Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • The Candy Aisle

    In August of 2009 I wrote about how I couldn’t afford to let my child choose whatever candy they wanted from the gas station because I literally only had less than $2. All of our credit cards were maxed out and we could barely make the minimum payments. It forced us to become used to living within our means after living outside of them for so long, but our troubles were far from over. In fact they were only just beginning.

    “I went to bed [that] night thinking about my experience earlier in the day with my daughter at the gas station. We walked there to get my wife a coke, but had some ‘extra’ money to get her some candy. When we walked through the candy aisle, she started looking at the bags of candy on the left and I looked at the money I had. I had to bend down and tell her that she could only look on the other side of the aisle, in a section in which I could afford to buy her something. In bed that night I started thinking how much more awful it would be to do similar things in the future to clothes she’ll want to buy, trips she’ll want to go on with friends, etc..

    In 3 months I’d be living at a friend’s house in a spare bedroom, and I’d be a month away from losing my house. The tires on my car were so bad no one would change them unless I bought all four at once, which I couldn’t afford. Since they didn’t think my car was safe I didn’t feel comfortable picking my kids up to go anywhere. I ended up selling my wedding ring to fix my car because I didn’t know if my wife would give me any of my money from the paycheck deposited in the bank account she controlled. She blamed me for the state of our marriage, for the mortgage going unpaid, and for her inability to get a job. And she was right. A lot of it was my fault. I chose to go to college, incur huge amounts of debt, get married, have children, buy a car and home I couldn’t afford, and take whatever job came my way. I didn’t have a plan and I wasn’t being a leader. I was a loser and I had lost.

    James Altucher wrote in How to Have Great Ideas that, “I lost the first home I bought. I lost all my money. Fifteen million cash. I went to zero. I was literally crying on the floor while my baby was crawling over to me to get to her toys. I couldn’t get a loan of a few hundred dollars just to ensure I could provide diapers and food for the weekend. From my own parents! Nobody trusted me.” And in his book, I Was Blind But Now I See, he wrote, “I would pace at three in the morning. ‘I’m going to lose this house. My kids are going to switch schools. I have three months to live. I’m going to lose this house. I’m going to this and that and this/that.’ The chatter doesn’t stop and it’s nightmarish at three in the morning. And at four, and at five, and it doesn’t stop when the kids wake up and they don’t know anything is different but I cry then because everything is different.”

    Paper RouteIn Everything I Know About Cars I wrote, “Our first son was born the day Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008 and soon after all of our credit cards were unusable. The banks decided to lower our credit limit to our current balance, rendering them useless. We had foolishly been relying on credit each month to pay our daily expenses, but suddenly we were forced to pay for everything with cash, check, or debit card. We didn’t make enough money at the time to pay our monthly expenses as we had been living outside of our means since before we were married. For the next year I did odd jobs on the side and we cut expenses, but the time came when we couldn’t reduce our expenses any more and we had to raise our income. In the fall of 2009 my wife decided to get a paper route. After running the paper route four months, another route opened up and I applied. I started running the paper route Feb 1 and ran it every morning until November 30. For ten months my wife and I would get up at 3 AM, be at ‘The Shed’ by 3:30 and be done delivering papers by 7:00 in order for me to be at work at my day job by 8:00. I’d get home, change my clothes, and jump back in the car.”

    In How to Work a Life of Purpose I reference this period in my life as one of only two times I’ve worked hard to overcome something, “[I] wanted to get caught up on back-mortgage to keep from losing the house so I got up every morning at 3AM for 10 months straight to raise the money. I went through 2 flat tires, 2 visits to the brake shop, and got stuck in the snow twice, but we kept our home,” but I also worked hard to repair our marriage, which has remained strong since.

    Working a day job was starting to wear on me and 2 years after writing about the candy aisle I quit my job to run my own business, which I had been building on the side for 4 years. I ran it successfully for another year and a half before calling it quits and going back to a day job. One of my biggest clients hired me on full-time to continue doing what I do best: IT consulting. We are still not using credit cards and I still drive the same car I drove in 2003. I now have four children and another one on the way. I have strong opinions on management and believe that there are big ideas “no one claim yet”. I’m continually looking to the future and am happy to report that even though I can now afford to let my children buy candy from either side of the aisle, that they still only get candy from the right side and the thing that always mattered most was the time we spent together and the love we had for each other.

  • 13 Trends That Are Changing the World

    Things change and will continue to change, that much we know. But sometimes the change is so incremental that it’s hard to notice. This post aims to take a step back and review where we are now and where we might be going.

    1. Crowdfunding – funding a project large or small used to be limited to knowing the right people, lucky breaks, or having a proven business model, but now a new method for funding a project has emerged. Crowdfunding allows many people to give small amounts, which in aggregate help fund a larger goal. It can be used to fund an art project, a new product, or even a political campaign. One of the most popular crowdfunding sites is Kickstarter, but AngelList has a list of crowdfunding sites here. Here is a list of crowdfunding for scientific research. We will continue to see more of these types of sites set up to serve more unique, niche areas of the economy.
    2. Crowdsourcing – breaking big jobs into little jobs that anyone can do or opening up a contest for a complex problem that anyone can enter are two forms of crowdsourcing. Sites like Amazon Mechanical Turk is an example of the former, creating small, repeatable tasks for people to perform while the X Prize Foundation is a good example of the latter where prize money is given to those who can show they can overcome big problems. Crowdsourcing has proven to be fuel for innovation when traditional methods just aren’t working. This will continue be a method used by organizations in the future.
    3. Open Source – building hardware or software while making the information, code, and plans public information has proven to be a viable way to build new companies, highlight worker skills, and help the world. Old theories about how people won’t work for free or that organizations won’t do anything that doesn’t directly make them money have been turned on their head by open source projects like Wikipedia and Mozilla. Android, the most widely used mobile operating system, is also open sourced, along with the backbone of the Internet, Linux and Apache. The future will continue to use open source initiatives.
    4. Insourcing – the opposite trend of outsourcing, this is where organizations begin pulling their talent, manufacturing, and logistics back inside their company, not as a vertical move, but one that makes sense for communication, intellectual capital protection, and patent creation. Some of this may run counter to the open source movement, but it nevertheless is still happening. Companies who used to outsource their call centers or programming to India are now bringing the operations back to the United States. Even Apple is now bringing the manufacture of some of its products back to the United States.
    5. Infilling – instead of building out and creating more sprawl, communities are choosing to build in and between existing buildings in order to create more dense, walkable neighborhoods. Instead of creating new housing editions, new home construction is occuring in exsiting neighborhoods between existing homes. According to the EPA, “Nearly three out of four large metropolitan regions saw an increased share of infill housing development during 2005-2009 compared to 2000-2004.” This trend then allows more benefit from public transportation, bike and walking paths, which are growing in popularity.
    6. Cloud Apps – storing data and running programs from shared servers instead of each organization running local programs on local servers is more efficient and allows for easier access to the data from a variety of devices and platforms (as long as they are on the Internet). The high-availability of the Internet coupled with low server costs and the near ubiquitousness of smartphones makes for a perfect storm for cloud apps to replace local workstation and server apps like Microsoft Office. In some ways, the operating system itself has become less relevant as it is increasingly used only as a gateway to Internet-based cloud apps.
    7. Long Tail – this is the idea that there is just as much value in a wide variety of small niches as there is in the biggest blockbuster hits of any industry. If you’ve ever heard the term, the riches are in the niches, it’s true just as much as the riches are in the blockbusters. Back when books required cutting down a tree to print and movies were only distributed on VHS and DVD, the cost of printing anything other than the most popular items was prohibitive, but with ebooks and streaming video, the cost of distribution is way less, leading to more choice and a longer tail of products. The same is happening with 3D printing technology.
    8. 3D Printing – while reductive 3D printing technology has been around for a while, it’s the additive type that is getting the most attention nowadays because instead of using milling drilling technology to reduce a block of material down, additive printing builds an object up, which uses less material. When coupled with open source 3D printing hardware and cheap 3D scanning technology like the Microsoft Kinect, a new hacker-like “maker culture” is emerging that is set to create a whole new industry. There is a new industrial revolution and it’s happening in garages all over the country, which will create untold new businesses.
    9. Augmented Reality – while hinting at it for over a year, Google has officially released Google Glass to a limited public. The glasses layover meta information about your environment that only you can see and interactive with via voice. This is only one type of augmented reality, but it’s one I’ve predicted to eventually take the place of mobile phones and why I think Warby Parker will be the next Apple. Why would people take the time to look at their mobile phone when they can have the same relationship always in view? This technology is bound to be disruptive to privacy and relationships, but only time will tell.
    10. Electric Cars – while natural gas, electricity, and even coal has been delivered to your home over the last century, we’ve always had to drive to the gas station to fill up our cars. Now, instead of laying new gasoline pipelines to our homes, we can use the electric lines to charge our cars overnight. It’s perfect for short commutes and teenagers you don’t want driving very far, but that will change. Battery technology and power infrastructure will continue to improve along with society’s point of view of how a car should be driven and when. Electric cars will only continue to grow in popularity thanks mostly to Tesla Motors.
    11. Private Space Exploration – it’s hard to talk about private space exploration and electric cars without bringing up Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. If it weren’t for the development and sale of payment processor, PayPal, there might not be a space vehicle capable of servicing the International Space Station right now, which is what SpaceX is doing. But the bigger story is the men who are going to Mars (1,2) and the organizations planning on mining asteroids for profit. The future outlined in Aliens is finally coming to fruition, just in time for the new Star Wars to come out in a couple of years (with J.J. Abrams!).
    12. Mobile Computing – mobile computing may not seem like that big of a deal now because it’s used so much and so often it’s starting to fade into the background, but that’s precisely why I bring it up. We all have Internet access, calculators, video/still cameras, calendars, social networks, GPS receivers, and highly specialized apps in our pockets. Most of us could do our jobs if not run our companies from our smart phones. While there is some decent processing power, most of it happens on the cloud, which is also where most of our data is stored. It’s the way things work now and will be more so in the future.
    13. Mobile Payment Processing – while this technology seems less revolutionary than space travel or electric cars, the ability for any person to accept any form of payment at any time is now at hand. From mobile to mobile payment apps at your bank to specialized services like Square, the ability to take credit card payments or make a payment using your mobile phone through services like Starbucks’ app make the mobile payment revolution a real one. The era of paper money and checks is slowly dying as the rise of the smartphone and Internet access makes this process much more efficient. Look for these services to grow.

    Of course there are more than these and some of you may argue as to the importance of these or others, but these are the ones I’ve been exposed to. It really boils down to three primary trends:

    • The love children of Smartphones and The Internet – what happens when the adjacent possible of two of the biggest technological contributions ever combine to form our new technological paradigm?
    • The love of Efficiency – electric cars and 3D printing are all about being more effecient and better stewards of our stuff – you shouldn’t have to move so much stuff around to move so much stuff around.
    • The love of Control – people want access to the stuff they want, whether it’s a new product, an old movie, their money, or their data – give it to them or they will find someone to give it to them for them.

    Thoughts?

    If you liked this, consider join my mailing list to read more like it



  • How to Work a Life of Purpose

    What is my purpose in work? How can I find a career I love?

    I have been reading Hacker News for the last six months or so and a few days ago I stumbled upon a Jeff Haden piece called “Do What You Love? Screw That”. I admit, this title intrigued me. I had been a big fan of finding and doing what I loved ever since my dad turned me on to Richard Bolles’ What Color is Your Parachute? back in high school. The book came out originally in 1970 and thus entire generations (including mine) have grown up thinking that there is always something better coming along that never does and why people quit their jobs. These are all part of the career myths espoused and made popular by lifestyle designers like Tim Ferriss and his 4-Hour Workweek. I drank the Kool-Aid. Who wouldn’t want to do what they love, follow their passion, and have full control of their working life and income? This is the dream, right?

    The Passion Mindset

    Haden’s article was talking about things I had never heard spoken before: “Telling someone to follow their passion–from an entrepreneur’s point of view–is disastrous,” says Cal Newport. Who’s Cal Newport? “Passion is not something you follow,” he adds. “Passion is something that will follow you as you put in the hard work to become valuable to the world.” This struck a chord with me as it seemed to echo what Mark Cuban said back in March of 2012 in “Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Effort” where he says, “‘Follow Your Passion’ is easily the worst advice you could ever give or get. Had Cal read Mark Cuban’s blog or had Mark read Cal’s blog? Maybe it was an “adjacent possible” thing.

    The Adjacent Possible

    In Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, of which Haden’s article is about, Cal talks about the “adjacent possible”, which is:

    A term taken from the science writer Steven Johnson, who took it from Stuart Kauffman, that helps explain the origins of innovation. Johnson notes that the next big ides in any field are typically found right beyond the current cutting edge, in the adjacent space that contains the possible new combinations of existing ideas. The key observation is that you have to get to the cutting edge of a field before its adjacent possible – and the innovations it contains – becomes visible.

    I felt this book was a good example of that for me because I was just about to write something similar. It seems this is possible because Cal and I both have similar reading habits and a desire to find out how to do what we love. This book builds on principals from Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell, Derek Sivers, Daniel Pink, and Reid Hoffman. I will admit that I was a believer in the “passion mindset” and although I thought I was a hard worker, I tended to avoid the mental strain Cal talks about that’s so important to deliberately practice in order to build career capital (these are two terms Cal introduces). This book really does a good job of turning the passion mindset on it’s head while giving you solid, practical advice about how to get the things you want in a job: control/autonomy. The bad news is that it takes a long time, will hurt, and requires a lot of work.

    The Law of Financial Viability

    Mark Cuban asks, “Think about all the things you have been passionate about in your life. Think about all those passions that you considered making a career out of or building a company around. How many were/are there? Why did you bounce from one to another? Why were you not able to make a career or business out of any of those passions?” Cal asked Derek Sivers this same question in the book, to which Sivers responded with what Cal calls the law of financial viability, “Do what people are willing to pay for…unless people are willing to pay you, it’s not an idea you’re ready to go after.”

    By Doing, We Understand

    How do you know what college major to pick or what job to go after? How do you know what will make you happy? You don’t, but key lesson here is that any path can make you happy. At Mount Sinai, the Jewish people accepted the Old Testament Torah with the words, “asah shamah” – we will do, then we will understand. Exodus 24:7 says, “Then he took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do (asah), and we will be obedient (shamah)!” The Hebrew word asah means to do, accomplish, or observe. Shamah means to hear with understanding or intelligence. Asah Shamah means “by doing, we understand.” When you do good work, passion will follow. You don’t have to understand it before you begin.

    I recently had a kind of enlightenment before reading So Good They Can’t Ignore You:

    1. ME: I want to be great, but I don’t want to do anything that’s hard.or takes too long to accomplish.
    2. SUCCESFUL PEOPLE: Doing great stuff is hard and takes a while to accomplish.

    I feared that my excuses about being raised in America as a white male with two parents and a mother who did my laundry and cooked my meals may not hold water. I knew that there have been times in my life when I have worked hard and seen the rewards of it:

    1. Wanted to start a band, but had no money to buy equipment, no experience, and could not play an instrument. I used my experience as a writer and my leadership skills to recruit and then learned to play guitar by practicing every night after school.
    2. Wanted to get caught up on back-mortgage to keep from losing the house so I got up every morning at 3AM for 10 months straight to raise the money. I went through 2 flat tires, 2 visits to the brake shop, and got stuck in the snow twice, but we kept our home.

    But it kind of stopped there:

    1. Wanted to start a successful business, but instead ended up creating a job for myself that wasn’t that stable. I blame a constant search for self-discovery of ‘who I am’ that could have been avoided if the company was a business, not a person. Companies know who they are and just go.
    2. Wanted to write my own app, but after the online classes got hard or I encountered the first hardware obstacle, I immediately quit. I blamed not having a mentor. I will admit that mentors are nice and have helped me in the past learn guitar (a great uncle), business analysis (managers), and SEO (Pangburn). You can’t always buy a consultant or personal trainer though.

    Or can you? If that is what is stopping me, then why can’t I just pay someone to help me get over that initial hump of learning the initial pathways?

    Deliberate Practice

    In So Good They Can’t Ignore You Cal talks about the value of a mentor/trainer in deliberate practice, which is a term coined by Anders Ericson and defined as “difficult practice required to continue to improve at a task,” typically designed by a teacher, “for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual’s performance.” And this notion of deliberate practice is what takes a person above the performance plateau, which gives you the career capital to spend creating the work you love.

    Before reading the book it crippled me to even think of taking a hard, fast step towards something because I felt no pressure. My back was not against any wall. Although I had no problems ‘stepping out’ when I needed a car (get a loan!), wanted to buy a house (a mortgage!), or go to school (student loans!). Even though these are huge, life-changing, and decade-long commitments they are made in relative moments. It is only when faced with no deadline, with no urgency – that the endless wandering of thought leads to constant consternation. After reading the book I realized this eternal hand-wringing was the negative effect of the passion mindset.

    I was so afraid of choosing the wrong thing and making a mistake that I didn’t do any one thing well. I didn’t take the time to invest in my career capital to become the best I could at my job. Back to my earlier comment about “easy” vs. “hard”: it’s easy to read a book by Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, or Jim Collins, because they are good writers and they aren’t really asking you to think much. The things they point out are pretty easy to implement and so you feel good doing them, but there’s no meat there. I might as well be reading People magazine.

    The Craftsman Mindset

    There is a difference if what I am trying to be is the best writer, manager, leader, business analyst, marketer, or product developer I can be. I don’t read SEO tips because they can sometimes be hard to implement, but also because I don’t really care. I’m not passionate about SEO, people just are willing to pay me to do it (the law of financial viability). I know there is more to do with SEO than what I do, but I reached a performance plateau and felt what I was doing was ‘good enough’. To overcome this, Cal says to develop what he calls “the craftsman mindset”, which is working on developing the “value you are offering the world.” Because the things most people desire in a job (autonomy and control) are so rare, they are intrinsically valuable. And therefore in order to achieve them, you must have something equally as valuable, career capital. One of the ways to achieve career capital is through a craftsman mindset. In this way, you can see that it’s all about a change in how you think about work and how small changes (or Little Bets), can make a big difference.

    Personal Programming

    In the book A New Kind of Science by Stephan Wolfram, he explores how simple rules can lead to complex results. This is how much of the world and our universe works, but it can be applied to our daily lives as well. Call it habit formation or life hacking or whatever, but simple changes to your day to day life can have large, complex changes to your overall life and well being. Our minds control a lot of what we do, but the nice thing about them is that they can be programmed to do what we want. It’s hard to do though, so most people don’t.

    If I were to counsel someone like me I would simply say, “Erich, 95% of what you do is automatic behavior. You’ve got to start to take back that part of your life and start to live in the moment. Listen to the sounds around you. Feel what’s touching your skin. Stop and smell the roses. Now take a deep breath and let it all out. You are going to write a new story for your life. You’re going to live with a purpose. You’re going to ask God for help and you’re going to do one thing consciously today and for the next 21 days that you didn’t do before. If you forget one day, pick up again the next day. It’s going to be hard. That’s how you know it’s working.”

    On Obtaining Wisdom

    There are times when thoughts and ideas learned over years of study begin to coalesce around a central theme. This is where wisdom is born and it only comes with time. Proverbs 4:7 says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.” One thing I’ve learned is how fast I can learn.

    Here’s a typical example from my working life: someone has a problem they can’t solve or implement. They bring me in to review, recommend, and implement the change. I normally don’t know anything about the company, product, service, vendor, or technology being used, but I almost always figure it out. I read the manual, I contact the vendor, I ask questions. It hurts my brain. I’m straining, but it’s like deliberate practice. It makes me stronger and I gain career capital.

    Deliberate practice hurts my brain. It’s physically painful for me to learn. I’ve heard that the brain has no feeling of pain so I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but it does hurt, at least for a while. Cal says in his book that the feeling tends to last for about 10 minutes, then subsides. He gets over this pain through a mental exercise of setting a time limit on the study to no more than an hour. This seems to help, but it might not work for you.

    The conditions in which I can learn do seem to be limited, though. I tend to be better under pressure, when there’s a time limit, someone watching me, or the fear of not getting paid. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked into a home or business and had zero idea on how to fix their issues, but by the time I leave I’ve learned and fixed the problem. The client is happy and I am relieved. What I can’t seem to do is learn the things I want to learn. Why? There is no pressure and the reward is dubious at best. Take programming for example. I’ve tried to learn programming several times over the years. I’ve done some BASIC as a child and some Visual Basic.NET and JavaScript in college, but so far all I have managed to learn is HTML and CSS. I’ve dabbled in Actionscript for Flash animation and Objective-C for iPhone apps, but not made much past “Hello World”. Why?

    The Value of a Mentor

    Beyond lack of pressure there was no real reason, no project, and no goal. But the biggest reason is the I had no mentor. The only reason I learned HTML and CSS is because I had a mentor to teach me and a reason to use it. I would make web pages on shared computers at school and at work to make static Intranet sites. I’d use them to publish newsletters. Eventually I started making web pages for friends and family and eventually started a web design company. NOTE: This is where the similarities to Cal Newport start to get coincidental. We both have an interest in computers and writing, and like Cal we both had bands in high school and started a web design company. We both studied the same topics in this book, but he wrote it first (of which I am thankful).

    I was drawn to web design because its roots are in publishing and I had been publishing my own signs, letters, and news for years before I ever made my first web page. CMS blogging platforms like WordPress kind of take the work out of publishing and tools like Twitter and email make it easy to share your ideas. Everything is just so easy. Everything but learning and doing that is (aka work). At the bank I used to laugh hysterically when my manager would talk about a new position being created, “because somebody has to do the work.”

    What I’ve Learned

    If you’ve read this far then you might be interested in what I’ve learned so that I can share it with you. While I was busy paying the bills providing IT services, web design, and business consulting services to clients and employers, I was seeking out the relationship between work, mind, body, and spirit. I wanted to know how to find purpose in life, how to align that purpose with work, how to do what you love, how to be happy, and how to have an impact on the world. This is what I’ve learned over the last five years:

    I learned from Amway and 30-Day Challenge resources like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich that all things begin with a thought. David Allen’s book Getting Things Done said you can’t manage your time, only your actions. Stephen Covey said to begin with the end in mind. Thoughts guide your actions and intention sets direction. Measure what matters and inspect what you expect. Dave Ramsey says a goal has to be written down and have a deadline (pressure). Mark Cuban says passion comes from effort. Rick Warren says in The Purpose Driven Life to have an attitude of gratitude. Be thankful for what you have and more will be given. Good things beget good things. Those who have much, more will be given. Ask and you shall receive. The world is full of abundance, not scarcity. It’s a big Blue Ocean. Choose your story. Change your thoughts, change your outcome. What you tell yourself matters. Smiling makes you happy. Standing tall makes you feel strong. Your body can influence how you feel just like your words am influence how you think. If you can change your thoughts, you can change your story, and you can change your life. Do the work and you can earn the value needed to have the life you want.

    What’s your Story?

    If you liked this, consider join my mailing list to read more like it



  • A Passion for Soil

    While in West Lafayette at the Han Institute project meeting I was introduced to a man who claimed to have a passion for soil and how it relates to plants, animals, and humans. He was a project manager by trade, most recently working for Eli Lilly through BCForward in Indianapolis. He’s a reflexologist on the side, which is like acupuncture, but without the needles.

    He told the story of how his brother, while working for Albert Einstein, asked Einstein if his famous equation could be inverted to create mass from energy. The story goes that Einstein just rocked back and forth in his rocking chair a bit before saying, “I’ll leave that one for you to figure out.” His brother later worked on developing formulas for ionization, which was the beginning of his work in soil and plant science. His brother now consults with farmers about how to improve yields without fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides.

    The man’s name is Jerry Smith. He’s of Jewish descent, having had his name changed upon his ancestors entering the United States. He asked us if we knew the purpose insects serve? I said to clean up plant waste, but he said it was to eat unhealthy plants. He said the only way to tell the true health of a plant is to use a spectrometer. Unhealthy plants contain less sugar and are easier to digest. Then he asked us why weeds exist? He said it was to add nutrients back into the soil to prepare for other plants.

    In other words, his brother believed and has proven that healthy plants need no insecticide and healthy soil grows no weeds. These are pretty bold statements, but it gets even bolder. He said that plants, like corn, that have broad leaves get most of their nitrogen from the air, not from the soil. He said that people knew this back in the 1700’s, but somehow the knowledge was lost. On top of that he said corn should be able to water itself from the moisture in the air as long as the soil was healthy.

    So what are some characteristics of healthy soil? It’s soft. It has a smell to it. It’s cool in the summer and warm in winter. And it should have the same moisture level as the air. If any of these things aren’t true, it means the soil is dead or damaged. He did mention one way to restore the soil. He told a story of a farmer with a sandy hill. His brother asked him if he could plant some buck wheat on it for a year. As soon as the buck wheat would turn to seed, he’d plow it under. After the third time, the soil had turned black. The buck wheat had taken nitrogen from the air and energy from the sun and put it into the ground. He had created matter from energy.

    Corn Leaf

  • Free Second Chapter of Jessica: Summer Camp

    This is a continuation of the first chapter of Jessica:

    Internet Access

    Having gotten accustomed to being able to get online at a pretty regular basis, it was hard to adapt to an environment where access was extremely limited. I had dial-up access at home and in my dorm room at school, but mostly we would go down to the computer lab in Lusby when classes were not in session. Sometimes we would accidentally walk in when classes were in session and would not know it sans the dirty looks from the majority of the class. My boss at camp, Blaine, had dial-up and he said I could check my email whenever I wanted there so I jumped at the opportunity to check my Hotmail that night.

    The second night I knocked on Blaine’s door, his wife obliged, but I could tell they were wondering how often I would be coming over and for how long would I be online. I took them at good faith that I could get online whenever I wanted, but already I could tell that it was not true. By the third night, I was told, “You can get online at the library I think,” which I took as, “You can’t get online here anymore.”

    I began my search for internet access on Saturday. I drove out to the nearest library and saw that you could get online, for a half-hour at a time, but you must sign in.

    “I’d like to use the Internet, please.” I asked the librarian on duty.

    “May I see your library card, please?”

    “I don’t have one,” but I was quick to add, “How can I get one?”

    “You can sign up for one, but where do you live?”

    “Niles.”

    “I’m sorry. I can’t give you a card. That’s not our township.”

    “So I can’t use the Internet, then.”

    “No, you’ll have to go to the library in your township.”

    “Do you know which one that is?”

    “No, I don’t sir, but you can look it up on the Internet.”

    “How am I supposed to do that when I can’t get online?”

    “That’s not my problem, sir, now if you’ll excuse me, the people who DO live in this township need my help. Good day.”

    I had to call every library in the phone book before figuring out which library I could go to. It was up north in the town Denise lived in. I would go there tomorrow.

    To Build a Fire

    Every night there was a fire in the camp. It was at the bottom of the hill on the south side, just north of the road, but behind some trees on one side. There were logs set up around it in a circle where the kids would sing songs and talk about God. It was called Campfire and we were in charge of setting it up.

    It was the last thing we did each night before cutting out to the movies or Jessie’s lakehouse, or whatever it was we did that night. We drove up to the old white maintenance shed by the house and picked up the diesel. Then it was down the hill to the wood pile where we loaded up the cart with wood.

    “I’m so freaking tired, dude.” said Jessie.

    “I know. If you hadn’t broke the freaking John Deere, I wouldn’t have had to stand up day long on the freaking Toro!”

    “Jeff broke it with the air compressor and his fat grandpa seized it up in the middle of the night! Just cause I was the one driving it when it failed, doesn’t mean I broke it.”

    “Who doesn’t know what the temperature gauge looks like?!”

    “I thought it was just telling me it was hot that day!”

    “I just hope we get it back soon. My legs are killing me from all the standing and shaking. Do you think it even needs mowed as much anymore?”

    “No. I’m going to talk to Jeff about it tomorrow.”

    I let Jessie drive once we get enough firewood loaded. He stomps the peddle on the gas/electric hybrid utility cart. Its like a golf cart, but with a trailer built into the back. A lever between the drivers legs indicates forward, backward, or neutral. There is a gas pedal, a brake pedal, and a key. That is pretty much it. No seat belts. We arrive at the campfire just around the corner and begin to stack the wood.

    “Did you grab the newspaper?”

    “Yeah, I got it.”

    Jessie had started stacking the wood in a square. This meant he was building the ‘Log Cabin’. We varied between building that and the ever popular ‘Tee Pee’. After careful placement of the newspaper and logs, we doused the fire with diesel and drove off. Finally we were done for the day. It was getting dark and I was getting excited. Denise was spending the night tonight.

    Trash Men

    The camp sat on 66 acres (corresponding with the number of books in the Bible) and contained four cabins, two tree houses, two maintenance buildings, two houses, one pool, one playground, one office and staff living quarters, and one multi-function building that housed the kitchen and a large indoor area which was used for eating and gathering for worship. There were three meals served a day in that mess hall. There were seven barrels of trash filled at every meal. This accounted for over a hundred bags of trash a week from meals alone. The trash truck came twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. Trash trucks are very important to maintenance men. They empty the dumpster. When the dumpster is full, sometimes the bags have to be shoved up on top of other bags and on Friday night it was the worst. One Friday night sticks out more than others.

    High school week was over and we were all itching to get done so we could relax on the weekend. Saturdays were really the only day we had off since campers arrived at camp Sunday nights. We send the campers home before supper on Friday night partly to save on food costs and partly to allow us, the staff and faculty, time to clean up after them. As a maintenance worker I was responsible for providing the cleaning tools to each cabin and transporting the trash placed outside into the dumpster. We were the only ones that were supposed to drive the gas-powered carts and so we were the ones doing the hauling. I say “we” because it was my partner, Jessie and I. With Jessie everything was a question of being “kosher” or not, but he wasn’t Jewish. He was hardly even Christian. When he first asked me if I smoked, I said, “No.” It turns out I answered his question correctly, but he wasn’t asking about tobacco use. Only a few trash bags remained, the ones from the female cabins at the top of the hill, nearest the pool.

    “I’ll get the rest,” I said to Jessie while still sitting in the cart in between the mess hall and the dumpster, which sat just outside the forest by the lake. By lake I mean large body of water, never more than three feet deep, and covered most of the summer by lily pads and the corresponding leap frog. It was just deep enough to canoe through and some people did, but you weren’t supposed to go alone and it was really hard to find someone else with the same enthusiasm for the trip. If ever there was such interest, it was a one-time event. At least that was how it was for most people, including me.

    “You sure?” he asked.

    “Yeah,” I said, “I’ll meet you in the mess hall to finish up.” Though the faculty were responsible for cabin clean-up, we were responsible for pretty much everything else, including the mess hall which had to be swept after every meal. It was a horrifyingly awful job to have to stop what you are doing throughout the day to come back and sweep the entire mess hall. The process involved sweeping between the rows of tables of chairs, then pulling out all the chairs and sweeping again, under the tables. It was brutal as there were often more than a hundred chairs to move back and forth. Friday’s were more extensive. We had to fold up all the chairs and tables, sweep the entire floor, and then mop. The camp manager would then come by for a final inspection before we could go off on our merry ways. I headed up the hill.

    The last of the trash bags were sitting outside the cabin along with the cleaning supplies used to clean it. The cabin mom was no where to be seen as she had left as soon as possible. I went to school with most of the people who worked here. That’s how I found out about the job. I was working with Kelly in the cafeteria of Kentucky Christian College as a kitchen closer. She worked on the line serving students as they came through. We both washed dishes sometimes and sometimes we washed dishes together. There was no dishwasher at camp, which is why there was so much trash. The camp used styrofoam plates and cups, and plastic utensils. Pots and pans were washed in a large sink after every meal. I headed down the hill to the dumpster.

    The dumpster was full. That was an overstatement. The last three bags could not be thrown on top or they would just roll off the mountain of white sacks. I had to shove the bags into spots on the side to get them to stay. I saved the biggest I had to use two hands to shove the last bag in. As I did I saw a small opening develop in the plastic, but I kept on shoving. I was determined to get this bag in. Before I could do anything, the small tear grew into a large rip and soon trash began caressing over my face. My hands, caught up in pushing the plastic, could not move fast enough to stop the fall. It was all over the ground around me. I bent over to pick it all up and angrily threw it into the dumpster, loose. It was disgusting. Later, people would always ask me why I didn’t go get gloves that day.

    “Why didn’t you use gloves?” they’d ask. All I could say was that it was the most disgusting thing to ever happen to me. I was glad the week was over.

    Downtown Dowagiac

    “…in downtown Dowagiac!” blared the radio anouncer. His voice got really deep when he got to the word Dowagiac, pronounced doh-wah-jac, like the “Lets get ready to rumble!” guy. It was fun to say once you got the hang of it. The town elders must have named it after the last Indian tribe they ran out of town. It sported a drive-in movie theater, which people would drive from all around to see since there weren’t very many of them left. Ashley agreed to meet me up there one Saturday night for a movie and so I drove up there on good faith. She had given me a phone number of the house she was going to be at. I was bored so I drove up early and stopped to eat at Dowagiac’s local Pizza Hut, alone.

    “How many?” the waitress asked.

    “Just me.” It was at that moment that I realized it might be weird to dine in at Pizza Hut all by yourself, but by now it was too late. I was committed. I decided to ask God to join me. I prayed, “God, will you eat with me?” Just then a man entered the Pizza Hut, alone. “That was fast,” I thought. I asked him to join me and he did.

    “How’s it going?” he asked.

    “Its alright.” I hated that question, but in this case, I could be forgiving. “What did you want to order?”

    “I’m just going to get a some beer. I’m waiting on my girlfriend. She doesn’t get off work for another hour.”

    “Cool. I’m getting a pizza. You can have some if you want.” We order with the waitress and though I’m in a potentially awkward situation, I’m calm. It was hot outside, but cold in here and the Mountain Dew she brought me tasted delicious. The red leather seats were sticking to my legs as the sweat dried. The air conditioner in my car was all but not working now. I would have to look into that later. For now, I decided to see what God had to say about Jessica.

    “I’m thinking about getting married,” I said. Jessica was one of my most favorite subjects to talk about.

    “It aint nothin’ to rush.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “How old are you?”

    “Twenty.”

    “I got married to my first wife when I was your age. Had two kids, got a divorce. Got remarried, had another kid, got divorced, had my fourth kid with my current girlfriend, but decided not to marry her. It aint nothin’ to rush.”

    This is definitely not God, I thought, but I continued to listen. He had ordered a pitcher all for himself. He offered me some, but I didn’t drink then. I finished eating and thanked the man for eating with me. I paid the waitress with cash. I didn’t have any credit cards then. I needed to find a pay phone so I got in the car and drove to ‘downtown Dowagiac’. The Pizza Hut was on the outskirts of town, in the sprawl. Downtown, there was a small hub of old brick buildings and streets next to the water. I saw a pay phone so I parked and got out to call Ashley. The phone rang until the answering machine picked up, “You have reached the Gellars residence. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”

    I didn’t know who the Gellars were, but I left a message anyway. “Hey, this is Erich, just calling to see what’s up. I’m in Dowagiac now. I guess I’ll see you at the movies. Bye.” I hate leaving answering machine messages. They always make you seem desparate and pathetic. I was determined to see the movie whether or not she showed up so I got back in the car and drove towards the drive in. “The engine temperature seems high,” I thought to myself, “I’ll check the anti-freeze level when I get there.”

    I paid to get into the lot and parked the car. The engine was still running a little hot and got even hotter when I turned the car off. The analog gauges in my 1984 Caprice Classic stayed on, unlike todays digital guages. I popped open the hood and took a look. The anti-freeze was on the left side and had lines marking the level it should be when its hot and when its cold. The anti-freeze was where it should be, but I decided to add some water to it anyway. I had heard that was what you were supposed to do, but I didn’t really know. There was a bathroom behind the concession stand so I took a used bottle out of my car and filled it up. I did this several times, which aroused interest from the other cars parked near me.

    “Car troubles?,” one man asked. You can’t escape nosy neighbors wherever you go. Bill Engeval would have handed this man a sign. It was one of those obvious questions, but I decided to answer him anyway.

    “Yeah, it’s overheating a little bit.”

    “I haven’t seen a carburetor in an engine in a while. Ever cause any trouble for you?”

    “No, not really. I’ve had to replace the alternator and the radiator once, but that’s about it.” My dad helped me replace the alternator. We layed out in the driveway in the middle of the winter changing that thing. It was hell. The radiator we left to the pros down at Chumbley’s Auto.

    “Well good luck to you.” I wish he could have actually helped me or given me insight into the situation. He could have saved me from a lot if only he had known. If only I had known. The sun was going down. The movie would be starting soon, but the wind was picking up and the pressure was dropping. There was a storm rolling in.

    It was still hot after the sun went down. Everyone had their windows down and the speakers attached to their cars. About half way through the movie, the downpour began. I rolled up the window, but had to leave the speaker outside. It was thundering and lighting all around us and the windows were fogging up. It was hard to concentrate on the movie and I could barely hear what was going on. I don’t even remember what movie I saw there, but I remember being very scared.

    Ashley never showed up and I made it back to camp alright that night.

  • Exchange Public Folders and Tasks on iPhone and Android

    How do you sync Exchange Public Folders with Android/iPhone?

    There is no way for the iPhone to show the Public Folders on its own, so we have a few options:

    Exchange Sync iPhone Android

    1. Create additional Contacts and Calendar folders in Outlook. These new folders will synchronize with the Public Contacts and Calendars and as they’re in the mailbox they will simply appear on the Iphone as a new contact list and calendar
    2. Download the Public Folders App from the App Store
    3. Use CodeTwo’s Exchange Folder Sync or DidItBetter’s Add2Exchange software
    4. Easy2Sync for Outlook (requires installing Outlook on Exchange Server and using PFsync on Android devices)

    Most of these solutions are read only, one-way syncs, meaning you can’t add to the public folders from a mobile device. For the Android, there is only one option in the Android Market called Public Folder Sync.

    If you’re using Public Folders to store documents, stop doing so and begin looking for another solution immediately. Microsoft doesn’t recommend using Public Folders in Exchange to store documents and will be phasing them out past Exchange 2010. They have not updated how Public Folders work since 2003 after introducing them with NT4.

    How do you sync Exchange Tasks with Android/iPhone?

    On the iPhone, try TaskTask for syncing Outlook & Exchange Tasks. For Android, try TaskSync for Exchange.

  • Best eCommerce Platforms in 2013

    Which e-commerce site would you recommend? Is it better to have a site that starts as a blog with a shopping cart added, or an e-commerce site with a blog added?

    BigcommerceI’m currently recommending BigCommerce.com as the number one best eCommerce platform in 2013. It’s an online shopping cart/ecommerce platform that performs well, looks great, and has a standard HTML/CSS backend theme structure. It’s an example of an e-commerce site with a blog added. It’s a managed site that you pay monthly for, rather than a self-hosted site like WordPress, osCommerce, or Magento Community, but it’s not much to pay for the amount of support and consulting that comes with that fee. I’ll discuss more on this later. For now, let’s look at the number one blogging platform, WordPress, when ecommerce is added.

    WP-Ecommerce is the most popular ecommerce plugin that runs on WordPress, but I don’t recommend it. I have experience using it myself and from helping clients with it. It does work most of the time, it’s just that when it doesn’t, support is hard to come by. It’s also hard, but not impossible, to make it look good. CSS and theme elements have a lot to do with that, but the plugin has it’s own CSS too, which makes it harder to configure. If you are deadset on using WordPress as your platform, consider Woocommerce first because of all the great themes and support available for it, but if you truly want to self-host, consider Magento Community instead. You might also want to consider osCommerce (read my comparison of Magento vs. osCommerce). Self-hosted ecommerce packages are not easy. If you don’t want to pay someone to support it (or to put it another way, if you want to support it cheaply), what I am recommending right now to clients is BigCommerce.com.

    BigCommerce is easy. Software and hosting are managed for you, it has integration with Google Shopping, is SEO friendly, loads super-fast, has blogging functionality, and has gorgeous themes. For a low monthly rate you also get support and some initial consulting. Compare that with hiring a web designer like me and/or hosting it yourself. The bottom line is that WordPress is not an ecommerce platform, it’s designed for blogging. Although it is powerful enough to run an ecommerce site, it’s not its specialty and it will always be harder than a platform designed for ecommerce. For a second hosted solution, consider Shopify. It’s slightly more expensive than BigCommerce and uses less ‘open standards’ of coding, but if you like it better, it’s still a great shopping cart system.

  • osCommerce Vs. Magento Community

    Recently an e-commerce customer who uses osCommerce asked me about re-installing his e-commerce site from scratch or whether or not he should switch platforms:

    1. Can I start from scratch to build an osCommerce site? What’s involved? Would I need to link my shipping and payment?

    Yes, but I don’t recommend that because it’s out-of-date technology that’s hard to update and doesn’t look that good compared to what else is out there. Installing a new OS Commerce install involves:

    1. Creating a blank database via your web hosting control panel.
    2. Downloading the latest osCommerce zip file from osCommerce, unzip it and extract the ‘catalog’ folder.
    3. If you want your shop to be available at http://www.yourdomain.com/catalog then upload the whole of the catalog folder to the root directory of your website via FTP. If you want the site to be available at http://www.yourdomain.com then just upload all of the contents of the catalog folder, but not the folder itself.
    4. Make sure that the permissions on all of the folders are set to 755, and if that does not work then set them to 777. Make sure that the includes/configure.php file and the admin/includes/configure.php file are set to 777 for the duration of the install. Once the install is complete reset to 644, 444, or 400 depending on your server setup.
    5. Go to http://www.yourdomain.com/install and begin the install procedure. Your DB Server will probably be ‘localhost’, your db user name and password (for mysql access) will have been provided to you by your web hosting company. The name of the database you already know – because you just set it up. Do not enable SSL, elect to store sessions in the database and not files (untick the box), and do not enable persistent connections.
    6. After the install create a folder called ‘backups’ inside the ‘admin’ folder (via FTP), and delete the install folder. Reset permissions on the two configure.php files.
    7. Password Protect your ‘admin’ folder using the Password Protect feature in your web hosting control panel.

    2. Can the new site be full screen format? Or can it have a different look? I have not yet figured out how to give my osCommerce site a different look.

    The CSS files in the catalog folder control the color and look of the site. The “catalog/includes/header.php” and “catalog/includes/footer.php” files contain the structure of the tables that control the width of the site. A quick find and replace in your editor will replace all the pages that have the same code as above in the catalog folder. The header.php and footer.php files have a little different code and would need to be manually changed. Look for the “table” element that looks like this:

    [html]
    table width=”100%”
    [/html]

    3. I’m not sure if I want a completely new site – different address or just revamp my current. I think maybe both. Can I use the same shipping and payment for two sites? New site would be O.S. only….I need a no cost option otherwise I would consider something else.

    Magento Community Edition is a much better ecommerce platform and is free to download and use, but to answer your question, yes, you can use the same shipping and payment information for both sites. If you’re serious about considering Magento, there is a osCommerce Migration tool to convert your osCommerce site to a Magento site.

    osCommerce vs Magento4. Why Magento vs. osCommerce?

    Magento has ‘Store View,’ which allows online shop keepers the ability to set up multiple stores with the same products, at different prices, and even in different languages from a single admin area. Magento is better in terms of what it allows you to do and the customer experience. However, the community around osCommerce is huge, and even a person who does not know programming is able to enter and modify the code. If your shop is a huge online store and you are planning to have thousands of products then it’s better to use Magento as it is more robust and has a dedicated support team because of it’s enterprise customers.

  • In Case You Were Born Yesterday

    As I sit here drinking Yogi green tea I can’t help but think of all the people who don’t know anything yet. These are the people who were born yesterday, the ones who still haven’t heard about Reddit or still believe in Santa Claus. This isn’t a completely exhaustive list, but it’s the stuff that people kind of forget to tell you growing up because they expect you to know it. Take it all with a grain of salt*.

    1. Moss grows on the north side of trees because the sun rises in the south. This creates shade, which moss prefers. Consequently, a rolling stone gathers no moss because it’s constantly moving and it all falls off.
    2. There are lots of things buried under the ground and it gets weirder the deeper you go. Besides the normal gas, water, and electrical lines, there are sewers, subways, secret CIA tunnels, aquifers, and molten lava.
    3. Gravestones face east and west and cows eat north and south. This is so people can rise and set with the sun and because of their magnetic compass, respectively.
    4. Fire takes three things to burn: fuel, heat, and oxygen. If you take any one of these three things away, the fire goes out. That’s why a fire goes out when it’s out of fuel, get’s dowsed with water, or gets smothered, respectively.
    5. 100 years from now no one will know who you are. This used to be more true, but with the Internet’s uncanny ability to make history flat, your great, great, great grandchildren may be watching your Youtube videos.
    6. A tree’s age can be determined after cutting across it’s trunk. The trunk of the tree grows a new layer of bark each year and years with more rain and/or sunlight make the rings larger or smaller which gives us indications of the weather.
    7. You dream you can fly because your sheets make you think air is thick like water. When you’re asleep, you forget you’re under the covers and when you jump in your dreams, you feel resistance against the ‘air’ and think you can fly.
    8. We have been to the Moon and to Mars. Once we found out there really wasn’t anything to do there, we didn’t persue it much. If you think you’d like to go, there’s nothing stopping you going nowadays as long as you’ve got the cash and aren’t too worried about coming back.
    9. Banks lend out 10 times what they have on hand. While it is illegal to print money, it is not apparently illegal to lend out money you don’t have. This is how banks make money from money they don’t have. A new bank is called a “de novo”, which means “from the beginning”.
    10. Community does more for your health than food, education, money, or DNA. The more plugged into a community of people who care about you and depend on you, the longer you will live regardless of how much fat you eat, what school you went to, how much money you make, or who your parents are.
    11. The ‘secret’ ingredient that makes food products most successful is not sugar, but *salt. In a comparison of all major cereals, the ingredient most correlated with commercial success was not sugar, but salt. Coca Cola has more sodium than Pepsi, but not by much. Pepsi does however have more sugar than Coca Cola.
    12. Amazon.com started out as an online book store with over 1 million titles. While they now have server farms that power a large portion of the Internet and are the online equivalent of Wal-Mart, they started small in a niche where they could add value – books.
    13. Everybody used to talk the same language, lived a lot longer, and were a lot smarter than you. There was a time when we all used to ‘get along’ and live hundreds of years, but that didn’t last too long. And every generation thereafter has a little less of the core DNA and more mutations, which makes us slightly less smart every year.
    14. The 14th floor of many buildings is really the 13th floor renamed as the 13th floor. This is because people are superstitious and think that the number 13 is unlucky. This is because there are about 13 full moons a year, but only 12 months! Whoa! Watch out!
    15. Numbers and time aren’t real. We made them up. I’m serious. They only mean something because we say they do. You can count in apples and bananas just the same as 1s and 0s. Numbers only serve as variables to denote measurement. They give us a standard language to communicate with. Kind of like they used to have when we lived longer.
    16. The universe is more than meets the eye. I’m not talking just talking about spectrums of light and what we can see with our eyes versus what can be detected in infrared, radio, and x-rays. I’m talking about the other 95% of the mass out there that we have no idea what it is. We call it Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
    17. Intentions set direction. Look at your toes. Are they pointing towards the door? That means you want to leave. Whatever your intentions, it sets your direction. So spend some time figuring out your purpose in life and what you want out of it before you start to work towards it and your intentions will set your direction.
    18. Weddings and babies are both rare and common events at the same time. The amount of things that have to happen just perfectly over time for someone to meet and agree to marry or for a sperm to reach an egg is almost astronomical, yet it happens everyday – several times a day in fact.
    19. College probably won’t help you in the way you think. It’s a key – a gateway past an interview process, but most hiring managers don’t actually believe you know much right out of college. It shows you can complete a program and that’s about it. Know this and spend some time learning a skill outside of school.
    20. There is more to this life than this life. You probably won’t live in this simulation for over 100 years, but if you do, you’ll probably realize that our solar system is pretty small compared to the whole universe, and there are mysteries you won’t uncover until you figure out what all that dark matter is. But by then it will be too late. I’d encourage you to find the oldest book you can find, one that has the most wisdom, and read it. There is a clue that will help guide you. Let me know when you find it.