My first blog posting

Weblog April 30, 2008



Good afternoon! This is the first posting for my blog and I can tell you I am more than a bit anxious about it. I am a 56-year old engineer and like many people my age the concept of exposing me to the “world” is more than my fragile ego cares to take on. But so be it. What can you people do to a 30 year veteran of running his own company that hasn’t already been done? The internet is worldwide, but I am safe and sound in my small office and unless I give any of you my home address, I don’t think I will be expecting any ticking FedEx packages.
I am going to do this because of the following:

1. I always have an opinion about most things and since I do have all of this experience, I can share that with a less experienced audience. How do I know you are less experienced? Simple, I know lots of people my age (or a little older) that got their first cell phones last Christmas and most of them came as gifts from their children. Email? That takes too much time. Internet? Well, then they would need a computer and that was discussed last Christmas too. They took the phone. So if you are reading this posting, chances are you are not older than I am.


2. No one can interrupt me. This is the best thing. I can blab all I want and say anything I want and there is nothing anyone can do to shut me up. I tried talking with my wife like this when we first got married 30 years ago. No wonder email and the internet were invented (thank you, Al Gore). I am feeling better already and I have only written three paragraphs. Even when I take responses from all of you,I still reserve the right to accept or reject those I like and publish what I please. This is real power.

3. I really have some good experience in the manufacturing world and I want to interact with others in the field. Manufacturing in the U.S.A has declined continuously over the past decades and continues to do so. But we are poised for a rebound! The future is really brighter than we read in the papers! Very soon now the dollar will have fallen enough and our standard living will have sufficiently declined to where we will become the low cost producer of the world’s goods. Move over Viet Nam!


4. I have books that tell me it will be good for business. Robert Scoble in his book naked conversations (www.scobleizer.com) explains that my future as a businessman may very well depend on it. Some of the things he says are fairly persuasive; others are not. One thing he does make clear is that the internet will change things at an exponentially faster rate than anything in the past has done. Want an example? The words “blog” and “blogging” on my screen have squiggly red underlines and this is one-year old software (Word).

5. I believe blogging can make friends with people you would never take an interest in otherwise. Who has the time? The physical world takes more effort and energy than ever before. How do you fit new friendships into a day totally consumed by work, meals, sleep, family, American Idol, and afternoon naps? Consider we can have very real friendships without ever leaving our homes or office. Not a very novel thought to our children, but a revelation to most of the baby boomers.

That’s it for this posting. Since this is an open ended conversation, I can stop any time I want. I am posting pictures of my first grandchild Rachael (11 months). I am sure you will agree no words are needed.


Thanks for visiting.