#Weblinks for Nov. 4

This 4-minute video made me emotional the first time I saw it. I love the lesson that it teaches about kindness and thinking of helping, rather than harming, others.

"America is a place for winners, not whiners." This is a quote I found on this website. Are you part of the 53 percent?

If you're like other readers of my blog, or any blog for that matter, you're skimming this text. Nearly 80 percent of web readers scan text; while less than 20 percent read word-by-word. And if you got to the end of this paragraph, congratulations you're probably one of those 20 percenters. Read more about your web reading habits and those of the scanners here.

What is Contact Pressure?

Earlier this year I started tracking a personal metric that I call "Contact Pressure." This metric measures in a real way when I am feeling most stressed at work. It's like a blood pressure reading for stress.


The blue line represents Quadrant 1 emails that need a response soon. This is in reference to Stephen Covey's suggestion to categorize work into one of four quadrants of urgency. I keep my general email inbox clean at the end of each day, moving emails that still need a response (usually requiring more than a few minutes of thought) into a folder called Quadrant 1. At the end of each day, I track the number of emails in this folder.

The red line is the callbacks or to-do items that are on my calendar or in my contact database management program. The unattended-to alerts I note at the end of each day as well.

As you can tell I'm currently not at a healthily contact pressure level. I would consider healthy more like 100 Q1s (or less) over 10 callbacks (or less).

How do I get myself out of this mess? This usually requires some extra time at the office with strict attention paid to doing the follow-ups that have built up over time. Unfortunately, this graph also sometimes discourages me from taking vacation or regret taking productive work trips, as I know they both set me behind.

I used Skitch, a screen capturing software program that partners with Evernote, to capture this image from Excel and add the notations you see. Skitch also makes it super easy to drag these saved images into Evernote for permanent storage.

I welcome any suggestions or tips readers may have to decrease my Contact Pressure or to change my workflow altogether.

Halloween pumpkins 2012

Our family has a tradition to carve pumpkins each year. My wife insists we continue it. The kids last long enough to get a picture of them helping and then we end up finishing the job.

Here's the designs we copied and cut out of the pumpkin carving kit we bought.

My wife made bats out of small pumpkins that we grew in our garden this year. I thought they were pretty cool too.

Happy Halloween!

Remember Charlie?

Occasionally my work as a dairy magazine editor takes me to places that are exotic, like the photo in the blog header from a trade mission to Dubai, or bumps me into famous people, like the interview I completed today.

Dr. Peter Ostrum is currently a veterinarian in a mixed animal practice in New York's Black River Valley. You will recognize Dr. Ostrum as Charlie, the main child character from the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder (1971).

Dr. Ostrum is back on screen again. This time he's participating in a reality web TV series called VetsOnCall. That's why I bumped into him. Dr. Ostrum's vet practice consults with 26,000 dairy cows in New York.

The new series follows several food animal veterinarians during their client calls and explains some of the everyday practices they do to care for these animals. It's an interesting series. Dr. Ostrum says two of the webisodes he's filmed are on YouTube. Two more that are already filmed will follow later. Depending on the success of the webisodes, more may be filmed.

"People are so far removed from where food is produced," he told me during the interview. "I thought this would be an excellent way for people to see what happens on large and small dairy farms – to see where milk comes from."

Dr. Ostrum says that as a child he enjoyed working with horses, even more than he liked acting. His passion for animals led to a career as a veterinarian. When I asked if he has found more fulfillment in his current career than as a movie actor, he said: "Absolutely. I've never looked back."

View Dr. Ostrum's webisodes here:

To operate or not to operate?

Pregnancy testing in cows

Thanks, "Charlie," for the interview.

UPDATE: Here's the story I wrote for Progressive Dairyman and that was published in our e-newsletter.

Preview: 2011-2012 Box Top program

Tomorrow will be a big day at my first-grade daughter's elementary school. We'll be giving each class their collection tin for the year and explaining the class collection prizes. At four different checkpoints throughout the year, classes have a chance to earn a class reward. They qualify for the prize if they reach a predetermined set of box tops collected. The first level is 500. Any class that collects this level of box tops by Oct. 15 will receive a snack for each student in the class during school.

The end-of-the-year, grand prize is a pizza party for the class that collects the most box tops. Box tops are measured in per-student metrics (total box tops/students in class).

My wife did an awesome job creating a billboard to keep track of it all throughout the year. I painted the background but the rest of it was all her. The whole thing is eye-catching.

Each week we will collect box tops on Friday, count them and update class totals by posting a piece of paper representing pepperonis on the pizzas. The number of pepperonis will roughly estimate the class with the most weeks submitting box tops, one of our end-of-the-year prizes. Hopefully this will help even out the workflow from the coordinators' standpoint.

I will update our progress and how the program is going as the year progresses.

Monday morning photo shoot

Inspired by a group of students and their blog, I'm attempting to get better at photography. I have a long way to go.

Gaining the mastery of shutter speed, aperture and film speed is my current quest. At the referral of a better-than-I photography friend, I've been watching Photoextremist.com's training models on these topics. My goal is to watch them through once each week and then shoot early in the morning after doing so to apply what I've learned. This morning wasn't the best shoot, but here is one of the photos I actually liked.

Better photos to follow in the future, I hope.

Why the name Box Top Dad?

A professional friend recently told me he'd visited this spot but didn't get the name of my blog. I then realized when launching this blog I didn't explain the reason for its name. So here it is.

I am the coordinator for the Box Tops for Education program at my daughter's elementary school in Jerome, Idaho. Never heard of it before? Of course, not the school, I'm talking about the program. You're probably more familiar with it than you might realize.

Think back to the time you poured your last bowl of Cheerios (or other favorite General Mills cereal). On top of the box, and sometimes lately even in one of the corners on the front of the box, is a postage-stamp-sized coupon outlined with a dotted line. The coupon or "box top" is worth 10 cents when a participating school submits it back to General Mills. Throughout both the school year and summer break, I coordinate our school's efforts to educate students and their families about the program, identify box tops on products they buy, clip and save them and get them into the school.

As one of my work colleagues said when I explained the program to her: "Oh, I thought there was some reason for those. I figured someone would want them. I felt guilty just throwing them away."

After reading this post and you find that you purchase items that have box tops on their packaging and usually just throw them away, please stop. Start collecting them in an envelope or plastic bag. Once you've got a few, please go and do one of two things.

• Find a student in your neighborhood and give them your collection. They should know what to do with them. If they don't know what to do with them, see the next option.

• Consider sending your envelope to me. Leave a comment on this post if you're interested in helping collect box tops for my daughter's school. I'll get in contact with you after you post.

To learn more about the Box Tops for Education program or to become a coordinator yourself, click here.

Remember everything, even fireworks

It's Wednesday and time for another Evernote use.

Evernote's tag line is "Remember everything." I'm finding out it's true.


After finding a few firework varieties my kids really enjoyed this year, I took pictures of the packaging of our at-home fireworks show after the sparks went out. I don't typically spend much on fireworks. (I think this year's show cost $20.) Next year I plan to pull up these pictures from Evernote while standing in line at the fireworks stand. I hope Evernote helps me spend my money next year to get the stuff my kids enjoyed the most and avoid fireworks they thought were duds.

Evernote Wednesday: Birthday gifts

Recently I celebrated a birthday. So for this week's Evernote Wednesday post, I thought I'd share my tips for both giving and getting gifts. First, giving them.

Ever walked through the store with your spouse and hear them say: "I like that!" or "I could use one of those!" Those moments often seem to advertise a great gift idea for the future. Of course, it's hard to remember them when birthdays, anniversaries or Christmas rolls around. But recently when one of those moments happens, I've been hanging behind in the aisle, waiting for my wife to turn the corner. Then I snap a photo with my iPhone and later upload the photo into a list called: Wife's gifts. I tag it with "gifts" for easy searching. If I ever think of something that would be a useful or fun gift when at home, I enter the item into the same note in plain text. So far shopping for gifts in 2011 has been much easier.

I've also been using it for myself. There's always things I need or want, but when birthday time comes around and people start asking, "What do you want?" I can rarely remember these things. Now I have a list. And with my parents or siblings or wife, I even feel comfortable e-mailing them the note from Evernote.

Maybe Evernote could help you avoid just-another-tie gifts.

Remembering Grandpa Cooley

I've had several compliments from office staff, readers and family about the editorial I wrote for the July 5th issue of Progressive Dairyman. I wrote it just after my grandfather passed away. I feel it may be helpful to some of this blog's readers as well. It's a good reminder about the mentality we should have with all of our family members. I share it with the hope it may be helpful to one of you out there.

Here's the link: http://www.progressivedairy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6638:always-say-hello-and-goodbye&catid=39:editorial&Itemid=65

Love you always, Grandpa. You will be missed.

New feature: Evernote Wednesday

Since 2009 I've been using Evernote to help me remember important, and even not so important, things in my life. The independent cloud-computing platform is free to use (up to 60 MB of new storage per month). I've slowly been learning how it helps me organize and remember things. In future Wednesday blog posts, I'd like to share how I'm using Evernote.

Oftentimes with new technology I get discouraged because the possibilities for use are so limitless that I don't know where to start. Evernote seemed this way to me, but I saw enough potential that I forced myself to use it. And once I did I discovered it really wasn't that difficult to use after all. Now I'm an Evernote believer, and I hope the examples I'll share will help you feel comfortable enough about Evernote to give it a try.

Example:

This past week my 90-year-old grandfather passed away. One of the many things that I admired about him was that he kept a daily journal. As part of Stage 3 of the grieving process (bargaining), I recommitted after his funeral to trying to keep a daily journal. But beyond just scribing a print journal, in today's age, video and audio journaling are more feasible. Partially inspired by the movie Avatar and the video journal the main character Jake does each time he returns from his avatar life, I decided I'd make one of my journal entries per week an audio one.

I use the Evernote app on my iPhone to record my voice describing the events of that past week and then attach it to a note to be saved into the program. I've started tagging the notes as "journal." Eventually I may add more tags related to the content of what I've recorded in my audio journal.

I hope to soon be able to read my grandpa's daily journal to learn more about his life. My hope is that one day my posterity may be able to also hear my journal in my own voice.

Cut down your shipping costs

If your PTO program pays to ship your Box Tops like ours does, you might want to consider this little tip to save some money.

Some official Box Tops are printed on corrugated cardboard. Often these Box Tops are submitted whole, with the Box Top printed on the top sheet of corrugated cardboard, corrugation in the middle and a bottom sheet of cardboard paper. (See example in photo to the right.) Huggies diaper boxes are the most common Box Top participant with this type of Box Top. And if you're school is like ours, it's one of the Top 3 submitted Box Tops each year. (Look for Box Top code HMD.)

However, if you gently peel away the corrugation you can remove only the Box Top layer from the cardboard. The corrugation is lightly glued at each ridge and will make a popping sound as you peel it away. It's almost as fun to do as popping bubble wrap, once you do it a time or two.

Removing the extra corrugation will save you on shipping cost. You won't be paying to ship more than two times the weight of the Box Top to send in corrugation and a bottom sheet of cardboard paper, both of which earn you nothing.

Heartfelt congrats to friend and fellow blogger

Often I follow or star blogs that catch my attention because of their cool content (such as this video about how get elected officials involved in your cause) but occasionally another blog will catch my attention because it's well-written, even for an amateur.

Noah Knoble is the sales representative for the printer we use to print El Lechero magazine, which is published by my company. He blogs about paper prices, new media and print industry news. But this past weekend he shared with everyone his incredible graduation story.

For several years, he worked and went to school to finish his college degree. And he finally did it. Way to go, Noah! From one hard-working dad to another, you rock!

You can read his story here.

Popsicles for top classes

Recently collected our school's Box Top collection cans from teachers' classrooms. Thankfully, many of them had already collected a few more even after the deadline we gave them to collect for our school competition. The top grade level in our school (first grade) got snow cones and the top class in each grade level got Popsicles. We made over $2,600 from the Box Top program this past year.

We also handed out Box Top collection sheets to all classes - one for each month during summer vacation. It's our first time trying out this method of collection, so we'll see how it goes.

Expiration dates

Just finished clipping the final round of box top collections for our 2010-2011 school year. Each class and grade is competing for the highest box top total collected. The winners will be rewarded with a treat in May.

As I went along tonight, I kept track of the expiration dates on the more than 500 box tops I clipped. I will attempt to keep these updated in the future.

Unless you're segregating box tops by expiration date, you could have any box tops with these expiration dates or earlier in your collection. Submitting groups of box tops before these dates will ensure you don't let leave some money on the table by submitting ineligible box tops.

These dates will also remain as a sidebar on this blog:

2011
June 1
June 30
Dec. 31

2012
June 1
June 30
July 31
Dec. 31

2013
Feb. 9
April 30
June 1
Dec. 31

2014
March 31
June 1
Dec. 31

2015
Dec. 31

I'm writing this blog post at 6:30 a.m. on my smartphone with one hand and a bottle to feed my 6-month-old son in the other. I've always thought that posts had to be typed, but maybe they can be texted. I'll have to hurry to finish texting before he's done as I haven't had much luck saving work midway on my phone and getting back to it again.

Jeff Foxworthy's Red Neck jokes inspired this post.

If you ask strangers for the #boxtop off the label of their used Avery notebooks, you might be a #boxtop coordinator.

This experience actually happened to me while sitting in a meeting. I was seated across from a man who had organized his agendas in an Avery notebook. He had left the purchasing label and its box top on the spine. After the meeting was over, I approached him, asked if I could have the label for its boxtop and then explained that I was my daughter's school's boxtop coordinator. At first he was confused, then just surprisingly dumbfounded that a man would be doing such a thing. Perhaps a woman wouldn't have gotten the same puzzled response?

What would you have done in that situation? What's your most awkward boxtop request moment?

My first follower

Thanks to Sarah Caldwell for being the first to follow this new blog. Sarah is the sister of one of my editors for Progressive Dairyman magazine. She will be graduating Penn State University this spring. From what I know of Sarah, she is a go-getter.

I was really impressed by her unique take on a bucket list. She made what I'm calling a micro bucket list or a list of memorable things to do during a specific period of time in life. Knowing that she would only have once to live her university student experience, she made a list of things she wanted to do during those four years. And then she checked them off one by one.

This got me thinking that I need to review my own bucket list and see if there are things I'd like to do in my life that I can only do during a specific time or stage of life. For example, become an Eagle Scout. Check.

What I've been watching lately

With both of my recent Box Top submissions sent prior to the March 1 deadline, I used the USPS' app to confirm delivery of my shipment. I've used the app before to make sure that my passport application and payment was received by the government. Here's what the app looks like the day the package ships.


Over the weekend I watched to see when the package would make its next move toward delivery at Young America, Minnesota.


Finally it was exciting to see this three days after putting the package in the mail.


Obviously it was delivered to a P.O. Box because no one was there to sign for the package.


One day perhaps I'll send a submission of Box Tops via FedEx or UPS to see who would actually receive the shipment.

March 1 submission

Here's my pile of bundled Box Tops for my first-time submission deadline.


The Box Tops must be submitted before March 1. Counting them into 50s and bagging them was not much of a challenge. It's worth the time for the money it earns for our school's programs. The kids are worth it!

Thanks to all of our parents and students who continue to participate.

What's best to do with this box top?

The other night we ordered Pizza Hut. I've learned the best way to get the most bang for your buck there is to ask for the special. For example, last night I asked what the special is. It was:

• One large specialty pizza
• One medium two-topping pizza
• Small order of bread sticks
• $20

I went against my better judgement and ordered on my own. I got:

• One large specialty pizza (a supreme, my favorite)
• One large order of cheesy bread sticks
• $20

I could have gotten an extra pizza if I would have been willing to forgo cheese on my bread sticks. I wasn't feeling up for much compromise and so I felt fine with the choice. But, on any other night, I'd recommend you just ask what the special is and if you like it, go for it. It will be your best bet!

Now on Twitter @BoxTopDad

I've been on Twitter professionally with @PDmag, Progressive Dairyman's Twitter handle, for a while. I'm not the primary Tweeter for this account; however, it has helped me get more comfortable with the entire platform. I decided to see if @BoxTopDad was available on Twitter. It was, and I snatched it. So far I haven't found an online medium that doesn't have Box Top Dad as an available name. I use Tweet Deck as my mobile platform with a #boxtop Twitter search for tracking trends and tweets related to Box Tops.

In the coming days, watch for updates here about how we jump-started collection and hype for Box Tops at our K-3 elementary school.

This is where it begins

I've been working as our school's box top coordinator since last fall. I have much to learn about collecting Box Tops. I hope to connect with others who can help meet and exceed our school's goal. Wouldn't it be cool to earn the max amount allowed in one year – $20,000? I hope to learn how to do it.