$5,000 Toilet

A Japanese manufacturer called Toto has introduced “the world’s most intelligent toilet.” Called the “Neorest,” the commode features a wireless remote that can raise and lower the seat, a deodorizer, a warm air drier, and a massager. Price: $5,000.

The world’s most intelligent toilet, eh? And what can we say about those who drop five grand on this royal flush, hmmm?

R.I.P. Ronald Reagan

Pundits on both sides have plenty of material for post-mortems this week. Some conservatives say that Reagan wasn’t consistent enough. Others think that he was the fourth person of the Blessed Trinity. The Left, of course, is polite in public and foaming at the mouth when speaking to one another. (Ted Rall says that Reagan is now burning in Hell.) Plenty of diversity out there.

I remember the Reagan years as a time of optimism. “Let’s make America great again” was a common theme. We right-wing extremists had been beaten down for so long, we were elated to finally see some things returning to sanity. Those were happy, heady days. Our peerless leader was saying the right things and often doing them and we had hope that America’s downward spiral was being reversed. One book we all read was called The Second American Revolution. Another was The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead. There were dozens more.

Alas, the perspective of old age (I’m 48) has shed a lot of light on those times. Clinton was elected twice by a nation that had seen the wonders of the Reagan years. The size and scope of government increased steadily under Reagan, George Bush, and Clinton, and now skyrockets under the leadership of Dub Bush. And, by definition, increasing government means the restricting of liberty; and liberty was the key idea in our secession from England.

Nearly everything is a mixture of good and bad. Despite the disappointments we conservatives have experienced, I’ll always look back fondly on the “Glory Days” when America stood tall and her enemies were scurrying for cover. And I’ll thank God for Ronald Reagan.

Plumbing for Royalty

Yesterday I cleaned a drain belonging to Elvis’s aunt.

Well, it used to belong to her. It’s at a house in midtown that she lived in long ago. An ordinary midtown home; nothing special. Cast iron drainpipe, two inches in diameter, water runs downhill.

Ah, but it once carried the wastewater of Elvis’s aunt!

So if you want my autograph, send me a SASE at the address posted on my company web site.

Junk Pathology

I’m a junkie. Dunno what makes me this way, but I accumulate junk.

I spent the better part of Memorial Day working on my junk. Specifically, I have a collection of old toilets and parts thereof in my back yard. I call it Old Time Pottery. My wife calls it grounds for divorce. I spent a few hours cleaning the pots up, making a detailed inventory, and finding a place in our storage building to house them in an organized fashion. When I need a certain item that is otherwise extinct, I draw from my stockpile. I sell it for a good profit and the customer benefits because he avoids the cost of a new item and, often, the associated labor. For instance, replacing a tank lid requires much less labor than pulling an entire toilet and replacing it. That’s the beauty of junk.

Of course, it’s not all that beautiful sitting in the back yard with weeds growing around it. Hence my Memorial Day Inventory. Now that the pottery is ensconced in its fortifications, the yard looks much better. My wife is only mildly palliated, but that’s still progress.

Yesterday, having worked on plumbing jobs until past suppertime and having then mowed the grass, I drew out an old faucet I’d pulled from a remodeling job last year. It was a good old faucet that the customer wanted to replace, so I had saved it in my faucet collection. (I have about ten or fifteen.) I cleaned it up last night, replaced nearly everything in it, and bagged it nicely for this morning’s 9:00 customer. I got to bed at about 11:00 last night, but I was proud of myself because I had reclaimed a fine old faucet, I’d sell it for a profit of about $35, the customer would save about $40

After an hour or two of struggle this morning, I had the new/old faucet installed. As I was putting it through its paces before leaving, I found that it was leaking internally. It was, in other words, no good. I pulled it and installed another rebuilt faucet in its place. Total time on the job: three hours.

What does a rational person do after a faucet disappoints him like that? He throws it away and says, “Bad faucet: I spent a lot of time preparing you and a lot of time installing you and and it was all a waste because you have a flaw internally. I never want to see you again and I’m not going to invest my time in junk any more!”

But we’re not dealing with a rational person here; we’re dealing with a junkie. As soon as I can get around to it, I will take that faucet apart so far as is possible and I will take a torch and repair that internal flaw.

No, I can’t get rich this way. But I can be happier than any rich person I know. In fact, I am!

A Birthday

Today is May 25th. Thirty five years ago God had mercy on a thirteen-year-old kid in Houston and took away my sins and guilt for Jesus’ sake. I was born again during the altar call at a Sunday morning service in a Baptist church. It has been the defining moment of my life.

Here’s a hymn I memorized long ago:

All praise to God who reigns above, the God of all creation
The God of wisdom, power, and love, the God of our salvation
With healing balm my soul he fills, the God who every sorrow stills.
To God all praise and glory!

What God’s almighty power hath made, his mercy ever keepeth
By morning light or evening shade his watchful eye n’er sleepeth
Within the kingdom of his might, yea, all is just and all is right
To God all praise and glory!

I cried to him in time of need “Lord God, O hear my calling!”
For death he gave me life indeed and kept my feet from falling
For this my thanks shall endless be. Oh, thank him, thank our God with me!
To God all praise and glory!

The Lord forsaketh not his own, his chosen generation
He is their refuge and their rock, their peace and their salvation
As with a mother’s tender hand he leads his own, his chosen band
To God all praise and glory!

Then come before his presence now and banish fear and sadness
To your redeemer pay your vows and sing with joy and gladness
Though great distress my soul befell, the Lord our God did all things well
To God all praise and glory!

Thoughts on Iraq

Nick Berg was murdered last Saturday. The videotape of his slaughter appeared on the Internet this week.

Our generation of Americans is woefully ignorant of the real history of warfare. The recent photos of Americans mistreating Iraqi prisoners provokes massive revulsion, but the reaction is out of proportion to the offenses. (Yet the most recent reports indicate that there are even worse photos emerging now; so I’m not referring to them, only to the earlier ones.) Nobody approves of Americans mistreating prisoners, but what we’ve seen in the earlier photos was mild compared to warfare as it really can be.

More typical of real war is the murder of Nick Berg. The militant Muslims are facing hopeless odds against the Americans. Their only hope is to break American morale. Public slaughter is a time-proven method of doing just that. As you can see from the American reactions, it works.

In 1565 the Muslims were winning the world until they were defeated in their seige of Malta. The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Jean de la Vallette, commanded a force of about 8,500 men, most of whom were not real soldiers. Only 541 were his Knights or servants-at-arms. The invading Turkish force numbered around 50,000. How could the Christians win? Only by intimidation.

After four months of besieging the Maltese fortifications, the Turkish commander offered favorable terms of surrender to the Christians. La Vallette responded by gathering up his Turkish prisoners, who had been captured in earlier conflicts, and ordering that their heads be struck off. Their headless bodies were then dumped into the sea in full view of the invaders. And their heads were loaded into cannons and fired like cannonballs into the midst of the Turks.

The Turkish invaders did not appreciate this at all.

The seige was resumed, but the Turks could not prevail. Upon hearing that the Christians had received reinforcements, they decided to abandon the effort and sail away. This was just in time for the Christians. Unknown to the Turks, La Vallette only had about 600 fighting men left and Malta was on the verge of collapse. But just as the Turks had gotten into their ships, they received word from their intelligence sources that the Maltese reinforcements were only a handful of men, not nearly enough to make any difference in the battle’s outcome. So they decided to resume the seige after all.

As they were leaving their ships to take up their former positions, La Vallette ordered a charge. His men came pouring out of their fortified positions and threw themselves furiously at the thousands of Turkish fighting men. This so intimidated the Turks that they fled. They had already lost at least 30,000 troops by fighting with these Maltese madmen and they had no more heart to pursue the campaign.

Thus was Malta saved from Muslim conquest, and Islam was turned back from its European campaign.

Butchering the enemy in order to demoralize the survivors is nothing new. In Viet Nam, I think it was, a Viet Cong jungle fighter would sneak into a camp where two Americans were sleeping side by side and silently cut the throat of one. Why not both? Because the second one became nearly useless from the terror of waking up and seeing what had happened, and his condition demoralized others as well. More bang for the buck, so to speak. [Note: I have learned from my uncle, a machine gunner in the Pacific during WW2, that Americans used the throat-cutting trick back then. So the Cong didn’t invent it.]

Our opponents in Iraq are not sissies. They intend to defeat us. If their will is greater than ours, they’ll succeed.

Added note: the Left around the world are blaming Berg’s death on G. W. Bush or a CIA plot or even on Berg himself. See this article.

Thoughts on Business

Thinking back to April 14th, I recall that I waited until the last minute to prepare my tax return. My accounting is pretty rudimentary, so there’s every motive for procrastination. �How can one get excited about wading through 400 little receipts and coughing up $5,000?

Big government has a stranglehold on business. �Comparatively few businesses can navigate the web of regulation and taxation successfully. �I refuse to involve myself in the mess, so I remain a sole proprietorship. �Were I to grow, the friction from the government would increase exponentially.

New topic: a small mistake can be costly. �Recently I inadvertently broke the side mirror on a customer’s Mitsubishi Galant. �That cost me two hours and $30 to repair. �I’m glad that I wasn’t booked solid with jobs that day, so I could take the time to drive to the auto glass shop.

Would the customer have let the average plumber drive off with her car? �Personal attention is the killer app in a sole proprietorship, but I’ve seen plenty of solo guys who tried to run their business as though they were big and impersonal: not answering the phone when they didn’t feel like it, not returning calls, not caring for the customer’s property, not inconveniencing themselves. �Their customers find me eventually.

Why I’ll Always Have a Job

Yesterday a customer was in a pickle. (So what else is new?) His basement had flooded and put out his gas water heater. He couldn’t light it again, no matter how long he waited. A day later he gave up, went to work, and called me for an appointment. We agreed on noon, since he’d be off for lunch at that time.

Shortly before noon he called and reported a flat tire. I went on to his neighborhood and checked on another customer, just to see how our recent flooding in Memphis had responded to my work in her basement last year. (I had installed a sump pump.) When I heard from my first customer again, I proceeded to his house and met him there.

I successfully lit his water heater on the first try. Apparently it just needed to dry out.

Between traveling, waiting, and lighting, I’d killed an hour and a half. I charged him $35. He lamented that he’d made a mistake by calling me when he didn’t really have a problem. I pointed out that he did, indeed, have a problem: he was at a dead end with no hot water and it was time to call somebody. He couldn’t know if another half-hour would solve the problem or not. It wouldn’t have been wise to go to work all day, come home in the evening, and then see if things had gotten better. Had they not, he’d have faced a choice between cold showers or calling a plumber at night!

The good thing was that he knew whom to call. Some companies would have charged him $100, and they wouldn’t have had the flexibility to meet him at just the right time.

Reverse Auctions: “Gitcher plumbing service rat cheer!”

Imagine an auction where the price gets lower with every bid. That’s called a reverse auction and they’re doing it online these days. Who’s doing the bidding? El Cheapo contractors, that’s who. They’re bidding on jobs. All the bidders keep dropping their prices until the last man standing gets the contract.

Reverse auctions have been around for quite a while, and companies like GE have claimed that it saves them a lot of money when they buy commodities. I tend to think that such real-time bidding, where price is the only factor, is fraught with peril. But what do I know? GE hasn’t offered me a six-figure salary to run their purchasing departments.

I know a little bit about plumbing prices, though. Check my web site’s “About Pricing” page. I would never get into a bidding war with another plumber over a job. Why not? Because I’m honest. I don’t quote a price to a customer because I want to see if he’ll agree to it; I quote him the price because that’s what the price is. If I’m prepared to cut the price when necessary, that means I wasn’t telling the truth the first time.

The only time I renegotiate a bid is when the customer points out to me some factors I had originally missed. I don’t mind admitting a mistake. But if I were to offer to clean a drain for $70, and a housewife should respond that plumber X had told her on the phone that he would charge $60, I would still stand by my original offer. If I lose my time and gasoline on this “free estimate,” then so be it.

Sales managers have told me that I’m nuts. Fellow-plumbers have told me the same. Our point of disagreement is over priorities. Economically they’ve got me dead to rights. Ethically, I have the upper hand. I didn’t tell her $70 because I was trying to trick her into paying ten dollars more than she needed to. I told her that because that’s the price.

Believe me, if a plumber drops the price under pressure, he’s highly capable of recovering his “lost” money by cutting corners. A reverse auction sounds like a fool’s game to me. Here are some professionals who agree.

Work Harder

I’ve discovered a variant to the 12-hour day; it’s called the 24-hour day. I just got in from working a full 24 hours. Plumbing tends to be a lot of squatting, bending, and moving around. It gets old after a while. It really gets old when you do it for 24 hours straight.

People in my condition shouldn’t write blog entries. See y’all later.

They Don’t Know that They Don’t Know

Another twelve-hour day. It’s nice to feel wanted.

At Home Depot tonight I was buying parts for the nail salon job, which I’m doing at night so that the business can keep operating in the day, and I spied a little old lady with a small piece of paper in her hand. She scanned all the shelves with an aimlessness that bespoke no acquaintance at all with the plumbing trade.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, yes. Do you work here?”

“No, I’m a plumber.”

She looked at her little paper and told me what she was looking for: a slip nut for a 1-1/4″ j-bend. She said that she was trying to find the j-bends first, then she would look for the appropriate slip nut.

Dear reader, she would have been there for a good hour had she been allowed to persist in that method. I took her two aisles over and showed her the slip nuts. I also gave her my business card.

Sometimes the workers in such a store can be a big help. Sometimes they’re as lost as a goose in a snowstorm. The problem is that the poor customer can’t tell the difference. As I resumed picking my parts off the shelves, I overheard and enthusiastic and clueless customer rattling his desires off to a worker in orange.

“Now I needs me some solder.”

“Right here it is; silver solder.”

“Why is it silver?”

(Slight pause, then assertion of confidence) “You don’t have to wear a mask when you solder with it.”

Solder was made of lead in the old days. Environmentalism has driven the trade to use lead-free solder now in an attempt to make our drinking water a fraction of a tad safer. Contrary to this utterance from the oracle in orange, nobody ever wore a mask when he soldered with lead.

I turned to look at the unfortunate victim. He had three rolls of solder in his shopping basket. I, who run plumbing calls for a living, use about one roll every month or two.

I believe in the “Do It Yourself” philosophy, but you’d better have a plumber standing by when the project goes into the toilet (so to speak); because there’s a lot of false confidence for sale, and you just might leave the store with some if you don’t check your bag carefully.

Sunday in Plumberland

I try not to work on Sunday, and today I succeeded. Church is a good reinforcement for business ethics. Some antichurch writers claim that a morality that needs religion isn’t moral at all; instead, they say, if you don’t find your morality within yourself, you can’t get it from anything outside.

They’re missing the point. Christianity doesn’t superimpose a morality from outside. Instead, it changes the heart so that one is strengthened to do what’s right and resist what’s wrong. The Bible also informs the conscience, so that right and wrong aren’t merely a matter of opinion. Then we go to church because we are social beings and were never designed to operate in isolation. Morality isn’t just a series of decisions; it’s a continuous process of life. Christ living through us can produce a morality far preferable to one that comes from gritting the teeth and making right decisions.

Nearly all religions are actually philosophies: they try to explain life and how to be happy. Christianity is first of all history: it tells what God has done on certain occasions in order to redeem man from his ruined estate. Second: it is an experience where God’s redemptive work is made actual in your individual heart. Third comes the philosophy, which tells us what to do in response to this gracious experience.

It affects the way you do plumbing, believe it or not.