Mindconnection eNL, 2011-02-06

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Then there are people who can't do this.

What's the difference?

My observation is that people in the second group panic. They look at the whole system, and can't see its parts. They see the forest, but cannot collect the necessary firewood because they can't see the individual twigs that are right at their feet.

People in the first group take a methodical approach. While it may vary, it tends to (for using mechanical things) follow this pattern:

1. Identify the problem.
2. Identify the source of whatever power or signal is needed.
3. Identify how the power or signal is used.

Example 1:

Suppose you are using a friend's fancy upright vacuum cleaner and need to use the attachment feature.

1. You can just panic and hope something occurs to you. Or, you can say, "The problem is that I can't find the end of the vacuum hose to which attachments attach."
2. The source of the vacuum is the motor. So the attachment end must be not the part that goes into the body of the cleaner where the motor is, but the other end.
3. Obviously, I need to remove that end. I will look for a latch or other restraining means, and if I can't find one I will just pull fairly hard because with no restraint that means the hose is kept in by pressure.

Example 2:

Suppose you are using a software program you have not seen before.

1. You can just panic and hope something occurs to you. Or, you can say, "The problem is that I have not accessed any menus to see how to use this program."
2. The source of control for the user is the user menu. So you look for something that resembles a menu. It may be a button, text, or dropdown.
3. Obviously, items under "File" have to do with filing things, items under "Edit" have to do with changing/editing things, items under "View" will alter how things look, and so on.

When people ask me to help them figure something out, my first instruction to them is often, "Take a deep breath. Now, relax." I say this because the amount of knowledge and intelligence required to solve the problem is usually well below what that person actually possesses, and the problem is that person's panic simply prevents him/her from accessing that knowledge and intelligence.

Solutions and answers aren't instantly obvious, most of the time. It make take a little effort to reveal them or parse them out. Take a methodical, thoughtful approach to a situation, and you, in many cases, be able to solve it with your own brainpower instead of being panicked and helpless.

Something to remember when you are tempted to panic is this. While governments do not have to please consumers (who do not have a choice but are forced to buy government "services"), makers of things and doodads generally must please consumers or lose them to competition. There is, unlike with government, actually logic to how things are done. This is why, for example, I never had a problem programming a VCR.

That is not to say all consumer goods are properly designed and completely logical in their controls and usage. They aren't. But some sort of logic is still there, in nearly every case, so if you stop and think you can figure out the logic and apply it. As in the cases above.

Some aspects of consumer goods defy logic. Examples:

1. Packaging that requires a chainsaw to open. When you encounter a product thusly packaged, don't take this lying down. Send it back and ask that it be opened and then sent back to you (if ordered online). If you buy it in person, go back to that store and ask the store manager to open the package for you. Make a big deal out of this insanity, so they get the message.
    
2. Layered menus when simple buttons will do. The problem here is usually when you buy a multi-purpose device that will do 21 different things when you need only 1 done. The solution is to buy a single-purpose device; it will be simpler to use for the intended purpose. Much simpler.
    
3. Automobiles with automatic transmissions. In Europe, 80% of the cars have manual transmissions. In the USA, 80% have automatics. While automatics make sense for special cases, they are generally the worse choice for the typical driver. They use more fuel, have a higher total cost of ownership, and require time for maintenance. They don't make driving better; they give the driver less control. Supposedly, Americans are too stupid and lazy to do the math here and prefer to waste time and money on automatic transmissions while Europeans are intellectually superior by far. This, to me, is an illogical supposition.
    
4. Food. Packaged foods are, generally speaking, unfit for human consumption. For reasons that defy logic, "food" companies adulterate the food with poisons such as endocrine system modulating high fructose corn syrup and colon cancer causing hydrogenated oil. Why anyone would buy this crap in the first place, only illogic can apply. Why any company would make it also defies logic.
    
5. Synthetic clothing. It's a really, really bad idea to put synthetic fibers in contact with your skin all day long. It makes no sense to produce this stuff and market it as clothing, yet that is exactly what's done.

You can apply a methodical approach to solving these problems even though their genesis is in illogic. I gave you the solutions to the first two. Now, apply some logic to see if you can find the solutions to the last three.

It completely baffles me as to why anyone would actually shop at Wal-Mart, for example. Here's a company that truly plays dirty on multiple fronts, ultimately screwing the consumer (mostly by externalizing its costs). It cheats its employees, cheats its suppliers, and cheats the communities in which it has stores.

They also cheat the federal government out of millions of dollars, so if you live in, say, Atlanta, you are helping to pay for the food stamps and other federal assistance provided to the Wal-Mart employees in, say, Detroit. If Wal-Mart paid a decent wage, this would be reflected in its prices instead of in your taxes.

There is a very, very high cost to Wal-Mart's low prices.

The more that people in a given community shop at Wal-Mart, the more money everyone in that community loses because they are picking up Wal-Mart's costs while Wal-Mart simply pretends to give them a good deal.

So you can save money by boycotting this scam-based company and encouraging others to do the same.

You can also save money by doing business with quality merchants that actually care about their employees, their customers, their suppliers, and the communities in which they have stores. One such company is the computer chain store Microcenter. I have no stake in that company, other than being a happy repeat customer of theirs. I am more than willing to give them a free plug, because I am so extremely impressed with what a good job they do in meeting my needs every time I show up there.

Over the past few years, I have gone there for something specific like an odd to spec cable. Every time, I have asked for help and the person has either said, "I don't know but I'll find someone who does" or has provided expert help. Every time. This is just amazing. My normal experience with tech help is I conduct a free, ad hoc training session. At Microcenter, it's the other way around. And they are always right.

Recently, my desktop machine started to make noise (the fan in the power supply) and would sometimes require me flip the switch on the power supply off then on again to start it. Obviously, I needed to change out the power supply. But to what?

I went online and quickly discovered that selecting one was going to be challenging. There was also the fact that I was operating with a funky power supply that might fail at any moment or that might destroy something expensive like my motherboard. So I drove to Microcenter, in a neighboring city.

I was making my way to the peripherals department, when a Microcenter employee asked if I needed help with anything. My response contained more information than she actually needed, but she patiently waited for me to finish and said, "I don't know power supplies. But I will get someone to come back here and help you. In the meantime, you can start looking at what we have," she said, pointing, "over there by the...."

Within a few minutes, a knowledgeable sales rep showed up and asked me a few questions. I had brought along with me the layout drawing of my motherboard. It didn't take long to narrow down the selections to three different units. I was about to tell him which one I wanted, when he did something surprising. He grabbed the most expensive of the three and said, "You know, I can discount this one by $20." He then explained why this particular one was, technically, the best of the lot. That's the one I got.

Checkout took almost no time. I was in and out of the store in less than 20 minutes, with exactly what I needed. Did I pay too much, versus what I might have paid via finding the cheapest unit online? No. I saved at least two hours of research. Considering that it took less than half an hour to swap out power supplies, my total investment of time for the whole job was less than the cost, in time, of researching. Time is money. Not only that, I did get a heck of a deal and a really sweet unit.

My point here is you don't necessarily save money by getting the lowest possible price. Nothing is free; you will pay one way or another. So if you have had occasion to ask a merchant for help and have gotten expert help, support that merchant with your business and with recommendations.

There is an ethical contract, here. Going to one merchant for assistance and then going to another to save a few bucks is stealing. The merchant that was stolen from was, de facto, an unpaid employee of the merchant that got the actual sale. The result, if this is repeated enough, is the more expensive merchant (not the one with the higher price, but the one who charges a lower price and gives you less) remains while the better merchant goes out of business or changes its practices to also be cheap instead of good.

Are you saving money at great cost? Or do you consider your personal spending as an ongoing concern that must be properly conducted for total overall savings?

Shortly after turning 50.

Another form of mistreatment is to tell you not to eat eggs. This is actually the opposite of what an actual health practitioner would tell you. Here are a couple of diet-related cholesterol articles:

• http://www.supplecity.com/articles/cholesterolveggs.htm
• http://www.supplecity.com/articles/cholesterolvbeans.htm 

But suppose you go in for blood tests and it turns out your cholesterol profile is now much worse than for previous tests and/or your total cholesterol has sky-rocketed. The likely cause is you have vascular leakage. This is commonly caused by a bad diet. So the solution is to fix the diet.

Diets that cause this leakage, and thus the body's heightened use of cholesterol, are those that are low in nutrient-dense foods and high in processed foods. We at Mindconnection have worked with high cholesterol individuals, and in every case they have rapidly brought their cholesterol numbers down from "dangerous" to "healthy" by taking a few simple steps:

1. Replace grain with green. Do not eat any corn or wheat, period, for six months. After that, no sweet corn.
2. No processed foods, period.
3. Six small meals a day instead of three big ones.
4. Eat copious quantities of free-range (or equivalent) eggs (one dozen a day, as a rule of thumb).
5. Eliminate (not reduce) sodas.
6. Eliminate (not reduce) high fructose corn syrup.
7. Drink at least a gallon of water a day.

Now, this is not to say you should ignore your doctor and just change your diet. You should change your diet, and inform your doctor of this. Then, monitor your cholesterol to see if the dietary changes are having the desired effect. If you are on cholesterol medication, work with your doctor to open windows of being off the medication to see what your actual condition is.

You might have some other problem causing the leakage. The dietary changes are mandatory anyhow, for a long list of reasons. But they alone might not solve your underlying problem. If that is the case, keep in mind that cholesterol medication won't solve those problems either. You will need to do some research if your doctor doesn't offer anything else but potential liver disease as a "solution."

At www.supplecity.com, you'll find plenty of informative, authoritative articles on maintaining a lean, strong physique. It has nothing to do with long workouts or impossible to maintain diets. In fact:

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur. Members of CONgress don't change their stripes; they just spend, spend, spend no matter how much damage it causes.

Is Your Vitamin D Level Adequate?

Bioletics has been offering its Vitamin D sample kit for many years, now. In all this time, only one person has had adequate Vitamin D levels (she was on the Australian Olympic Team).

Just how far are you from an adequate level? Now you can find out, easily and inexpensively.

That brings us to another popular product. How can you bring your Vitamin D level up to where it needs to be?

One route many people take is to buy Vitamin D capsules and scarf them down. Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well because the body absorbs D poorly from the digestive tract. It does, however, absorb it very well under the tongue. Using this mint-flavored spray, you can deliver it to where it can best be absorbed.

This eNL is supported by sales from www.mindconnection.com. Please shop there, as appropriate.

Used in a sentence: Members of CONgress are never abstemious spenders; and the reasons they give for the various pork spending bills are facetious in the extreme.