Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

Last Wednesday started out like any other day. I went to work, stayed a while, then I got in my car and went home. I drove about three blocks when I heard the telltale woof-woof-woof sound of a flat tire. Flats always suck, but it’s not a huge biggie to change one. I had run the rear tires bald hotrodding and driving all over creation so it was not a total surprise. I did chastise myself for my usual stupid procrastination. I’m apparently motivated more by necessity than a desire to avoid potential catastrophe and aggravation.

I limped into the nearest parking lot, took all the necessary crap out of my trunk, stripped down to my undershirt, and got to work. I had a couple floor mats in the trunk so I took one out to have something to kneel on as I changed the tire. A cold front started to blow through as I popped the hub cover out of the wheel. I noticed that in addition to the usual lugs, I had a locking lug in place. Locking lugs are a common anti-theft measure for alloy wheels. They cannot be loosened without a lug lock key. I had the same thing on my Saturn, so I started looking in the usual places. Glovebox, trunk, ashtray, console. Nope. Then I started looking on the ground around the car in case I had somehow dropped it out while removing everything from the trunk. Nope. Without the lug key, there was no way to change the tire. I was stuck.

I decided I’d better drive the car back to the parking garage at work, so I wouldn’t get towed from where I was. That’s where I left it. The next day I borrowed Jody’s car and drove around to various Ford dealers around Dallas to see what I needed to do. The consensus seemed to be that I had two options: order a replacement key and wait for it, or have the car towed to the dealer where they could remove the lug locks with a master key set or by brute force. The second option would have required getting the car towed and paying for a new lock set and the labor to remove the lugs. Ugh. I was going to try finding another key first.

At Bankston Ford off loop LBJ, I told my story to the older gentleman in the parts department. He nodded sympathetically and pulled a cardboard box out from under the counter and said I was welcome to look through all the spare lug keys he had. I had a digital photo of the lug in the event I had to find a key, and I ended up finding a couple that looked like they might work. He said I could take them with me to try out. There was an unspoken understanding that I would bring them back when I was done, but it reminded me that there are still people in the world who honor strangers with their trust. Almost as if my magic, my view of the situation brightened and I even started to think better of Ford as a company, since they must be alright to have such good people working for them. There’s a lesson there for business.

Even though the keys didn’t fit I was on the right track. I found out that instead of ordering through the dealership I could order directly from the manufacturer, a company called McGard, who specializes in lug locks and other forms of asset protection. This was a painless process. All I had to do was take a photo of the locking lug, email it to their customer support staff, and they would match it and overnight a key out to me. They got it to me in less than 24 hours. Once I got the key I changed the tire and went out to get all new tires and a full-size spare. The cost of the key and overnight shipping came to $30. Much better than a tow to the dealer, a new lock set, and an hour of labor to remove the locks.

Obvious lessons learned or remembered:

1. Don’t be too cynical about people. They will surprise and shame you with their generosity.
2. Necessity and thriftiness will motivate you to find optimal solutions. Don’t settle for what a few people tell you.
3. Make sure you know where your lug lock key is before you need it, especially if you’re buying a used car. Keep it in safe place and make sure you get it back any time you have work done. Also, don’t keep it in your glovebox like everyone else. This is the first place thieves look.
4. The price of tires and assorted services (balance, warranty, alignment) can be negotiated. My favorite negotiating tactic is to not say anything when I hear the price. Just try to seem silently unsatisfied like you’re thinking. I saved about $100 this way, but who knows how much mark-up there is on tires. All I know is I didn’t pay what I would have had I just went along.

This might be BS, but it seemed funny anyway. This guy at work told me that it costs a dollar to have an unlisted number. Instead of doing that, he listed his telephone number under “Hugh Janus”.

To all within earshot, have a Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be doing a lot of driving and I imagine you will be too. Watch out for all those liberated office thralls motoring around in their family cruisers, don’t overdo anything, and enjoy the company of family and friends.

My company, Duet Design, is looking for partners web monkeys. Basically, we need a few extra hands since we have more business then we can get out the door. Right now, for every job we do, I’m the one doing nearly 100% of it. Obviously, this prevents future growth since I can only do so much per hour.

This is not an hourly or salaried position. You will only get paid for the hours you work like any contract or freelance job. The only difference is we juggle many different projects on a regular basis. Let me know if you are interested. I’d like to get to the point where I have several people I work with on a regular basis that I farm stuff out to.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s behind Walmart’s push for cheap generics. They’re clearly feeling some sort of pressure from the neighborhood drugstores, which have been expanding rapidly and not just due to an aging population as the article suggests. In my neighborhood in downtown Dallas, there are 5 or more drugstores within a mile radius. On Lemmon Ave, there are two CVS stores less than a mile away from one another. I think as more people move back into city centers, or remote burb-claves and cocooning trends continue due to things like: cable TV, Netflix, and the Internet that keep us cooped up inside, the big-box stores will have to compete with a raft of smaller, neighborhood-type stores. This is fine except it requires massive, centralized companies like Walmart to get nimble. The other problem is that they’re getting more competition in the affluent suburbs from companies like Target and Kohl’s.

Beemer thinks Wal-Mart’s threat is indeed significant, despite the fact that its program so far only covers about 300 generic drugs out of thousands on the market. Because the company is largely using its pharmaceutical business to leverage up its store traffic in the hope that customers will buy other goods in its stores, expanding the $4 price to cover more drugs is likely. At a certain price, people will forego the convenience of the local Walgreen or CVS to make a longer drive to Wal-Mart.

Four dollars “is an incredible price point for Wal-Mart. I think there is no question they will expand it,” he says.

Key to its strategy is luring 55-plus, low-to-middle income shoppers that Wal-Mart isn’t getting right now and that could well be important to the company’s future. Indeed, the goal of all pharmacies is to become the one-stop shop for customers who buy multiple drugs each month. By luring buyers with promises of a few low-price, even below-cost generics, they can either retain or expand their base of customers who may buy other brand-name drugs at considerably higher prices and higher profits.

“Wal-Mart is basically saying, ‘I’m stabbing the head off my drugstore competitors,'” Beemer says.

Advertisement:

The Pharmaceutical Industry has grown increasingly competitive. Learn more about Different Prescription Drugs and the differences between Generic Drugs and the more expensive name brands. Knowing about your Prescriptions can help you make informed decisions.

This is interesting. A Sitepoint survey reveals four web developer “types”:

• The “Guru” is strongly motivated toward technical excellence, actively tracks new technological trends, and is interested in learning how to use them to improve the quality and functionality of web sites.
• The “Entrepreneur” is strongly motivated toward building and retaining an audience, and is less interested in using technologies just because they’re new.
• The “Designer” is strongly motivated toward the timely delivery of visually appealing web sites that meet the business requirements of clients.
• The “Corporate” is strongly motivated toward reliable, stable performance; the “Corporate works in a larger organization, and faces the unique mixture of constraints and opportunities that the corporate environment offers.

This sounds about right to me. I’m definitely more of the Entrepreneur type by nature, but also because I currently work for a small company that is focused on marketing to its prospective customers. You just can’t specialize and expect to be as effective when you have a team of one to two people tasked with achieving all projects that need to be online. However, it helps to be able to slip into the other modes when necessary. It’s all about maintaining the flexibility needed to meet the overall strategic goals. In other words, creating a visually stunning design or implementing an amazing CMS should not supercede the need to make the phone ring and get the information out to your customers if that’s what needs to happen. In larger corporate settings where you’re one of many in amongst an array of departments, you can worry about version control, documentation, or overall content management. Likewise, if you’re running a design house, you can spend time obsessing over every visual detail to support one of your client’s online ad campaigns. But, if you design / build in-house for a small company, you just have to get stuff done.

Creepy, but riveting. What did we do before the Internet?