Month: November 2024

For more than forty years, I owned and managed a systems consulting firm.  Most of our business was salvaging huge automation projects that were failing. We would get a call from a client saying: “We are really in trouble here.  We have $30 million in this project and it isn’t working.  If the new system isn’t up by Christmas, we will all be fired.  You need to bring your guys in and make this work.  If it doesn’t, at least we can blame you and maybe save our jobs.”

So, we got to be pretty good at organizing and managing huge projects that were really in bad shape. We had incredibly skilled professionals and a very long record of never letting an implementation fail.  We were the IT version of the company that caps oil well fires. 

If you do this for a living, it changes your lifestyle.  When you agree to take on the engagement you drop everything, become incredibly detailed and focused, and stay that way until you hammer out the new system implementation.

When I retired, my friends said you are really going to have difficulty adjusting to retired life.  You’re going to immediately switch from laser focus and extreme pressure to dead calm.  That will be challenging.

In fact, I never really changed my lifestyle when I retired.  I simply changed the projects I worked on.  As a consultant, I had to find out why a client lost 60,000 healthcare claims, recover the claims, and fix the system failure that caused the breach.  As a retired person, I had to organize my spice rack.  They were equally complex undertakings.

Let me take you through spice rack optimization.

Most people have a small section of their kitchen cupboard with a collection of all the spices they use.   So did I.  Okay, the pumpkin pie spice may have been eighteen years old, and I may have had four jars of anise seed.  Once every other year I would use two tablespoons of anise to bake up a batch of Aunt Flossie’s Christmas cookies. When I bought supplies at Publix, I would forget that I already had anise seeds in the cupboard.  So I would buy a fifth jar.  Most of the seasonings I used were in the cupboard somewhere. When I whipped up a pot of jambalaya, the most time consuming effort was searching for spices in the spice cupboard. 

I really started to hammer spices when I became a barbecuist.  Being someone who is paid to streamline processes, I quickly realized that my prep time was at least four times longer than it should be because I can’t easily find the spices I need. 

The first step in the great spice optimization project was to identify all of the spices I use.  Most were tied to barbecue but not all of them.  I reviewed all of my recipes and charted all of the spices required for every one of them.  I created a list of 36 spices that I use for everything I cook.  Nobody’s world is perfect but easily 95 times out of a 100, all the spices I need for anything are included in the list of 36.

When I started the indexing process, I could be cooking or barbecuing in three different places.  The ranch, the beach house, or the condo in Ann Arbor.   I never wanted to start a meal and have to stop to run to the store for any spice.  So I tailor made three identical spice racks with all 36 spices.  In fact, I bought three, 36 bottle, sets of unlabeled glass spice jars and created computer generated labels for each spice.  Included on the jars was the logo for the American Smoking Society – Hickory Only.  For easy identification, the spice name was both on the side of the jar and on the round top. The spice rack could rest on a counter or in a cupboard.  The spices were indexed alphabetically.  Anytime I cook, I can pull the desired spice instantly from the indexed racks. 

Of course, an effective spice management system is not as simple as three spice racks. 

Over time, spices start to fade.  Some, like black pepper, last a very long time.  Others, such as dehydrated bell pepper, go flat in six months.  Why would anyone spend a day and a half trying to make the best ribs and brisket in the world using dead spices?  The goal is perfect, explosive flavor.  You want to see your guests do an eye pop when they bite into one of your ribs.  Flat spices won’t get that done.  You are investing a lot of hours in the smoking process.  The spices need to be fresh. 

A second complicating factor is volume.  When you are making sixty pounds of four different varieties of sausage, those nice little spice jars are not going to get the job done.  You may need ¾ cup of sage for the twenty four pounds of breakfast sausage you are grinding.  In addition to the volume challenges, I am stocking three complete kitchens in different locations.  I don’t want to run out of anything, anywhere.

The final challenge was to minimize the cash required to obtain high quality seasonings.

So I set the following strategy.  I would buy the spices in volume from wholesalers, hoping for volume discounts.  I would set up a fourth spice rack of the 36 spices but the fourth rack would be quart jars of each seasoning.  The quart jars would work well for high volume projects, like sausage making, and barbecue sauce. In addition, when the regulation size spice jars ran low, I could replenish them with spices from the quart jars.  To avoid the “dead spice” pitfall, I would toss everything after eighteen months and start with a new batch of seasonings.

I identified several spice wholesalers and called them.  One of my favorites is Planters in Kansas City.  “Hello, this is Mike Sinelli, I am the Exalted Hind Quarter of a renowned barbecue society.  I am sure you have heard of the American Smoking Society – Hickory Only or ASS-HO.  The Society runs through a lot of spices and I am wondering what volume we need to purchase from your fine establishment to take advantage of wholesale pricing?  Minimum weights of one pound lots will give us the reduced prices?  Excellent!  I am looking at 36 spices and I see you have 30 of them listed on your website….”   

As it turns out, a pound of spices is typically a lot of spice.  Heavier spices, such as granulated garlic, might not quite fill a quart jar.  But a pound of Thyme would require three or four quart containers.  Importantly, when I ordered a pound of all 36 spices, I would easily accommodate all of my needs for eighteen months and I could replenish four or five racks for my fellow ASS-HOs.  

Wholesale pricing is greatly reduced from retail.  In fact, I could buy bulk, one pound lots cheaper than buying the regular size bottles from Publix.  I typically spend $325 to $400 every eighteen months when I restock my spices.     

Maximizing the benefit of any project requires fairly constant review and revision.  I change some of my “go to” spices when I tweak recipes or try new recipes.  So I may add new spices to the rack.  Changes require getting new jars and revising the computerized labeling system. 

In addition, I had to rework the storage system.  My quart storage stash is at the Beach House in Florida.  When we spend three months in Michigan, I would burn through a lot of the spices in the small bottle rack on the counter.  It’s a long drive to Jacksonville to replenish the sage jar.  So I added a backup rack of half quart jars to the Michigan Condo.  This rack travels to and from Florida with us.  In essence, I have a 36 quart jar rack in Florida for back up in the sunshine state and a 36 half quart jar rack for backup in Michigan.  I have all of the bulk spices delivered to Florida and I replenish the half quarters from the Florida stash when I travel to and from Ann Arbor.  For now, this system is working very nicely.     

So the great spice optimization engagement kept me fully focused for a long time.  Nobody’s job was on the line, the remuneration wasn’t very good but it had all of the other aspects of a Sinelli and Associates consulting engagement.  You would think that there are only a few spectacular potential missions, like spice optimization, for a retired person.  However, it appears that the list of possible engagements is limitless.  I can find ten or twenty on my own and my wife can easily add another hundred. 

Here are a few. 

Downsizing.  Moving from a big house to a small house can consume a few man years of effort and test all of your planning expertise.  I believe that you touch every item that you own at least three times during the procedure.

Organizing the 5,000 square foot storage locker.  This is really a bi product of the downsizing engagement.  Even though you tossed 80% of everything you own in the downsizing effort, you still have a few thousand things that you can never get rid of.  If you don’t try to organize the storage locker, most of it will end up like the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie.

Digitalizing family photos.  I know it seems difficult to believe but my wife’s family and my family identified us as patsy’s to store all of the old family credentials and photo graphs.  I sorted through 23 boxes of old family photos.  I bought a scanner and digitalized more than 17,000 photographs.  My indexing capabilities were heavily taxed but I can go to the file and find a picture of Sue’s dad having a beer at Wall Drug on our great west vacation in 1973.  I can start from scratch and pop up the photo in less than ten seconds.  This was a great retired person’s consulting engagement!

Archiving recipes.  Everything I like to cook is in my computer.  I have hundreds of recipes.  The first segmentation isolates Barbecue Recipes, Tailgating Recipes, InstantPot Recipes, Christmas Recipes, and General Recipes.  I’m kind of weird, even with recipes.  When I make something, I will go back and add notes for things that I am not likely to remember the next time I whip something up.  So, I’ll have the recipe and four or five notes of things I may want to change each time I prepare the dish.  If I want to get the Pasta Faggioli right, I need to find the recipe and read the notes.

Instructions for barbecues.  I save all of the processes I follow when I smoke barbecue.  These include rubs, marinades, smoker used (even after downsizing, I still have eleven different grills and smokers), other equipment employed and timelines.

Instructions for tailgates.  If you want to know what the World’s Greatest Tailgaters put together for the 2012 Michigan State (Moo U) tailgate on October 20, 2012, I can tell you.  In addition to chronicling the menus, I have detailed lists of required equipment and timelines.

Sue has chipped in with a vast number of projects that she has prioritized.  We work them into the mix as well. 

If we don’t want to do anything constructive for a month or two, that’s fine.  One of my consulting engagements has been to organize The Retired Person’s List of Potential Consulting Projects.  That’s right.  I successfully completed a project to list, track and manage all of the potential, ongoing and completed projects. If I ever hit “dead calm”, I pick something off the list and I am back to work. 

I get all of the enjoyment and satisfaction of reworking a broken process with none of the downsides.

At Sinelli and Associates, I was updating the CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies in the country on the status of our financial system restructuring.  I pointed out the challenges that we needed to overcome in order to “go live” by January 1st.  We intended to deliver but there were real perils and he needed a complete and honest appraisal of the possible outcomes. The CEO stopped me and said “I don’t like you Sinelli.  You are saying “if this” and “if that”.  The “if” you need to focus on is: “If you don’t have these systems in place by January 1^st, you are going to F****** DIE!”

Key differences with Retired Persons Consulting are: Nobody is getting fired, no one is threatening my life, I’m not working 70 hour weeks, and there is not a lot of pressure from the people paying our fees.  However, I am still doing complex and interesting work. 

Bottom line: I really enjoy Retired Persons Consulting.         

A great comedian, Norm Crosby, was reflecting on the perils of being tried for a criminal offense.  “The scariest thing is having your fate decided by twelve people who are too stupid to get out of jury duty.”

Most of us recognize the importance of this civic duty but really hope that we are not called. It is a sudden event in our highly planned lives that is always inconvenient.  

I have been selected for Jury Duty a few times.  The odds are very long that anyone will actually be selected.  First you have to be summoned.  I was randomly chosen as a potential juror four times.  Most of my friends have never even received an initial notice.  I was instructed to call the Court on Friday afternoon to see if my services may be needed the following week.  Three of the four times they cancelled any requirement for my services. 

Once, however, I was asked put on a suit and report to the Court House.  I was given a number and tossed in to a pool of potential jurors for a civil trial in the State of Florida judicial system.  Somebody was badly injured at work and they were suing a large multinational employer and the employer’s insurance company for damages. Tens of millions of dollars were at stake.  All morning, they kept pulling other people’s numbers out of the hat.  Both lawyers were sorting through potential jurors with a lot of detailed personal and professional questions.  One person was eliminated because she had been employed, as an administrative assistant, by an insurance company.  Another was an accountant for a local bank. One of the lawyers did not want any accountants on the jury.

I’ll be out of here in no time.  I was a CPA who primarily audited insurance companies. In fact, I was Controller of a public insurance company for several years.  I now ran a consulting practice and all my clients were insurance companies.  We were down to just one open slot.  There were twenty prospective jurors sitting with me.  I will be home for lunch.  The judge called both lawyers to the bench.  He seemed unhappy about how long this process was taking. 

The bailiff pulled my number out of the hat. I was ready.  I would be completely truthful in all of my answers.  However, I would clearly show that my life experiences may not make me the best jury candidate for this trial. I would dazzle them with my CPA/auditing experience reviewing a lot of bogus injury claims.  As Controller of the insurance company, we were required to safeguard the reserves for our policy holders by culling out claims that clearly did not meet policy requirements.  I had grown to naturally dislike injury attorneys.  Frivolous lawsuits are the primary reason for excessive insurance costs in our state. 

I sat down for the inquisition.  The attorney opened with a softball.  “Is there any reason you cannot be fair if we seat you on the jury?”  My one word response was “No”.  “Okay, we accept this juror.  Let’s go to trial.” 

Wait! Wait! Wait!  You asked everyone else all kinds of questions about their personal life and employment history.  “Did an attorney ever make you cry?”  Are you happy when you write a check for your insurance premiums? Did an insurance agent ever cut in front of you in a concession stand line. Do you like creamy or chunky peanut butter?  Boxers or briefs?”  What?? I only get this one simple question??

One thing you learn about the judicial system is that jurors don’t get to ask any questions.  You get to answer some in the selection process and that is it.  I only got to answer one.  After a one word, two letter response, I am a juror.

Now I was in Norm Crosby’s cultural category of someone being too stupid to avoid jury duty. 

This was not how I intended to spend the next few days.  I had some challenges at work that needed attention.  However, Jury Duty is clearly an important civic duty.  I was legitimately selected and I will work with my fellow jurors to make the fairest possible decision.  As it turns out, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

The trial ran for five days.  The six jurors were from very diverse backgrounds.  There was a nurse, a school teacher, a homemaker, a student, a government employee and a business man.  We all followed the judge’s instructions not to discuss the case until it was turned over to us for deliberation. The first few days, I swung back and forth as the attorneys unfurled their cases.  After about three days, it appeared to me that one party was clearly right and the other was not.  I listened carefully until early Friday afternoon and became even more solidified in my position.  I thought, this could be bad.  I am not going to change my mind and it is very likely that some of my fellow jurors are equally entrenched on the other side.  We were a diverse group.  I have consistently found in life that most people don’t think as weirdly as I do.  Deliberations were going to be interesting.

What became very clear, when we were able to discuss the case, was that every single juror had carefully paid attention for the entire trial. There was some confusion about a few key facts. But not many.  We spent some time making sure we all understood them correctly.  Now we had to decide.  Everybody was serious.  We all wanted to get this right. 

We then decided to vote.  There were about five issues to rule on.  In reality, the only issue was “Is the employer liable for injuries suffered by the employee?” Instead of raising hands, we went around the table and asked every juror what their decision was and also asked them to explain why they made that decision.  I was the last person to vote.  At this point the count was 5-0.  Going in to the vote, I was confident enough with my decision to spend a few days in deliberation and hang the jury if others disagreed. My turn. I simply said that I agreed with everyone else.  I don’t need to tell you why because you more than included all of my reasons in yours.    

How did we get a unanimous decision so quickly?  It was not because the case was simple or clear cut.  The jurors were all very different individuals.  Different backgrounds, different political beliefs, different cultures.  What we had in common was a great sense of right and wrong and a very strong desire to reach a responsible verdict. 

This was very encouraging to me.  All six of us paid attention for a full week and made our decisions based on the facts that were presented to us.  No one simply went along with the crowd.  A random group of six people made a terrific effort to ensure that the State of Florida court system was fair and impartial.    

So I have to disagree with Norm Crosby.  There were no stupid people on this jury.  Very likely, all of us would have preferred to not be selected.  But once we were chosen, we did a great job.  I have the sense that this is the way most juries work in America and it is a real tribute to our country.    

---

I have always been confused by units of measure.  Much of the confusion is centered around cooking or barbecue.  I’ll be reading one of my grandmother’s Springerle cookie recipes and it will call for a Smidgen of Almond Oil.  I actually have Almond Oil but what is a Smidgen?  I thought many of these ancient terms were really descriptions, not measurements.  I would splash in a little Almond Oil.  Predictably, no two batches of these Christmas cookies ever tasted the same.  As it turns out, my grandma’s frequently used expressions (Dash, Pinch and Smidgen) are real measurements.  A Dash is 1/8 of a teaspoon, a Pinch is 1/16 and a Smidgen is 1/32.  Through the wonders of Amazon, I now have measuring spoons for these volumes.  I actually use them frequently when I whip up some of the old Italian and German recipes passed down to me by my mom.

When I moved to the south, I found several southern expressions that are quasi units of measure.  Passal is a good example.  Passal means a large amount.  When it is applied to a specific item, it may mean a lot and a specific number.  I invite my friend Bubba over for ribs.  “Bring the family.  We will eat all day.”  Bubba responds “Shooey! With my crowd you’re gonna need a passal of those great ribs.”  In this case, both Bubba and I know we need one passal or four racks of ribs.  In Jacksonville, a passal is exactly half of a whole passal.  So if Bubba says “My sister Billie Jo and her family are staying with us. Can we include them?”  “Sure!”  Now we need a whole passal.  A whole passal of ribs is actually twice as many as a passal. So we need eight racks of ribs. Similarly a passal of hamburgers is twelve and a whole passal is twenty four.      

Much of my experience with units of measure is pretty short on science. To bring clarity to some of these vagaries, I called the National Bureau of Measures.  I had a delightful conversation with Professor Melvin Cowznofski, Chief Regulator for the Encyclopedia of Measurements.  Dr. Cowznofski provided a lot of definition and insight to popular terms that I thought were simply descriptions. In addition, Melvin offered a number of measures that few of us have ever heard. For example:

New York Second.  This is the measure of time between a traffic light turning green and the time a New York cabbie, directly behind you, starts honking.

Microcentury.  A microcentury is the maximum period of time that is allowed for a long, boring explanation of anything.  Officially, it is one millionth of a century or 52 minutes and 35.7 seconds.

Potrzebie.  In a 1960’s issue of Mad magazine, the publication established the “Potrzebie Systems of Weights and Measures”. The base unit is a Potrzebie which equals the exact thickness of the 26^th issue of Mad magazine.  It converts to 2.263348 mm.  Unfortunately, it failed to become the world’s standard for distance measurement.  Many years ago, anticipating the change, I invested 20 bucks in a Potrzebie based slide rule.  I still have this fine instrument manufactured by Axolotl, Inc.

Sagan.  A single Sagan is 4 billion of anything.  It is a base number equaling the smallest combination of multiple billions (billions and billions).  i.e. 2 billion plus 2 billion.      

Beard Second.  A measure of very short distances usually used in the production of microchips.  It is the distance an average beard grows in one second.

Portal Potty.  Time wasted inputting redundant information into every health care provider’s patient portal. An average of 76 minutes per portal.  “I just peed away 2 ½ hours signing up for two new Doctors.”

In Australia, a very small distance is called a Bee’s Dick.  Similarly in Germany, it is called Muggeseggele which translates to “a housefly’s scrotum”.

Software engineers have developed a rating system for newly developed technology.  According to their standards, there are no perfect systems. The Lovelace Scale, however, measures how significantly any particular program “sucks”.

An impressive IT term is a Mickey.  A Mickey is the smallest resolvable unit of distance that a pointing device (Mouse) can travel on your computer.  A typical distance is 500 Mickeys per inch.

Beer.  For many of us, it is convenient to measure elapsed time in beer.  If you’re smoking a pork shoulder for dinner, the elapsed time could be seven beers.  If your spouse’s boss is dropping in for the feast, you may be better off smoking pork tenderloins with an elapsed time of 1.3 beers.  In Buffalo, they gauge snowstorms in beer. Wisely, they only recommend six beers for a two foot blizzard.  Everything is set to scale based on one beer per four inches.  

Standard Giraffe Unit.  This measure is actually used to categorize Near-Earth objects by the European Space Agency.  In essence, they are tracking big rocks that are traveling close to our planet.  An object the size of a Giraffe is rated 1.0 and called a Giraffe.  An object that is .14 Giraffe Size is called a Canada Goose.  If the rock is 1.25 the size of a Giraffe, it is labeled an elephant.  There are seven animals on the SGU scale.    

A final unit of measurement offered by Professor Cowznofski is the Minutes Per Big Mac metric.  This economic yardstick measures how many minutes a worker, earning minimum wage, needs to work to afford a Big Mac.  Obviously, both sides of the equation will vary based on regional differences.  

So I thank Dr. Melvin Cowznofski and Wikipedia for all of this great information.  I may only use Sagans when evaluating government spending and Minutes Per Big Mac will be very helpful in assessing when I need to find a job in my retirement.  I am already measuring elapsed time in Beer and I certainly hope that no Whale objects will be an imminent threat to our planet.

If Potrzebies make a comeback as a distance metric, I have the slide rule.

Now I am trying to figure out how many people are in the Russian Army.  My wife often reminds me that I have enough barbecue to feed them.  I know it is way more than a Smidgen but I can’t get my mind around how many people are really in that group.