Ocracoke Waves

Unconditional Love

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:06:00 +0000

I consider myself one of the privileged few whose life has been touched by a number of wonderful animal friends. Today, Percy, one of my favorite friends of all time passed away.

Percy was a rescue cat with the smallest feet that I have ever seen on an adult cat. She also had the biggest heart of any cat that I have ever met. She never saw a lap that she did not try out. I think she was convinced that all humans loved her as much as my daughter, Erin, did.

After being an outside barn cat living somewhere near Harrisonburg, Virginia, Percy was rescued by our Roanoke area vet. When I first met Percy, I knew a cat who enjoyed being cuddled that much would be perfect for my daughter whose other two rescue cats remained a little aloof.

The name, Percy, seemed to stick to the little cat whose sometimes grumpy look had nothing to do with the love she radiated to her human friends. She was also pretty good at soaking up love just like a sponge.

That first trip years ago when I took Percy to my daughter's house in Northern Virginia was just one of many that Percy made. She was a traveling cat. She loved to go wherever my daughter went. Though she would have preferred to sit on someone's lap the whole trip, she did agree to being comfortable in a seat as long as her litter box was not too far away.

Percy had no trouble winning over our Lab, Chester. She even was the only cat that ever managed to withstand the intense scrutiny of my other daughter's two big dogs, Dozer and Byerly. Still she preferred the company of humans to that of dogs or other cats.

Percy did not ask for much in life except a regular dinner and a soft spot for her naps. She got that in spades from my daughter who made sure Percy always had a lap and a warm bed. Percy's daytime bed in my daughter's room was an electrically heated one. Because the two other cats often picked on her, Percy often got a personal escort to the litter box. At night all the warmth she needed came from cuddling with my daughter.

We are going to really miss Percy. Her unique personality touched many people including some known dog lovers. Some of my best memories of Percy are from when I was working at Apple in Reston, Virginia. I would often be the first at home, and I was not above taking a nap before dinner. Percy was always glad to see me. I can still remember how she would drape herself around my neck. My daughter kept the thermostat in the sixties, so a warm bundle of cat fur felt pretty good as I dozed through the national news.

Percy enjoyed her meals. While some cats are picky eaters, I think Percy knew how lucky she was to have Fancy Feast every night on her own plate. She also had a great talent for finding a ray of sunshine and soaking it up. We never knew Percy as a kitten, but once in a while she would play like one. It was far better entertainment than television.

Percy regularly made the trip of seven hours to our beach house. She loved the wide windowsills there. She always acted like it was her home. She would walk right in and expect to have dinner, and then she would go off exploring to make sure we had not moved anything.

When she visited us in Roanoke, she had a special hiding place in our basement. Still the best surprise that she ever gave us was one Christmas morning. We had looked all over the house trying to find her. Eventually we found that she had made her way inside the large dollhouse in Erin's room. You will find her in the second picture in this post.

While Percy is resting in peace, my memories of her will stay fresh especially on a cold winter evening when I could use a little cat fur around the neck to keep me warm.

Social Networking the Marshes

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:48:00 +0000

I have been a fisherman since I was old enough to hold a pole. That has been a very long time, and I have learned much about fishing and life over the course of my life long love affair with the sport.

I have fished for native brook trout in Canada and for Grayling in Alaska, but mostly I have fished the state of North Carolina from the mountains to Cape Hatteras.

There is one golden rule that I have learned with fishing. You will never catch any fish unless you put a line in the water. You cannot catch fish by standing on the edge of the water and just looking at the water.

It occurred to me this afternoon that fishing is a lot like social networking. In social networking you have these rivers of information like Twitter or great pools of fish like Facebook. It is unlikely that someone can stand up in front of you and really get across the essence of social networking.

The opportunity that social network offers has to be balanced against the challenges that it places on information gathering and decision making.

Social networking is a logical expression of the changes that have happened to our society. Fifty years ago when I was growing up in the small town of Lewisville, North Carolina, there was no need for social networking. We were a small town world. While there was some mobility in our towns, but it was nothing like what we have seen since the turn of the century. People were born in a community and often died there.

You met people at church, at school, at work, or someone introduced you to them. Ancestors from our family had lived within twenty or thirty miles of where I grew up since not long after the revolutionary war. We lived on a street named after our family not far from another road named for the ferry my great grandfather used to run.

There are not many people who have the luxury of growing up in an environment like that these days. Jobs take people all over the country if not the world. Children are lucky if they start school in the same town as where they were born.

In the days before the Internet, if you wanted information you mostly wrote letters, and you had to judge the person on the other end by the quality of the letter you received in return. Telephone calls could be very expensive even if you were able to figure out the right person to call.

In 1971, I ended up buying an old farm in Canada. While the project started with letters to a real estate agent, it eventually required a couple of trips to personally evaluate the agent and the land. What I found out about the area came from books and visiting the area. There was no Internet for research. In the end the decision was mine based on what I had learned the hard way. There was no supporting cast of people in the area to tell me that the North Mountain of Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley was a good place. I had to take a gamble.

Actually I am not certain that the purchase that I made in 1971 would be as easy today. Nowadays there is always a risk that your decision making can end up overwhelmed by too many opinions and too much information. In 1971 too much information was not a problem.

As the geographic ties that held many families together have dissolved, more and more people have faced a world where they do not know their neighbors or their neighbors change so often they do not have enough time to know them.

Distant corporations email, online forums, and instant messaging loosened some of the bonds that made the person next to you less important than the person 3,000 miles away with whom you exchanged messages.

Then there is the whole generational issue where many younger workers communicate more with their friends than their colleagues. It is pretty easy for this to become a distraction at work so it comes as no surprise that social networking starts with something of black eye in most corporate circles.

In that we find the most interesting paradox, those companies which could benefit most from social networking often show great resistance.

If you look at the marsh and the waters in the picture accompanying this post, most people would understand that there is very complex web of life at the boundary between the marshes and open water. The afternoon we fished there, we caught a wide variety of fish in that one spot.

Had we not taken the time to anchor and fish there, any speculation as to what might be there would have just been speculation. We fished there, now we know what to expect the next time.

Social networking done right can provide a tremendous amount of information about market trends and customer preferences. Becoming part of a social network interested in your products or services is like being part of the largest customer focus group possible.

On top of customer information, social networking can also be an amazing learning opportunity. You can see first hand how people respond to certain messages. It is the ultimate testbed for marketing campaigns.

Even just watching the information flow on Twitter is like sticking your hand in a river and understanding the currents.

Certainly every business hoping to grow should have an active social networking strategy.

Peace in the pictures

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:51:00 +0000

When you are working as hard as you can to build a business using online marketing techniques, you often feel like you are on an endless treadmill that keeps speeding up.

The challenges are immense in my world of real estate.

You have to work your job, but you also must provide exceptional content to attract new clients. In my case content ends up being articles and photos about the Crystal Coast of North Carolina. Of course they are posted all over the web from my own sites to Twitter and any place that I can find an audience.

The one good thing about providing good content is that you have to live the life you are describing or you have no chance of being authentic.

So if I am talking about surf fishing, I have just come from surf fishing. If I write about being the last person to close down the beach, there should be no doubt that I closed down the beach. With that in mind, I really enjoy it when I write about kayaking or fishing from our skiff.

Right now "living the life" is one of the few benefits of the job. I describe what I experience to the fullest. That works well except for the fact that instead of relaxing with a book or watching some TV evening, I am always up in my office writing. Sometimes I end up with keyboard prints on my face.

With a lifestyle that is buring the candle at both ends, I have to find peace and relaxation wherever I can find it. Often I find it in the viewfinder of my favorite camera which right now is a Panasonic ZS-1.

In a certain sense I live through the lens of my cameras. Composing a relaxing scene like the Atlantic Beach one in this post relaxes me.

Even when I see the picture downloaded onto to my computer, I find a certain sense of peace.

In a world of digital deadlines and increasing demands, I will take my peace wherever I can find it.

Peace on the water

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 03:27:00 +0000

One of the things that I look forward to each morning as I roll out of bed, is walking across the road to check out the water in Raymond's Gut. While I often first look at it from the dock behind my home, I enjoy another view which lets me see all the way out to the White Oak River.

I am alway especially pleased when the waters are so calm that they form mirrors for the scenery. It is a pretty neat way to start the day.

It certainly beats a freeway and bumper to bumper traffic. I was just finishing a post about how hard it is to find good jobs in the places where it is a pleasure to live.

If you have lots of jobs, you might have too many people in paradise so I am not going to wish for over development. We have lots of places in North America that can lay claim to being over developed. The Crystal Coast is not one of them.

With crystal clear waters that give us our name and water within in sight almost everywhere, it is no surprise that many people move here because of the opportunity to be close to the water.

Having the chance to start your day looking at water and end your day watching a sunset over water is a great privilege. It also helps to keep your soul energized.

When the world around you is so beautiful, it is hard not to have good thoughts. I am probably a whole lot easier to deal with just after my morning walk to see the water than I am after sitting in an office with only a print for my water view.

Of course the water can be powerful and dangerous. It is suicidal to ignore its power.

I guess you could say that with great beauty comes great power.

I am pleased to be under the spell of the water. It certainly makes the outlook for tomorrow a little more pleasant.

Searching for intelligent development

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:50:00 +0000

Our primary home is in a small subdivision called Bluewater Cove. We live just across the cul de sac from the swimming pool pictured in the post. The pool and water access for boating are the main reasons that we live on the Carolina coast near Cape Carteret and Emerald Isle.

We have had the privilege of living in a wide variety of places from the isolated shores of Nova Scotia to the suburbs of Washington, DC. We have lived on a farm in a small community in New Brunswick, Canada. For twenty we were on the slopes of a mountain overlooking Roanoke, VA. My wife and I both grew up in Mount Airy, NC otherwise known as Mayberry. We even owned our family home there for a while.

We have had the experience of driving twenty miles to the nearest grocery store. We have also seen our kids be able to come home for lunch from school. Given that wide variety of experiences we have chosen Bluewater Cove in western Carteret County as our latest place to live.

I just penned an article, When the small stores leave. It is about my concerns on the hollowing out of commercial services in the area where our home is in Roanoke, Va. It seems that all the commercial enterprises want to be in the same concentrated areas. The result is that neighborhood services are disappearing. Perhaps this is inevitable.

I still remember walking to the local hardware, drug store, and movies when I lived in Mt. Airy. When I lived in Lewisville, NC, I could walk to school, church, hardware, and grocery store. There was even a small restaurant within walking distance. Much of that has disappeared.

We saw the planned development model when we lived in Columbia, MD and the years that I worked in Reston, VA. While having controlled development might help rationalize some decisions, I am not sure it works very well either. I know in Columbia all car services were pushed to the outskirts of town. In Reston neighborhood grocery stores have disappeared.

On the North Carolina coast we have a long commercial strip probably five miles in length. Most of the homes are on roads that branch off of the commercial strip. Homes still on the strip are gradually being converted to commercial businesses.

Some of the commercial development is starting to centralize and of course there are a number of subdivisions where residential development is also concentrating. It is almost a hub and spoke model of development. The hub is the centralized shopping area and the spokes lead to the residential areas which are often subdivisions.

In spite of the small population in the coastal area, we have better access to many services than we do in a larger town like Roanoke. Today in Roanoke I drove several miles to get a bag of pea gravel. It probably took me nearly an hour before I found what I needed. I could have accomplished the same task in under ten minutes on the Carolina coast.

It is almost counter intuitive that I could get something done more quickly where in theory there are less services. However it turns out there are actually better located services in the smaller area. Roanoke has two Lowe's Home Improvement stores and two Home Depots, all are about 20 minutes from our home. There is no hardware closer to our Roanoke home than ten minutes.

In Cape Carteret on the Carolina coast, we have only one Lowes nearby, but it is only seven minutes from our house. There are two hardware stores under ten minutes and another two at about fifteen minutes. There are other Lowes and a Home Depot within twenty to thirty mintues.

Things are similar when it comes to grocery stores, but if you start looking at medical care, Roanoke has far more resources which are close by.

Our closest hospital in Cape Carteret is about 25 minutes away. In Roanoke we have one under ten minutes away and a second one twenty minutes away.

What is surprising is that aside from medical care, life in a rural area like Cape Carteret stacks up pretty well.

The good news is that Carteret General Hospital has decided to build an imaging center close to us. Hopefully that is the first step in addressing additional medical services for the area.

With a Walmart probably coming to town in 2010, we will have just about all the modern conveniences that we need. My wife would only add that we need a Target.

Maybe intelligent development happens if you plant yourself in the right spot. I hope western Carteret County is it.

It certainly is not hollowing itself out like Roanoke is at the present time.

Apathy is not a solution

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:44:00 +0000

I was talking to another Realtor the other day about a potential new way to advertise for clients. She indicated that she had little or no enthusiasm for any new tactics.

It occurred to me that apathy is rarely a successful solution. Allowing yourself to become someone who watches while things happen instead of being someone who tries to control the future by being proactive is just not an option for me.

I have found that either working to be a success or planning to get out of what you are doing are really the only options ever available. You cannot just sit and let things happen to you and expect those things to be good.

I have been in tough positions a number of times in my working career. Hiding under the desk has never worked.

Understanding the things that you can change in a tough environment is one of the most important first steps to building a plan to get out of your challenging spot.

You should focus on what you can do to be ready to be successful. If you position yourself to take advantage of the next opportunity for success, you will be in a lots better position than if you spend your time complaining and doing nothing.

Right now real estate is in a terrible tailspin. While we have more buyers looking than we have had in a while, most of those buyers are very finicky and often looking for deals that just do not exist.

I have decided that now is the time to build my brand and to own the content about the areas where I sell real estate.

When serious buyers take the places of the ones we are seeing now, I should be successful. It means that I work harder than some colleagues.

That's is okay with me. I would rather be ready for success than sitting and hoping that things might change.

In the meantime, I will enjoy life here on the Crystal Coast spending as much time on the water as possible thinking about what I can to do to position myself for success.

Waiting for failure is not any more of an option than trying the same things which are not working over and over.

As far as I am concerned a Perfect Beach Day can spur the imagination and lead to success.

My love affair with mornings along the southern coast

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:52:00 +0000

It is a real privilege to go to bed at night and be excited about waking up the next morning. What I do in the morning is not very exciting, but I enjoy doing it were much.

While I do enjoy my first cup of coffee, the coffee has nothing to do with the pleasure I take from my morning rounds of our home place at Bluewater Cove. First I usually check our tomato plants to see if anything is ripe enough t0 pick or if the plants need water. I also check our palms and our one perrenial hibiscus.

Then I will usually walk down to the dock to check the tides and see what sea creaturing are lurking around the dock. After that I make my way out to the mailbox. Along the way, I get to enjoy the warm morning breeze, our roses, and the pine trees growing in the lot next door. I will also scan the yard to see if any ant hills have popped up.

Sometimes I will wander over to boat ramp to see what is swimming around there. These hot mornings I often hear the carpenters up the road. They come to work early during the heat of the summer.

It is a special time in the morning. There are even some mornings when you can forget all your cares. It is a relaxing time of the day, and I have even been known t0 take an early morning dip in the pool.

I sometimes get a lot done before 9:00 AM. As early morning is my favorite time of day, I do not mind working hard. It is better to get chores out of the way early in my book.

Evening comes in a distant second as a time I enjoy, but it does have moments also like this walk down Emerald Isle's main street.

Front porch storm watching

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:38:00 +0000

Maybe it is a southern thing, but I have always enjoyed watching thunderstorms from the porches of our homes.

We have had a few homes without porches, but those have been in the minority. Perhaps my favorite storm watching porch before we moved to the coast was the one in Mt. Airy, NC where I spent my teenage years.

Our side porch there was protected but had a great view of the building storms that skirted the Blue Ridge Mountains. That former home is now a bed breakfast, Sobotta Manor, so you can book a stay and hope for a nice southern thunderstorm for some entertainment.

Thunderstorms sometimes break the heat in the south or at least provide some temporary relief. Sometimes they are damaging, but often they just bring welcome precipitation and some noise like they did today here on the Carolina coast.

Watching the power of thunderstorm is a humbling experience. I actually like North Carolina and Virginia thunderstorms much better than the ones we had in Canada. The Canadian ones were ill defined. They seemed to be all over the place. You could never really tell their direction.

Make no mistake, you can tell if a southern thunderstorm is headed for you. Most of them leave no doubt. Tonight's edition went south of us. We got to watch the fireworks without getting in the line of fire.

Still the strong breezes and lightning brought back many childhood memories of listening to the rumble of thunder in Mount Airy or Lewisville, NC. Storms in Roanoke, VA were a little different. Once they got in the mountain valley that is Roanoke, they could go in circles. Many times we saw the same storm more than once.

In the summer, thunderstorms are a regular occurrence here near the water. When we are fishing we try to have our boats back at the dock by three PM which is when the storms often fire up. With the flat territory, you can see them for miles.

I know the storms are to be respected. I had a cousin killed by lightning, but I like to think that if I am careful, the front porch makes a pretty good spot to watch a storm unless we are in the middle of it.

Not a normal dinner spot for us

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:35:00 +0000

We are actually more comfortable out on the beach than we are going out to dinner these days.

Still when someone gives you a gift certificate to a good restaurant, you do not want to waste it. With that in mind we headed off to Red Lobster in Roanoke, Va. recently.

We managed to get there during their lobster festival. With my love of lobster, I ended up ordering a dish with a couple of kinds of shrimp, a lobster tail, and a few crab legs.

After a Caesar salad and some of their yummy rolls, I was feeling pretty good. Dinner arrived quickly since the restaurant was not as packed as has often been the case before the economic recession.

It was hard not to compare our dinner since we had just fixed some shrimp and grits at home down on the NC Coast. That is something we do fairly often so we are pretty familiar with seafood. To say I was a little surprised at the tiny size of the shrimp on my plate is an understatement.

Shrimp of the size that I was served in garlic butter would never even make it to bait shrimp on the Crystal Coast. In fact a couple of our Crystal Coast shrimp would equal the amount of meat in the lobster tail on our plates.

Now I had plenty to eat, but I am not certain how much money Red Lobster is saving in the long run by purchasing juvenile shrimp and lobsters. The crab legs were also tiny. Serve fewer but bigger shrimp. I would rather have three shrimp that I can cut into bites than six which are so tiny that you hardly know you have eaten them. I have to believe that normal size shrimp is a better use of marine resources. Of course here I am thinking that these shrimp were caught in the sea. They were probably farm shrimp.

However, the lobsters had to be wild caught, and my guess is that they came from Canada where I have heard the size limit is smaller than Maine. I know there is a certain size lobster which the lobster men in Maine claim should be harvested. Anything smaller or bigger hurts the lobster stocks which I want to make sure survive. You can read about their efforts at lobster sustainability.

We had some great lobsters this fall at our area church suppers, and I know they came from Maine because I saw the truck. The lobsters were on the order of 1.5 lbs each. I cannot believe that the lobster tails that we ate at Red Lobster recently came off of a lobster anywhere close to even one pound in weight.

I think that perhaps I will go back to making my own seafood dinners. Now I just need someone to donate some right-sized lobsters.

Riding the right wave to success

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:34:00 +0000

Watching ocean waves is a favorite activity of mine. Getting a picture of just the right color wave is a challenge that I love.

Getting the right picture to post is far more important to me than staying on top of the latest trends or gossip in the entertainment industry.

Our society is moving so fast that it is hard to keep up on even things that interest me. I finally got to the point that I realized that there are lots of things which I can live without understanding. I am not embarrassed that I could care less what Brittany Spears is doing today or that Madonna is not in the news.

I want to focus on what I know and where I can be successful while enjoying what I do. That removes a lot of fluff from my life.

I know that there are lots of television shows which can be downloaded, but I will remain a bystander since I have a hard time finding ones worth watching much less downloading.

There are the extreme sports fans who like jumping off a mountainside and buzzing roadways in the Alps. That is fine with me, just do not expect me to chip in on the medical bills. I really do not care how hard it is drive a truck in Alaska or work in a kitchen with a maniac.

I am also not interested in endless complaining about how poorly the new administration in the United States is doing. They inherited the mess, it will take a while to fix. No one is smart enough to be able to tell if this stuff is going to work yet. That is the end of the brain discussion for me except that rooting for a President to fail is about as low as it gets.

One of the best lessons that I ever learned was to spend more time listening and learning than telling others how to do their jobs. If the job is never going to be yours, you might as well see how well your advice works in your own life.

I can still remember the time when during one of Apple's many reorganizations, I ended up being moved from years of managing a team calling on higher education institutions and selling directly to calling on businesses and selling through resellers.

It was not a move I wanted. I had two choices, become a whiner or figure out how to do the job to the best of my ability.

I knew how to manage people, and I knew how to be a good reseller since I had been one twelve years earlier before I came to Apple.

After the move, I spent a lot of time out in the field with the existing reps, listening to them and their resellers. Mostly I found an incredible amount of arrogance among the reps. Some of the system engineers were even worse. One even gave a new sales rep bad directions to an account so he would look incompetent when taking me there.

Being successful was an option that most of them felt required too much hard work. Complaining about everything was easier. In a year's time the only person out of nearly twenty that I had inherited was my area associate. I had found new people who were willing to work, to listen, to learn, and to be successful.

We put together a series of mini-MacWorld seminar events and delivered them in nineteen cities across the Southeast. We partnered with resellers instead of complaining about them. The resellers loved what we did. The customers were beyond enthusiastic.

We brought value to the equation, and in spite of what the former experts said, we ended up being successful.

We were one of the top regions in the country the next year. Sometimes success just takes fresh faces with new ideas and the willingness to work hard. It did not happen over night, and a lot armchair experts told us we would fail.

We believed in what we were doing and kept going even when the hours were long, and there were lots of people pulling for us to fail.

I think I will keep doing what I know works even now when the times are tough.

You can ride the right wave to success

Reinventing yourself

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:56:00 +0000

As I look back to the summer of 2004 when I left Apple Computer, I have no doubt that I have learned more in the four years since Apple than I did in the nearly twenty years there.

While I learned a tremendous amount as I worked at Apple, the nature of the company perhaps limits your growth in ways that are hard to see until you leave.

Perhaps the biggest challenge at Apple is the overwhelming pressure for the company to present an image which has no blemishes.

I have learned more from my mistakes since I left Apple than I did from my successes at Apple.

You certainly did not want many mistakes at Apple because that was the quickest way out of the company.

Measured in awards and sales results, my last years at Apple were my most successful.

Other teams flocked to learn what we had done in order to be held up as an example. When you are asked to present to other groups on how to be successful, it might be a warning that you have become a little too successful for your own good.

Success at Apple has to have a sponsor. You can be very successful at Apple and labor in anonymity. However, if your success helps move an agenda forward, you can easily be held up for others to admire. If your success looks like it might overshadow your sponsor, you might see it evaporate.

Success can be turned into a failure with just the right negative words whispered into the appropriate vice president's ear.

In my last four years at Apple, I led a sales team that more than tripled Apple's federal business.

Yet when it was decided that an inside sales team needed to look better than my team, our success got repositioned as failure.

All corporations have similar messes when one executive wants to leap ahead of another. Maybe at Apple it is a little worse, but that is pretty hard to measure. The point is that what you learn from those situations does not help you grow a lot in your skills.

If success at Apple comes not from what and how you have accomplished something, but from what others want to showcase in order to advance their agendas, then it is hard to pull many valuable lessons from the experience.

Since leaving Apple and being on my own for the last couple of years, I have found that the only way to learn whether something works is to try it. If it fails, you try to evaluate why and try something else. You can make a lot of progress that way.

You quickly realize that perfect does not exist in the real world. You can get close, but you soon come to realize that being a lot better than the competition is much more achievable when being realistic and flexible than when agonizing over the perfect words to include in a mailing.

I once watched Apple spend over a year trying to decide what they wanted to say in a security document describing an operating system which had already been released. In effect Apple's programmers managed to get an operating system out the door before Apple's marketing could figure out the perfect words to describe it.

The interesting thing about security and OS X is that Apple missed a huge opportunity to market to many customers who were very troubled about computer security. Apple did not miss the opportunity because they did not have a good product, they missed it because they were afraid to talk about it.

While there is financial security in a place like Apple if you are in favor with the right folks or if you have found away to hide, you will never learn the skills to actually make intelligent decisions.

Significant decision making ability at Apple is restricted to the very few.

If you want to be nimble and ready for this new economy, Apple is not the place to prepare. Try creating your own business, you will learn a lot more.

Having to reinvent myself every six months is an amazing experience, but it gives you a lot of confidence in your own abilities. It is much better than figuring how to cover your rear or whom you have to sacrifice in order to save your own skin.

I would rather have the successes and failures that have taught me much since leaving Apple than the always suspect favor of an Apple vp.

Inauguration Day- A new road?

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 15:28:00 +0000

NBC News is reporting that 75% of the American public think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

That puts anyone looking for change in the majority. I know government is not the answer to everything.

However, government needs to be part of the solution, just as much as corporate American needs to revamp itself.

It will take leadership in government and a change in corporate leadership techniques to restore success to America. I know more about corporations than government so here I will focus on corporate behavior.

Last spring Wired had an article, "Breaking the Rules: Apple Succeeds By Defying 5 Core Valley Principles." One of the points in the article was the following.

5. CODDLE YOUR EMPLOYEES
Valley Rule
Since the best ideas bubble up from within the ranks, encourage autonomy by allowing workers free time to focus on their personal projects. Also, shower them with perks like free food and massages to make them feel special.

Apple Rule
Motivate through fear. Don't be afraid to scream. Threaten to fire them. Withhold praise until it's truly deserved. Go ahead and bring them to tears. As long as you can inspire them with your sense of mission, they'll consider this the best job they've ever had.

At the time, it appeared that Apple and Steve Jobs could do no wrong. Ten months and Steve's health problem have changed the equation.

Steve has built a company that has with his help turned out some fantastic products. My guess is that Steve has not created a management style which will benefit other companies or America or aid Apple in building a long term proposition.

Nearly twenty years at Apple taught me that fear of retaliation is not the best way to get the most out of your employees. Fear of failure certainly is not the best way to build a strong leadership culture in a corporation.

I continue to believe that the best management technique is to build strong interdependent teams where individuals are committed to supporting each other and to mutual success. Apple being enthralled by slash and burn management techniques where employees are often afraid to convey anything but good new has a weak leadership culture as a result.

I saw Apple corporate employees rush to cancel events where results would be anything less than perfect. I saw a brochure about security in a new operating system take longer to write than the operating system because people were so afraid of making mistake. I saw a simple customer request ignored by a handful of vice presidents because everyone was afraid of making the wrong decision.

What we need today is a culture in both government and private corporations which emphasizes accountability but also recognizes that you rarely get something right without making some mistakes along the way.

If you are honestly focused on trying to do the right thing for the right reasons, mistakes should be written off as long as progress is made towards a solution.

No business and certainly few government officials are immune to the politics of personality. New leaders try to make their marks, and when the personality becomes more important than the solution, more problems are created than solved.

Now that Steve Jobs is gone, Apple will continue with the products it has in the pipeline. Some will undoubtedly be successful. However with an attitude that typically ignores customer input and focuses on delivering margin to the company at the expense of value to the customer, I think the long term outlook for Apple is negative.

Articles such as the recent WSJ one, "I Once Was Chic, but Now I'm Cheap," indicate that others are questioning the value proposition of Apple. I have long suggested that Apple's market share will peak at 10%. The culture of Apple is to create the easy hit and move on to the next one, often with little effort beyond exacting the highest price from the most people in the shortest time.

I cannot hold Microsoft's Vista up as an example of success, but I can credit Microsoft for a strong effort to fix the product and deliver a new one that is better. Vista is a far better product today that what it was sixteen months ago when I first purchased it.

In the meantime, hardware manufacturers have delivered vastly less expensive products which help the Vista operating system look better.

Certainly Apple's Leopard came out of the gate as a far better product than Vista and has shown some improvement. However when I look at Apple hardware line, I am disappointed.

The MacBook went up in price, the MacMini is still spec starved, and we are still waiting for a new iMac and a product between the iMac and Apple's expensive towers,

In the end, I want better, lower cost products not just hit products from Apple's culture of fear.

Winter beach days

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:31:00 +0000

Most people associate the beach with hot summer days and vacations. However, beaches do not disappear when children go back to school.

They actually stay in business all year here along the Crystal Coast. I can think of a handful of really cold days over the last few years when I stopped by the beach to find it completely deserted.

However, those days are definitely the exception rather than the rule. Almost every visit to the beach I find someone walking along the water. In January there are likely wearing jeans and tennis shoes instead a bathing suit, but people are still on the beach regularly in the winter.

I love sunny skies so I typically do not go to the beach when it is very cloudy like it was today, but I know from experience that a day in January when the temperature topped out at sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit is likely to have drawn a few beach visitors.

It will not be long before the North Carolina sun starts to really provide some heat which will make walking the beach a true winter pleasure. I am counting down the days before I will be able to get in the water once again.

Last year my first dip was June 3. This year I am hoping that I can get wet in May, but I have no desire to jump into cold water so I will wait until the water has reached a civilized temperature.

I recently posted a few late December and early January beach photos.

Some people need some salt water scenes to get through a snowy winter. I am happy to help.

Winter Sunsets

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:20:00 +0000

Viewing a spectacular sunset is truly one of the great pleasures of life. This picture was taken in one of our favorite spots for sunset photos during early winter.

My wife and I might be called sunset seekers because we are usually lurking somewhere near the water when there is a chance for a great sunset.

We are usually not alone, people tend to congregate in the best spots to enjoy that last flash of warmth and light before the sun goes down. Maybe we are hard wired that way from hundreds of thousands of years living by the light of a campfire.

I cannot pin down why I want to watch the sun go down. It is one of the most spectacular light shows available. Here on the coast often the colors in the sky after the sunset are even better than the ones at sunset.

There is the idea that the sunset marks the point in the day when most of what I have to do is personal as opposed to business related. However, having reached the special status in life of semi-retired or un-retired, I doubt that is the case.

My guess is that it is nothing more complicated than the pure, often warm light, and beautiful colors that attract us. That with the day's activities winding down and the opportunity to catch our breath is all that we need to flock to those places where the sunset is the attraction.

There is a human need to enjoy and appreciate beauty. That natural beauty enriches our lives is a given.

Sunsets are the most cost effective way that I know to personally enjoy and share that beauty.

Seasonal peace on the beach

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:25:00 +0000

I only have to think back to last fall to remember the warm days in December when we saw surfers enjoying the beach.

This year is far different from our two previous falls on the shore. The cool weather has come earlier in the year, and it has been more persistent.

That means that walks along the beach are fewer and shorter. Walking on the beach as did last year the first week of December when it was seventy degrees Fahrenheit is much nicer than a stroll when the temperature has struggled to reach fifty.

Tomorrow we are actually supposed to sneak into the sixties. We might try a nice beach walk since we have only been enjoying the beach from a distance since the cooler weather took over.

My wife gives me a really hard time when I start complaining about cold weather. It has something to do with dragging her to Canada when we got married. We farmed for over a decade in a snow belt north of Fredericton, New Brunswick. Our first winter, we watched as we were buried with twenty-three feet of snow.

We came to really appreciate snowshoes. We also got very used to cold temperatures. I can remember unloading five hundred bales of straw at twenty-eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Every single hair on my head was covered with frost. My eye brows were even frosted.

Then there was January of 1982 when our youngest daughter was born in the middle of blizzard where the temperatures finally bottomed out at minus forty degrees.

Now I find myself complaining that the temperature dropped to 31.7 degrees Fahrenheit this morning here on the Crystal Coast.

While snow often brought a certain peace to the farm, here on the North Carolina coast cold weather and cooler waters have a similar impact.

Going for a ride in your boat or sitting on the river fishing is not nearly as much fun at fifty degrees as it is at seventy five degrees when shorts are still the uniform of the day.

Still I find that I eventually adjust to the cooler temperatures. I will soon be back out riding my bike on days when the temperature sneaks up into the sixties. I might even still take my kayak out if we can get a day or two in the seventies.

Last year I managed to take our skiff down the river on Christmas eve. I will probably continue running the boat some each week or so, just to keep the motor loosened up.

While the short days and cool temperatures limit outdoor activities somewhat, there are some nice sheltered trails in the area.

Eventually though the call of the beach will be too much, and I will find a warm day for a nice walk. Perhaps tomorrow will be one of those days.

In the meantime you can enjoy the quiet of the winter beach by watching this YouTube video, December Beach Day, that I posted earlier today. If you have the bandwidth, make certain you watch in high quality.

You can read more on the quiet of the beach at my post, The Almost Empty Beach, on Crystal Coast Living. The photo might look a little familiar

Could this be winter?

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:41:00 +0000

On Tuesday we headed west from the Emerald Isle, NC area. About one hundred miles east as we crossed Interstate 95 we ran into some snow squalls.

They were short-lived but impressive. As we made our way farther into the heart of the state we could see more of the signature tall white clouds which seemed to merge into the ground.

We came back to the coast on Wednesday night. On Thursday we were over on Emerald Isle and heard that snow flurries had been sighted while we were gone. At the same time our neighbors in Roanoke, Va sent us pictures of the first snow of the season.

Today, I have seen several quick snow showers. It is over forty degrees so nothing is sticky, but I am impressed nonetheless. These are the first snow flurries that I have witnessed on the coast.

With temperatures running ten to twenty degrees below normal daytime highs for November and snow in the air, I must conclude that we are having an early winter.

At one time in my life I relished the first snows of winter. Once the snow came, there were certain things that were no longer possible on the farm. There was a period of shifting gears which actually offered some opportunity for relaxation. The first snows brought an end to the frenzied pace of fall. It was a time to put some things on hold and make up a new list of what had to be done.

The second winter, 1989, after we moved from Canada, we had just moved to Roanoke, Virginia, The snow came early that winter. Five or six inches of snow remained on the ground from before Thanksgiving until after Christmas. We thought we had moved back to Canada.

That was the only fall that the snow stayed on the ground in Roanoke.

Somehow, a cloudy even snowy early winter seems to suit the mood of the country. No one really knows how to fix our problems. Perhaps if we hibernate through winter, things will be better in the spring.

If it were just that easy, there would be no complaints coming from me even if it meant some snow on the ground here on the coast.

That fall feeling

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:17:00 +0000

As the season begins to turn here on the coast, my thoughts are drawn back to previous falls. There are some great memories there.

One fall, probably 1974, I built the first big barn on our farm in Tay Creek, New Brunswick. I can still remember nailing up the last of the steel siding just before American Thanksgiving.

By then it was pretty cold to work outside without gloves.

In the fall of 1981 we had our cattle dispersal sale. In one afternoon we sold all two hundred head of our purebred Angus cattle. Some went as far away as Alberta. It was an amazing event that I will never forget.

About a year later I went to work in one of the first retail computer stores in eastern Canada. The transition from working outside all the time to a desk job was easier than I thought. It is a wonder that we have any farmers. Still in less than a year, I had helped open four other stores and had a number of employees working for me.

When the fall of 1984 rolled around, I joined Apple Computer for an amazing journey of almost twenty years. For those years, fall always meant a sales conference which in the later years was usually in the California. The early years were wild.

One early conference in Boca Raton Starship played for us. Then there was the greased watermelon hunt with Michael Spindler on a beach.

The year 2004 brought the first fall after leaving Apple. It was a time of soul searching and trying to figure out what to do next with my life.

I ended up doing a couple of years with small companies, but I found that for the most part the only way that companies learn is through their own mistakes. Reliving the mistakes of the past was not for me. I enjoyed consulting more, but it was hard to earn a consistent income.

Then in the fall of 2006 after lots of training I passed my real estate licensing exam for the state of North Carolina. I felt a great sense of accomplishment because I had not been certain that I could go back to school. Old computer guys can learn new tricks. The rest of that fall was spent taking even more real estate classes.

We also moved down to the coast of North Carolina in the fall of 2006. It was a risky dream of mine, but I am glad we did it. I have learned a tremendous amount and met some great people.

Fall of 2007 was a relatively successful real estate time for me. I finished the year strong and was named rookie of the year by our firm. We were actually well on the way to have a good follow-up year until the financial world fell apart this fall.

I think this fall might be remembered as my fall of fishing. Last fall I was learning out to handle our boat, this year I am more focused on fishing.

There have been many pleasant days on the river and along the beach. The weather has been great, and we have caught enough fish to enjoy a few meals and to keep us excited about fishing.

Fall is always when I start to take stock of where I am and what I want to accomplish next.

This year looking forward is particularly hard. Real estate continues to suffer, but at some point I know it will recover. The question is should I try something else while waiting for the buyers to return to the market? Right now I have decided to keep going forward with real estate, but I have my eyes open for other opportunities.

I continue to believe that the Internet will play an ever increasing role in helping people find and sell their homes. My skill set makes me well positioned to take advantage of the Internet as a marketing tool.

With those thoughts in mind, I have worked with a friend to come up with a new site for Carteret County. It has everything from a calendar of local events to a business directory and blogs. There are also real estate listings to browse. I think our CarteretNC.us site is a glimpse of the future. I would be interested in hearing opinions of the site.

My efforts with the site might end up eclipsing all the fishing that I am doing.

Home waters

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:21:00 +0000

Our word is strange place these days. Technology encourages us to experience as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Exploring areas close to your home might not seem as rewarding as flying half way around the world to climb a famous mountain, but first impressions can be deceiving.

The picture above and to the left is what I consider my home waters. It happens to be about a five minute paddle from my dock. The water is part of the White Oak River, and I spend a fair amount of my time there either in an outboard powered skiff or my kayak.

While the surface looks smooth, what's below that surface is anything but smooth. Large oyster rocks (piles of oyster shells) can be just beneath the surface. The depth of the river can be anything from a few inches to over twenty feet. In the area where I paddle the most, the river is about a mile and one half wide. Ten minutes by power boat from there, the river is less than fifty feet wide. Then minutes in the other direction and the river joins Bogue Sound and not far from there the Atlantic Ocean. Of course there are also tides and winds to confound a boater.

In fact just to safely navigate the White Oak River, it is recommended that you stay in a marked channel. Sometimes the wind can blow much of the water out of the river. Even in the channel there will be places with only three or four feet of water.

Still Exploring the river is a lot of fun. Maybe in a few years, I will grow bored with the White Oak, but right now I am enjoying learning the river in detail.

The river can be a source of great peace. It can also bring storm surges and heavy waves. It can be a quiet as a pond as in my slide show, Mackerel Morning.

There are days that I push the throttle all the way forward and zoom down the White Oak to Bogue Inlet, but there are also times like today when we throw out the anchor less than five minutes from home.

Learning the river and catching its fishes have become dual passions of mine. It is fun exploring, and since there is no guide book, you have to figure it out on your own.

There is a certain amount of satisfaction in doing that. I might just be the person to write up the history of the White Oak.

Searching for new waters

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:06:00 +0000

A little adventure never hurts. That would especially be true when you spent Sunday afternoon in a very quiet real estate office.

Before I left for work, my wife and I decided that we had to get outside on such a beautiful day.

I suggested that we ride up the White Oak River which happens to be the river in our back yard.

She quickly agreed once she learned that any fishing would only be done in an emergency which would be defined as they are almost jumping in the boat.

Besides getting out on the water on a beautiful day, I wanted to check to see where people were fishing. Riding around and watching is a great way to find some new waters to fish.

I made it home after work by twenty minutes after five, and it took us about ten minutes to prepare our skiff and drop it in the water from the lift behind our home.

We have actually been up the river a couple of times, but at those times I was still focused on learning how to boat. Now I am comfortable enough with the boat that I can enjoy where I am going without worrying about what to do next.

We slowly went out Raymond's Gut from Bluewater Cove which is located at Hancock Point. I quickly got the boat on plane, and we headed up river.

There are only a few more channel markers after Hancock Point, but I had the advantage of our GPS system which had recorded a few fishing expeditions that I had enjoyed the previous week with my fishing buddies.

Once you are past the last channel markers and headed north on the White Oak River, mostly you are fine in the middle of the river as long as you avoid the crab pots and watch for white PVC poles which mark some oyster reefs. The river is about four feet deep at high tide in most places.

The river going north is much less complex than it is south of Hancock Point where the channel is marked all the way to Swansboro. In the section from Hancock Point to Swansboro, there are many oyster reefs which can do serious damage to your boat if you stray from the channel and do not know what you are doing.

It took less than ten minutes before Hadnot Creek and White Oak Bluffs came into sight. In just a couple more minutes I impressed my wife by going full speed through a narrow opening in the marshes. Of course I had watched others do it and had checked it out with my depth finder earlier in the week.

After that we could see River Oaks Plantation subdivision on the right. Then the White Oak began to narrow and deepen. As I slowed up, my depth finder zoomed from four feet to sixteen feet.

No long after that the river rapidly narrowed to around one hundred feet wide. Considering the White Oak is close to a mile and one half wide at Hancock Point that is big change.

As the river narrowed it also gave up being a straight river and began doubling back upon itself.

We managed to make it to the southern side of what I like to call the Stella "fishtail" which you can see from this Google Map link.

Across the flat marshlands we could see the railroad trestle and the few buildings of Stella. We could have gone a little farther and perhaps turned around at Boondocks which is a paid access point and boat ramp just on the other side of the Stella Road bridge just north of the railroad trestle.

However, the sun was getting down in the sky, and the prospects of navigating the White Oak in the dark kept me on the cautious side of adventure. The old floats that are on the multitude of crab pots are a much harder to spot in dwindling light so we turned around and headed home.

We got the boat on the lift about six thirty. By the time we carried the gear to the garage and got in the house, the sky was turning golden, and the sun was getting near the horizon.

Our little one hour trip up the river was great fun. I am looking forward to going back when we have more time. October is the best month of the year for exploring.

I posted a few slides on the web of our trip.

The joy of discovery

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:19:00 +0000

I have been lucky to have been in a number of places that inspire the imagination. Those were places where the landscape can dwarf your ideas.

I can still remember the first time that I saw the Newfoundland barrens from the air. It was a wilderness that seemed never to end.

Now that I am shoehorned into a lot in a very special subdivision, it is hard to stand on hill and see nothing but trees. However, it is even more special to paddle around the corner and visit a pond that had been inaccessible.

This afternoon it did not take a lot of NFL football to get me thinking about doing something outside even with the clouds that had taken away our morning blue sky.

Sometimes I think living in Carteret County creates an addiction to blue sky. We have it so often, that it becomes part of consciousness. When it is not there, we miss it. The good news is that it is there more often than not. A day like today where the sky starts blue and turns cloudy throws me for a little loop.

But I managed to get myself motivated and in my kayak in mid-afternoon. We had a very high tide. It was probably the highest that I have seen while actually on the water paddling my kayak.

When I turned the corner to head out to the White Oak River, I noticed the high water had made accessible a pond where I have often seen Herons. In fact just before I started paddling towards the pond I noticed a Great Blue Heron and a White Heron in the old tree at the back of the pond.

As soon as they saw me heading their way, they moved to another tree across the gut while I explored the pond area.

There's something special about finding and exploring a neat spot like the flooded pond. I have paddled the area for two years and never suspected that the water might get high enough to let me paddle into the pond.

It is even more fun when the hidden area is just around the corner from your home.

I did not stay very long since the idea of dragging my kayak out of there over mud did not appeal to me. I moved on before the high tide started to disappear.

My trip out into the river was an easy one with the wind behind me. I managed to fish a little, but mostly I enjoyed the solitude of the river. Only two power boats came by in the couple of hours that I was out there.

I did catch one fish which was barely as big as the Gotcha lure that I was using. Still it was nice to know that the lure was capable of attracting fish.

I have found some pretty neat spots hiking in the mountains behind our home in Roanoke,Va. On our farm in Canada I can still remember finding a wonderful spring which the previous owner of our farm had mentioned to me. It was such a neat spot that I carried a Sierra Cup back into the woods and left it hanging there for anyone that happened upon the cool waters which flowed so strongly that you could see the steam from it in the woods even with four feet of snow on the ground.

I suspect I will remember this day that the tide was high enough to let me visit the Heron's home pond. It was a special visit where I got to see our inlet from a different perspective. It just shows you that adventure can just be around the corner.

I posted a few pictures of my trip which lets you join me on my visit.

Nature's Power

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:36:00 +0000

We can certainly can credit the weather channel with developing our fear of hurricanes.

All of us who walk the beaches can attest to the power of the wind and waves. The beach changes daily even without help from the storms.

Now that we are sitting here waiting for Hurricanes Hannah and Ike, there is the expectation that the beaches will be very different the next time we walk on them.

We went for a boat ride and very nice beach walk on Labor Day. There were some big changes on our favorite beach. One large dune had been cut in half. Of course the waves were somewhat stirred up from all the storm activity in the Atlantic Ocean.

We're not hurricane pros so today we went out and bought some bottled water and battery powered lights. The budget doesn't have room for a generator yet so we have to gamble a little.

If we lose power, we will pack our goods needing refrigeration into ice filled coolers and hope for the best. If Ike continues to gain strength, we might head to the mountains after securing everything.

The Cape Carteret area is in the Cone of Possbility for a hurricane. I hope they are wrong or that at the very least the storm exits quickly,

Changing times

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:54:00 +0000

Our world is changing. Some of the changes are not exactly what I would call positive.

There is no question that the is world is a far different place than when the millstone to the left was working in Styers Mill in Yadkin County, NC in days around 1915 when my mother was a little girl.

People knew each other a little better a hundred years ago. Most people were still on the farm. I still remember my mother telling me about her first driver's license. "The Mount Airy DMV" which I believe was a judge at the time asked her if she could drive, she said "Yes," and the judge told her to give him fifty cents, and he gave her the license.

If the reports about the Prince George's County, Maryland SWAT attack are accurate as presented, we're living in a world where danger might be coming from the people charged with protecting us.

Even if the reports are wrong, why do we have SWAT teams that regularly seem to go after people who are unarmed? On top of that why do the dogs always get shot?

Is the drug war such a priority that people have to face raids like this?

If we have SWAT teams sitting around waiting to be used, perhaps they will eventually find the shootout that they seem to want.

I understand some drug dealers have automatic weapons, but most of the reports that I am reading aren't about shootouts with heavily armed drug dealers.

I am pretty sure that the Labrador Retrievers were unarmed.

The bigger view

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:34:00 +0000

Sometimes it is hard to take the bigger view of a situation. It is easy to get bogged down in the details.

This picture of Bogue Sound looking east towards Morehead City is truly a large view. Yet when I am piloting my boat on the sound, I end up paying a lot of attention to the next channel marker.

If I do that consistently I generally stay out of trouble. Normally I take short trips on our skiff, but my career and life are much longer journeys. Yet in their cases it is even harder at times to rise above the details and focus on the big picture.

I recently was confronted with a situation where someone did something unethical. Not only was it unethical, but it harmed my income at a time when there is not a lot of income.

The experience that I have had in the business world let me back away from the situation and look at what was really important, my client. I did not lose my cool, I went forward with the situation until it resolved itself without me having to do anything other than the right thing for my client.

It was actually pleasing to watch the problem resolve itself without any real intervention.

The appropriate things ended up happening. I'm not sure if the unethical person learned a lesson, but certainly their behavior only ended up hurting them and the person who decided to play the game with them.

There was no collateral damage and for that I'm happy. Maybe being able to go for a walk on the beach makes it easier to see the big picture. That is one of the great benefits of living where we live.

Here are some shots of a perfect beach trip which might help some folks step back enough to focus on the big picture.

If that doesn't work, some visit us on the Crystal Coast and take a real walk along the beach.

Treating customers right

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Most people are aware that the real estate business is not booming these days.

While the market is changing things are still challenging. We certainly are not the only industry under the gun. Airlines, automakers, and restaurants just to name a few are all having their problems surviving the economic downturn.

Realtors® are not different than others, our costs are rising, and our incomes have certainly tanked.

I have often quoted Dennis Waitley's famous phrase, "Crisis is an opportunity riding dangerous wings." I believe that change is inevitable in most business. You either change or you go out of business.

However, change has to be carefully considered. Need jerk change can often be harmful. We have become a very value conscious society. If you bump your prices up and don't deliver more value for the money, you will likely have a problem.

On Monday, I gave some potential long term clients a ride around the county. I probably spent $25 dollars in gas. Yet I was able to show them in a couple of hours what might have taken them a couple of days to find and see.

I didn't ask for a buyer's agency before driving them around because they aren't ready to buy. I could have charged them $100 for being a tour guide, but that didn't make a lot of sense either.

It made the most sense to do what I have being doing all along, differentiate myself through the value and hard work that I bring to my clients

Trying to provide value to my clients has served me well, and I hope that the word of the extra efforts that I provide my clients continues to spread.

In the long run that will be worth more than $25 for gasoline

The proof is in the sandwich

noreply@blogger.com (ocracokewaves) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:09:00 +0000

In the tomato business, I think the real proof is in the sandwich, but it does not hurt to have some nice numbers on the digital scale.

So far this is the largest tomato that we have harvested from our three plants this year. It weighed an impressive 1.335 pounds on the scale.

I also took a picture of the tomato beside a tape measure. It measured around five inches across and was about 3.5 inches high.

Still the end result, this plate of tomatoes, was the key to some great Bacon, Letture, and Tomato sandwiches which we enjoyed on a recent trip to Reston, Virginia.

I continue to be surprised that are people in the world who do not like tomato sandwiches. Even my own son won't eat them. It is a good thing he is my flesh and blood, or I would have been checked out for not loving tomato sandwiches.

At our house on the coast, there are not many days during tomato season, June 1- December 19 that we don't have a tomato in something. In the heart of summer that something is usually a tomato sandwich of some sort. I even like toasted bologna, cheese, and tomato sandwiches.

Then there are boiled ham sandwiches with Swiss cheese and tomatoes. Tonight we made a pasta dish with grilled Italian sausage, fresh mushrooms, asiago cheese, three cheese spaghetti sauce and of course some fresh tomatoes. It was great on top of some bow tie pasta.

I even enjoy tomatoes in omelets. The tomato scare has not caused us any problems, but we are at the point with our crop that we have to either find more people to take some of them or start canning or freezing some.

We are very proud of the tomatoes since they are the best tomatoes that we have ever grown and by far the earliest. We have already enjoyed them for a over a month. I just put another tomato plant in the ground last week with the hopes that we will have fresh tomatoes into January.

Who knows what will happen? I still would really like to beat my December 19 date from last year. It is a noble quest, fresh homegrown tomatoes from June 1 until January 15.

So if you see me around, be careful, I might slip a bag of tomatoes into your car.