with a bad clutch, I kept trying to get my brain in gear.
Eventually, I got connected to my Outage bridge conference call and was able to sound semi-intelligent as I directed my team as they worked to resolve a work stoppage issue. Most days, I’m generally at my desk between the hours of 7:00 am and 3:00 pm. I consider my “office hours” to be anytime between 7:00 am and 5:30 pm. But, actually, I’m on call 24×7. The only time I’m “off the clock” is when I’m physically in an area with no cell phone coverage, or I have specifically arranged for someone else to take over. (Something I do only a few times per year.)
I realized that I have a condition that makes drug combinations extremely dangerous. My job. More specifically, my phone doesn’t mix well with drugs that cause drowsiness. It’s funny, in a way. I didn’t want to take the drugs, but now that I can’t take them, I feel even more stressed that I can’t use them.
And I’m right back to heightened anxiety. If I’m gonna be stressed anyway, maybe I should just go ahead and schedule that prostate exam.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
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or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved
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They rise like giants out of the prairie. Visible for miles, first one, and then a second and soon an entire ridgeline full. The car stands still as they capture the wind and push the land under my wheels.
As a kid I remember watching the steel giants carry powerlines across endless miles of prarie. The steel giants of my youth have given way to the gleaming white windmills of today. We saw more than I could count even if I had the inclination to. As we made our way across Southern Idaho, I tried to decide if they were an eyesore? Southern Idaho has it’s own kind of beauty, but it involves a lot of rocks, and dirt and sagebrush. The wind farms stretched for miles, breaking up either the monotony or the beauty of the passing landscape.
I’m sure they are a boon to the landowners. It’s not like they were using that land for anything anyway. Cattle can still graze on the sparse grass that managed to eke out an existence between the rocks. The land is unfit for farming and there’s no water even it was.
That got me thinking about the cost of those windmills. And despite being in the middle of nowhere, the cell phone companies have done a great job of providing coverage for the I-84 corridor. My lovely wife was driving so I used my phone to look up the cost and the payback on a windmill. I was amazed.
Eight months.
The payback on a windmill is eight months. That seemed really, really short. Next, I looked up the cost. A typical windmill costs $1.3M. My lovely wife started to do the math out loud. She started to divide a million dollars by eight months. Then, when you figure in the cost of electricity. . . and that’s where we realized there was a problem.
It doesn’t work. The math fails. There is no way that you can earn back $1.3M in less than a year.
I went back to the web and tried a different search string. This time I asked for the return-on-investment. Much different result.
I had no idea that “payback” and “return-on-investment” are two different things. I went back to my earlier search results and realized that “payback” refers to the amount of energy needed to build a windmill.
To combat global warming, why don’t we just all agree to leave our refridgerator doors open?
If it takes more energy to create a solution than that solution will save, you are “selling below cost, but making it up in volume.” But, fortunately, windmills aren’t energy negative. In fact, they are remarkably efficient. In just under a year, the windmill will produce more energy than was expended to create it. Everything after eight months is a net positive in terms of energy.
I felt better about those miles of windfarms. They really were making a difference. So, what about the return-on-investment? How long did it take the power companies to earn back the $1.3M cost of that windmill? Turns out the return-on-investment, if you do the math (or read about it, like I did) at the current cost of electricity, it takes 24 years to earn back the $1.3M. That’s not even counting the time-value-of-money, or the difference in what you could have earned if you had invested the money for 24 years.
The article I was reading also included information about the expected lifespan of a windmill giant: 20 years. Those big white giants are expected to keep turning for 20 years. . .and it will take 24 years to pay off the cost.
Apparently they are selling below cost, but figure they’ll make it up in volume.
Note: Since it requires energy to cool your refridgerator, leaving the door open, would result in more energy being expended and it would actually get warmer rather than cooler. It’s the reason that the hottest portion of your summer yard, is right next to the air conditioner.
Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
Follow him on
Twitter (@rodneymbliss)
Facebook (www.facebook.com/rbliss)
LinkedIn (www.LinkedIn.com/in/rbliss)
or email him at rbliss at msn dot com(c) 2017 Rodney M Bliss, all rights reserved