Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Sen. Burr Nominates Mt. Tabor Student for Naval Academy

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Sen. Burr's press office sent out notice of his military academy nominations and two were from the Winston-Salem area, including Mt. Tabor student Jennifer Penley of Pfafftown.  Sen. Burr nominated her for the U.S. Naval Academy.  Congratulations to Jennifer, and best wishes to her especially as she gets ready to head to plebe summer.  Any kid willing to give up the half of their last summer before college and to knowingly go into the grueling atmosphere of the Naval Academy deserves our respect, big time.

One of the craziest guys I knew in high school, Andrew Heino, went to the Naval Academy and the last time I saw him at a party during our college years, he said that getting through that summer was one of the hardest things he'd ever done.  He also said his whole first year was no picnic.  I haven't seen him since then, but every once in a while I'll catch word of him.  In February, 2007 he was interviewed on CNN's Accent Health show about some of his men doing yoga and at that time he was a Lt. Colonel in the Marines.  That comes as absolutely no surprise to me.  

Heino was the guy who got me through an open water test for our SCUBA class in freezing water in a quarry in West Virginia.  On that dive the visibility was about one foot and the water was literally freezing and when we got down to the dive platform (I think it was at about 50 feet) the guy next to me went into shock and the dive instructor had to do an emergency ascent with him.  There was another instructor around but we couldn't see him and I was ready to head up, but Andrew grabbed me and signalled to sit tight.  We did and eventually the instructor came back and we finished our test.  That's the kind of guy Heino was.  Also, he could recite every line of Apocalypse Now verbatim from memory, and I guess that says something too. Heck, the fact that he talked me into taking a SCUBA class says a whole lot about him.

Health Insurance Relief for Laid Off Workers Thanks to Stimulus Package

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My wife Celeste is a bookkeeper by trade and as a result receives a lot of publications that, quite frankly, make my eyes gloss over.  However, today she forwarded me a newsletter from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers that contained an article about "hidden traps" in the new stimulus law that definitely had my eyes wide open.  Here's part of what the article said:

The new law includes a 65% federally funded COBRA continuation subsidy that lasts up to 9 months for workers (and their families) involuntarily terminated from Sept. 1, 2008-Dec. 31, 2009. The subsidy terminates when the former employeeis offered employer-sponsored health care coverage by a new employer; orbecomes eligible for Medicare; or has COBRA coverage that has expired.  
Notify within 60 days of Feb. 17 former employees involuntarily separated between Sept. 1, 2008-Feb. 17, 2009. Notify those who elected COBRA that they are entitled to a lower premium starting in the first coverage period after Feb. 17. Notify those who rejected COBRA that they have 60 days to elect COBRA and receive the subsidy. You can let former employees choose a less expensive plan. No subsidy is available to former employees whose income is over $125,000 a year or a family income over $250,000 a year, but employers are not required to monitor for the income phaseout.

Later on the article mentions that the employers are responsible for paying 65% of the health benefits up front and then getting reimbursed by the federal government by reducing their federal income tax contributions.  If the amount of healthcare subsidies exceed what the company owes in taxes then the company will have to apply for a reimbursement from the US Treasure, and there's no telling how long that will take.  Can we say cash flow problems?  Also, the first subsidies can come due as soon as March 1, 2009 so companies literally need to move on this now.

If you've been laid off and are paying COBRA or paying for insurance as an individual this could save you some serious money.  For instance if you're using your employer's health plan via COBRA to cover your family, which means you're paying 100% of the cost, then you could easily be spending over $1,000 per month for your premiums.  With the government picking up 65% of the tab that payment drops to $350 which is some serious savings.

Keep an eye out for a notice from your former employer and if you don't get one within about 45 days then contact the human resources department or whoever at the company is responsible for administering benefits and ask them to send you more information.

 

Lingonberry Soda It Is

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Yesterday when I posted my tips for shopping at Ikea I mentioned that one of the great things the store offers is a restaurant with good, affordable food and a soda with some exotic fruit that I couldn't name.  Laura left a comment saying she thought it was lingonberry soda and 'lo and behold she was right.  Esbee ventured down to the store in Charlotte today and had a meal and a lingonberry soda and she posted a picture just to make the rest of us jealous.  

Newest Investment Scam Has Piedmont Ties

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The newest investment scam, the alleged $8 billion fraud perpetrated by a Texas billionaire named Allen Stanford who had himself knighted in Antigua, has ties to the Piedmont Triad.  In 2007 the operation opened a Greensboro office that was run by eight executives from US Trust Co. who were charged with targeting wealthy investors.

In July 2007, the company hired a team of eight executives from U.S. Trust Co. to work out of Greensboro, North Carolina, where the firm’s private-client group planned to target wealthy investors, according to statement at the time. The team was made up of John Rich, Glenda Burkett, M. Jo Brooks, Ken Dimock, Anthony Monforton, Virginia Saslow and William “Wes” Watson and Suzanne Wilcox.

FYI, a big part of the scam was selling investors financial products that they called CDs and pitched as even safer than FDIC insured certificates of deposit.  The money for the "CDs" was then funneled to a bank in Antigua controlled by the company accused of perpetrating the scam.  The company implied that the funds were insured, but never explicitly said they were insured.  By all appearances it's a nasty little scam.

Between this scam and the Madoff thing I've never been so happy to be an unconnected, unwealthy guy.

Reporter of the Future

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Steve Rubel has a great post about The Reporter of the Future.  Essentially he describes how a reporter who covers the Yankees for a smaller New York area paper is using all kinds of tools to cover spring training.  The reporter takes pictures with his iPhone, he has a blog he updates daily, he has a Facebook group, he produces a podcast and he hosts an live text/video chat with readers using CoverItLive.

Yesterday I wrote about the folks at the Winston-Salem Journal having to take 10 days of unpaid leave.  Maybe the reporters can spend some of that time studying this guy and seeing what their future professional lives might look like.  

Bipartisan Sleaze

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Have you heard about the latest high-end scam artist?  No, not Madoff, but this joker Sir Allen Stanford who is accused of running an $8 billion fraud that on the surface sounds an awful lot like Madoff's scandal. Part of the emerging Stanford story is his soft money donations back in 2000 to prominent Democrats, and I think it's an important reminder because it reminds us that the sleaze in Washington is bipartisan.  The next time you hear someone slamming all Republicans or all Democrats but giving their side a free pass please remind them that the problem isn't the parties it's the politicians.  As a breed they make ambulance chasers look good by comparison.   

Furloughs at Journal Now Official

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Media General, parent company of the Winston-Salem Journal, announced today that they're requiring their employees to take ten days of unpaid leave.  Employees have to take four days by the end of March and three days each in the two subsequent fiscal quarters. I guess if you look at the glass as half full at least these folks are keeping their jobs.  For now.

Any suggestions for what these folks should do with their involuntary, unpaid "vacation"?  BTW, I've used quotes around the word vacation ever since my wife returned to work from maternity leave and received a heap of abuse from her boss who said she should be well rested from her "vacation".  In all seriousness I have some friends that work at the Journal and this stinks for them, but I am glad to know that they still have their jobs. 

Ikea Tricks

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Today Ikea opened their first store here in North Carolina, home of the furniture mart.  It's probably a sign of the times that the Lego of the furniture industry is opening a store here in the capital of the US furniture industry to great fanfare.

We had an Ikea just down the road from us in Northern Virginia and we frequented it quite a bit.  Given that we've lived here for five years you might want to take the following advice with a grain of salt, but I figure things haven't changed that much so what I'm about to advise is still fairly accurate.  That is:
  • The food in the cafeteria is pretty good and pretty cheap.  We used to pig out on the meatballs and they had some kind of crazy fruit soft drink that we all loved.  I think it was something like pomegranate, but whatever it was it was very light and un-syrupy.
  • If the store in Charlotte has a children's play area that allows you to sign your kids in for a 1/2 hour of supervised play time while you shop then you should definitely take advantage of it.  But be forewarned that within a week you're definitely going to be dealing with some strange illness that involves a lot of snot flowing from your child's nose.  Personally I always found it to be a fair trade.
  • If you buy any furniture that requires assembly, and I think that is all the furniture that Ikea sells, then you need to familiarize yourself with the metric system and odd looking tools that look like something out of a toddlers play tool set.  You also need to set aside triple the time you think it should take to assemble the furniture. 
  • Don't go if you don't like primary colors.  Ikea's big on primary colors. 
  • Finally, just because it's Ikea doesn't mean the other customers will behave any better than they do in other stores.  In fact in Ikea most people tend to get lost which means they act even worse than usual, so paste on the happy face and just roll with it.  If it helps just imagine yourself at the DMV before you enter which should get you in just about the right state of mind. 

Enjoy your shopping experience! 

Today’s Retail Rundown

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Two completely unrelated events from yesterday have me thinking a lot about local retail experiences this morning.

  1. Esbee's had it with OfficeMax.  She wrote a post yesterday about how on multiple occassions she's taken clearance items to the register only to be told that she can't buy them because they'd already been sold back to the vendor.  She reasonably asks why the items are still on the floor.  She also relates an unsatisfying experience with the manager there.  Me thinks the folks at OfficeMax have a wee issue with their systems and management that they might want to clean up, and if the comments on Esbee's post are any indication I'd say that lots of folks here in Winston-Salem share the sentiment.  I wonder if the manager is getting a call from corporate asking him why his dissed a woman who has about a bazillion readers?
  2. Celeste was in Costco yesterday and paid cash for our items.  The cashier didn't have change in his till so he called the manager to get some.  The manager came by the register and said that he was sorry but he didn't have any cash for change because the bank had not made its daily cash delivery for the third day in a row and he also wasn't able to get any from the nearby Home Depot or Lowes.  I'm not sure which bank Costco uses, but I find it a little disturbing that the bank is letting down what has to be one of its more prominent customers.  It causes me to wonder if there's a problem with deposits at the bank or if it's just poor management. Or is there a problem with Costco's credit?  Normally I wouldn't think much of it, but in this day and age every little signal causes me to wonder if there's something more ominous going on behind the scenes.  Oh, and in case you're curious Celeste was able to get her change when the customer behind her also paid cash and gave the cashier enough small bills to make change.

Another Reason to Set Up Online Tracking for Your Name

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In today's connected world one thing all of us should do is track our identities online.  You might think, "Well, I don't blog, or use Facebook or any of those other web things so it's really not worth my while" but I'll have to disagree with you and I have a real life story to help explain why.

This morning I was checking my Google Alert feeds.  I have several set up for various interests, like "winston-salem arts" or "forsyth county business" and I also have alerts set up for tracking blog searches for similar terms.  This morning I came across a listing for a blog that sent chills down my spine.  Essentially it threatened some people at a local institution with severe physical harm and it did so by naming them specifically and providing their home addresses so I thought it needed to be taken seriously.  I'm not going to go into any more detail than that because I don't want to give the threatened folks any more angst than they have already experienced.  I called security at the institution to give them a heads up and they gave me an email address to send them the URL of the page containing the threats.  I heard back from them about an hour later and they said that the page had been found by someone else last night and that the threatened parties had been alerted.  I can't tell you how relieved that made me feel.

But here's the point.  The people who were threatened could have found the same information if they had an alert set up for their name because their names were used specifically on the threatening page.  Even if the threat ends up being a false alarm they will have known about it even if someone else hadn't warned them.  Of course this only happens if you're threatened by name online, but there are other practical reasons to set up an alert system:
  • Someone might be saying nasty things about you on a message board.
  • Someone with your name might be doing nefarious things, and if they are you want to be aware of it so you can let people know it's not you. 
  • Documents that you might have thought were private somehow end up online.  At least you'll know about it and maybe you can take action to have them taken down.  
  • A friend posts pictures that have you in them and tag them with your name when they upload them. You may not have your friend remove the pictures but if you're uncomfortable with your name being attached to them you can ask them to remove the tags.

I think you get the point.  Anyway, if you want to set up an early warning sytem for yourself it's easy and free to do with Google.  Simply visit the Google Alerts page and follow the easy prompts to set up the alert.  You can set up the alerts to be emailed to you as they happen, which means any time your name appears online you'll get an email, or you can have all the alerts compiled and sent to you once a day or once a week.  Here's a helpful tip: use your full name in quotation marks, like "jane smith", because if you don't you'll get an alert for everyone with your first name and everyone with your last name.  By putting both names in quotes you can cut down significantly on the number of "false positive" alerts you'll get.

One last thing: it's kind of fun finding other people who have the same name as you.  I've found that there's a high school baseball player in Oklahoma with my name (seems he's pretty good too), and there's someone else here in North Carolina with my name.  I'm going to have to track him down some day.