Photo of the day, Thursday, 10/23/08

Greetings and Salutations! I have had an awesome day today with getting some tools ordered, driving to the lake shore to visit with a potential business partner and then the icing on the cake. I get a call from a customer asking for a quote on one of the parts that we make. The annual volume was predicted to be 6000 parts a year over the next 4 years. Awesome volume for this kind of part. The reason that this is icing on the cake is a bit of a story, do you have time? If so read on, if not, make sure to leave a comment for my Sister and Brother-In-Law, Maureen and Tom who just celebrated their 25th anniversary. That is so awesome! I have a shot of each that I really do like. If you look, you can see that my sister has the killer good looks, just like all of us Youngs, and that brother-in-law of mine, well, I have always enjoyed that man's sense of humor. You two rock, Happy Anniversary!

Now, back to the story...

3 years ago we were working on a new product for our open line. That means that anyone can buy the product, so we control the design and only gently listen to the customer. At one point I was too forceful and informed the customer that we were going to go with our design and would be happy to modify a bit to meet their needs, but we really felt that we had a winner.

Right after I put my foot down to stop them from trying to change our design I was informed that they were no longer interested in working with us and they would be working with our competitor. Boy, oh boy, was the boss mad at me. I lost the new business. RATS!

We both launched our products at the same time and since ours was an open line product it took off slowly at first but was soon picked up by a few big players and ta da! We had a hit. Theirs had only one channel for sales and wasn't so well received and had a harder time getting any traction.

Fast forward one year. At our big show in Chicago we could display ours in many showrooms, not so much for the original customer.

Fast forward another year. Our product is a hit, not so much for the original customer.

Fast forward yet another year. (This is the icing part) The original customer came back and wanted pricing for the product that my company developed. Now they have a customer that wants to standardize on our product, to the tune of 6000 a year for the next 4 years.

The guy that called me admitted that they may have missed the boat and asked for the best pricing that I could offer. I just laughed, I give every customer our best price and our best engineering power right behind it.

Here's our part.

Theirs is so ugly that it's not even on the web. Hah!

Have a great day,

Pat

Photo of the day, Wednesday, 10/22/08

Wow, Tuesdays are really busy days and I guess I just need to try and fit in a something, rather than the dead air, or, what ever you call it in this cyberspace era.

Tonight the boys are at youth group. Tonight is the first Wednesday night. Before the youth would meet on Sunday evening, but with new leadership comes new ideas. I agree with what Matthew is trying to accomplish, so I guess I can drive out of Rockford on Wednesday night to get them. Maybe Holly and I can turn this in to a light date night. Nah, that would just make sense.

I was going to attempt to relate some of the "Leave No Trace" training that I had last weekend, but I can't begin to cover this very well, so I leave it to the curious to seek it out on their own. One source of information is at BSA Leave No Trace

Since we're talking about the Scout Training here's a shot of the lake that we walked around during our nature hike portion of the training. This was taken at about 8:30 in the morning.

Have a great day!
Pat

Photo of the day, Monday, October 20, 2008

Happy Birthday Ian! Today Ian turned 14. It was so funny to see how cranked up he was, I mean, he could barely sit still at dinner. Poor kid had to go to school on his birthday. He handled it pretty well and we had some fun. This morning we sent him out the door with very loud birthday song and a hug and a kiss. I am certain that he was glad that we did that inside the house, he'd have been mortified if his friends had seen him. Here he is, in a rare close up with a big smile.





We had scouts tonight and the boys had a new project laid out before them, to create a patrol flag. The material was donated by someone that works at Wolverine World Wide, they tan hides right here in town you know. It was pretty interesting wandering around and listening to the "artistic" process unfold. Can you say pandemonium? Once the designs were established the leather tools came out and they require hammers and pounding and much arguing about where the exact placement should be. Needless to say, I have a headache now.

Here's a shot of the boy with some of his "loot". Two new PSP games and a flame "skin" for that same PSP. That's PlayStation Personal to the uninitiated.

Have a great day and Happy Birthday Buddy!
Pat (Dad)

Photo of the day, Sunday, 10/19/08

Happy Sunday!

Wow, what a weekend. I was up at Camp Gerber for Boy Scout Outdoor Leader Training. It was pretty cool, on two levels. !st the training was fun and that always makes it go better and second, it was pretty chilly for outdoor sleeping.

The way it works is that you are assigned to a small patrol and you'll function just like the boys do, just for the weekend. So I was partnered up with 8 others. We elected a patrol leader and named our patrol. I was elected the patrol leader and our name was The Lightning Patrol. We got there and set up as it was getting dark. Once it was fully dark, it was time to start training. We sat through 2 hours of lecture on all the red tape associated with scouting; insurance, membership, fundraising...We got to bed by about 11.

Up at 6 in the morning, it was frosty, truly. 2 people had to go to the mess hall and get a box of food. Bring it back to camp and we had to prepare our meal, and we had 2 guests coming along for the ride. The guests arrived at 7, with plate and fork in hand.

After breakfast it was training all day, in fact, dinner was another training session, this time on cooking and especially on how to cook in a dutch oven. We finished at about 11 again. The training sessions were:

1. Camp site selection, what to look for before you pitch that tent


2. Plant and animal identification, what to look for on a hike


3. Knot tying, the seven basic knots, square knot, clove hitch, 2 half hitches, sheet bend, bowline, taught line hitch, timber hitch


4. Maps and compass, how to use in the field


5. Wood tools, axe, hatchet, maul


6. Leave no trace, so interesting I may post on this one


7. First aid, light overview


8. Dutch oven cooking, over 15 different meals were prepared we ate the exams for dinner


9. Cooking equipment, stoves, ovens etc,


10. Non-denominational services, how to do one


11. Camping gear 101, how to outfit a scout for camping and hiking

Really a good session, but so busy it was crazy. Here is a photo of my patrol, we made the flag that first night too. We took this this morning after we broke camp. The distance is good to help with how rough we actually look.

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Thursday, 10/16/08

That long, painful meeting was this morning. It went longer than I had anticipated, but it was pretty successful, or at least, that's what I thought at the time. We're still waiting to see a PO. After that I tried to decompress by working on a few of the other projects that we have going . Kind of crazy to decompress via slightly less stressful work, but it seems to work for me.



Today was conferences for Spencer and so Holly and I met at Middle School. Hmm, that sounds kind of funny, we actually met well after high school, but that's another story. Anyway, remember that post that had a photo of Spencer's Rosie's Diner project? Oh rats, I just remember that was Holly's post, she had scooped me that day, of course I went through every post that I have made in order to come to that realization, we'll here's a link to it so you can remember how awesome it turned out. Rosie's Diner We saw the final product today, in one of the display cases at school. Oh, sure there were some other structures in the same display case, but not of the same caliber. Just my unbiased opinion. Anyway, all his teachers love him, of course and have Spencer stories of their own. There was no earth shattering conference, just the usual, and he's doing well so we can relax, at least for a day or two.



Yesterday's shot was one that got some comments coming back our way. Remember to share your thoughts with the world, it's easy, get to the actual blog website and go to the bottom and click on the Post a comment link.

I am going to Outdoor Leadership Training for Boy Scouts this weekend so my post will be silent. I will try to come back with some good stories and I may even take the camera. See you Sunday/Monday, depends on my tiredness and the family.

Here's another photo from our little guitar shoot last night. I am not really sure what this pose was for, other than to prove publicly that I will pose for my son after all these years of posing him. Maybe it was to show that our necks are thicker than guitar necks and therefore we know that Dad (that would be me) is not a pencil neck geek. Just a thought.







Have a great day,
Pat

Photo of the day, Wednesday, 10/15/08

As I am settling in to my fall routine I am struck by how life seems to be busier and busier as I get older. I used to attribute it to time speeding up as I aged, but now I'm not so sure. For example work is like this; I have a large project going with one customer and the tooling order is getting close to being placed, so close that I hope we can get it taken care of tomorrow. Anyway, we've been going crazy trying to get everything in place. Additionally we have several other customers that are demanding our attention, all with the potential of tooling and more sales. Yes, even in these crazy economic times, we are frantically busy. Add to that the 3 Bible studies that I'm involved in and Boy Scouts and Children's Ministry and the time needed to prepare for that. (by the way, we're still selling Boy Scout popcorn here) Oh, yeah, I have yet another Boy Scout camping trip this weekend. (I'm pretty sure that I've now camped more this year than I have up to this point in my life.) This time it's just adults, all trying to learn Outdoor Leadership skill to help our boys. (all I can think is that it's going to be cold and wet)

So, where am I going with this? It's pretty simple, Live Life Out Loud and try to keep up! Easy to say, not so easy to do. I always get wrapped around the axle at work. You know, get involved with way more than I should and then my home life starts to fall apart. I am pretty sure that that's not God's plan for me. He has plans to prosper me, not to grind me into the ground. So every once in a while, I take a break. Fall back and ask, what's most important for the future of the world? Usually, it's not work. Of course, with teens, I'm not so sure I can pass anything more than a cold on to the youth of this country.

Now, as for a break here's what worked tonight, here we are taking a break from the stress of life and we're playing guitar hero. I'd like to point out that I actually beat Ian today on guitar hero, of course he was playing on expert and I was playing at..., well,... well, I was not playing on expert. Anyway, Spencer, me and Ian are posed and ready to go crazy for our fans. Well, actually, it's fan. Only Holly was cheering us on, but she's the best fan a guitar hero could hope for. Rock On!

Have a great day!

Pat

Photo of the day, Monday, October 13, 2008

Man I hate construction season. I was driving back from a customer visit in some pretty heavy near rush hour traffic. Well, OK, it's Grand Rapids, and we don't really have a whole rush hour. It's more of a rush half hour. Anyway, you have to remember, my commute is now totally contained within Rockford's city limits. So there I am, moving along and I see there's some construction coming up and we're to get over. I blindly obey. No one else seems to though. In fact, I see some that get just plain obnoxious with the cutting in and out of traffic.

I was getting pretty angry sitting there. As I sat and stewed in my own juices I realized that I can't do anger alone. It's just no fun without someone to witness and commiserate with. So I laughed at myself and turned up the music. Soon enough we were all flying down the road again and best of all, I felt great!

Here's a shot of our tent village from last weekend. Mine is way to the back, behind the dark blue. The boys were off to the left. It's kind of a cool shot because you can see my shadow in the foreground. Can you tell I had my Indiana Jones hat on?

Have a great day!

Pat