May 21st, 2009
Been following Gary Vaynerchuck for awhile now. I’ve seen a few of his talks on video. I relate to him mainly because of his LOVE for people. He talks about caring enough to answer every email, even when he gets several hundred a day. To listen to him, he wants us to find our passion and go for it with all our hearts. Sounds familiar! I have believed that for years. All the while I have been wondering what my passion is. I believe I am closer to that answer than I have ever been. I love helping people. With my computer business, I have been able to help people in a technical way, making their lives easier, simpler. Very gratifying to hear the comments of those people. Funny how when I reread those comments, how it makes me feel about myself. Then I get involved in health and wellness, again. 21 years ago, I did this with limited success. I loved what I was doing and felt like I was making a positive difference in the world. It led me to personal development and personal growth. I am such a product of that way of thinking, way of life that I now wonder what the "average joe" thinks about people like Tony Robbins. Loosing touch with my roots has never been easy for me. I love connecting to Ironworkers. Thats where I started 28 years ago. The friends I made there are real and substantial. I will value those connections for the rest of my life. I connect to others with that same passion and intensity, even when to them, its a peripheral, unimportant thing. I would like to hone my communication skills to the point where people can get the fact that I care about them. How do I create lasting relationships with people? I let them know I care. If I am not being effective communicating that, I fail.
So the new business is making friends, building those relationships and showing them that my purpose for connecting is to help them, if I can, in some significant way. Any comments? I welcome them!
Thanks.
merlin |
Blog |
April 22nd, 2009
Well, things have been exciting to put it mildly. I have been working less and less at the construction thing. Less tower cranes and manlifts to erect and dismantle these days. Last job was in the San Jose, Ca area and it was HORRIBLE! The company was so tightfisted they put me into a pit of a hotel, they flew me in and didnt even give me a car. All in all, one of the worst experiences I have had in this industry. I am firmly of the opinion that they are doing their damndest to chase me away. I am happily going too. Time to move on.
I joined with my lady, Kelli, in a new venture for both of us. I am now on the lookout for others who want to take their financial future into their own hands and take off along side us. We have been doing well with this new stream of income with a product we never have to see, ship or exchange money for. The owner of our company, BK Boreyko, is a man I met over 20 years ago. I know him to be a tireless man of integrity and I am proud to be a part of his organization. Probably the main reason I decided to take a look at this company. One of the perks of this company is our very own ecommerce website. Look if you want.
OK, enough of the commercial. I dont plan on using this forum to pound people into submission to join us. That will happen all on its own. This is for letting people who care about my family and life. We have been having a tough time with the lack of good work. I keep busy with my computer business, as well as the networking. I have played online a lot and I am on twitter too. Now that Oprah is on twitter, I guess its ok to admit I have been there for over a year. Funny how she is able to add credibility to something like that. I also just made my Google Profile. Some little tidbits you may not know about me.
One other thing, I plan on using this forum to post more often. Please forgive me for taking so long to post. I plan on changing that in the very near future…
Merlin
PS. Happy Earth Day!
merlin |
Blog |
March 6th, 2008
I have been needing to write here for quite some time. I have stories about my cell phone company calling the cops on me, a story about going to El Paso instead of Los Angeles one weekend. I also have a funny story about Salt Lake City and the aftermath in Reno. Never ending work and the family keeps me on my toes full time. That’s my story and I am sticking with it.
Ok, Alltel and their revenge. In October I bought a smart phone and signed a 2 year contract for a smart phone plan. I wanted the phone, not the plan. They told me I had 30 days to change my mind if I didn’t like it. Well, I did like the phone but my first months bill came to over $900 so I decided to back out of the contract and the phone. I was out of town for most of that time so as soon as I got back, I went to the local Alltel store and tried to give it back. The manager was out so they told me I needed his help with this, in the meantime, here. Try this Blackberry. I went home with it. Was out of town for a couple days and when I got back (less than 7 days later) I went back to the store and said “no, I don’t want this either” I was told too much time had passed and I was stuck with the blackberry and the plan. I was not happy and decided to fight back. I kept calling managers and supervisors until I finally found a guy who agreed with me. I have been a customer of Alltel since ‘99 and I should be able to get what I wanted. When he asked me what that was I told him I wanted a regular phone with a regular plan. No contracts, just a regular customer. I said I would even pay full price for my new regular phone. He sent it to me, overnight so I would have it for my trip to San Diego the next day. I went to the store on my way out of town to get the numbers transferred to my new phone. They informed me that they could not do that because they didn’t have the software. I accepted that. I would have to look at the blackberry for the number then manually punch it in on the new phone. I didn’t really want to do it to over 350 contacts, however I could deal with it for a week until I could find an alternative way of dealing with it. That wasn’t ok with the guys in the store. They were obviously unhappy that I ended up getting my way so they thought they would turn the screw a little bit (or a lot) They said they were going to keep the blackberry because it was Alltel property. I had arranged with the corporate guy to send the phone back to him and I had that in writing. I didn’t have the letter with me, as I was on my way to San Diego. I told them the deal and they insisted they were keeping the phone and my only copy of my 350 contacts. I assured them they were not keeping the phone adding that all the little boys in the store put together weren’t man enough to stop me from walking out the door with the phone. When I grabbed it off the counter they tried to take it out of my hand. I felt showed great restraint in not popping someone then. They told me if I left the store with that phone, they would call the police and tell them of my “theft” of the phone. I walked, saying “go ahead” About 150 miles west, in the middle of the desert, I get a call from a Gilbert city policeman asking for my side of the story. He acted like a worn out father of 4 who was tired of his kids squabbling. I told him and he said “don’t go back into that store” I agreed and assured him I had no intention of going back into any Alltel store except to give them all the phones and to cancel my service with them. That is exactly what I did as soon as I got back to town. I am now a happy customer of AT&T and think it was the best move I had made in a long time.
More stories later. That was longer that I expected. I will keep an eye on comments in case there are any questions. funny, though, isn’t it?
Thanks for listening.
Merlin
merlin |
Blog |
January 4th, 2008
Wow, I unloaded 6 towers at the house the day before yesterday, then another one yesterday. that makes a total of 8 on the bench. Kind of a personal (professional) record. The coolest thing is, I really love this stuff! Making older hardware work. Getting the best performance out of the hardware. Setting up windows so it is easy and productive. Getting the most information out of each and every window and application. For some unknown reason, default settings in windows xp are not that way. So I go into every installation and tweak settings. I once wrote down all the things I did to a new install and it took up a page and a half! The response I’ve gotten for this has been clearly positive. Everyone seems to appreciate the steps I take to make things go more smoothly when on the job or at home. Lately, I have been putting Ubuntu Linux on older hardware. That’s pretty fun too! It runs great on older hardware, stuff that windows struggles with. Not like linux installs of old, this version actually sees all the hardware and installs it almost automatically! Comes with some great free applications too.
Getting ready to go to San Diego for a crane job. This is the last time we will move this tower crane on this jobsite. There has been a crane there for about 9 years, hopping it from one building to the next about every six months. This is the last building. In about another six months, we will take it down and truck it away. Not a bad rental contract. Wonder how many cranes they could have bought outright for that money. Good thing it isn’t my job to decide those things for them. I might have gone a different way. Of course the first crane on the job was burned down a long time ago by a bunch of eco-terrorists so that may throw the money out of whack a little bit.
Still twittering and there are some good pictures of heights on my flickr page. There are a couple of Hannah Pictures up there too, aint she cute?
merlin |
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December 29th, 2007
Well, I am writing in Windows Live Writer. I am giving it a solid trial to see what it looks and acts like. I have to say, the Word style highlighting of misspelled words is a cool thing. Something Wordpress doesn’t do. Spell checking is something wonderful if you are used to it and then suddenly it’s gone. Also, the fact that adding links to posts is really easy, as easy as Wordpress itself.
All in all, I have to give it a thumbs up. So far. I’ll keep you posted. (no pun intended)
merlin |
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