Thursday, June 28, 2007

My Work: To Market, To Market - Part 2

Pigs. If you have just a few you baby them, maybe name them, and get to know them as individuals. When the time comes for slaughter you start to feel kind of sad about it, but after struggling to get them in the truck you’re mad enough to kill them on the spot yourself.

We went on like that for four more years. Some years were better, some were worse, but I dreaded loading pigs. The sheep weren’t so bad, we could just lift them into the truck but one year it took Ray and me the whole morning to load our pigs. I had enough. I did some research and found Dr. Temple Grandin’s website on livestock behaviour and the design of handling facilities. I learned about flight zones, points of balance and common distractions that impede animal movement. For example, pigs won’t cross a change in flooring or texture, step across a gap, or move into areas that are darker or blindingly brighter. They even shy away from a shadow in their path.

Armed with my new information, I backed the pick-up into the barnyard, measured the height of the tailgate, then calculated the length of ramp needed for an incline that wasn’t too steep for pigs. I built a long tunnel with sides three feet high and a wire top, hinged to the door the pigs used to get out into their yard, water and feed. Then I installed a truck jack underneath halfway along. The idea was for the pigs to get used to the tunnel all summer long. Then, at loading time, we could crank it up with the jack so it inclined into the bed of the truck and drive them up the tunnel one last time. This would determine once and for all if I was smarter than a pig.

The tunnel worked well. The pigs scampered through it all summer long to and from their inside sleeping quarters. Just before loading time, however, Ray called me and said he could borrow a stock trailer when I wanted to load my pigs.

The nice part about a stock trailer is that it is low and animals only have to step up six inches or so to get in. We backed the stock trailer up to the main barn door and Susan put a bucket of boiled chicken mash inside. The pigs smelled that warm mash and couldn’t get into the trailer fast enough. Took us about five minutes, once again proving that the right tool makes the job a lot easier.

I looked over at the tunnel we never even used and Conor said, “Dad, looks like the pigs outsmarted you again.”

He was right but I didn’t care. For the first time in five years even loading pigs was fun on the farm.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

My Work: To Market, To Market - Part 1

Autumn was the time to ship our first pigs to the slaughterhouse. But we didn’t have a stock trailer, so there were days of planning before and at least a day of relief after.

First, we had to prepare the truck. We knew the little 1 x 2-inch side racks we’d used to get them as 30-pound piglets would never stand up to the 400-pound bruisers they’d become. So we nailed 4 x 8-foot sheets of plywood to the inside of the truck box, with half-sheets for the front and rear. Then we built a ramp up into the truck with cross pieces for good footing and nailed up more plywood sheets on the sides of the ramp to form a long tunnel. In the pen, we lined up straw bales as best we could to form a narrow run to the ramp.

Conor stopped feeding and watering them the day before because we were hoping to entice them up the ramp with some kitchen scraps, water, and feed. But they weren’t the least bit interested. It took a little shoving and pushing before the first, Pork Chop, trotted up and into the truck. Charlotte took her station at the top of the ramp to make sure there were no porcine second-thoughts of escape, and we tried the next one, thinking that it would be a bit of a struggle, but not too bad.

We underestimated our pigs. Yelling, prodding with sticks, pleading, and swearing were useless on the remaining three. They would either stand still or go in exactly the wrong direction. Then the largest, Hammy, bolted for the barn door that was guarded by my wife Susan. He dove between her legs, picked her up and tossed her aside in a flash. She got mad and wanged him twice over the head with a shovel. We were at a standoff by this time, the pigs and the people, looking at each other and puffing in the same rhythm. We called for help.

Our neighbor, Ray, has experience with pigs and had advised us on the truck preparations. I jumped in the car to pick him up and his son came, too. By the time we got back to the farm, the pigs had escaped the barn and were out in their yard. We made soft flails out of binder twine so we wouldn’t bruise the meat and tickled them into the barn. Then we performed a yelling and prodding encore with no more effect than before. Finally, Ray grabbed the ears of the largest, Hammy, and flipped him over on his back. Then we dragged that squirming bag of squeals out of the pen and into the truck by his ears.

We rested a few minutes and hauled Peameal up the ramp the same way. Charlote was still in the truck, keeping them in there. While we were resting again, Conor guided Hickory out of the pen and up the ramp slick as could be using a small piece of plywood next to her head as a portable wall, a trick he saw at the fairgrounds. Hickory just about danced up the ramp while Ray and I watched enviously. We decided to let Conor do the whole job next year. Finally, we tied a tarp over the top of the truck and took off at fifty kilometres an hour for 40 kilometres, wind blowing the truck sideways and the pigs moving around inside. I never thought we would make it intact, but we did.

At the slaughterhouse, Susan and I dragged the first out by the ears while it squealed bloody murder, which would be about right soon enough. Then we turned in time to see the butcher calmly walking behind the other three as they strolled out of the truck and into the corral. It’s amazing how much better a little technique works than just brute force. As we left, Susan said, “Well, I guess we’re farmers now.”

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Writing for Grammar: Plurals - Part 2

11) Most compound nouns form the plural by pluralizing the fundamental part of the word - governors general, trade unions, spelling matches

12) When a compound noun is made up of a noun and some form of preposition or phrase, the noun is usually pluralized - brothers-in-law, passers-by, runners-up

13) When compounds are written as one word, their plurals are formed according to the usual rules - businessmen, stockholders, bylaws

14) Nouns that retain their foreign endings form their plurals as follows: a changes to ae, us changes to i, um changes to a, on changes to a, is changes to es

minutia-minutiae
vertebra-vertabrae
alumnus-alumni
cactus-cacti
addendum-addenda
bacterium-bacteria
criterion-criteria
analysis-analyses

16) Plurals of letters, signs, symbols, figures, and abbreviations used as nouns are formed by adding s or an apostrophe and s. The omission of the apostrophe is gaining ground - 1990s, GICs, GRSPs

17) Groups of animals have their own nouns for the collective. For example:
a school of fish
a sounder of wild boar
a pride of lions
a murder of crows
a clowder of cats
a paddling of ducks (in water)
a team of ducks (in flight)
a nide of pheasants
a covey of quail
a skein of geese (in flight)
a skulk of foxes

And there are other possibilities that show promise but have not yet become common usage:

a tragedy of lawyers
a clutch of mechanics
a drove of taxi cabs
an imelda of shoes
a mass of priests
a stoppit of parents
a brace of orthodontists
an interference of mothers-in-law
a ledger of accountants
a portfolio of money managers

Monday, June 25, 2007

Writing for Grammar: Plurals - Part 1

The formation of noun plurals ranges from straightforward to downright nutty. Here are a few examples:

1) Most nouns just add s – cars, trucks, trains

2) Some nouns ending in f, fe, and ff form their plurals by adding s to the singular - chiefs, giraffes, proofs

3) Some nouns ending in f or fe change these letters to v and add es - leaves, lives, wives

4) Common nouns ending in s, sh, ch, x, and z form plurals by adding es to the singular if an extra syllable is needed in pronouncing the plural - businesses, taxes, hoaxes

5) Nouns ending in y preceded by a consonant form plurals by changing y to i and adding es - companies, industries, utilities

6) Nouns ending in y preceded by a vowel, except those ending in quy, form their plurals in the usual way - attorneys, keys, valleys

7) Some nouns form plurals by changing an internal vowel - feet, geese, mice

8) Some nouns are always plural - earnings, goods, proceeds

9) Some nouns have two plurals different in meaning - indices (mathematics) and indexes (TSE, VSE, Dow Jones)

10) Some nouns plural in forms are singular in use and take a singular verb - economics, news, physics

Friday, June 22, 2007

Writing for Grammar: Common Adjective/Adverb Errors

Revised from Purdue OWL.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/536/02/

1. Bad or Badly?

When you want to describe how you feel, you should use an adjective. So you'd say, "I feel bad." Saying "I feel badly" would be like saying you play football badly. "I feel badly" would mean that you are unable to feel, as though your hands were numb.

Here are some other examples: "The dog smells badly".
Here, badly means that the dog does not do a good job of smelling.

"The dog smells bad."
Here, "bad" means that dog needs a bath.

Sometimes people say "I feel badly" when they feel that they have done something wrong. Let's say you dropped your friend's favorite dish, and it broke into a million pieces. You might say, "I feel really badly about what happened." Although the usage is not strictly correct, the meaning is communicated and that's the whole point of language.

2. Good or Well?

Good is an adjective, so you do not do good or live good, but you do well and live well. Remember, though, that an adjective follows sense-verbs and be-verbs, so you also feel good, look good, smell good, are good, have been good, etc.

So: "My mother looks good."
This does not mean that she has good eyesight; it means that she appears healthy.

"I feel really good today."
Again, this does not mean that I touch things successfully. It means rather that I am happy or healthy.

Many people confuse this distinction in conversation, and that's okay. You will hear people say, "I feel well" when they mean that they feel good. However, if you're taking about action verbs, you'd say "well." "I did well on my exam." "She plays tennis well."

3. Sure or Surely?

Sure is an adjective, and surely is an adverb.

For example: "He is sure about his answer."
Sure describes he.

"The Senator spoke out surely."
Here, surely describes how the senator spoke.

Surely can also be used as a sentence-adverb. For example, "Surely, you're joking." Here, surely describes the entire sentence "you're joking." The sentence more or less means, "You must be joking."

4. Near or Nearly? Near can function as a verb, adverb, adjective, or preposition. Nearly is used as an adverb to mean "in a close manner" or "almost but not quite." Here are some examples that demonstrate the differences between various uses of near and nearly.

"I'll be seeing you in the near future."
Here, near describes the noun "future."

"The cat crept near."
Near is an adverb that describes where the cat crept.

"Don't worry; we're nearly there."
Here, nearly describes how close we are.

Near can also be used as a verb and a preposition.

"My graduation neared."
Here, neared is the verb of the sentence.

"I want the couch near the window."
Near is a preposition at the head of the phrase "near the window."

And surely that’s nearly enough.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Presentation Tip 4: Smile and Relax

From Wilder’s Presentations at: www.wilderpresentations.com

Well, not always. What type of talks do you give? About diseases? About laying people off? About problems in people's lives? If so, smiling is not what you want to be doing.

But most of us do not give those types of talks—yet many people never smile, as if their face would crack and fall off. Smiling is important if you want to reach your audience.

Don’t just break into an unhinged Alfred E. Neuman grin every time you get to the third point. Instead, look at your outline to see which topics and points lend themselves to a flicker of a smile. Your grin can show how excited, happy, or eager you are to share this point.

When?

You have been presenting some problems with the environment and calling your audience to action. Now you are sharing what has been done to reverse the damage. That's the time to smile.

You are giving a project update. Some of it is just statistics on what's been accomplished. Then comes the anecdote about someone on your team who figured out a way around a particularly difficult obstacle. Present the success that's occurred because of this breakthrough with a smile.

You are describing your goals for the future. They include higher sales margins, store reorganization, and other issues that you illustrate with charts and graphs. Look through those charts and see which numbers are going in the right direction. That's when to smile.

When you smile, you relax and appear more at ease. And when you are more at ease, your audience relaxes. They become more responsive to you and your content.

That leads to more creativity, more agreement, more enthusiasm, and a higher opinion of your capabilities.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My Work: Living on Solar Power - Final Installment

March 2003

A hard winter was broken with some good news. Queen’s University had purchased too many 75-watt solar modules and were selling them for half price. We couldn’t turn it down.

We bought and installed six more modules, bringing us up to three arrays of six modules each, 18 in total, theoretically providing 1350 watts of peak power every sunny hour. The actual production is more like 1000 w, but this should be more than enough in the summer and not quite enough in the winter, close enough for us.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve replaced every major system: fences, septic tank and drain field, well, well pump, furnace, batteries, solar modules, inverter, windows, generator, telephone, fridge and washing machine, but our current solar power system should be sufficient for years to come. It’s been a long slug with a steep learning curve and some mistakes along the way but it’s worth it. We have power without monthly bills and don’t contribute to the pollution caused by huge grid generating plants.

We started with:

Solar modules: 4 x 75w = 300 w
Batteries: 225 Ah NiCad
Inverter: 600 w
Generator: 3-cylinder 6.5 Kw water-cooled propane

Now we have:

Solar modules: 18 x 75w = 1350 w
Batteries: 2770 Ah lead-acid
Inverter: 2500 w S/W
Generator: 1-cylinder, 5.5 kw propane-gasoline
Heated, underground generator house
Amp-hour Meter
MPPT charge controller

We use about four or five thousand watts a day, while the average Ontario house uses 20 thousand, and we do it all on solar without feeling the least bit deprived. Visitors never guess we produce all our own power unless they happen to see the modules on the roof and in the back yard. You probably want to do it differently but, if we did it, so can you.

When we moved to the country we didn’t know the difference between AC current and DC current, but we gradually learned enough to get by. Just remember, you don’t have to do it all at once, all you have to do is start. Let me tell you, it’s worth it.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Presentation Tip 3: Vary Your Tone and Rhythm

From Wilder’s Presentations at: www.wilderpresentations.com

Think about the presenters you’ve enjoyed and what made them special. Others probably made you want to leave the room as soon as they started talking. What made the difference?

Could be looks, dress, body language, or voice tone. Tape yourself and listen to your voice. It sounds different by ear because you hear your own voice through your jawbone. How can you make your voice more engaging?

Tone

Your tone should be open, friendly, and variable. You don’t want to try to play a symphony on one note. That tone will put people to sleep. You don't want to sound like you know everything. That tone has a definite, very arrogant sound to it. There are no pauses between sentences, leaving no room for anything but the message from the speaker: "I am talking. You listen. I am right."

Likewise, you don't want to sound like you don't know what you are talking about. You will sound tentative when your voice tone goes up at the end of a sentence, making every statement sound like a question. In English your voice tone needs to go down at the end of your sentence.

A voice that is deep and sharp for the whole talk sends one message to your audience. A high-pitched soft voice sends a different message. Vary your voice tone.

Rhythm

You may have a nice rhythm to your voice but, like tone, if that rhythm never changes, your audience will be lulled into dreamland. Listen to swing music and let your voice dance a bit. Don’t speak slothfully and don’t speak so fast that your audience stops listening, unless you are talking about right-brain images and emotions. Left-brain information takes time to digest

Change your rhythm. Speed up and slow down. When you have a key point to make, make it and then be quiet for a moment. Silence is more powerful than shouting. Too many times a speaker makes a key point while talking on and on, and no one notices—not even the speaker.

As you listen to your tape, ask yourself, "Will the audience know by the tone of my voice that I just made one of the three key points of my talk?"

Your rhythm should include pauses. Count to two or three, then start another sentence. Don’t link all your sentences together, especially with "and" or "and, uh." End them. When you are telling a story, don't start every sentence with "and then..."

Don’t forget to follow these same principles in a meeting and on the phone—you're presenting then, too.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

My Work: Living on Solar Power - Part 10

Dec 2002

Despite all our improvements, we still weren’t getting the performance out of our system that I thought we could. The NiCads were tough, but they were 40 years old and even jumping out the weak one in each string didn’t improve them as much as I had hoped. Plus, 100 batteries took up a lot of room and I was getting tired of recording the voltage on each one every month or so and adding water every three months. So, an unexpected, very lucrative writing contract started me thinking about batteries.

After much research we decided on Surrette lead-acid batteries; a Canadian company with a good track record (www.surrette.com). They had several different models, but the distributor I called recommended one that was not on their website: 2V, 2770 amp-hours. That sounded pretty good to me since we were operating on about 400 amp hours at the time.

They were 31 inches high with an eight inch-square footprint. That would require some modification of our battery cabinets, but they would take up one-fifth the room of our NiCads. Six batteries to replace 100. Sold.

We installed them with Hydrocaps that capture the hydrogen normally given off during charging and return it to the battery, cutting down greatly on the need for adding additional water. Six times the capacity, a 10-year guarantee, less maintenance, and less space. Ain’t technology grand?

I was a bit sad to leave the land of NiCads for lead-acids — it was the same feeling as replacing the kid’s aging Macintosh with a DOS machine, but I saved the best 20 NiCads for the barn, just like I refuse to give up my own Mac.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Presentation Tip 2: Change the Order of Your Presentation to Fit Your Audience

From Wilder’s Presentations at: www.wilderpresentations.com

What makes a presenter special, especially when talking to a group that wants to engage instead of just listen?

Suppose you are talking to someone higher up in your company, a new prospect, or managers from a company that has acquired yours. These are audiences who like to ask questions almost as soon as you start. You may not be used to this, so when someone asks you a question you don’t know what slide the information is on. How do you stay in charge rather than fumbling around in the slide sorter trying to find the right slide?

There are two PowerPoint features than can help you out. If you are the visual type, print your slides six to a page and number them. Do File>Print>Handouts>Slides Per Page 6.

Then, when presenting, you can quickly look down and see which slide you want. Just type in the slide number and press enter to show the slide. To go back to where you were, type in that slide’s number and press enter.

Don’t need an image to remember slide content? Then all you need to see is the slide’s title. Use Ellen Finkelstein’s method: First, be sure you have small thumbnails of your slides on the left hand side of your screen. View>Toolbars>Outlining to see the Outlining toolbar. Click the Collapse All button on the outlining toolbar to see slide numbers and titles.

File>Print>(Print What) Outline View to print only the slide numbers and the title of the slide.

What are the pitfalls of this system? If you don't have clear, informative titles, the slide title names won’t mean anything. Don’t put transition phrases or words like summary and background in your titles. Don’t use the same title on more than one slide—what if you have three titles that only say summary?

A great benefit of using the outline view to navigate through your slides is that you will be forced to create titles that actually state the point of the slide - and that may help you reduce the content on each slide to one main point.

For more tips from Ellen Finkelstein, sign up for her informative PowerPoint newsletter at www.ellenfinkelstein.com.

Monday, June 11, 2007

My Work: Living on Solar Power - Part 9

March 2001

Ever since we moved in, solar friends and colleagues had urged us to buy an amp-hour meter to measure the state of charge of our batteries, like the fuel gauge on your car. I always resisted, preferring to judge the batteries by their voltage and saving the cost of the meter, but that was inaccurate because of the many variables that affect voltage. Plus, we were tired of running down to the basement and looking at the inverter readout every time we wanted information about the state of our power system.

The meter has several names, depending on who manufactures it, but it provides digital readouts of battery voltage, instantaneous amperage gain or draw, amp-hours left in the batteries, and hours the batteries will last at the average usage over the last 30 minutes. It was very convenient to push four buttons in the kitchen and accurately read the state of our system. It was also much easier to yell at the kids, “Come here, look at how much power you’re using.”

By this time, our batteries were growing weaker. Some bad cells were drawing the others down, so we jumped out the worst in each string to bring our system down to 10.8V. It didn’t seem to affect the operation, but the batteries held their charge longer without having to compensate for the bad apples in the strings.

September 2001

This fall, I read an article on the Mr. Solar website (www.mrsolar.com) about a nifty box called a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) Photovoltaic Charge Controller that claimed to increase the power from our solar array by 30% (www.rvpowerproducts.com).

When solar modules charge a battery, they typically charge at the existing battery voltage, say 12V. But solar modules can produce 17V, and that means you aren’t using the module to its full capacity. The Solar Boost draws current from the module at 17V, then feeds it to the battery at just above the existing battery voltage. Going from 17V on the input side to 12V on the output side increases the current that charges the batteries if the watts remain the same. I called a few people and they said the technology was sound, so I ordered one and had it installed. It worked beautifully. It did increase the power production from our 12 modules by 30% — for the cost of one module. It also acted as a charge controller, and was an outstanding addition to our system.

Saturday, June 9, 2007

Presentation Tip 1: Practice Out loud

From Wilder’s Presentations at: www.wilderpresentations.com

Practise out loud with real listeners.

Every time I teach a class or coach an individual, I hear, “I get nervous before my talk. And sometimes I can’t sleep.”

I ask, “Do you practise out loud?”

Usually I hear comments like:
  • “I think about it in my car”
  • “I don’t have time to practice. I finish my talks at midnight”
  • “I’ve gone over the slides in my head. That’s enough."

None of these will reduce a presenter’s nervousness.

The only way to really improve at presenting in front of a group is to do a dry run. And it’s best to have two audience members: one who does not know your subject and one who will represent the typical audience for this presentation. The one who does not know your subject can tell you what words, phrases, and acronyms do not make sense. Most audiences include some people who are not that conversant in your area of expertise, and you want to be sure that your talk makes as much sense as possible to them.

The listener who knows your subject will tell you what is unclear, doesn’t flow logically, and may cause your audience to be aggressive and disagree with you.

Next time you feel nervous, rethink your rehearsals. Perhaps you should spend less time creating your slides and more time practising. Your content is important, but if you don’t sound in charge of it and convincing, your audience will not pay attention. And all your hard work will not produce the result you desire.

  • Desired Goal: Practice the entire presentation in front of two people.
  • Acceptable Goal: Practice the entire presentation alone. Imagine people sitting in the chairs around the room and end your sentences looking at certain chairs.
  • Better-Than-Nothing-Goal: Practice the opening and transition phrases between major points and closing.

Friday, June 8, 2007

My Work: Living on Solar Power - Part 8

December 1998

After a full day discussion in fancy Ottawa law offices about our telephone woes with all the parties, we arrived at a mediated settlement that was agreeable. Finally we could close that chapter.

We reached agreement on all for $150 of the costs by 10:00 am. Then, four lawyers (for the manufacturer, the distributor, and the installer) sat around the table haggling over that $150 until 3:30 pm, charging their clients all the while.

September 2000

The three-cylinder, water-cooled generator was 25 years old and tired. It sat in a cement block enclosure in front of the house and during the cold days of last winter, the only way I could warm it up was by moving the governor rod gently back and forth by hand while coaxing it, then yelling at it, to keep going.

We had already dragged it out of its house and into the pick-up with a come-along then hauled it to Kingston for an overhaul last fall. We replaced the battery with a 20-kilo industrial monster. Now it needed new points. I called the manufacturer and was told they would be $350. “No,” I said, “I don’t need new pistons, rings, and bearings. All I need is points.”

“That’s right,” said the parts supervisor cheerfully, “New Points. $350.” I wasn’t nearly as cheerful as he was. It was a good brand, the best. That meant they could charge whatever they wanted for parts. It also meant a week’s worth of phoning around for less expensive points that would fit. No luck. I did find someone in Toronto who built generators, though. After several conversations, we ordered a custom-built one-cylinder propane/gasoline 5.5 kw generator from him.

In the meantime, we set about building a properly-heated generator house into the side of a steep hill next to our main house. We dug into the hill and smoothed out a nine by nine footprint, then poured a cement floor and a two-foot high cement pad that had hot water pipes from the house running through it. We sided it with pine boards and battens to match the “The Shrine to Pine”. With insulated walls and roof, the new generator sat snugly underground on its heated pad, enjoying its new home that never got below 15° C, no matter how cold it was outside.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Writing for Grammar: Using Colons

The colon has a specific grammatical purpose: to call attention to the words that follow it. Usage includes lists, quotations, and compound sentences.

The main rule for correctly using colons is to make sure that what comes before the colon is a complete sentence. If you can delete the information after the colon, what’s left should make sense by itself. If it does, you have used the colon correctly. If it doesn’t make sense, you shouldn’t use a colon there.

Using colons for lists

Usually the list renames or defines the words that come before the colon, and the information can be presented as either a horizontal list or as a vertical list. But the main rule for using colons still applies: the information that comes before the colon must be a complete sentence.

We bought cookies in the shape of Canada’s eastern provinces: Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

Using colons for quotations

The words before the colon should explain or set the context for the quote.

In The Power of Myth, a video about the ancient and modern uses of mythology, Joseph Campbell explains how a dream differs from a myth: “A dream is a personal experience of that deep, dark ground that is the support of our conscious lives, and a myth is society’s dream.”

Using colons to create compound sentences

Faithful blog readers know that you can use a semicolon to join two sentences when the two sentences are closely related. But when the first sentence of the pair creates an expectation that the second sentence completes, a colon should be used.

Minds are like parachutes: they function best when open.

You can also use a colon in other circumstances:
  • After the salutation in a formal letter “Dear Sir or Madame:”
  • To indicate hours and minutes “5:30 p.m.”
  • To show proportions “The ratio of buyers to sellers was 2:1”