Tag: 100 days 2021

Good Customer Service

Good customer service is not about doing whatever it takes to make the customer happy. That is something that marketers use to share unrealistic stories about how a company helped one customer in an extraordinary circumstance. It is not realistic to expect your company or employees to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy.

Good customer service is being honest with the customer and doing your best to deliver on the promise made during the sale. What I mean by being honest with the customer is that you will give them as direct an answer as you can. If there was a mistake on your or the companies part then you need to own it. Once owned then you need to find some path of resolution that makes the customer happy.

Good customer service is about clear communication. If it feels like there is any miscommunication occurring you need to stop everything else and get that cleared up. A small misunderstanding can grow into massive problems if it is something central to what the customer thought they were paying for. Clearing up any miscommunication can resolve an issue on the spot, or at least help the customer change their perception enough that the problem can be resolved eventually.

Good customer service is about finding a way to resolve a situation in a reasonable manner. Most customers are reasonable people. If you are clear in your communication and honest about wanting to help, then a solution can be found. For the unreasonable ones, they were going to be unhappy no matter what. Your job in those cases is to get them to understand how they are being unreasonable, good luck!

Good customer service comes from enabling your employees to make decisions, and then standing by the employee and their decision. If your employees have no latitude for helping a customer then they are going to deal with a lot of upset customers. Eventually they are going to get tired of dealing with upset customers, and move on to another company. Like everything else at your company it all starts at the top. Are you giving good customer service to your employees?

Good customer service requires good listening skills. Again this applies to the whole organization and not just the person talking directly with the customer. If there is a problem with your service your customers are the first ones to notice and let you know. Have you enabled your employees to be able to quickly, easily, and reliably pass this information to the correct people internally?

Good customer service is about saying no when no is the answer. We are taught that ‘the customer is always right’ but this isn’t right. If the customer wants you to bake 100 loafs of bread in a day, and you can only bake 20; then you have to tell them no to the 100 and give them the option of 20. This will work out better for everyone even if they take their business somewhere else.

Good customer service is absolutely critical now more than ever. Customers are one click away from your competition. It costs very little to change services, and the great companies are paying attention on how to make it even easier. You should be doing everything you can to ensure your organization is focused on giving good customer service.

Good customer service is the best thing and your customers will love you for it.

December 13, 2021
Surprise party!

On Saturday my plan was to work on the garage a bit, and then Kate and I were gonna watch a movie at 7pm. Kate was busy with various chores, and was going to hang out with some friends in the afternoon. It was going to be a pretty perfect day, as far as I was concerned.

Then at about 2pm she told me to get cleaned up, and then I was to stay in the basement until she let me out. Since my birthday is in a few days I figured we were going out for something, and maybe meet up with a few friends.

When I was allowed to exit the basement I was surprised with a large group of friends waiting to celebrate my birthday. Kate had arranged everything, and then feed me lies all day to distract me from what was coming my way. The deception was pretty deep on this one. I will have to pay better attention moving forward, apparently.

Surprise!

One of our friends, whom we meet after moving to the area, shares the exact same birthday as me, to the year. I don’t know a lot of people with December birthdays in general, but the same date and year? That hasn’t ever happened to me. I am not an astrology or numbers person, but the idea that we were both born on the same day a state away is kinda neat.

Mountain Glow

So anyway it was a dual birthday and the cake said “Happy 90th!” which was funny. Speaking of the cake, Kate got one of the local bakers to make this specialty salted caramel cake. It was really great with just a ridiculous amount of salt, and sugar, and gooeyness, and I-definitely-ate-too-much-itis.

Another trip around the sun and I am ready for another.

December 12, 2021
Winter is here!

I wanted to get a sunrise shot this morning with my drone. The operating temperature for my drone is 32F and it was 0F this morning. I figured I should get at least a few minutes of operating time if I take the drone from the warm house outside and move quickly. I was wrong.

The first issue I noticed was that if I took my hand off of the control stick that makes the drone rise up the drone started dropping. Normally it will maintain altitude but not when it is this cold. The next issue was a low voltage warning even though the battery had 80% charge.

My first attempt to get some shots was a failure. I took it up and tried to get it into position for a photo but the warnings were going crazy. I really did not want to have to go fish the drone out of the snow so I flew it back onto the deck as fast as I could while avoiding crashing it into the house.

For my second attempt I put a fresher battery in and walked out to the front driveway of the house. I took off from there and started taking photos as soon as I was up in the air. Then I moved the drone south to get better angles for shots.

In the end I got the shot posted above and am pretty happy with it. Tomorrow I will try again with the batteries topped up to 100% and start from where I want to get the shots in.

December 11, 2021
New Bike Day!

I am a little kid on Christmas morning. The anticipation has been building for days and years. Technically yesterday was new bike day as that is when FedEx delivered my Canyon Spectral 29 CF 8. This is my first new-new bike in 15 years and my excitement is well beyond 9000!

My coworker had a new bike day a few days ago and got a sweet road bike. I had to bite my tongue about getting my bike for fear of jinxing the delivery, but FedEx was on time!

Wus in here?

Canyon is a direct to consumer bike company. This means that they sell their bikes directly to you from their website. There is no bike shop selling Canyon bikes, anywhere. This allows them to save costs and give us lower prices, but it also means that you need to do some assembling of the bike once it arrives.

Putting your Canyon Bike together

I was able to assemble my bike during my lunch break and even got a quick ride down the drive way. Everything went pretty smoothly together with solid instructions provided. There was an omission of attaching the dropper post lever to the front brake handle but I figured it out.

Most safe.

First impressions are that this bike is a missile and it is ready to launch me down some trails! There are a lot of reviews on this bike that go into detail about the head angle and progressive suspension. Considering I am coming from a mountain bike that was built in 1997 this thing is basically an alien spaceship.

The only things familiar to me are the grips, seat, and pedals. The rest of the bike is totally different from anything I have ever owned. The main areas I need to get familiar with are the suspension and the hydraulic brakes. Both of these are very advanced technology to me and require training to understand better. The brakes are pretty much good to go for now but the suspension needs to be adjusted to my weight and riding style.

Put a fork in it!

Naturally it snowed all night so I guess it’s time to get some snow riding in!

December 10, 2021
Hitting the Road

On Labor Day 9/1/2014 Kate and I packed up what we needed, and hit the road to be fulltime RVers and digital nomads. It took 3 months for us to plan everything from renting out our home, to finding a trailer and tow vehicle, and figuring out that Kate would resign her job. This was a quick transition but we made it work and for 6 years we roamed the USA and some of Mexico.

The initial catalyst for hitting the road was due to our dog Zeke. I have talked about Zeke before and how great a dog he was. On a trip to Tucson we noticed that Zeke had started wetting his dog bed. Some quick Google-diagnosing mentioned different things, including cancer. We had lost Bonzai the year before and Ozric the year before so we immediately assumed the worst, but did our best not to say as much directly. It is interesting how people avoid talking about their sadness even while it is shown on their faces.

On the drive home to Phoenix I asked Kate: “If money wasn’t an issue what would you be doing right now?” It was partly to lighten the mood but also a serious question. Career wise Kate was doing fantastic and my website/marketing business was doing well. We had a nice home in central Phoenix and great friends. We were happy, but there was something missing in our lives. We had spent the prior few years trying to have children but it was not to be our fate. Kates immediate answer was: driving around the country in an RV.

In May of 2014 Zeke was diagnosed with cancer and with treatment was given 18 months to live. We were devastated. We started treatment and he responded well, which is not a good sign. 18 months became 12 and then we stopped asking for timelines.

In the middle of this Kate and I had been training for the St George Half Ironman triathalon which involves training 7 days a week. The race was just a few weeks away and we managed to make it happen and both of us finished. It was a great accomplishment but all we could think of was Zeke.

A month later Kate comes home after work and announces: “Labor Day” and I am like “yeah its in 3 months what about it?”. Her reply: “Thats the day we are hitting the road in an RV.” The flag had been planted now we needed to make it happen.

At the time we had a pop-up trailer for camping in. We would hitch up on the weekends and drive into the Arizona mountains. We had been camping in the pop-up for less than a year and had a good routine for making it work. We had been car campers before that, and enjoyed getting into the out doors and away from the city. However, we knew that there was no way we were going to be able to live in the po-up. We would need to find something bigger.

So in the middle of training for another half ironman which would happen in July, and dealing with a dog in cancer treatment: we added finding a trailer to live in to our to do list. We were also going to need to get rid of 70% of our stuff and find renters for the house.

We started looking at trailers with the thinking that a trailer would suit us better than a Mobile Home. The difference is that a trailer has a tow vehicle so there is only one motor to maintain. With a Mobile Home you have the motor that drives the home and then you are also going to want a second vehicle. The reason for this is that once you setup camp somewhere you have to put everything away before you can drive the home somewhere else. In a trailer this isn’t a big deal since you just un-hitch the tow vehicle and drive it to town for groceries. With a Mobile Home you have 2 motors to maintain and neither of us are mechanics.

At first we thought we might be able to use a hybrid type trailer. These are larger than a pop-up but still have sections that pop out and have canvas covering the area. They are smaller than normal trailers and we quickly realized they were too small for our needs. Eventually we found our 29 foot Jayco Jaybird G2 RLS29 (The RLS stands for Rear Living Space.).

Then we needed to upgrade our tow vehicle to something that could handle such a large trailer. We found a Toyota Sequioa that could handle the weight and we both liked that Zeke had space in the back to hang out in. I installed a trailer brake controller and we were ready to roll out!

Then we just needed to get a blog setup, cause thats what you do. Since Kate’s last name is Grass I came up with the totally innocent name of Rolling with Grass. 😎 I wanted to get a big sticker made up for the side of the trailer but Kate shut that down. Alas our blogging career did not take off, mostly due to a lack of blogging, but we had fun with it.

We pulled out of Phoenix a few days before Labor Day and headed up to Flagstaff to camp with friends for the weekend and bid them farewell. Over the next 6 years we would criss cross the US multiple times. We spent 3 different winters in Florida and a couple summers in New England. We took the rig down to Mexico on 2 different occasions and continued living in it until last fall on our land.

December 9, 2021
Writing is Exercise

I try to get up every morning and workout. It is not something I have been great at doing regularly until about 4 years ago. When I turned 40 I knew I needed to start paying better attention to my body, and keeping it working well. Since then I have a pretty good success rate at getting up and doing some type of exercise. This helps me feel good which generally means I am in a good mood and therefore more productive and pleasant.

Writing has the same effect, by getting me to think clearly enough to write this sentence. As I write more the easier it is to put my thoughts together and convey what I am thinking. Doing this every morning helps me organize my thoughts about the day. Whether I am reflecting on something that happened yesterday, or planning something for next year writing helps review what is happening.

When I exercise I am thinking about my next bike ride, hike, or rafting trip. I think about how a strength movement is going to help me in different circumstances. I may also be thinking about how much pain I am in and to keep breathing and get through it. Which is a huge thing to work on and apply to a bike, hike, or rafting trip. In the end I am doing these things because I enjoy them.

Writing is also an exercise in thinking. When I am writing this sentence I am trying to organize my thoughts to convey something. I am also thinking about work, or a meeting about the trails group. Mainly I am thinking about what the heck am I trying to convey here.

Where I get stuck with physical exercise and writing exercise is thinking about what others will think. When this happens everything freezes and I forget why I am doing this. Instead I am worrying about how I look, or if someone might think this sentence is silly. There is no benefit to this during exercise. If those things are important to an activity then it isn’t exercise, it’s work.

The fun part about exercising physically or mentally is that it is just an exercise to get better. I have no delusions about going to the Olympics or being hired as a model, but I do want to enjoy a long bike ride. Physical exercise will ensure that I can physically complete the ride, and hopefully have a smile on my face. I have no delusions that I will be a New York Times bestselling author, but I do want to improve my writing for work. Writing exercise here on my blog gives me a place to practice writing, and expose it to whomever cares to take a look. I hope that it is enjoyable to read, but I try not to take it too seriously. I am writing metaphorical push ups and jumping jacks here with the intent that my writing elsewhere will get better.

December 8, 2021
Build something big

As a kid I would imagine wild ideas of being a pilot and astronaut. Dreams were limitless and the sky was not even the limit. Then I went through life and got beat up by the reality that not all dreams can be made into reality. While I hated the idea of limiting my dreams I did need to be practical and make a living.

All that said, In the last few years Kate and I have been getting back to living the dream. We have done this by being gradual in our approach but always taking a moment to ask the big questions: why are we doing something? and are we thinking big? For our home I covered these questions a few days ago. One thing that is on my mind now is our work with our local trails group.

Currently our trails group does a great job of maintaining existing trails and recently has been building a decent amount of new trails. One thing I have noticed in my 2 years of volunteering with the group is that the focus is very narrow. This is due to it being an all volunteer group and also being a small town with limited resources.

Currently there is a lot of groundswell for mountain bike trails in the US. Towns like Bentonville, AR, Fruita, CO, Moab, UT, Asheville, NC, and many others are investing in their trail systems to attract tourism. I think that Mancos has similar potential and that our trails group could play a big part in it.

Recently a local company, Osprey backpacks, was sold for about $414 million. I think this is a great opportunity for us to put a larger plan together for the group. If we could get just a tiny fraction of that money we could hire someone to run the group full time, have a paid trail crew, and expand our trails system well beyond what we have today.

I have no idea how to make it all happen other than to start trying. It’s a big dream, but what else are we doing here other than to have big dreams and try to make them real? Stay tuned!

December 7, 2021
Zen and the Art of the Dog Walk

It wasn’t until I met Kate that I have ever had a dog as a pet, or even had a pet. My sister had some hamsters at some point but that was just a box of shit in the house. Anytime I brought up getting a dog to my family there was mumblings of responsibility, and things which I was still a bit foggy on. Looking back I should have gotten a dog as a kid.

At the time we met, Kate had Bonzai and Ozric (she requires all her dogs to have ‘z’s in their name). Bonzai was a rescue that Kate first saw in the parking lot. Bonzai was a puppy and Kate elected to see no other dogs and rescued her on the spot. At one point we had her genetically tested and she came back as Siberian Husky and Dauschund. Talk about an odd couple! Ozric was part of one of Kate’s co-workers litter of Boxers. Kate went over to have a look at the puppies and Ozric was the runt, and apparently quite cute.

Kate’s house had a dog door to a fenced in back yard, so it was a self service affair for the dogs. In terms of not having to pick up piles of shit it was great. However, this meant that we did not use the backyard for much. To be fair we lived in Phoenix, so hanging out in a backyard pretty much only happens if you have a pool. Kate did not have a pool, she had dirt and dry dog shit.

The first and only time I tried taking Ozric and Bonzai for a walk, we made it about 200 yards and Ozric decided to sit down. When a 60 pound boxer decides to sit down its game over, until they decide to move again. In this case Ozric stayed sitting until I started walking back towards the house. That dog was all about chillin.

After he passed and Bonzai let us know she needed a new companion we rescued Zeke. His name was Humphries but that wasn’t what we considered to be a terrific name for a dog, and there was no ‘z’. At one point a vet tech thought he looked part Argentine Dogo. Zeke was a big, beatuful, gentle beast, and loved going for walks, he was also the best on leash.

Walking a dog on leash can be a varying affair based on a number of factors. The first and main factor is the dog themselves. Some dogs are great on leash, and I hear it is because the owner trains them to be. All I know is that Zeke must have been trained by someone before us, because Kate and I are not “trainer-type” dog owners. He did not pull on the leash and walked by your side very calmly. He enjoyed visiting our neighborhood coffee shop and was a very good boy.

Eventually Bonzai passed and it was just us and Zeke. He liked humans more than dogs so we didn’t try to force a new companion on him.

After Zeke passed we rescued Dazey and shortly afterwards Enzo. Again we altered the names to protect the innocent. Dazey is pretty good on leash but she knows she can get away with a lot. Enzo is just Enzo. If there is a Squirrel or anything he is ready to go!

At this point we were only a few months into our full time RV adventuring, and we were moving around a lot. We saw a lot of states and campgrounds and went on a lot of dog walks. Walking the dogs could be interesting side quests involving other dogs, roads with lots of traffic, and wildlife.

Dog walking is a Zen activity because there is a balance. The primary purpose of the walk is to let the dog relieve themselves outside of your home. They also need exercise, but then there are the smells. Apparently a dogs nose is hyper sensitive and can detect things that are well beyond our capabilities. When they find something to sniff on it’s a big deal.

In the meantime I have other things to do, and unfortunately cannot spend the whole day waiting on them to finish their forensic analysis of whatever animal urinated on that rock. I try to let them get some-time to explore but eventually its time to move on. The other issue is that there are a lot of things they want to eat in nature. For a lot of dog owners they see this as natural and ok. For me I am not a big fan of messes inside the house and/or trips to the vet because of excessive diarrhea. So I err on the side of not letting them nibble on random shit in the woods.

Squirrel!

In the end I think we have a good balance on our walks. I try to get them out 2 to 3 times a day with at minimum one loop around the land. Thats a good 18 minute walk and there are tons of things to smell and try and eat. I get to take a break and spend time outside with my best buddies. Its a win-win-win-win-win.

December 6, 2021
Weekend projects – Workshop lights and shelving – 05/100

A few days ago I talked about how we designed much of our house. I left out talking about the basement and the garage. Both of those parts of the house were under my purview and direction. Some day I will talk about the basement but today let’s checkout some of the garage.

There were a number of considerations for both having a garage and using a garage. Colorado gets pretty cold in the winter. Having a garage means your vehicle is not an ice block in winter mornings. I also like to work on my bikes and build the occasional woodworking project so a workshop was key.

We built the garage big enough to park both vehicles, and have room for a workshop. At the time of drawing the house we had a 22′ long truck. In the middle of the house build we sold the truck and got a smaller vehicle. Basically my workshop doubled in space. Bonus!

Let there be light!

While the house was being built I started thinking about planning out the workshop, and purchased the Weekend Woodworkers Workshop course to help with that. One of the first things I learned from the course was upgrading my lighting to their suggested LED shoplights. Originally I was thinking these would be the only lights in the Garage, but Kate suggested otherwise after seeing how bright they are.

Basic lighting

To start with I only setup 5 of the 10 lights from the kit and I am really happy with them. My workspace has very few shadows allowing me to see what I am working on. Setup was really easy. Decide if you want to plug them into an outlet, or hardwire them to be used by a wall switch. I chose the outlet option since these are secondary lights in the garage. Then I decided I wanted to focus on the southwestern corner of the garage.

Power levels are above 9000!

Getting organized

One of the first projects of the course is a shelving unit that is focused on preventing putting too many items on the shelf. It does this by not being very deep so you cannot hide a tool behind another tool. This keeps things visible and accessible, which helps encourage their use, and keeps the project moving instead of searching.

We have some leftover wood from the trim that is really pretty Knotty Alder so I used some of that to build the self. The course gives excellent instruction and tips for ways to work safer, faster, and more efficient.

Boo yeah!

I judge how a project went by Kate’s reaction. In this case she asked me to make her one, so I think it came out pretty well. 😎

December 5, 2021
Robot Apocalypse

We recently moved into our new home, and since it is 2021, we purchased a robot vacuum cleaner. We went with the Rooma i8+ from Costco as it was a good deal, the reviews are positive, and it has a self cleaning dock. There are much cheaper options on the market, but it sounds like the navigation/mapping technology is pretty important, and Roomba is the leader in that regard.

Right now the Roomba, whom we named George, is on their 3rd run of the house. They are still mapping out the main floor of the house, and appear to be over halfway to completing that mission. I have read that it can take 5 or more runs to get a complete mapping done while also operating as a vacuum. This part can be done faster in Mapping Mode, but no cleaning is done, which seems like a waste to me.

Any concern of a robot apocalypse can be well mitigated by spending some time watching a Roomba map out a room. While the technology involved in making George operate is incredibly impressive, there is still a long way to go. Watching them bump into everything in the house multiple times is both funny and sad. If there is one thing to give them credit for it is persistence.

That is until it comes to recharging itself…

When the battery runs low George makes their way back to the charging dock. On the first 2 runs George was unable to get themselves back onto the charging dock. Rather than stop and let us know that there was a problem they went back into cleaning mode, and kept going until the battery died. While I appreciate the dedication to cleaning, I don’t understand why it has to run off into the house and die. Does George realize that their existence is ending and choose to be as productive as possible before the end?

While George is not a person they are not just a vacuum either. The question of how to address a robot is neither new nor is it settled. However calling them ‘it’ seems wrong. They are acting in a semi-autonomous way to make our lives easier. Shouldn’t that afford them more respect than our ‘dumb’ appliances? Our attitudes on this matter mimic what is happening with human rights, and animal rights, and will continue to evolve. Hopefully we avoid going full Matrix or Butlerian Jihad.

I reoriented the charging dock so there is 6ft+ of clear runway and this time George was able to make their way back onto the charger. So far it seems to be doing a good job of cleaning up dirt and pet hair, which we have no shortage of.

The dogs have adjusted to George in their own ways. Enzo was not happy about the roaming vacuum to start with. He did not attack, but would bark as them as they made their way around the house. I gave him some treats and now he lies in bed while George works. Occasionally Enzo will get up when George gets too close to the dog bed. Dazey just goes upstairs while George is running around.

An uneasy truce

If you have a robot vacuum do you have any tips of suggestions? If you are considering one I would recommend buying one, especially if you have pets. Having a George has already let me relax about sweeping the floors everyday. We still need some more time for a full evaluation, but so far they are doing a great job.

December 4, 2021