Scattering leaders in Panama City, FL

I left Orlando, FL and made a beeline to Panama City, FL to attend a self improvement course sponsored by Nikken.  They are truly a corporation that cares about people, which is increasingly harder to find lately, even from ones we have trusted in the past.  People make corporations, corporations don't make people..

The course itself I've mentioned in the past, is called Humans Being More. That link is to a brief description of what the course is all about. It focuses on improving ourselves and highlighting our Five Pillars for our success. These are having a Healthy Body, Mind, Family, Society and Finances.

When corporations help their people better themselves in all walks of life, it can only benefit the corporation, individual, and society, as a whole.  This is one of the primary reasons for this self improvement course.  Sadly it is something which corporate America seems to be lacking, in spades, lately.

The instructor we had was from Tallahassee (and a former Navy SEAL), which is in the general area, and he (and his wife) have had the pleasure of doing this for the past 17 years, wow.  They gave several handouts and will be covering them in later posts.  However, there is one which will benefit everyone!

20 Critical Management Competencies

That Produce 80% of Management's Results:

Super Critical

  1. Listening Skills
  2. Giving Effective Instructions
  3. Accepting Responsibility
  4. Identifying Real Problems 

Highly Critical

  5. Time Management
  6. Reinforcing Excellent Performance
  7. Communication Decisions
  8. Speaking Effectively
  9. Establishing Priorities
10. Explaining Work
11. Giving Feedback

Critical

12. Writing Effectively
13. Prepare Action Plans
14. Defining Job Qualifications
15. Adopting Organizational Change
16. Promoting Cost Reduction
17. Operating Within Budget18. Developing Written Goals
19. Justifying New Resources
20. Developing Yourself ContinuouslyGiving Feedback

from a BYU research project, replicated by UCF

Regarding this list, my personal view (a little biased of course), is that I have mastered 3 out of 4 Super Critical Skills.  The other one, Giving Effective Instructions, am well over 75%.

Out of the Highly Critical Section I have a solid four of those skills to where I consider them excellent, with the rest in various stages of excellence.

Out of the Critical Section it's looking more sparse, but that is primarily to me not being in Management.

It's my belief that have avoided management due to me being more of a leader than a manager, as identified in this Wall Street Journal article. It is hard for me to do the minute day to day stuff when I would rather be making a difference instead of filling out forms in triplicate.

This is just one small tidbit that got from that weekend.

A surprise!

After driving till about 2 am (time zone change too) from Orlando to Panama City, and having to stop enroute twice for support calls, made it to a Walmart close by and spent the night.  After arrived went in groggily and verified was OK to stay.  Some places won't let you, primarily due to town/city regulations.

Next morning the alarm goes off nice and early, so start the GPS and head down the road, following it very precisely in a 35+ food land whale (as Paul Wheaton calls them), and GPS guides me someplace but it doesn't look right. I pull down this skinny access road behind a hotel (wrong one turns out) and pull over far as I can to stare and gawk at the GPS, silently, or not so silently, wondering what mess am in now.

Then start creeping forward to get my bearings when I spot this couple walking away from me.  Just at the right moment they look back and I look at them, and can tell we needed to talk, for some unknown reason.  So at the same time I stop and they start walking towards me.  With engine still running, go to side door and see what the feeling was about.

One of the first words out of their mouths was "Do you want a kitten"...  Talk about a deer in the headlight look.

I hemmed and hawed as have Mia still, and they gave me a story, which I presume is true, that they can't take this kitten in that they just rescued.  If I can't take the kitten, they say it will go to the shelter (as they have a dog), and who knows what happens there.  Once they said that knew what had to do.

Stepped out of the RV and took the kitten. Of course, the first thing kitten tries to do is claw it's way out of my arms, onto my shoulder, or any other part of me, to try and escape.  Finally got kitten under control, and as was going back into RV, turned around and asked couple a question.

"What do you think I should name kitten?" (couldn't tell at time if male or female)  First thing that came to their mind was Scatter, as kitten was hard to catch and would always scatter when they tried.  I got the feeling they didn't do this all the time. I thanked them and we parted ways.

One other thing to note is that, according to them, they tried to find the home for kitten, and everyone said it wasn't theirs.  After accepting kitten/Scatter, I noticed clearly how underweight and flea ridden kitten is.

Immediately brought her to other cat (Mia) to see how it would go... BOY oh BOY, it wasn't pretty, lots of hissing involved, but no claws!  And I had a class to attend.... Interesting times ahead is my thought.

Put kitten down in back and proceeded to find correct hotel (passed it on the way), and then get moving as running out of time.  Scatter stayed back as a little unsure of surroundings.

Once parked made sure both of them were somewhat OK before heading inside to HBM.  .  Scatter, at this point, was still a little skittish, as is expected.

During every break over the two days, would make a beeline to the RV and check how everything was going.  Scatter would be resting underneath one of the captains chairs, and Mia would be resting on my passenger's seat. Always in the same spot and every time would come in Scatter would almost immediately pop head out and expect some attention.  Could never spend longer than 5 or 10 minutes but would make effort each time to check and make sure there wasn't any blood shed, and there was none!

Prologue:  A day and two weeks later Scatter seems to have grown at least 50% (closer to twice as big I think) in size and fleas are mostly gone!  Brought scatter outside last night and wasn't entirely happy.  It also turns out that am 99% certain that scatter is now a BOY as see dangly bits forming underneath and only one opening at the rear.

And, one picture, the first one, contained in the album:
 

Bern's Steakhouse!

This past Sunday I made it down to Fort Myers to see some relatives who live there, and it was a great, but long trip.  From where am currently at it's about a three hour drive down.  Decided to take the backroads and was blown away, almost literally, by amount of bugs which impact the windshield...  It was icky.

However, my main point of this post is my trip to Bern's Steakhouse, located in Tampa, FL.  Took a trip to St. Petersburg where went to visit another friend, but think they left the state and went up north as didn't see them home.  Didn't have their phone number so tried to drop in unannounced.

After leaving St Petersburg made my way to Tampa, and Bern's!

This place is known throughout the world, and people fly in specifically to eat here, then fly out.  I managed to arrive a little after five, and was unable to get a table.  There was still a line at the front desk.  However, was able to sit at the bar and was not disappointed!

From the outside it doesn't look like much, but the secret, with most everything, is what's on the inside.  Inside it's truly amazing.  One thing I was disappointed about is that they got rid of their live fish tank.  They used to have live fish and you could pick out a specific fish and they would cook that specific one up for you, after cleaning and all that happy jazz.

One of the key specialties here is their beef.  They take great pride, and care, of their beef.  It is dry aged for at least 30 days and kept in a special climate controlled room to age their beef in the best way possible.  It's also cooked over real wood, which is truly superb!

On this visit I had an 8 ounce filet mignon and it was just amazing!  Beyond amazing actually!  It came with a baked potato, some greens, and couple other yummy things.  For the price, and what we get, it's actually a really good value!  Not sure if could eat here often if lived in the area, but while sitting at the bar talked to a couple who actually did that, and they were quite happy!

After the scrumptious meal, have the option of going on a tour of the kitchen, and the wine cellar, both are amazing!

The kitchen is a well oiled machine, and each area has their own specialty, from salads to the grill, to dish cleaning, even a bar in the kitchen (for the dining room) where drinks are made and sent out.  There is even a specific meat carving station!  The tour is quick, efficient, and get a good idea of the whole process and what it takes to run such a great establishment!

The wine cellar...  OH MY GOODNESS!  If was drinking again would be in pure heaven.  This cellar is amazing!  The guy who gave me the tour said it was the largest of it's kind, in the world!  They have one at the restaurant, and a separate one which contains double amount of wine stored here.  They have bottles ranging all the way from present and back to 1815.  Their most expensive bottle of wine believe is about $40,000.00.  When people generally have these wines though, it's typically done upstairs in the Harry Waugh Desert room!

First came here about ten years ago, and now every time am in the area this is a must stop destination.  It truly is that wonderful!

Everyone I talked to here was easily approachable and very happy to talk and chat.  Talked with this one older lady (sorry, forget your name), for a good solid thirty minutes, was a very wonderful conversation!  She was there using a gift card she got for her birthday!  She taught me a long in our short thirty minutes in that it's still sinking in!

Will be going back one more time before leave the area, it's truly that good! People are amazing, booze is amazing, and of course, the food is drop dead gorgeous!

Also, must say RIP to the Roaring 20's Pizza place...  That was on my list to visit but they're no longer in operation..

Fast Mover...

It was a busy time for me, the last couple of weeks.  After picking up scooter from AF1 Racing (more on that later as it's not complete), took off and headed east.  My goal was to reach Orlando, FL fast as possible.  Only minor problem is that it was a busy time at the office and was putting in long hours to get tasks completed.

I had to cover about 1,100 miles prior to May 1st.  Started off doing an hour or two a day, bouncing between one truck stop and another.  This is actually a fairly nice way of doing it, though have to keep an eye on the house batteries as they tend to draw down with the refrigerator (runs on propane mostly), and lights/computer useage.  Have a couple of power inverters, to convert 12 Volts of Direct Current (V DC) into 120 Volts of Alternating Current (V AC).  Using these a lot draws down the battery faster as there is always some loss when converting any electricity from DC to AC, or vice versa.

Don't really recall all of the places where I stopped, but some of the highlights were:

Truck stop just east of downtown Houston. Loud, noisy, right next to I10 on ramp in the concrete jungle.  Icky but good for a day.

Truck stop just east of Mobile, AL.  Restaurant called Marci's Antique Club was near here, about 15 minutes away.  It was a wonderful little eatery, a lot of great character, and the food was pretty good too.

It was pretty mild, and mostly sunny, on the way east.  Didn't hit the real muggy weather until Mobile and Est.  When left Mobile to head east more, turned on the generator to run the roof mount AC unit.  This was necessary as humidity was just up there.  I was fortunate enough to miss the really horrible weather in the Florida panhandle.

One neat thing which happened... As was nearing destination, while on the Florida Turnpike, looked down at the odometer that was still reading ERR1 (always has), and had feeling to jab the buttons one more time..  This time the jabbing paid off and the odometer is now displaying real, honest to goodness numbers!  YAY

Had to make it to Orlando area due to the Business Development conference I attended.  It was located at the Florida Mall, where it was last year.  Very interesting and worthwhile!

Four Powerful Questions

Just attended a business building conference in Orlando, FL this weekend.  During one of the sessions four questions were presented to us.  I don't have my answers for these, just wanted to post them.

1. If we were meeting 3 years from now, what has to have happened during that 3 year period for you to feel happy about your progress?
2. What are the biggest dangers you'll have to face and deal with in order to achieve that progress?
3. What are the biggest opportunities that you have that you would need to focus on and capture to achieve those things?
4. What strengths will you need to reinforce and maximize, and what skills and resources will you need to develop that you don't currently have in order to capture those opportunities?

I thought these were powerful questions about our own individual future.

Las Vegas Scooter Rally 2014

It's been a long time coming and didn't know exactly how would "rate" this rally.  The thing is, each rally is unique and great in their own special ways.

I was only able to show up for Saturday as had to leave on Sunday for Yuma.  I purposely missed a trip to the goat farm (couldn't truly confirm when it was by calling) in order to attend this rally.  In hindsight (20/20) think I would've had more fun visiting the goat farm.

One of my current big things is to help support local as much as I can when traveling.  This is very important to me as it helps the local economy and helps get money out of the big corporations hands.  As we see wages dropping this is becoming more and more important.  The money MUST stay as low in the food chain as it can and not pay CEO's ~$500,000 a day (depending on CEO) for "maximizing shareholder value" while reducing American value.  Will stop here before get carried away.

This is the full album from the scooter rally.

The rally itself was OK for this Saturday morning/afternoon.  Had problems finding where the scooters were at this casino as didn't pay attention to the map.  Arrived around 10 am and there were quite a few scooters, only to double as the day progressed.

Started walking around, with my bright "safety orange" Firkin Scooter club T-shirt, to spread some Firkin blessings.

Overall I wasn't generally impressed by this rally.  There didn't seem to be any cohesive bond (as an outsider) that I was aware of.  It also seemed like the organizer (one person) was from out of town.  Don't quote me on this, but it truly looked like proceeds of the overall rally didn't benefit the club(s) in Vegas.  Even the website for the rally doesn't specify anything about the local clubs, just the total attendance.

The $30 Rally pack was not what am used to in the Seattle/Tacoma area.  The patch was fairly nice but even these aren't all that expensive in bulk.

Did see a handful of people from Seattle.  Forgive me for not remembering names, but would like to say that they drove 18+ hours down while towing their scoots on a trailer.

While great to visit other Scooter communities, next time think I'll pass on this one!  The dogs there were really kool though!

RV Alternator troubleshoot/replacement

Ick

NOTE:  Reposting this.  After posted first time accidentally deleted it.  Was able to go back in history to find, PHEW!

About a month ago, sometime after I left Yuma, AZ on my way to Pecos, TX, noticed that the voltage needle was fully pegged to the right side instead of staying steady'ish in the middle..  Knew this wasn't good so I immediately turned on everything I could, just to draw more power to reduce the voltage.  Pulled into the first place I could find (a Love's truck stop), and looked at the battery.  It boiled over.  They were able to test voltage and the younger person there said the battery was bad..  I was like, yup, kinda new that..  He also measured the alternator voltage, and while don't know the readings, he said it was "charging fine", even though volt meter on the dash showed it over charging.

So, went off to find a Walmart and replace the battery, this was a fairly easy process and didn't upload a picture of that.  They had almost the same battery, a 12 Volt RV/Marine Deep Cycle battery.  Almost even the same CCA (Cold Cranking Amps).

After a new battery it still didn't fix the issue, so spent night in the general area and continue trip to Pecos, then to San Marcos, Austin, and back to San Marcos, TX.  In the meantime fried another battery and just replaced it.

Troubleshooting alternator:

There's a remote sense terminal on the alternator.  What this does is make sure that there's about fourteen (14) volts sent to the battery, so the auto sense wire goes to the battery to measure the voltage.  Am assuming this allows the voltage regulator to adjust voltage appropriately.  This document describes process of testing, and bypassing, this function.

What I did was take off the wire, check it's serviceability, cleaned it little with WD-40 (not that that cleans things, but what had on hand), and put the wire back on.

Ground wire on left, power on bottom

Another step, which was the first one I did, was to check all the wires.  As can be seen here, the ground wires is on the left hand side (in back of alternator), while the power wire can barely see at the bottom right.  Can see the power wires (actually two of them) better in above photo.  There was a plastic shroud around them (help to prevent shorting?) that didn't "survive" the transplant.

I also asked around at the RV.net forum.  There's a thread there where all sorts of great people came together to help me answer my question.

Another person came up with this alternator diagram that shows all the parts which make up the alternator.  If the voltage regulator was bad (and think it was in the beginning), looks like it would've been fairly easy to replace that one piece.

Since I ran the alternator so long in it's overcharging state, truly think that this caused the whole alternator to go bad.  As can be seen in the thread, the alternator stopped charging totally and was warm to the touch (with engine off all day).  So pretty sure that there is a short in there someplace.

Testing "spare" alternator

When I bought the RV it came with a bunch of spare parts, and one of those was a spare alternator.  When first noticed it I looked at it and said "really"...  turns out it was there for a reason..  Now I hope don't need all the other spare things.

The testing piece was interesting too.  Brought it to the local AutoZone, and to their credit, they went above and beyond to get this tested.  Took them about an hour to do, in between other things, but they never gave up!

The main problem they had in testing is their testing rig is from a different manufacturer, and so requires the manufacturers part number.  Things is, for this alternator, the manufacturer didn't have anything comparable.

After quite some time they found something that worked, though the amp rating was lower (100 amps instead of 160), but they got it to work.

Turns out the alternator is perfectly fine.  Spoke with someone from the RV.net forum (owns a repair shop) and he said that sometimes alternators that have sat around for awhile are flaky and might work for a week, month, year, or a lifetime, and there is no rhyme or reason to how long they last, and he wasn't sure why.  So for now am living in the lap of luxury!

Test results:

Lamp/Diode Trio PASSED
Regulator Test PASSED
Rectifier Test PASSED
Rated Amps: 100

Date: 4/15/2014
Time: 12:55:02

Battery volts 14.20 14.44 16.00
Ripple volts 0.00 0.40 2.00
Lamp On volts 0.00 1.97 9.00
Lamp Off volts 11.00 14.52 0.00
Rated Amps: 100

Unsure what the three sets of numbers mean, but this is what it was rated at.  Looks OK to me.

Replacement of Alternator

Engine, under bed

This part was a little easier than I thought.  Went to a Vocational - Technical high school, which allowed us to learn a trade for half of the school year, and took normal high school classes the other half (in three week blocks).  As a freshman, we went through one week of each of the nine different shops, and one of them was Diesel shop.  Forget what we actually did, but we worked on engines, got greasy and smelly, and it was actually somewhat fun.

"front" of the engine

Watched couple video's on youtube prior to doing this, all for the same diesel engine, but not in an RV.  According to the videos it is a fairly easy and simple process.  The hard part here (initially) is that, as can see in the photo's, there isn't a lot of room to see where the belt goes.

Tensioner

In this picture can see the actual part which was rumored to exist but couldn't really see it.  Turns out was in front of me the whole time without me realizing it (story of my life there).  It is the tensioner for the serpentine belt.  As the engine is running this applies pressure on the belt to prevent it from falling off, while still allowing "play" and room for normal loosening through wear and tear.

If look closely at what I call the tensioner can see there's a square "hole" in there.  This is where something like a breaker bar goes, to lift it up and out of the way.  According to the youtube video I watched, believe he said it was 1/2 inch.  Turns out that in this instance it was 3/8 inch, so used my ratchet (better to use a breaker bar or something without fine gears).  It worked fine, though was a little rough as couldn't really brace it all that much while removing belt from the alternator (another pair of hands would've been great).  Just push the ratchet (or breaker bar), it will move the whole thing just enough to remove tension on the belt, then slide belt off of alternator.  I found it best to not move it too far off the alternator, basically slide it off and down a little.  This is to help avoid having to reroute the whole belt through all the wheels...  That would've been not so fun.

Removing wires

This is VERY IMPORTANT...  Prior to removing alternator wires, fully disconnect the battery which starts the engine.  Bad things happen when there's power in the line.

Here can see where I start to remove the wires.  Hard part here was getting a wrench down there to loosen the bolts, especially for the ground wire.  Can see, at top of the picture, the ground wire is removed.  Also, mostly removed is the two "live" wires, the ones which carry the "juice".  Not sure why there's two, but there is.

Of course, the next part is to actually remove the alternator.  At this point, have done the following:  Removed serpentine belt, removed the two wires at bottom of the alternator, removed the ground wire, and removed the power wire.

Top mounting bolt

Removing alternator is a fairly simple process.  With this one, there are two nuts and bolts to remove.  A long one on the top, as seen here, and then a smaller one at the bottom, which is just out of the picture.  On the top it's a longer one to presumably help with stress of the serpentine belt (only a guess).

Alternator at the bottom

Next step is to get the beast out of there.  Didn't have enough room to pull it up into the RV itself, so decided to drop it down.  Worked out better than expected, but can't tell that from this picture.  Had to work a little to wrangle it around and out the bottom.  Went closer to the radiator and twisted it around until it slid down and out.

It's out, and made in USA!!!

After it was out, fairly simple process to lift the new one up and into place.  After had it up there, put the bottom bolt in place (to hold it in, and tightened a little with ratchet, just so wouldn't fall out.  Doing this backfired on me a little.

Couldn't get it on

After crawled out from underneath, went back to the top of the engine and tried wrangling around the alternator.  Just couldn't get it on, as seen in this picture.  Had to go back underneath, loosen the bolt a little (wasn't tight to begin with), and that gave me some slack to move it around from the top.

Almost there....

After doing that it slid into place almost effortleslly, until another issue came up.  While looked like was in the proper place, the long bolt wouldn't slide in.  Was able to find out (thanks to phone) the reason for this.  While looked like it was close enough to allow, it wasn't close enough.  Can see in the picture that it's slightly off center.

To correct this tried using breaker bars, wrenches, etc, and none of them seemed to work.  Would always lift it up a little, not enough, and then go back down.  Suddenly had a spark of consciousness..  Used an allen wrench that I had, a bigger one, that slid into the hole and was able to move it around enough to allow the bolt to slide in.  This picture, only for illustrative purposes, shows the allen wrench on one side, bolt on the other.

Bolt on left, allen wrench on right

Got one side of the bolt in, then while it was there, used allen wrench on other side to make the bolt go all the way through.

It was then a simple matter matter of tightening up the bolts, lifting up the tensioner and sliding the belt on (make sure it's FULLY seated, another important thing).  Double check everything again and then fire up the engine.

Engine running, have only done for a minute so far.  The voltage meter showed right around 13.5 - 14.0 volts, which is right where it should be.  Revved engine a little and no problems.  Will be updating this as appropriate.

Alternatives to fixing

While this would have to be fixed for the long run, the owner of repair shop mentioned something and thought worth noting here, as never know if it'll help someone.

RV's have two sets of batteries, a pair for the house to provide electricity to lights, fans, refrigerator, etc., and one for the starter engine.  These are typically seperated and the house (lights, fans) battery is not charged when engine is running.  The reverse is also true in that if plugged into the power grid (120V), the engine batteries are not charged.

So, what could have done, is started the generator.  This would have the effect of charging the house batteries (as well as providing 120V power).  Since the house batteries are charging, could run a wire (jumper wires in a pinch) between the house batteries and the engine batteries.  This would keep the engine battery charged.

Couple caveats can think of is that this would use more fuel (engine and generator).  It could also wear down the house batteries a little (in terms of longevity) as they're meant to draw down slow.  If have headlights on this would tend to draw battery down faster.

However, it would get me down the road with minimum of fuss.  The repair shop owner said someone went 500+ miles like this, just enough to get where he was going before getting it properly fixed.

If I was to do this with my overcharging problem, think it would have been best if removed the positive battery from the alternator, and wrapping the end in electrical tape, then hooking up the jumper cables to the two batteries and go down the road.

This would only be a last ditch effort and not something want to do as a common practice.

Tidbits from Austin, TX

Attended the Pathfinders Summit in Austin, TX.

I had the extreme pleasure to be amongst many self-made multimillionaire's this weekend.  These down to earth people took it upon themselves, when presented with an opportunity, to recognize and seizethe opportunity, then help others achieve their goals and dreams.


This video explains the purpose of Nikken and how we help people!

One of the women here, Liz Coker, is a professional business woman in the technology sector.  She was named as one of the 100 most influential women in business, and is proud to be part of the Nikken Revolution.  She has many passions in life, and one of those is to enable people to live their dreams.





Some notable items I jotted down which are applicable to everyone (IMHO):

• Turn your should's into MUSTS!
• Life will pay what you ask of it, when done intelligently (don't ask for a random million dollars, must be for a purpose)
• Need to define your WHY, i.e. why you do what you do
• We'll never become what we want to be by remaining who we are!
• A reason is not always a purpose
• A purpose is always a reason
• Seek first to understand
• and then to be understood
• Get comfortable talking to people
• Cultivate a burning desire and belief
• I'd rather be real than pretend to be perfect!
• You only regret the things you don't do
• People do what you do, not what you say
• The biggest risk a person can do is NOTHING
• Writing things down as if they've already happen (done to achieve your goals)
• Can never say wrong thing to the right person
• Anything is possible if a flower can grow in the snow (presenter saw a flower's bloom poking through the snow pack)
• The business is about fostering relationships, not selling.

In this business it's all about helping people achieve their dreams, as many people are silently calling out for a change which will allow them more freedom, and also, more rewards.