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I am looking for women and teens to co-author a version of this book slanted towards different audiences.

Co-authorship can come about in a variety of ways. Perhaps you and your buddy have had an interesting adventure. and it seems appropriate that both of you should contribute to your travel book. Maybe your book-writing partner has some skills related to the topic that you do not. Perhaps you are so well known that you are sought out to contribute portions of a book. Any of these ways, and more, can open opportunities for co-authorship.

In the case of my soon to be published book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife, I wrote some autobiographical chapters based on my life experiences that related to the businesses, jobs and work that I had done throughout my life. These included selling peanuts out in front of a five and dime variety store to creating my own job and title at a multinational corporation to starting my own business. My late-life business is Hovey’s Knives of China, where I take inspiration from ancient bronze knives from 3,000 years ago and make cooking knives using modern steels in Central Georgia. These experiences and more are used in the book to detail how a person should start a variety of businesses throughout their lives with the ultimate objective of having a business already well started when the day comes between age 45 and 67 that the company you works for decides that you can be replaced by a younger, less expensive, worker from India or even by a robot.  In the modern international gig economy, no one’s job is considered safe, unless it is one that the you start yourself.

I am a guy and quite naturally write from a guy’s perspective. Much of the content of my  book would also be useful to women and teens who want to start their own business ventures. I have written 18 books on a variety of subjects including Geology, Architecture, Health, Hunting, Bow Fishing and Shooting. I could research and write a version of this book from a woman’s point of view. However, it would be a much stronger book if I had a lady who had been active in the business world rewrite parts of the book based on her own experiences and work-place challenges. Twelve chapters of of the book describe methods, such as how to copyright a logo, derive a name for a business, apply for a U.S patent that would remain unchanged. The chapters that the co-author would write would be a complete re-work of four chapters, a part of the Preface and a section of the back-cover material. In terms of words, out of a roughly 40,000 word book, her contribution would be about 14,000 words.

Working the time-table back from the desired release date, the co-author’s time line would be to have the book published a month before the release date. Allow two months for final editing and publishing, four months to write the book and one month to plan it. The entire co-authorship program would take eight months from initiation to completion. I can write a 40,000 word book in three months. I would expect co-authors to produce their 14,000 words in four months. If it takes longer, I need to find someone else. Book production is a business,  and new titles must be presented in a timely manner if the effort is to be successful.  Having a lonely author in their basement working on a manuscript for years does not work with non-fiction titles. You do the work, get it done and then move on to the next project.

How is this accomplished? The simple answer is that you write every, every, every day. Your goal is to put out x-number of pages each day. Maybe that number is only two. That can work. Some days you might do 10 or 15, but if you can write two pages of finished text a day, you can write a book. The real work of this writing business is in the re-writing. That is when the chapters are examined, repetitive words are removed, sections re-ordered, maybe new chapters added, all of the headings, subheadings got into their proper rankings, photographs obtained, permission slips gathered, etc. The entire book is printed out at several stages and gone over with a fine-toothed comb. Perhaps you even hire a professional editor to go through it, and maybe someone else to do the cover design with the costs of this work being split between the two authors.

A month before the official release dates you have books and pdf copies ready to send to reviewers and media people, and you and your co-author plan a pre-release media campaign trying to tell the world about your new book in as many ways as possible. A book, no matter how well written and published, will fail if it is not aggressively  promoted.  Books don’t sell books. Authors sell books. If you think otherwise, this is not a game that you should play. To be successful you not only must be able to write, you must also be able to give a compelling interview, write good ad copy, know how to get yourself across on TV and have sufficient confidence and passion to shill your title to a non-caring public. You have to demonstrate how your book is different from others covering the same subject, how it can help them solve real-world life problems, improve your readers’ lives and maybe even help them earn big returns on their investment of an small amount of money.

I am actively looking for co-authors for the woman’s version of the book, and I may have a suitable candidate. She is to let me know early next week. In the meantime, I am also looking for someone now in their 20s or early 30s to write a version of the book for teens. It could work where he, or she,  describes his experiences on how he started his business/es and how his teen-aged children and/or young relatives are starting theirs. In short, “What a difference a decade makes.” I see that as a fun parent-child collaboration. I hope that someone takes me up on that one.

If you think that you would like to co-author either the woman’s or teen title, contact me below.

 

 

Meet Fred, he is the Avatar for my new book, “Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife.” IF Fred sounds like you, you need to protect yourself by buying my book. Fred was born in small-town America in the

1940s, had a chance to participate in high school athletics, was reasonably good at it and also tried out for the School Play and was on the Debate Team. Like all able-bodied men in his generation he was facing being drafted for the Vietnam War. He went to his state land-grant university where he participated in ROTC and came out as a second lieutenant of engineers.

While in college he met Mary, who would later become his wife, but they decided to postpone marriage while she continued her studies to become a nurse and he discharged his obligation to serve two years of active duty with the U.S. Army. Fred was posted first to Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, where he received training to become a Combat Engineer Platoon Leader and was then posted to various locations in Vietnam. He participated in several actions, was wounded, returned home and after his release from active duty, married Mary.

His engineer training and experiences in Vietnam enabled him to find work with various construction and building companies, where he ultimately became a district manager for the firm. With more than 20 years with his present company he looked forward to retirement with a pension, social security and health benefits. Although he did have occasional flashbacks from his war experiences, he generally managed these events fairly well. He never did say much about these experiences to his wife or his two children Bob and Susan. All told, his life with a growing family in mid-America was going fairly well, although Susan had a mild language disability which she managed, with professional help, to work through.

Two years before he was to retire with full pension and health benefits, his company was bought out by a multinational construction company based in London. Under new leadership he feared that he was going to be laid-off at any time to be replaced by an engineer from India or now considered “redundant,” because the combined company already had existing operations management functions in his geographic area. His friends were being dismissed as soon as they completed their major on-going projects, and he felt reasonably certain that he would soon be among the pool of the knowledgeable unemployed working in the gig economy with no real security for him or his family. He felt betrayed, disappointed and angry.

This knowing uncertainty caused him to seriously consider his options and whether he wanted to move away from where he lived and had relocated his aging parents. His mother had been diagnosed with a terminal cancer and was not expected to survive the year, and his father, while in better physical condition, seemed to have a progressive dementia.

He needed to shield himself and his family from this coming financial crisis, and the best way to do that was to start his own business. While still employed he registered his new business as a consulting planning engineer with the state, started the state licensing process and rearranged his house so that he would have a now empty bedroom as a home office. The unused formal dining room became a conference room that enabled him to present information to clients, lay out plans, etc.

He started putting out bids to companies who were initiating new subdivisions and planing new manufacturing facilities to increase his client base and started doing limited work for them on the side. Ultimately, the dreaded day came. Abruptly he received a call to report to the Human Resource office where he was sat down before a 20-something that he had never seen and handed an envelope with his severance packet. He was told that his office computer and phone had been disabled, and he was to gather his personal things and leave the building within two hours. A young lady with some boxes and tape was assigned to help him, and an armed guard was assigned to receive his keys, company ID and walk him out to his car.   He was to speak to no one as he left. If he disregarded these instructions his separation package would be withdrawn, and he would lose his now-reduced pension and diminished benefits caused by his early separation from the company. (As if it had been his fault that he was being pushed out the door.)

Having been warned by his friends who had already been dismissed, this was not unexpected. Although he could scarcely contain his rage, he got his stuff together and left. Someone had already removed his pictures and awards from his office wall and put them into a box. As he packed he felt a since of relief. Bad as it was, at least the anguish of not knowing was over.

His head cleared and he took in a lung full of fresh air as he walked into the parking lot followed by boxes containing records of his last 20 years of life being pushed out on a dolly behind him. Today was the first day of his new life, and he already knew what he was going to do with it. Resisting the temptation to run down the company sign beside the highway as he left, he drove towards home thinking about which of his new-found clients he was going to call first.

 

 

Creating a compelling book cover that not only presents the book’s title in an interesting way, but also conveys at a glance the contents of the book has been a collaborative process that has involved people living in multiple states and two continents. Several covers that I have designed for my previous titles illustrate the book’s content using photographic elements. The best example that I have designed is Backyard Deer Hunting: From Deer to Dinner for Pennies per Pound. 

For Backyard Deer I purchased a photo of an urban deer taken in a person’s back yard, cooked the dishes on the table and photographed the result. The combination of the two photos and the down-pointing arrows completed the imagery and visually told what the book was all about. In it I describe methods for inexpensively hunting deer, even in urban areas with archery equipment, getting it ready for freezer and conclude with recipes that anyone who can turn on a stove can cook. Using my concept the print-on-demand publisher Author House completed the cover.

I had a larger format to work with when I published X-Treme Muzzleloading. Instead of being a 6X9-inch book this was  9X12-size. The book concept was to republished stories about my muzzleloading hunts in North America, Europe and Africa where I often pushed the limits of muzzleloading technology. The use of X-Treme in the title allowed me to shortening the title and provided the concept of   using some of my photos in quadrants of the “X” on the cover. An alternative would have been to do a checkerboard type of cover using many more images, but these would have become so small as to not be readily identifiable when reduced to thumbnail size. The alligator, swan, bison and  Cape buffalo photos amply demonstrated that I had done more with my muzzleloading guns that hunt deer.

The cover concepts for Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife, started off with a cartoon-like drawing showing a large open mouth with tonsils and teeth from which the printed words “You’re fired,” emerged.  This concept amused me, but professional book consultants informed me that it would not be well received by bookstore buyers or by individuals who might have recently gone through such a traumatic experience.

I had taken a good photo at dawn from my New York City hotel room on the 23rd floor of the Steward Hotel where I had an exterior balcony. I have seen many business books with buildings on the cover and thought that this might be a possible shot.  However, the image was very dark and I, with some help from one of my Quantum Leap correspondents, did a better job of enhancing the color pallet to make a more striking image. I shopped this around as a potential cover, but mostly got an “O hum” response. This translated into, “Yes you could use it, but it is not particularly original or appealing.”

I am no artist, but I did a sketch showing an older man standing on a loading dock with a shield fending off a series of arrows labeled with words related to the current employment climate like “downsized” and “redundant.” On my drawing I showed a large knife on the man’s belt, a pallet in front of him with boxes labeled “ship today,” and multiple arrows coming at him. When this went through the review process, I was informed that there were too many elements, and that simpler was better. I posted the drawing on Fiverr and received 15 responses from people who said that they could do the cover. The one I selected had a drawing to represent her, and it appeared that she would have the skills to produce the cover.

This turned out to be a much worse experience that I had expected. Although my illustrator ultimately produced a usable result, it did not include a better rendition of my sketch, as I requested; but a photo image of me that I took thinking that she just wanted a model from which to make her drawing. Instead she used Photoshop to produce an image. Various elements had to be corrected such as her misspelling my name  as Wm. Hovey Smitt, and it took four tries for her to get my name on the spine of the book. Although the cover I accepted was not altogether my concept, I could see that it might be made to work if all of the elements I needed in the cover could be incorporated in a usable manner. She did/does have excellent skills with managing images, changing out colors, even though she apparently could not draw and seemed to have real difficulty in understanding my instructions.

If you are going to create a cover for your book, I think that it should look like no other in that category. That is difficult. Whatever might be said of my cover it is different. It does carry the title and the necessary other information. The downsides are it is “messy” with a lot of elements that seem extraneous, such as the rock wall. My image is also not as sharp as it might have been had I known it was going to be used this way. The golden shield is interesting, a visual focal point and draws attention away from the title. It could also be said that the non-uniform golden background is meaningless to most viewers. My dress certainly does not look like an authority figure for a business book. The fact that an identifiable male figure is shown might turn off some women buyers, and it is women who purchase most books.

With all the foregoing being acknowledged, I like the fact that the figure is both male and not readily identifiable as being any particular individual. I was trying for an “every man” image here, rather than a Wall Street tycoon. This is a man defending himself against an onslaught of potentially adverse events by shielding himself by starting his own business. The rolled-up shirt sleeves and defiant stance indicates that he is ready to fight and do battle to defend his, and his family’s future. It will take hard work, and he is ready to do it.

I fully acknowledge that there are women in the workplace, and they have their own issues. I do not feel that it is desirable to make every thing written so sex neutral so as to lose impact or meaning. Men and women do see and experience things differently. While much in my book is applicable to both men and women, it is slanted towards men mainly because I write from my experiences, and I am a guy.  There is a need for a similar book for women that speaks particularly of the challenges faced by women as both workers and managers. Some of the chapters in the present book could be used, but new chapters would need to be written covering things like managing work and child bearing and rearing; divorce, remarriage and reconnecting; privacy issues; pay differentials; workplace discrimination; and sexual harassment that have no place in the present book. These issues need to be addressed separately in a follow-up book that might be co-authored by a women who has gone through these experiences. If there is such out there, please contact me. Similarly, there needs to be another follow-up title written for teens and 20-somethings co-written with someone who has gone through their particular set of experiences.  I am actively seeking co-authors for both titles.

The book manuscript is in the hands of a designer-editor that I have known for more than a decade who will handle the details about getting the softcover published with Amazon’s Create Space. I will publish the E-book version sometimes later with Book Baby, so that I have some representation of the title available throughout the world.

I used my Profit imprint on the spine, which is my U.S. registered trademark. It is rendered in Algerian Font in gold. This will be used to identify all of my business-related titles and has already been used in conjunction with my previous booklet, Ideas for New Businesses: Finding Ideas for Starting Your Million or Billion Dollar Business.” This book was published in 2015, and many of the ideas expressed in it were incorporated as a chapter in Create You Own Job Security.

Advanced copies Create Your Own Job Security may now be ordered using the PayPal button below:

As a promotional offer I will send anyone who request it an E-mailed copy of the Table of Contents, Preface and Chapter 17 which is Love Your Work and Live Longer.

Super Bonus

I will also do a free 15-minute consultation on business matters. Please state what you want to discuss when you contact me below.

 

Those who recreate in the outdoors often already own equipment that may be used to start their own businesses. In this particular case I am using a winch on my small-footprint Ford Ranger to pull weed trees from around the foundation of my house and out of my yard. In any large city were people are flipping older properties there will often be unwanted saplings that have started to grow next to foundations and along fence lines that need to be removed.

By using a small truck instead of the biggest, baddest truck on the block, you will be able to get into tight places where larger vehicles cannot and cause less damage to the yard. With a removable winch that can be attached to either end of the vehicle and the use of snatch blocks and tripods, trees can be removed from places that cannot be directly approached with a vehicle. So long as the winch operating cable is long enough to reach the winch and the winch can be anchored to a firm foundation, it can be used to remove these trees. This reach can be extended even further by using other lengths of cable attached to the winch’s hook or even by taking the winch off the truck, chaining it to a firm base and using it in this detached fashion.

This video also illustrates the use of a short length of chain which is used to make four wraps around the trunk of even small saplings and then tied with an overhand knot. This allows the winch cable to be hooked onto a strong chain, rather than to a length of cable where the loops are held by small clamps. The chain hook-up not only was more successful than using the cable, but many times stronger. The chain is much less likely to break while under stress than the cable-clamp connection. In any event the operator, and anyone else, should be well away from the tree being pulled.

Getting these one-half to two-inch trees pulled allows the smaller materials to be cut off with lawnmowers which will either suppress grown or kill the unwanted trees and shrubs. Using this technique I was able to extract some trees where the cable-wrapping method that I had previously used had failed or only broke the trees off, rather than pulled them. This was helpful in that the regrown tree often branched when it regrew and provided a wider base and low limbs which provided a firm grip for pulling-up the tree. Several of the trees that I successfully extracted had been stripped in previous attempts when the cable just ran up the trunk of the bent-over sapling and stripped off some bark and limbs.  You can view the video below:

How and how much do you charge for such a service? I suggest that you charge on a travel expenses plus a fee for each tree pulled. Depending on the market and the difficulty of the set up, that fee could be from $20 to $50 per tree. The maximum size of the tree that you would be able to pull would be about 2-inches in diameter. Anything larger would need to be cut off and poisoned or grubbed out. The most difficult situation would be in an urban area where there was a two-foot distance between buildings that had to be cleaned. In this event the winch can be taken off the truck, attached to a railroad tie braced on the buildings and operated with an extended power cable connecting the truck with the winch. Because of the nature of the operation, the safety of the public and to prevent someone from walking away with your winch, this now turns into a two-person operation with additional labor costs.

If a builder or property owner needs your services he will require a bid for your work with time start and completion dates. This would need to be turned in and often approved before you start work. You can try for half of your charges on signing and  the remainder on completion, but most commonly you will be paid after submitting an invoice at the end of your work.

This is an example of one type of business opportunity that I describe in my forthcoming book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife which will be available in August.  I am accepting prepaid orders for the book which may be made by using the PayPal button below. I also have a Bonus Offer that includes a Free e-mailing of the Table of Contents, Preface and a Book Chapter, Love Your Work and Live Longer. There is also a Super Bonus for the first 25 to respond which is a Free 15-minute telephone consultation.  To receive either reply below and describe what you would like to receive or discuss. I will reply and set up a time and date for the consultation.

 

 

One of the seminal events in my life was watching the 1952 broadcasts of NBC’s  Victory at Sea on our family TV set. I was born on December 10, 1941, thee days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I have some early memories of the war years and when it was over. Those who served were coming home, but not all of them. One of my mother’s brothers were among those who did not return alive.

When I saw this 3-disc set in the $3.95 bin at WalMart I bought it and watched all 26 episodes over three evenings. Now at 76, rather than 11, and after having served in the U.S. Army as an Engineer Officer myself, I have a different appreciation of what I seeing.

While it is true that, “History is written by the victors,” sufficient time had passed between the end of the war in 1945 and the production of this series in 1952 that a lot of the war-time propaganda aspects of period movies was gone. After the war there was the opportunity to use materials filmed by all sides of the conflict, and to see combat footage where sometimes a thousand men were were instantly killed when a troop transport was sunk. Not that the individual shots of the dead and wounded on all sides were any less gripping. This was film taken at the time of the events of real men and women in great peril, fighting and dying for their fellows, countries and causes.

Victory at Sea starts with some glimpses of the pre-war years and the American build-up in men and arms during the war. In the first disc there are a number of scenes of volunteers reporting for their physicals. To a man, they were all slim to skinny. As a nation we would be very hard pressed to find equal numbers of similarly physically fit young men in today’s United States. These men appeared to be largely 18-20-years-old.  Many were farm kids, brought up with a life hard physical work; but even those who were not, appeared in much better shape than their same-age peers today.  Throughout the entire movie almost no one is overweight.

The full measure of live combat, messy, dirty, confused, and deadly is shown as the series follows the war years in both Europe and Asia. Again I was struck with the enormous amount of personal physical effort required to fight in the jungles of New Guinea and Burma, the deserts of North Africa, the nearly barren islands of the Aleutians, and the on many islands of the Pacific.  Sometimes these combatants are identified as belonging to “The Greatest Generation,” because they knew danger and sacrifice and did what they did anyway, knowing that any second they might lie dead in the putrid soil of some green hell.

Those who want war and speak of easy victories have very often never seen it. This series of videos shows war, and if you look it is very easy to see yourself as one of those sea-sick troopers waiting for the door of their landing craft to drop so they could storm Hitler’s Fortress Europe. They would be greeted not by rose peddles and flags, but by a hail of machine-gun bullets already peppering the steel door of the landing craft. There were also those in all branches of service who were sent on missions with only a slight possibility that they would return alive. Their enlistments were not for a year or two years, but for the duration of the war or such time that they were so crippled by physical or mental injures that they were no longer, “fit for service.”

Are such men and women as they still in existence in the United States? I am confident that the answer is, “Yes,” given similar circumstances where our nation was attached or threatened with attack.  Another message delivered by Victory at Sea is that despite being dealt a hard blow at Pearl Harbor, losing the Philippines and having the Japanese occupy a part of the Aleutian Islands; America recovered, fought simultaneous wars in Europe and Asia and emerged as a victor, only to face new threats. One time allies like The Soviet Union and China became foes and one-time foes Japan and Germany became friends.

Given the ever changing political climate and the failure of The United Nations to serve as a world-governing body that is effective enough to keep peace,  no one knows what perils that the United States will face in the future. One thing that is amply demonstrated in Victory at Sea is that if we are attacked, we will defend ourselves and continue to fight until our opponent is defeated.  Never understate America’s resolve or our ability to survive and ultimately prevail.  This is the greatest lesson that Victory at Sea has to teach Americans and the world.

If watching these videos has inspired you to take advantage of the life opportunities that many of those shown on the video never lived to have, I am accepting prepaid orders for my new book Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife which may be made by using the PayPal button below.  I also have a Bonus Offer that includes a Free e-mailing of the Table of Contents, Preface and a Book Chapter, Love Your Work and Live Longer. There is also a Super Bonus for the first 25 to respond which is a Free 15-minute telephone consultation.  To receive either reply below and describe what you would like to receive or discuss. I will reply and set up a time and date for the consultation.

 

 

 

 

 

If you know what the objects are in this photograph, there are two job openings at the Master or Journeyman and Trainee levels in my home town in Central Georgia. Sandersville is located 90 miles from Atlantic beaches, about the same distance from Atlanta and about 150 miles from the North Georgia mountains. There are large recreational lakes nearby owned by Georgia Power, excellent hunting and fishing and one of the longest and most liberal deer seasons in the nation where we may take 12 deer a year with bow, crossbow, pistol, and all types of black-powder firearms. While we do have occasional snow, our Winters are mild and our Springs are beautiful.

We are blessed in Washington County to be located on a raised upland that is not ravaged by periodic flooding, does not have large earthquakes, is only occasionally impacted by winter snow and ice storms, is free from large-scale forest fires, is not prone to mud slides and consequently has low insurance costs. Our soils are fertile and our woodlands are vast with relatively inexpensive land prices compared to other parts of the nation.

Small town community living in the Deep South proceeds at a somewhat relaxed pace compared to the nation’s urban centers. While all of the cultural features and available activities of big-city life are not so readily at hand, they are available with a little travel. There are excellent educational institutions at all levels available in branch facilities within 30 miles and by extension courses from Universities anywhere in the world.

We are and always have been a multi-ethnic community that has been noted in recent decades for its racial and cultural tolerance. The county’s thriving Kaolin industry has brought workers from all over the world to support the state’s billion-dollar export of this product, and Sandersville is the state’s largest center of production.

Not counting the Native American part of my ancestry, my family has been in this community since the opening of the county for settlement in the 1790s. I trace Sandersville’s grown in a 30-minute audio CD, “My Home Town,” which is available below. In the CD,  I walk around the town square and talk about the town’s history and how it has been impacted by individuals from all over the world. As a Professional Geologist, I have worked throughout North America and lived is places as different as Alaska and Arizona, yet, I came back here to stay.

If you are interested in applying for these jobs, use the contact form below, identify the objects in the photo and briefly outline your work experience. This information will be forwarded to the company that needs the workers.

If you would like to purchase a copy of My Home Town, you may do so using the PayPal button below.

 

 

 

Business topics are often dull and treated in a mind-numbing manner with power points, bar graphs and columns of statistical data and analysis. This is so often the case that it is refreshing for a viewers to see two unrelated objects in juxtaposition as a humorous device to attract their attention while something more serious is being described.

In the following video I describe some new pieces of gear that I am using for this year’s turkey hunting. Rather that doing this straight-up,  I introduce the outrageous notion that my search for effective turkey-hunting methods might also include something gleamed from Dan Brown’s best-selling book The Lost Symbol, and also use his new book to introduce my own forthcoming title, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife.

We turkey hunters get desperate in our efforts to attract the cagiest of America’s wild creatures to within gun range. Many times when we go out into the woods we do not even see or hear a turkey, even though they are all around us. Our southern Toms are getting particularly shut-beaked because of an increasing coyote population who like to eat turkeys as well as we do, and my turkeys rarely respond to calls.

In Dan Brown’s books, he evokes problem-solving methods and the unraveling of symbols to solve desperate situations. In desperation we turkey hunters have been known to purchase a truckload of gear over the decades in our attempts to even the odds between us and the bird. I often carry, for example, a pair of turkey decoys, five or more calls of different types, a cushion, seat, stand and a muzzleloading shotgun and pistol along with all the things it takes to make them work. Since this is often a 5-6 hour event, I am further encumbered with a modest amount of food and water. All this is to say nothing of the camo clothing and accessories that we wear to keep from being seen by the birds’ 6-power vision.

Based on all of this, it is not so outrageous to think that some of the problem-solving techniques expressed in Brown’s book might be of use. In The Lost Symbol, Brown introduces the reader to secret squares in which the numbers added together up, down, across or diagonally reach the same sum, something that was already well known in Medieval times. If our turkeys have  lost any symbols I have failed to find them, even though the book was a good read while I was waiting for them to show up.

I am continuing to experiment with the application of Wild Turkey as an attractant by taking a tablespoon of it in a mixed drink in the evening prior to turkey hunting. I have killed turkeys after such treatments, but many more times I have not. Its application as an attractant, like everything else in regards to turkey hunting only works sometime and more often does not achieve the desired result.

You can see a video of this hunting episode at: https://youtu.be/Dh-3DzjhfOA.

My use of Wild Turkey Bourbon as a turkey attractant is even more far-fetched than Brown’s book. The only thing it has to do with turkey hunting is to offer a degree of solace in the midst of a two-month-long season that has yet to produce any birds for the table. Even experts who hunt everyday in different states all around the nation sometimes take 15 or 20 hunts to bag a bird, even though they only show their successful hunts on videos.

One of the author’s successful turkey hunts with an original 16-gauge Brunswick smoothbore musket made in the 1850s recovered from the Royal Arsenal of Nepal. 

To use some humor to poke fun at some of the more elaborately contrived turkey hunting tools and methods adds a welcome change-up to the usual advertising videos and infomercials, retains interests in my brand and keeps viewers looking for more. You can use some similar adaptations to promote your own services or products.

I am accepting advance orders for my new business book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife,  which may be made by using the PayPal button below. I also have a Bonus Offer that includes a Free e-mailing of the Table of Contents, Preface and a Book Chapter, Love Your Work and Live Longer. There is also a Super Bonus for the first 25 to respond which is a Free 15-minute telephone consultation.  To receive either reply below and describe what you would like to receive or discuss. I will arrange a time and date for the consultation.

Like anyone else on the internet I am constantly bombarded with spam. A large number of them are dire warnings that my fill-in-the-blank account is in some sort of dire peril if I do not immediately update my information by immediately responding to this E-mail. When I hover over the sender’s address I find that these mailings are from individuals whose addresses end in “.edu,” meaning that the server that sent the message was associated with some educational institution.  I have received messages that my Yahoo, Google, Chase Bank, American Express, Wells Fargo, WordPress, Facebook, etc. accounts must be immediately fixed by some service that only those sending the E-mail can supply. Sometimes these are even accompanied by photos of buildings, the companies’ logo or other readily identified objects.

This type of fraud is within the FBI’s mandate, but the FBI does not have the manpower or interests to investigate these 100s of thousands of fraudulent e-mailings. It would seem like the companies who names are being used would also have an interest in stopping this practice and in prosecuting those who are making illegal use of their names, but they do not bother with making cases against this type of fraud either, even though it is having a adverse impact on their customers.

How is this type of fraud done at Universities and Colleges?

There are three obvious ways:

1. Students wanting to help defray some of the increasingly high costs of getting a college education may be conducting these types of fraud to provide income. They can convince themselves that this is an “innocent crime” in that anyone’s loses will be covered by insurance or by the credit card companies who have ample resources to cover the loss. The more bold among them will plant viruses in their target’s E-mail accounts to possibly gain access to bank accounts, demand payment to unfreeze a computer or crash the entire computer just for fun.

2. Since student’s names are directly associated with these addresses usually in the form of “first name.last name or initial.letter designation of institution.edu” such as in jason.d@xyz.edu, or jasondeadhead@xyz.edu, it is very easy to go to an old university yearbook from five-years ago and look at the names of the graduating class and reconstruct the likely e-mail addresses that the students were assigned since they often had a set format. Running these names against a algorithm of commonly used computer passwords will discover some e-mail accounts that are still active, even though the students have not been at the institutions for years.  Then it is a very simple manner to forward any e-mails received to any address in the world.  Now that Jason has left the university he has different e-mail addresses at home and at work and will not think it strange should he find that he can no longer access the e-mail account that he used at school.

3. The University’s computer system can be hacked into directly, and any number of fictional names might be entered and those e-mails forwarded anywhere else. On the surface, nothing would appear to be wrong with the system except that there are students in the server that never attended the institution.

How can fraud operations like this be corrected or reduced?

While I am speaking particularly about Universities and Colleges in this post, exactly the same techniques could be used for computer servers associated with Grammar and High Schools or any other institution.

1. Students should receive a unique e-mail address that is not so readily discovered.

2. Once a student leaves an institution that address should be completely inactivated.

3. Institutional computers should be periodically scanned to insure that those addresses listed are for those who are students, faculty or off-site researchers who need access to the server.

4. A central database for the addresses of these fraud-extracting accounts should be established so that the Provost of the institutions can be notified of how prevalent these activities are on their university servers so that corrective action can be taken. This is not an innocent activity. These educational institutions were founded to promote the public good, and they should not be partners, even unwilling ones, to illegal activities.

5. Yahoo, G-mail and other mail providers who have already identified spam have the addresses of suspected spammers accounts and should be mandated to contact colleges, universities and schools and inform them of these illegal activities. They have the money and resources to perform this public service, and it would seem that it would be in their self-interest to do so.

Can this be a business?

Since this blog is about business, and I state that, “There is nothing in human experience that cannot be turned into profit by an inventive mind,” is there a business opportunity here? The answer is, YES.

Step 1. Start a blog titled “College Computer-Assisted Fraud.”

Step 2. Invite anyone who has received an e-mail with a  .edu ending to send you a letter containing the address and the subject material like “Yahoo shut down, Verify your Chase account” or the like, and collect a few thousand responses.

Step 3. Identify the institutions from the addresses.

Step 4. Contact the Provosts of the institutions and offer to sell them the listings that you have received that came from the school’s server and provide updates as new addresses are reported.

Step 5. Form partnership with e-mail services.

Step 5. Write and sell a newsletter of such fraud to subscribers.

Anyone with access to a computer can provide this service from a home office anywhere in the world. The only other thing required to make it work is time and publicity.  I will be happy to work with any interested party on this as part of my Profit series of companies.

My book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife, is in the final stages of completion and should be ready in August. I am offering signed copies with free shipping for advanced orders. You may place your order using the PayPal button below.

I am accepting advance orders for my new business book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife,  which may be made by using the PayPal button below. I also have a Bonus Offer that includes a Free e-mailing of the Table of Contents, Preface and a Book Chapter, Love Your Work and Live Longer. There is also a Super Bonus for the first 25 to respond which is a Free 15-minute telephone consultation.  To receive either reply below and describe what you would like to receive or discuss. I will arrange a time and date for the consultation.

 

 

I just initiated a blog, Take Me Off Facebook, which is a new type of business where the person who is initiating it provides a linking service between those who want their Facebook information modified or removed and those who are able the provide the service. The person who provides the link-up collects a fee from both parties and generally facilitates the service.

This type of business is increasingly common in this interconnected age. As more people use more services on the Web it will be come increasingly important, and profitable, for others with IT knowledge in this particular field to assist them in removing or modifying content. In fact I would not be surprised that Facebook itself soon launches this as part of their paid-for services.

You can visit the new blog at: takemeofffacebook.com. The first post made on it is below:

This new site is to provide a platform to link-up those who would like to have their Facebook presence modified or removed with those who have the skills to provide this service. It is my ultimate objective to find a group of skilled Facebook experts who can adeptly manipulate the platform and sell this domain to them. In the meantime if you would liked to be linked with such a person or if you can provide the service respond by using the contact button in the banner (of the other website).

There will be a $10.00 charge to provide the link-up. There will also be fees charged by the person supplying the service that must be agreed upon by both parties. The person whose Facebook profile is being removed or modified should do their due diligence to insure that the person they are allowing access to sensitive information is trustworthy. Users will have the opportunity to rank their service provider and ultimately a list of trusted providers will be assembled, but none is available at present.

The generation of this blog and capture of this domain name is an illustration of the potential business opportunities that are all around us every day that anyone can use to their own advantage and profit. For information about my new book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan To Start Your Own Security at Midlife, look at my Home Page on this blog or go to: createyourownjobsecurity.com.

I am accepting advance orders for my new business book, Create Your Own Job Security: Plan to Start Your Own Business at Midlife,  which may be made by using the PayPal button below. I also have a Bonus Offer that includes a Free e-mailing of the Table of Contents, Preface and a Book Chapter, Love Your Work and Live Longer. There is also a Super Bonus for the first 25 to respond which is a Free 15-minute telephone consultation.  To receive either reply below and describe what you would like to receive or discuss. I will arrange a time and date for the consultation.

In 2012 I was doing my podcast radio show, “Hovey’s Outdoor Adventures,” and conceived of an episode where I walked around the town square in Sandersville, Georgia, and recorded an oral history. I was prompted to do this because I came to the realization that a community’s oral history is largely lost in three generations. While what I had personally experienced was still fresh in my mind, the stories told to me by my living relatives were many fewer and the stories related to them by older generations were very few indeed.

Although I will admit that it was something of a strange sight for an older guy to be walking around the in the middle of the night talking loudly to himself, my 2:00 AM recording session was useful because of the general lack of street noise. I started at the corner where my grandparent’s house once stood before it was moved in order to build a new post office during the depression. As a child the pink Georgia marble used in that structure always impressed me and partly prompted me to become a Geologist.

That house witnessed Gen. W.T. Sherman’s army coming into the town and the resistance offered by Confederate General Wheeler’s few troops who were facing an army of some 35,000 men converging on the town from two different directions. A skirmish was fought among the gravestones surrounding  the Methodist church and around the courthouse. The courthouse and most of the commercial buildings around the square were burned, but my family’s home was spared because it was used to billet Union officers.

Some interesting natural events also occurred, as when a sinkhole opened up one night in the barn and two mules fell in. Unfortunately one of them broke a leg and could not be recovered.  There was also an entrance to a small cave under one of the buildings. The square also saw ice skating on a frozen sheet of ice under the town’s water tower after it had frozen to the point of overflowing.

An array of business had been located in the store fronts around the square including bars prior to prohibition and grocery, variety and drug stores along with professional offices for lawyers, doctors and dentists. The Rawlings Sanitarium  anchored one corner of the square which provided regional medical care. This was the place where I was born, after being delivered by my uncle.

On Saturdays the stores were open until midnight and the streets were so thronged with people that you could hardly elbow your way up the sidewalk. In sharp contrast today the town looks practically abandoned with only a few people being seen going from their cars to local eateries, banks or businesses at any given time.

These observations and many more are recorded on the 30-minute CD, “My Home Town.” If you are interested in how a small southern town evolved, the diverse population it attracted and how it coped with dramatic social events you can purchase the CD using the PayPal button below.