View from the Mountain

The liberal Mac and the conservative PC

I just read an interesting article, "Conservatives are So PC."  The author poses this question.

Why do liberals like Macs, while
conservatives shun them?

I guess I could argue against the whole question since Rush Limbaugh has over the years been a well known Mac user.  There was an interesting article a few years ago suggesting Rush could help Apple crack the conservative market.

Steve Jobs has always been something a counter culture icon and putting Al Gore on Apple's board pretty well shows Steve's political leanings.  Still I don't believe what computer you use has much to do with your politics.

At one time I thought maybe Macs were an urban phenomenon.  Of course it's hard to think that would be case since I spent over ten years running Tay Ridge Farms with its two hundred head of Black and Red Angus.  I then ended up selling Apple computers for twenty two years which included nearly twenty working at Apple.

I have worked with enough PC people (and I don't mean politically correct) to have learned that it is quite possible to be very productive with a Windows based PC.  I have learned from my son that it you want high productivity in remotely managed servers, Linux  is probably your operating system of choice. 

For a long time people who used Macs were looking for computers that were easier to use.  Most importantly the Mac often let you do things without really having to be a computer person.

Today with Windows and maybe even Linux, it is possible to get lots of tasks done without really being a computer geek.  Of course the Mac probably still leads the way in ease of use, but as many people have said,  a personal computer from Dell, Sony, Gateway, or HP is close enough for most people's purposes.

Still it is an interesting question as to why one person uses a Macs while another might choose Windows or Linux.  While I don't claim to have an answer that will please everyone, I do think that I might have an idea or two which might shed some light on platform choice.

I think a lot of platform choice boils down to how you relate to technology.  I think most PC users got their PCs for very specific reasons.  They wanted to read email, do spreadsheets, or even browse the web.  I don't think most Macs users knew what they were going to do with their first Mac.  They knew it could do the basics, but they also felt that it could do more so they were willing to gamble on a machine which might change things a little more than a PC from Dell.

As Windows has evolved, it is now quite possible to do maybe even more on a PC than on a Mac, though depending on the task, it still could be easier on a Mac.

I think the people drawn to the Mac chose it more for what it might do, than for what they knew it would do.  At one time there was a study that showed the average Mac user experimented with far more programs than the average PC user.

I'm sure there are people buy Macs because they think it will make them cool, just like people buy cars because they believe the car defines them.

In the end the idea that the Mac just might let you do something that you haven't even thought of is most likely the defining difference. It could be a powerful influence for some people.

Maybe that just means that Mac people are dreamers who have little idea of what they want to do and PC users are very practical folks who have business plans defining what they are going to create and know exactly what they need to make it happen.

Then again, maybe it is all random.  So what am I using for this post. 

The picture was imported from my Nikon camera to my Dual G5 Mac and iPhoto.  Then I saved the photo to a shared folder that I had set up for my Windows computer.  I actually accessed the folder from a Dell desktop running Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft!  I  did the post using Firefox 2.0.0.1 running under Linux and accessing Typepad.  After publishing I've made a couple of changes from my Mac.

In the end what operating system you use isn't nearly as important as what you do with it.  Since I have a farm background, I like to think of it this way.  I have seen fields hayed with horses and pitch forks, square balers,  round balers, and even hay stackers.  It  has never been about the technology , it has always been about the person and how they do the job.  You can do a sloppy job with a pitch fork or a fantastic job with a giant tractor and a round baler.

The same goes for operating systems.  No operating system is going to define the quality of work done.  Steve Jobs might not agree with me, but I'm pretty sure the evidence is with me on this one.

If you're committed to doing a great job, you'll get it done well with whatever tool is at your disposal.   If you have very efficient tools you might not have to work as hard,  but I doubt that will define how well  the dedicated craftsperson does his or her job.

Workplace lessons and the cult of the CEO

I have been in the workforce over thirty five years.  I have worked for myself.  I have worked for a Fortune 500 company, Apple, and I have worked for some small companies.  With that much work experience, it is inevitable that you will learn some hard lessons.  Seriously evaluating the company where you have a chance to work just might save you some real pain and agony.

If you are a person like myself who sincerely enjoys meeting people, working with people, and helping people grow and meet their dreams, you can sometimes get disillusioned by what you find in today's workplace.  While there is absolutely nothing wrong with a competitive workplace, there are people in just about every company who would sell their mothers if it got them where they wanted to be.  Given that, a workplace friendship with one of these folks is not just dangerous but often deadly, especially to your career.

These undependable workplace friends display an almost undetectable false sincerity.  They work hard to win your trust.  They will often pretend to bring you into their confidence only to try to find some way to trip you up.  They are masters of their own interests while they pretend to want to help you succeed.  Mostly they want to eliminate threats to their sphere of influence.  If you are competent and end up winning the trust of the boss, there might not be room for them.

One of the most unsatisfying work experiences is trying to watch your back while doing your job.  It's especially frustrating in companies where the only feedback you get is often from close workers. Imagine the fun if the feedback you're being given is structured to cause to you trip up.

Lots of times you'll find that certain companies grow more of these untrustworthy people than other companies.  Companies which really don't have good internal communications often breed these folks.  CEOs who share their real thoughts with only a few close associates often are enablers.

Knowledge becomes power, and often that power can be abused without anyone knowing since the knowledge is held by so few.

It's hard to put a finger on a strategy that protect yourself from someone who is actually trying to trip you up.  It is especially hard in today's environment where employees often have to depend on each other for information to get their jobs done.  If you want to sabotage someone, and you have the CEOs ear, it's not much of a challenge unless you actually care about treating people ethically.  Most of the folks like the ones I'm discussing have no ethical standard on which to fall back.   Corporations and small companies often are defined by the ethics practiced by their CEOs.   Just do a Google search on "CEOs under investigation," and read a few of the results to understand why no one is bragging about the ethics displayed by American CEOs.

If you're in a company where a CEO depends on a close circle of friends for advice and where the CEO's ego is the defining factor of the company, you might want to consider just looking for another company.  In the long run, the odds are against it being a good company.  Unfettered CEOs as the Google results show are about as corrupting to an organization as absolute power is to government.

Actually the biggest lesson that I have learned in thirty five years is that most companies are what they are.  They rarely change in a radical fashion.  One individual certainly can't change them.  Sometimes companies with some unusually nasty folks can actually be pretty successful by taking advantage of some mix of customers, investors, or even employees.  Still the likelihood of that success lasting over time is slim.  They end up being a flash in the pan.  Eventually the competition gets them.

It's hard to measure a company by something other than finances, but I was recently at a sales awards dinner for a relatively small company.  It was pretty clear the company had the formula right for lasting success.  There were employees that had been with the company for nearly twenty years. The company had shown tremendous growth.  Employees and owners had benefited over the years.  The owners were humble even in success.   People who worked only one day a week for the company were proud of their association with the company.  Even those people were recognized for their contributions.

One of the owners got up and said something that probably is the best measure of a great company that I have heard in a long time.

"First of all I would like to thank all of you for working here.  We know there are lots of places that you could work, we're proud that you chosen to work here, and we greatly appreciate the contribution that each of you have made over the years to creating the success that we are enjoying together as a company."

He then went on to thank above all the administrative people who in his belief provided the glue that held the company together in addition to creating that all important first impression for potential customers. 

You could tell that this was more an inclusive club of winners than an exclusive one. What a better way of looking at winners.  It included all the employees willing to give their all, no matter what it was to the company.  Yet it was clear in everything that was said that the company and its managers valued employees not just for what they did for their company but for the kind of people they were and how they represented the company in their public and private lives. 

The idea that being a winner is relative to your own skill set is a very positive one.  Still this company had demonstrated that its sales people were absolutely at the top of their game by winning some top national awards while competing against thousands of others.

That's a recipe for success that many companies would do well to emulate. It's not a cult of the CEO recipe, but it will be far more sustainable.  The companies which pin their hopes on the vision of a single CEO often end up more cult than company.  That especially the case when the CEO thinks he's larger than life. 

It takes more than a CEO to make a company that will stand the test of time.

Thinking about the beach

Fortunately there is a warming trend for at least today in Virginia and North Carolina.  We're pretty lucky compared to Anchorage, Alaska (actually the banana belt of Alaska) which has received 74 inches of snow so far this year according to this Houston Chronicle article.  When I talked to my friend in Halifax, Nova Scotia yesterday it was one degree above zero Fahrenheit, and they were having gusts of wind to forty miles per hour.

It doesn't take much late January or early February sun to get me thinking about the coast.  That's especially the case since I wander between the mountains and the coast all year nowadays.

When I lived in Canada this was the favorite time of the year to order seed and real estate catalogs.  Today you can hit the Internet to enjoy a taste of other places. 

Last summer I made the decision to switch to a new career as a real estate broker.  It's been a long journey as many of my classmates can attest.  I started classes in late July and passed my North Carolina licensing exam in late September. Then there were another ninety hours of classes before I could get the "provisional" removed from my broker's license.  This week I was in class again for my orientation as a Realtor®.  I was most impressed with the ethics training and commitment.

Perhaps the most interesting thought that has come to my mind is that I spent nearly twenty years with Apple (the former Apple Computer) and never received any substantial ethics training.  Certainly I dealt with my customers ethically, but other than some statements on relatively obscure web pages, working at Apple had no backdrop of ethics like my job as a Realtor®.  Working at Apple was all about selling computers.  There was plenty of secrecy so that customers could end up buying a computer that would be out of date or worth less money the next day.   Actually there was so much secrecy at Apple that customers sometimes would know more than employees.  We spent a good deal of our time making sure that our own customers had the benefit or our best guesses when it came to Apple.

In the world of real estate, if someone has become your client instead of just a customer, you are committed to helping them make the best decisions possible whether they are buying or selling.

In the real estate  there is a huge distinction between a customer and a client.  If you click on the link you'll get a good dose of information about that distinction.  It is something anyone looking at real estate should consider carefully.

When the taste for other places gets more serious than just being driven by a desire to provide some warm thoughts, most people can run into problems finding good information.  They often find it very challenging to explore a new area and decide on a place that meets their needs and perhaps turns out to be a good investment.

While there are no guarantees these days, one of the best ways is to ask your friends if they have had dealing with a Realtor® in a particular area or a local one who can provide a referral.  Most real estate brokers have established relationships with other brokers.  Given the amount of time real estate people spend in classrooms keeping up to date on certifications and training, it is not surprising that real estate brokers end up knowing a lot of other brokers.

I hope to provide a service to the Southwest Virginia area by helping people find their special spot on the North Carolina coast myself or referring them to someone else that I know.  My wife, Glenda and I are in our eighteenth year in Roanoke.  We were both born across the border in North Carolina and grew up in Mount Airy area.  We have strong ties regionally so it isn't too much of a challenge finding out what kind of people we are.  I have a career in sales which stretches back well over thirty years.  I have worked hard to make sure that my customers over the years have been pleased with my advice, whether they bought a purebred Angus bull, a Vermeer baler, an Apple computer, high speed networking, or email services from me.  As far as I know I've been successful in having happy customers.  I like to think I was very ethical with my customers.

So if my customers have been happy, just think how well I will treat clients where I have a fiduciary relationship with them.

I hope to make it a lot easier for friends and other people in the Roanoke area to get information about properties on North Carolina's Crystal Coast.  Most real estate agents are very local in their knowledge due to the tremendous amount of information they have to master.  I hope to have that local knowledge but also to share some of my broader knowledge that I have gained over the years visiting a wide variety of areas on the Carolina coast.  I have chosen to work with Bluewater GMAC Real Estate.  I made the decision carefully. We used  Bluewater GMAC brokers to handle the purchase of our home which happened to be built by Bluewater Builders.  Not surprisingly we live in Bluewater Cove.  If I weren't happy with the services I received, I wouldn't be part of the organization.

One of the reasons we're here in Cape Carteret, North Carolin is that we found great value for our dollars in this area.  There is tremendous selection in waterfront property in Carteret County where we are located.  The county is over 1,300 square miles of which 61% is water.  Often the challenge is deciding what kind of water you want and factoring in how much flooding or wind risk you want to assume.

We wanted to avoid a direct assault from hurricanes so we're back from the beach a few miles.  Still we can be walking the beach in ten to fifteen minutes which in our case is an acceptable trade off.

I like to tell everyone that based on my experiences in both Canada and Roanoke, that mountain flooding can be very serious.  While it can be serious at the coast, most of the time, it drains away very quickly because we aren't far about sea level.  People ask if I'm afraid of hurricanes.  No life is without danger.  When I lived in Canada, it was pretty easy to die if you slid off into a snow bank at minus forty degrees Fahrenheit.  We've had trees fall into our house in Roanoke due to high winds, and there was that one year the whole valley was filled with smoke from West Virginia forest fires.  Of course there are tornadoes in the Roanoke area and here in coastal North Carolina.  There is no perfectly safe spot.  If there was one, I wouldn't want to live there.

I guess I believe it is better to have lived where you love it, than to try to find the world's safest place.  For all I know all the deer that continue to forage in our Roanoke azaleas may leave behind some ticks where I'll get Lyme disease.

As to hurricanes, I see buildings from the 1700s in Beaufort and Swansboro, both of which are right on the water.  That's not to minimize the risk of storms, it's just to point out the facts which led me to make a decision that I wanted to live my dream before I was too old enjoy the area.

I think one of things that attracts me to Carteret County is that there seems to be room for everyone.  That means that houses prices go from very reasonable prices to homes costing into the millions.  The estimated real estate valuation for Carteret County is $18 billion dollars so there is plenty to choose from in homes.

So what do I consider good value.  I actually think the model home in our neighborhood is a great value.

I'll be talking more about real estate value in some other posts on my Realtor site®, but when you can spend under $340K for a home slightly over ten minutes from the Emerald Isle beaches in a waterside community with a swimming pool, club house, day dock, boat storage, and boat ramp, then in my mind you've gotten a good deal.

Then again when you're in love with an area, it is easy to convince yourself of value.

Some thoughts on insurance

The world of insurance whether it is for cars, health care,  or your home is a business world.  Businesses make money off of providing us the service of insurance.

One of the ways that they make money is by taking good risks.  Younger and healthier people get lower health care premiums.  Older people get more expensive ones.  Bad drivers get higher premiums or may even have trouble getting insurance just as people in hurricane prone areas might have trouble getting home owner's insurance.

In theory the market sets a rate and eventually everyone gets covered. Except that's not exactly the way it works.  You can pay insurance on your cars for years and years without any claims.  If you have an accident your premium will likely go up.  If you have a health problem and have lost your coverage, you'll probably have trouble getting coverage at any price.

It's too bad insurance isn't just people pooling enough of their money so that the ones who are unlucky enough to have claims can be covered.  I heard someone on the news tonight say that 30-40% of insurance premiums are administrative overhead used to screen people and claims.  While that might be good for business, it isn't exactly the best way to spend health care dollars.

I'll take any tax breaks that I can get, but the older you get, the more concerned you are about getting insurance period.  Using a tax break to make it affordable doesn't seem like a way to drive down health care costs.  The administrative costs seem the most sensible target for savings, and a single payer system appears to be the best way to get there, but I doubt there is any courage to create such a system.

NC snares Google equals Googlina

I am not exactly sure where I stand on government incentives for large corporations.  On the one hand, you needs some large  well respected corporations to give credibility to your development efforts.  On the other hand, there are lots of small businesses that make it just on their own grit.

Today the Raleigh  News & Observer confirmed that  Google will be locating a server farm in Lenoir, NC and investing $600M with the goal of creating 200 jobs in four years.  Tax incentives equaled $100M.

Would the money spent on capturing Google and Dell be better spent on helping small business deal with health care costs and other challenges?  I don't know.  What I do know is that I would rather spend money on Google than on a grocery store.  I think North Carolina's strategy works.  They will eventually get enough synergistic companies to make a difference in their situation.  The combination of their low cost higher education, state wide higher education system, a large work force and name brand corporations is hard to beat.

They have some geographic advantages over Virginia and perhaps some governmental ones also.  It's obviously a very complex situation.  I've written about it before most recently in "The chicken and egg equation for jobs in SW Virginia."

Development in southwest Virginia is disjointed.  If there is an overall strategy I haven't managed to grasp it.  There are some very good small companies, but all you have to do is drive south to North Carolina to see where real development is taking place.

Maybe there are people who want to preserve the Roanoke Valley as it is,  but many professionals in the area will tell you that there is little mobility in the  area between companies.  What that means is that people  often move to the valley with a job.  If they lose the job, they move away from the  area.  They might come back when they retire, but  replacing a  well paying job in the Roanoke  Valley is very hard.

One of the most entrepreneurial people that I know recently moved to Raleigh from Blacksburg.  I know another CEO who moved to Richmond to chase additional business.  I am now spending a good part of my time on the North Carolina coast as a Realtor® with Bluewater GMAC in Cape Carteret, NC. (http://coastalnc.org/realtor/)  I certainly haven't abandoned the Roanoke area, but in a sense I'm like the others I mentioned  who are hasing what have become better opportunities.  I'm glad that I have a multi-faceted career that allows me to continue to enjoy Roanoke and the friends we have made here.

Someone once told me that if you were lucky enough to make it up the ladder in corporate America, you could afford to live in the Roanoke Valley as long as you kept your corporate job. 

I was born in North Carolina and have lots of family in the state so in a sense, going to North Carolina is going home to me.  I recently got to attend a meeting in Emerald Isle, NC and listen to their town manager.  I haven't heard anything as sensible as I heard in that meeting in a long time.  Perhaps some Roanoke Valley government folks should send some representative to the next Emerald Isle meeting.  They might learn something about cooperation.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the Roanoke & New River Valley needs some visionary leadership before the area's fate is sealed as a transportation corridor that just watches the traffic zoom on to another state.

On another note, I don't find the extra ten to fifteen cents per gallon in gasoline prices in North Carolina too much of a burden to pay for some better highways.   I hate to beat a dead horse but it sure is nice to drive on some Interstates where every third vehicle isn't a giant truck.  I'm glad my route back and forth between Roanoke and Cape Carteret doesn't get near Interstate 81.  A trip to Blacksburg once in a while on Interstate 81 is all the truck excitement I need.