SWCAMBORNE

In May 2006 I published the idea for a luggage finder.  Now it has been invented by Loc8or.  They don’t mention the idea of using it for finding your luggage at the airport but it would work.  It is always a pleasure to see an idea I had turn into a product.  Especially when somebody else did all of the work.  Thanks to Steve Manes of Forbes Magazine for publicizing this product.

Lillian gave me this very nice turtle in his own special case for Hanukkah. The wrapping had holes in it and I had a momentary scare that she had given me something alive. It turned out to be this low maintenance painted tin turtle.

Here he is at his new station guarding the pond against intruders.

“Our opinions ossify long before our bones.”

Simon Burrow

taken by Uscfan

It turns out that what you call a carbonated beverage is very dependent on where you live in the country. Rebecca B.  sent me this link to a very cool map that shows the beverage name tendency by county in the USA.

Ben Wattenberg has posted three inventions  on his site. I like all of them but the third is the the one that somebody can make some money on.  “Paste-on pointed thumbs — for use on Blackberberries.”  Do you remember the rubber thumbs that they used to use for counting and sorting paper?  If one of those were made with a point it might work quite well.

Good idea Ben!

This is the story of a bell. It is indicative of a way of doing business but its story is mostly about some wonderful people with a sense of history, a great work ethic and the desire and ability to work as a team.

Happy Christmas to all of my friends at Brandon/Brady

Twenty-five years ago when we started Coventry Manufacturing Co which became Brandon International we installed a small sales bell in the hall. One of our rituals was that the sales department would ring the bell every time we got an order. Rituals were an important part of our management process. We got the idea for the sales bell from Dan Sandel the driving force behind Sandel Medical Industries. As the company grew and moved to a larger building the small bell could no longer be heard in the entire factory.

My memory is a little fuzzy but I think that one year for Christmas in the late 1980′s the staff bought me a new and much larger bell. We installed it in the Attic and ran a rope and pulley system down to the hall to ring it. And the bell kept ringing and the company grew and when we sold it to Brady in 2003 the bell went with the deal.

Imagine my surprise when last spring the bell arrived in very large package from Brandon/Brady. It had been in the attic at Brandon for at least 15 years ringing in the orders unseen but heard. I spent a few hours this summer cleaning up the bell and installing it on my patio.

This picture shows the bell installed and ready to ring every time I get an order for beverage.

This is the tile that the bell rope ran through down to the hall. It was signed by many of the people who I worked with all of those years. The tile was sent to me with the bell and is now memorialized on this site.

This picture shows the stone just after it was installed and as the basin was being filled.

The learning process of The Men of Stone has been excellent. I expect that in about another five years we will be quite good at this.

At this time of year many people express the holiday spirit by driving very badly. I don’t know if the number of accidents increases but the amount of agressive left turning and grabbing for parking spaces definitely increases as we near Christmas. And it makes sense, everybody is busier and going to places they have never been before to buy gifts for people they hardly know. Stress is up.

Part of the beauty of driving in the city is that we are anonymous. Bad behavior while driving does not reflect back on us in other situations. The people who offend us by changing lanes without signaling don’t know who we are, will probably never see us again and therefore don’t care. What if they could know who we are? Would we drive a little more politely if the people in the other cars were able to see us as more than the white Toyota Celica. I think so and the internet offers us the possibility of doing that.

Imagine a web site for Southern California called TrafficIncidentReport.com on the site you can search for a car license number and see if it has been reported for bad behavior or you can file a report. This site will have nothing to do with the police, it will be strictly for regular people to report bad behavior on. It will be possible to be notified via email if any car you register or report has additional reports filed on it. It will also be possible to file a rebuttal to a bad behavior report. It will also be possible to file a good behavior report.
In the margin this might help make people see that even when they are in their cars they are still part of a community and should act politely toward those around them.

The revenue stream could come from advertising by lawyers, body shops and car dealers among others.

Discovery HD shows a one hour sunrise show every morning at 7am PST (check local listings).  This morning the show was Sunrise at Stonehenge. Excellent.

It reminded me of an idea that I had a few years ago for background video very similiar to this but with an advertisers logo on the screen.  My favorite idea was a day at a park bench.  But I also liked a year in the life of a tree shown in an hour.

We all appreciate background music why not background video.

This picture was sent by my brother Matt B.

This company makes fasteners for the railway industry. As an advertisment for their industry trade show they built this henge. “A New Age is Dawning” indeed.