KNOWLEDGE PICKER'S ARCHIVE

Pick 10 - Surveys

I was just about to give up my daily search for hidden value when a Survey request popped into my e-mail inbox. Normally, I would tag such an e-mail as "spam" and flush it away but this happened to be my monthly invitation to participate in a Harris Poll Survey. I must be in some special class of grumpy old men that some merchant wants to "friend" because on two previous survey requests they backed away soon as I reported my gender and age. Today's Survey not only continued well past that point but got into such areas as my race, annual family income, married, single or divorced...well you get the picture.

This Survey asked about purchases of commodity items I may have made in April, May, and June of this year. It covered everything from household appliances to auto accessories. Even included items for gardening and do-it-yourself projects. I went through at lest four of these categorical lists, Each had at least 20 specific items. With much embarrassment, I had to check "Did not purchase any of these" before I hit pay dirt on the last list. It covered gardening and outdoor items. I was just about to check the "Did not purchase..." box when I spotted something that counted: "preenial/annual plants". I remembered that I had purchased two tomatoe plants from the nearby big box store. Don't these qualify as "preenial plants" I asked myself and happily checked that box.

It worked!. That response coaxed out a host of new questions: Was this a perennial or annual plant? Was this perennial plant a flower or a vegetable? And so it went til they popped the final question of the series: How much did you pay? Where did you purchase them? It was like hitting the jackpot on the slots! Each answer triggered two or more new questions. Finally, they closed the Survey part and asked me if I cared to answer a few questions about my "experience" with taking the survey. They posed these questions in a manner that reminded me of a neophyte nurse preparing you for an injection...afraid that you will scream out in pain and that will finish her career. So I responded to: How satisfied are you that our questions were easy to understand and to complete? Were the questions interesting? And so on.

By now you are ready to ask me: "Where was the hidden value?" That is what I am still trying to figure out.
The very last question in this part of the Survey was "Did you find this survey valuable?"
I kid you not!

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Pick 9 - Touchpad

I was clearing out some old office equipment today and came across my old [circa 1980] Desk Top 2500 "Touch Tone" telephone. It reminded me that the keypad layout, that is still used today on the iPhone, was standardized when the dual-tone multi-frequency system in the new push-button telephone was introduced in the 1960s. The keypad gradually replaced the rotary dial. To anyone like myself who worked in a business office between the mid-60's to the mid-90's, this phone was as commonplace as TI Calculators. And that is what got me thinking about the hidden value of the knowledge embedded in that keypad. I happen to have a desk size electronic calculator sitting right next to my headset telephone in my modern home office. They have been there for the past 5 years yet I never noticed that the keypad layout on the telephone is upside down compared to the calculator keypad.
That piqued my curiosity so I consulted Wikipedia. Here is what I discovered...

The Desk Top 2500 like most other phones of that era was designed by Donald Genaro from Henry Dreyfuss Associates. Much like Steve Jobs, Genaro felt having user acceptance of his design counted more than mere functionality. This placed him at odds with the engineers on how the keypad should be set up. Calculators had preceded the telephone in the use of a "bottoms up" layout. It had a buy-in from accountants and engineers who used calculators. However, only a small percentage of telephone users had calculators at that time. For this reason, he felt, they were likely to read keypad numbers like reading a book: left to right; top to bottom. Genaro faced a lot of resistance to "top down" layout but insisted it was better suited for the dialing than the calculator layout. To prove his point a great deal of user testing was conducted before the decision to have the number "1" placed in the upper left corner of the touchpad was approved. That is a hidden value we take for granted today because PCs have long since replaced hand held calculators. And who would have thought that having the letters on the touchpad follow the the same top down pattern as the numbers would enable texting while driving. But that is a hidden value for another day...

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Pick 8 - Microwave

It can warm up my coffee and thaw out frozen foods. It can heat a dinner platter and pop corn. Most recently I learned how to make perfect scrambled eggs or an omelet with it by breaking the cooking time into three 30 second bursts and scrambling or folding after the first two bursts. Indeed. My little counter top microwave oven does everything but toast bread. Yet none of those capabilities have hidden value. They are all apparent and easy to do. The real value hidden in my microwave can only be found when I get my monthly electric bill. That little guy is very stingy on his consumption of Watts.

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Pick 7 - Mailbox

It is just a simple box on a wooden post at the end of my driveway. Except for the one time purchase and installation price it has not cost me a cent to maintain over the last 15 years. It serves a very simple purpose: store outgoing mail for pick-up by the USPS and hold incoming mail until I can pick it up.Moreover, it currently works for me six days a week. Its hidden value lies in that fact that I can send a greeting card to someone anywhere in the USA, even Hawaii, for for less than half a dollar. Usually it will make it from my mailbox to the mailbox of the person I am greeting within 3 business days.

Sure I can take the same card to FedEx or UPS and they could promise delivery the next day. But my point is that I would have to "take" it to them unless I live within walking distance to a FedEx or UPS pick up box or center. Add to that a minimum service charge of 6 or 7 dollars and it is easy to see the hidden value I have in my personal USPS mailbox.

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Pick 6 - Desk Top PC

Today I found hidden value in my old desk top PC. It is an Acer Aspire 517. Back in the day when I retired and decided to launch a small business from my home, I wanted a work station that equaled the capability of the one I had used on the job.
Although the Acer did not quite match the processing power, it provided both the storage capacity and the network capability (Ethernet and wireless) that I required.

That was before the iPad, Smart phones, high speed cable internet and Wi-Fi. So you can imagine how often I pondered upgrading. The only thing stopping me from rushing out and getting the latest tech tools is money. My home business has not taken off and likely will not until the economy improves. With no cash flow and no desire to borrow money, I can only dream about upgrades.

To keep my feet planted on the ground I recall what a Sage once advised: "If you want more...desire less." But that turns out not to be so bad. In taking a second look at my old desk top I realized that while it may not have the portability and glitz of an iPad, it can do everything an iPad does and even more. I spend most of my writing time in my cozy basement office--not on the road. My high speed cable internet connection puts the world at my fingertips. From my humble office, I can reach out to anyone, anywhere in the world. Moreover, the Acer still provides VoIP. It can handle e-books, YouTube, and streaming movies. I can even record my own DVDs or download photos from my digital camera. That is the hidden value in my old but not obsolete desktop PC. Best of all...it is paid for and requires very little maintenance.

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Pick 5 - My Beagle

Today I found hidden value in my pet Beagle. Stanley is now 14 years old or 98 in dog years. He was only 4 months old when my wife and I rescued him from the local SPCA. Stanley and I share a lot of history--both good and bad. I was a young 56 when Stanley came to live with us. Two years earlier we had put our Black Lab Hosier to rest. He had been with us for 17 years and neither my wife nor I wanted to start down that path again. However, with an empty nest, my soon-to-be married daughter insisted that a dog would be good company for me and I would benefit from the exercise gotten by having to walk the dog every day. Note the Hosier was a backyard dog that never took to the concept of walking around the neighborhood. Stanley was just the opposite. He would wait for me to arrive home from work. Soon as I opened the door he would give me that "let's go now" look and even in the dark of winter, I found myself walking the neighborhood making frequent pauses for a sniff break and prepared to collect whatever soft, dark scent messages Stanly decided to drop that day. He took special delight in selecting the most pretentious places. Never in secluded areas where I could quickly clean and go. Usually it was in well lit easily viewed places so if neighbors were taking in that view it was even better from Stanly's perspective. And that brings me to the hidden value part of this message.

No I am not going to sell you on the notion that cleaning up after a Beagle makes one humble or that having to bend over is good for the joints. The hidden value is in finally understanding Stanley's perspective of his daily walks. People who study such things say that dogs communicate by their liquid and solid droppings in much the same way we use e-mail and texting. Their sense of smell is so acute that one sniff of fecal matter can tell them the sex, age, health, breed, and mental state of the dog that left it and even things about the dog's owner. And just as we humans categorize the status of each other, dogs do the same both of themselves and their owners. So for Stanley to select the most traveled and visible places to leave his calling card indicates that he is very proud of me and enjoys parading me around the neighborhood bragging to all of his acquaintances. He is such a dog!

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Pick 4 - Waitress

Today I found hidden value in the person of the waitress who served our "after church breakfast group" Although this group of six couples and two singles has been to this restaurant only a few times this year, this waitress not only remembers our particular likes and dislikes but makes each of us feel as though we are invited guests at her home. The part about remembering our likes and dislikes is especially valuable since the median age of this group is around 65 and sometimes we do not remember our favorite dishes from week to week. But that is not the hidden value I found today. The hidden value lies in the way she makes each of us feel that she has all the time in the world as she prompts us for our orders. Sixteen of us order off the menu and often want extras like honey for our oatmeal or sugar free syrup for our pancakes. If we were her only table on a slow Monday morning it would still be a challenge, but this is a busy Sunday morning and ours is not her only table.

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Pick 3 - Pocket Change

The goal of this blog is unique. I want to help anyone, anywhere find the hidden value in their surroundings whether they are at home, at work, on the train, or alone with their thoughts. This is not a spiritual endeavor or a self-improvement plan. It is simply a way to find the value in the people, places, and things that we see everyday.

I intend to post a new tip every day so we will not have reruns of old material just because I took a vacation. In fact, if I took a vacation and did not bother to search for hidden value: I would be telling you to do as I say--not as I do. And that would be very foolish.

Since this is the first day of my endeavor, I will begin by explaining what I mean by value and why I think it is often hidden from us.

Let's say you have some coins in your pocket. This pocket change consists of 1 quarter, 2 dimes, 3 nickels, and 5 pennies. If I were to ask what is the value of this pocket change, everyone would answer "65-cents." That is the apparent value of this collection. But what if one of the dimes happens to be a 1942 Mercury dime.
It's apparent value is 10-cents, but its hidden value could be closer to 12000-cents.
Why? because it is 90% pure silver and because there were not many dimes minted in 1942. So it has both commodity value and collectable value--hidden value for those who are unaware of these two facts.

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