Wednesday, December 20, 2017

How to Fix a Sleep Number Bed Wired Controller With Hard to Push Buttons


Okay, I'll fess up on this one. The controller buttons on my wired Sleep Number Bed controllers had been getting harder and harder to push. I looked up the cost of replacement controllers and after they removed the defibrillator I was struck by the knowledge that I would have to see if I could fix them. I still stalled until after the warranty ran out even though the controllers weren't covered in the warranty.

Sooooooo.....

With my heart in my throat, I assembled my tools not knowing if I was going to fix it or screw it all up and have to buy very expensive new controllers.  Here's what you need.

Tools:
  • Phillips screwdriver
  • 4 Q-tips
  • Alcohol
  • Cotton swab
Directions:

Unplug the electric cord so you don't sock yourself and follow the directions under the pictures below.

First turn the controller over and remove the three screws. Gently lift off the bottom half.









 


Remove the screw from the circuit board and remove the board and the wires gently.






 
Note the carbon buildup on the contacts below the up and down controller buttons. 






Remove the buildup by gently rubbing the affected area with a Q-tip moistened with alcohol. Immediately dry the area with a cotton ball so as not to damage the circuit board. Watch out as you do not to dislodge the LCD screen assembly.


Next clean the button contacts of any buildup. Gently rub with a Q-tip moistened with alcohol and dry immediately with a dry cotton ball to prevent damage to the contact.



If the screen assembly does fall out, don't worry. In the photo to the right, you see the screen and the plastic platform. There is a conductor pad stuck to the LCD screen. It's easily dislodged from the screen. Don't worry if if comes loose.


 The circuit board looks like this if the LCD screen falls off. Don't worry. Everything sits in place and works fine. Nothing to worry about reconnecting.




 
To reset the LCD screen, first place the connector pad in the position shown in the top half of the plastic housing as shown.





 
Next lay the LCD screen face down in the frame and put the plastic platform over it with the solid top facing up.





 

Lay the circuit board face down over the buttons and screen on top of the front plastic plate. Align the center screw and tighten it down securely. Fit the cord into the mounting slot as shown.


 Reset the back plate over the front plate and replace the three screws. Tighten the controller assembly and you're done.





 
Note the carbon residue left on the Q-tips.  Flip the controller over. Plug the pump back in and give it a try. You'll find the controllers work as easily as they did when they were new. And you won't need a defibrillator because you had to buy new controllers.


 That's all there is to it. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I feared it would be.  This was a much easier project that I thought it would be. Fix it and your spouse will think you're a genius, especially if you don't show her (or him) this article. Let 'em think you are brilliant.

© 2017 by Tom King

* If you attempt this repair while your bed is still under warranty it may mess up the warranty though I don's see why or how it would. Check out your paperwork first to see if there will be a problem. Likely not, though. If you've got wired controllers, your bed is probably way out of warranty by now. That said, we've never had any trouble with our Sleep Number beds other than the stiff controller buttons.  Love our Sleep Number bed!







Sunday, October 22, 2017

A Quick Emergency Stretcher


Rule 1: Don't move an injured patient, unless his life is in immediate danger. You can do more damage moving them, so in most cases wait for the paramedics. If, however, the injured person is in a dangerous place like near a fire, rising water or bad weather or dangerous animals are approaching you absolutely have to move an injured person, here's a way to make a quick sturdy stretcher using stuff that's easily available.

Gather up these two items.
  1. A blanket, tarpaulin, sheet of plastic or something blanket-like. On a beach you could use a couple of large beach towels, a sail from a sailboard or some pull the cover off the umbrella.
  2. A couple of poles, two tree limbs or long pipes or rods to use for the handles. Two sailboard masts could provide your poles or the umbrella posts. Anything long and straight can work.
Making the Stretcher:
  1. Lay out the blanket on a flat place so that the long edge of the blanket is toward you with the short edges to your left and right.
  2. Lay one pole on top of the blanket about 1/3 of the way over from the right edge of the blanket.
  3. Fold the right flap over the top of the first pole and lay it across the blanket toward the left side.
  4. Lay the second pole on top of the left edge of the blanket that was folded over about a third of the way from the left edge of the blanket. 
  5. Fold the left flap over the top of the pole and lay it all the way across the top of both poles.
Moving the Patient:


The best way to move the patient is carefully. Here are the steps.
  1. Lay the improvised stretcher next to the injured person, parallel to their body. 
  2. Get as many people as possible to help you lift. The more hands you have helping you, the easier it is to move the patient's body as a single unit. 
  3. Be careful not to allow damaged body parts to move. I could cause further injury if you try to straighten a broken limb or bend a damaged spine. 
  4. Lift the patient straight up and move his body slowly and lower it onto the top of the blanket. The patient's weight on top of the blankets will hold the blankets in place and prevent them from slipping from the poles. 
  5. Put two people on either end of the stretcher or four people, two on each end and lift by the poles. 
  6. When you carry the stretcher away, make sure everyone carrying it walks out of step with each other. This prevents the stretcher from swinging. If you walk in a march step, the rhythm of your step will cause the stretcher to swing back and fort and can cause those carrying it to stumble or drop the handle.
  7. If you have four people carrying the stretcher, put one on each end holding the poles and the other two walking alongside holding the poles at the center. 
Note:  Before you lift and go, practice a few times quickly so everyone knows what they are going to do. It's a good idea, if you work with kids and/or in wooded or isolated places, to practice making one of these stretchers so you can do it quickly.

© 2017 by Tom King

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Recycling Candle Jars

Bathroom Epsom salts storage jar.
 
Thrifty folks like me just hate to throw away those lovely candle jars when the candle is burned away to nothing but a puddle of candle wax, a little metal square and the black smoky residue on the sides. These things make nice canisters for all sorts of things like canisters for dry ingredients like Epsom salts, coffee creamer, sugar, salt, and even flour and dried beans. You can also refill the jar with wax and string and make another candle.  Here's how:
 
CANISTER:

Coffee creamer jar ready for label.
My Sweet Baboo wanted something decorative to go with her driftwood and rock collection on the bathroom cabinet. We had a small candle that was burned down all the way. Here's how we did the glass container shown in the photo above.

Materials:
  • Burned out glass candle jar and lid
  • Boiling water
  • Bottle brush
  • Microwave
  • WD-40
  • Decorative stickers
  • Label
Direction:
  1. Heat the candle jar in the microwave until the candle wax is liquified.
  2. Pour off the wax. Pour boiling water in the candle jar while the jar is still very warm from the microwave. Add a little dish soap.
  3. Scrub the inside of the jar with the bottle brush.
  4. If there is any wax residue left inside the jar, spray the inside of the jar with WD-40. Wipe it out with a rag or paper towel and the wash again with a brush, soap and water.
  5. Repeat until the jar is clean.
  6. Our bathroom decorative scheme is nautical. Sheila planned to put Epsom Salts in the jar, so I made a clear label on my computer that had a border and put "Sea Salt" on the label.
  7. Next we put shells and starfish stickers strategically on the outside of the jar as shown.
  8. Position attractively in your bathroom or kitchen or whatever spot you have in mind for your new sealed container.
NEW CANDLE:

Materials:
  • Old candle jar
  • Candle string
  • Small washer
  • Candle wax or paraffin
  • Scented oil 
  • Pencil
  • Old pan
Directions:
  1. Melt the old wax and remove the stub of string and metal weight.
  2. Clean out the jar as shown above. 
  3. Melt the wax slowly in the pan on the stove. Stop when it liquifies. Don't boil.
  4. Add scented oil till it smells as strong as you like and stir it in.
  5. Tie one end of the candle string to the small washer. Cut the string so it is a few inches longer than you need to reach the top.
  6. With the washer on the bottom of jar, lay the pencil on top of the open jar across the center and tie the string to the center of the pencil to hold the string vertical.
  7. Gently pour the hot wax into the jar and fill to a half inch or so from the top of the jar. 
  8. Allow to sit and cool and when hardened, trim the the string level with the top of the jar. 
  9. Your new candle is ready to go. 
Uses:
 
The nice thing about old candle jars is that they have a seal so that the jars can be made relatively airtight.  They're handy for a lot of things and you get that lovely smell when you burn the candle the first time before you reuse the jar.

REFERENCES:

Swan Creek Candle Company - (wax, scent and supplies)

Alternate Jar Cleaning Method (Youtube)

Three More Ways To Clean Candle Jars


© 2017 by Tom King



Saturday, September 02, 2017

Greeting Card Campaign: 9-2 National Blueberry Popsicle Day

Click here to download card
Today is one of those days we have to go with food holidays. Nobody seems to be celebrating anything else much except a few obscure saints and some tiny countries' independence days and such. So today is National Blueberry Popsicle Day - probably the least likely sort of food to get its own national holiday. The odds of actually finding an actual blueberry popsicle are pretty slim admittedly. Here's a link to a recipe for blueberry popsicles so you can make your own. Make your sweetie a sweetie and print up a card to tell her she tickles your fancy.

Just click on the caption below the picture of the popsicle.  The link will take you to a pdf file in Google Docs. Remember, instead of printing from Google Docs, click on "File" in the upper left corner, then select "Download" and copy the file to your own computer.  Open it with Adobe PDF Reader or whatever PDF reader you use and print the card from there. For some reason Google Docs doesn't handle fonts well, even though they are supposed to be embedded in the PDF document itself.

This is a side fold card, so when it prints, be sure to tell your printer it's in "landscape" format so you get the whole file. Flip it on the short side to print double-sided. This will save you a lot of time for thinking about her pulchritudinousness!

© by Tom King

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

How to Read All Those Numbers on Your Car Tires

And make sense of them.....




It all began back in 2009, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, set new standards for how tire manufactures mark tires for light trucks and passenger cars. There's a whole lot of information contained in those engraved letters and numbers now. This information includes:

Outer Ring
  1. The type of tire - Start at the tire model name on the outer ring of the tire. Move clockwise around the outside ring of the sidewall. You should run into the letter "P". P stands for "Passenger Tire" "LT" stands for Light Truck.
  2. The aspect ratio - The next three numbers following "P" gives you the width of the tire in millimeters. Next there will be a slash mark and a second number after the slash. This number is the height of the tire. Put the first number over the second number and you'll have the ratio of width to height. This fraction is the aspect ratio. In the photo above the aspect ratio is 185/60.
  3. Radial mark - The next letter, if it's an "R" tells you the tire is a radial. If there's no "R", it's not a radial.
  4. Rim diameter - The next pair of numbers is the diameter of the rim in inches. The tire in the illustration fits a 14 inch rim.
  5. The load index -  The next number and letter pair lists the load index and speed. The load index indicates the tires carrying capacity. For instance, 89 = 1,279 pounds, 88 = 1,235 pounds, 87 = 1,201 pounds, 86 = 1,168 pounds, and 85 = 1,135 pounds. Load indexes for light trucks and cars range from 70 to 126
  6. The Speed Rating - The speed rating is the maximum speed for the tire. Here are the letters and what they mean:
    L     75mph     120 km/h     Off-road & light truck tires
    M    81mph     130 km/h     Temporary spare tires
    N    87 mph     140 km/h    
    P     93 mph     150 km/h
    Q    99 mph     160 km/h     Studless and studdable winter tires
    R    106 mph    170 km/h    HD Light Truck Tires
    S    112 mph    180 km/h    Family sedans and vans
    T    118 mph    190 km/h    Family Sedans and vans
    U    123 mph    200 km/h  
    H    130 mph    210 km/h    Sport sedans and coupes
    W   168 mph    270 km/h    Exotic sports cars
    Y    186 mph    300 km/h    Exotic sports cars
  7. Treadwear - This next 3 digit number is a comparison between a standard test tire and this particular tire. They run the tires side by side around a 400 mile loop in West Texas. If the subject tire wears the same as the test tire it gets a 100 rating. If it does twice as well it gets a 200; three times and it gets a 300 rating. So the 220 rating above means the tire did 220% better than the test tire.
  8. Traction - The next data on the outer ring is the traction rating. There are four ratings.
    AA - the highest rating is followed by A, B, and C. These grades are measurements are G-force ratings on asphalt and concrete under dry and wet conditions. 
  9. Temperature - This is a temperature resistance grade. The grade is established by measuring a loaded tire's ability to operate at high speeds without failure by running an inflated test tire against a large diameter high-speed laboratory test wheel. The rating is an A to C rating. A rates the tire over 115 mph. B rates the tire 100 to 115 mph. C rates the tire 85 mph to 100. All US built tires must be at least rated C for temperature resisteance.
Inner Ring:
  1. Maximum inflation pressure - Follow the small letters around the edge of the rims. Starting below the tire name you will find the maximum permissible inflation pressure followed by the US DOT tire identification number the Tire ply, composition and materials used in manufacture. 
  2. Radial or not - Moving counterclockwise, tire markings repeat if it's a radial, but this time spells it all the way out.
  3. Tube or tubeless - Most tires are tubeless, but on the outside chance it's not here's where it tells you.  
  4. Made in ???? - Some tires which are made outside the US list their country of origin here  somewhere before the DOT code.
  5.  DOT Code - The Department of Transportation (DOT) code uses this format: XXXX XXXX XXXX.  The first two letters designate where the tire was manufactured. The next two letters and numbers are a code for the tire size.  There may be 4 letters and numbers next if the tire is sold in Europe. Look for an "E". If not sold in Europe, these number codes may be omitted. If you do not see 11 or 12 characters following DOT, you may have to look on the other side of the tire. The final group of four in this long number which may be continued on the other side of the tire tells you the week and year in which the tire was manufactured.  "2417" would indicate a tire made in the 24th week of 2017.
  6. Tire Ply and Composition - Tire makers are required to list the materials and number of layers of each material used to reinforce the rubber. Here is a sample of how it may be printed on the sidewall: TREAD PLIES: 2 POLYESTER + 2 STEEL+1 POLYAMIDE SIDEWALL PLIES: 2 POLYESTER 
  7. Maximum Cold Inflation and Load Limit - This final marking refers how much weight you can safely put on the tires. If you have four of the tire shown above with a load limit of 1300 lbs. per tire, that means the vehicle, passengers and load shouldn't exceed  5200 lbs. or a bit more than 2 1/2 tons. That's why some trucks use dual wheels over the payload bed. It's not for looks although a dually really looks cool. The extra two tires increase the load the tires can safely carry. That way you can haul a granite boulder or two without flattening your tires.
That's a rough idea of what tire markings are all about. Some of these markings might be particularly useful if, like me, you've ever had to buy used tires because you just put your kids back in school and had to buy $400 worth of notebook paper, pens and Ninja Turtle and Strawberry Shortcake backpacks. You can at least tell read the tire markings and tell when the tire was made. That way you don't wind up running around on 25 year-old rubber. 

References:


Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Water Safety: How to Avoid Capsizing

Well here's another fine mess I've got myself into!


Keep Your Boat From Capsizing


Most boating accidents and injuries in the United States happen because someone's boat capsizes. In fact, capsizing is the number one cause of boating injuries in the summer. It's June and people all over the nation are hitting the water in small boats. People simply over-speed, over-control, overload and over-estimate their skills.  

For some reason when people get around water, especially in the summer, their brains take a kind of holiday from thinking. Perhaps it's because no one is wearing much in the way of clothing. I don't know, but this chronic lack of thinking can lead to tragedy.  Capsizing is the most common sort of tragedy. You see guys out in little fishing boats standing up with a load of fishing gear, maybe wearing waders and a jacket in cooler weather. You see them lumbering around in their boats and then later, when you pass the spot again there are game wardens, cops and county divers searching the water. When they finally do drag them up off the bottom, they always look surprised!

There are some simple common sense rules that will help you prevent your boat from capsizing. If your boat is in danger of capsizing, you need to be prepared in advance to do some quick thinking and even quicker acting. You need a cool head and a thorough understanding of the physics of watercraft. You need to understand buoyancy and balance and the elements of how a boat floats.

Preventing your boat from capsizing happens before you even take your boat out on the water. I know most of us slept through physics class in high school, but boats, whether we like it or not, obey the laws of physics. We may disobey the fish and game laws, but boats obey those physical laws to the letter. It's critical that you understand the basic principles of the physics of small boats and even more crucial that you practice what to do in an emergency in advance.

There are four basic threats that cause boats to capsize. You need to react to them quickly to prevent turning your boat over:
Excessive speed, too little experience.
  1. Overloading - There are two ways to overload your boat. One is by exceeding the weight limit of the boat. Usually, for commercially purchased boats, there's a metal plate on it somewhere that tells you how much weight the boat can carry. They're serious about that.  But total weight is only part of the threat. If you set the weight in the boat too high, you can also overbalance your boat.  Get any weight you are carrying down and centered in the boat. It doesn't matter if you’re in a yacht, a canoe, sailboat, or motorboat, weight that is being carried too high in the boat is most likely to be the cause of your boat capsizing. Especially in rough seas and high winds, get any loose weight in the boat as low as you can, especially if you are in a small boat or canoe. If things get lively have your passengers sit on the floor with their knees low and the weight centered. You don't want all the weight shifting, so tie down any loose heavy object as close to the bottom and center as you can. Fishermen should get down off those tall fishing chairs in a high wind, especially if you're moving the boat. If the boat rocks excessively, sit flat on the bottom of the boat. If you can lower your boat's center of gravity, it makes it much more difficult to capsize.
  2. Excessive speed - Going too fast will kill you quick. If you've ever done a belly flop off the high dive, you know how hard the water feels if you hit it at speed. It can knock the wind out of you and even knock you unconscious. When you are turning or maneuvering or trying to move in a sudden wind, slow Down! Taking off a little speed reduces your chances of capsizing significantly. If you get caught in a sudden squall and heavy waves, don't push it. Maintain enough speed to keep your bows pointed into the waves, but resist the urge to try and jump out of the water. The wind can flip you while you're airborne, given the aerodynamic shape of the hull of a powerboat. In high waves, you want to head roughly into the wind to find shelter. If you move sideways to the wind, the waves can push your boat sideways and cause it to heel over. If you run a gunwale under the water, a sudden high wave can flip you over in a heartbeat. If you're in a sailboat, pay out the mainsheet and allow the sails to spill wind. Pull in the sails just enough to maintain headway, but not enough that the wind can flip you. In very high winds, you may need to drop the mainsail and proceed on your jib if you have one. If you're an accomplished sailor, you may be able to make your way downwind under bare poles if you're good with the tiller.  In any case, reduce sail enough to take the pressure off the sail. You can lower the sail halfway down and tie the loose sail to the mast with bungees and reduce your speed that way. In any case, you need to get to safety, so don’t stop moving. Watch your speed. Keep it down to where you can react fast enough to prevent the boat turning over, but are continually moving toward safe harbor.
  3. Striking an object - The secret to avoiding striking an object is first and foremost, watching where you are going. People get out on the water and thing that because there aren't any trees around, that they can watch the girls in the bikinis in the back of the boat and only have to look ahead once in a while.  Tain't necessarily so. Floating debris can pop up in the blink of an eye. Fallen trees can find their way into your path and they may barely show above water. Lakes often have whole sections where tree stumps left from submerged wooded areas still stick up below the surface.  Know where you are going and if you're not sure how safe an area is, slow down.  Save the speed for when you are in the old river channel or in open sea where there aren't any sandbars. Most such areas are marked on charts of lakes and seashores, but things can change, so don't bet your life. There's a sandbar shallows out in the South Pacific that isn't near an island and doesn't stick up. A ship captain paying attention might spot the rollers over the spot, but they do miss it. The place is a ship's graveyard going back 300 years. It looked like clear seas and then suddenly the ships ran aground.  That can happen in almost any body of water. It's better to be careful till you learn the water, than to get cocky and wind up with a hole in your boat and yourself sailing over the windshield landing headfirst into a stump.
  4. Wind and waves -  Weather has a nasty way of biting you on your nether regions when you least expect it. Check the weather before you go out on the water - always! You have no excuse these days. Smart phones can pull up weather forecasts, complete with radar so you can see storms rolling in before they even cross the horizon. Stay off the water when the wind is high. Your sailboat doesn't need that much wind. Your canoe will get blown away and your power boat can be flipped in the chop. If bad weather approaches, get off the lake. Getting cocky can get you drowned. Worse it can get the people in the boat with you drowned.
 
Even the dog needs a lifejacket!

PRECAUTIONS:
You need some things in your boat before you go out.  First of all you need enough lifejackets for everyone. People who can't swim should wear them. If you're hot-rodding around at speed, everyone needs to wear one. If you're thrown out of the boat and knocked silly without one, you can drown in a very short time.  Your life jackets should have tags showing they are Coast Guard approved personal flotation devices. The game warden or Coast Guard will check. Everyone needs at least a Type II PFD.

You need something to bail with.  Don't go out unless you have something with which you can quickly bail out your boat. A couple of old gallon bleach bottles with the bottoms cut out make great bailers. They have handles and you can secure them in the boat under a seat. Be sure to tie them to something with a long enough rope that you can bail without having to untie them. It helps in a hurry. Tie them with a bowline knot so they won't jam when wet in case you do need to untie them quickly.

Secure any loose objects in the boat. A supply of bungee cords is useful for doing that. Having coolers and tackle boxes sliding around the boat can overbalance you suddenly if you're leaning over the side or reeling in a heavy fish and next thing you know you're over the side or lying across the gunwale with water pouring in.

Keep the boat bailed out.  Water sloshing around in the boat is very heavy and the shifting weight of all that H2O can swamp you in a big hurry.  If you start taking on water, Every free hand needs to join in and bail.  Make sure everyone is throwing water over the side. In a panic, I've seen people scoop up water from the front of the boat and pitch it over their shoulder into the back of the boat. While it might feel good to be moving that much water, it's probably not helping much if it's still in the boat.  When your crew is bailing water, make sure they stay low in the boat while they are doing it. People sometimes get excited when water is coming into the boat and try to stand up in the boat. If there's a lot of water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat, standing up can lead to disaster. Always bail water from a kneeling or sitting position if at all possible.

If you’ve struck something and knocked a hole in your boat, you want to close the hole as quickly as you can.  A rag or shirt stuffed into the hole can slow the leak enough so that combined with bailing by the crew, you can make it to safety.

Head for cover as quickly as you can while maintaining a safe speed. Try to spot a sheltered cove or bay, especially if you are facing high winds and heavy seas. In a sudden squall, you'll have to crab your way toward where you want to go, keeping the bow of the boat into the wind and waves while slipping sideways in the troughs to prevent the waves from capsizing you. Angle our way across the fronts of waves turning your bow into the wave as you crest the wave. As you come down the backside you'll angle in the direction you want to go, then turn again into the wave as you rise back up on the next wave. This requires some skill at steering, but you should have already practiced your steering before you ever go out, especially with passengers. Always familiarize yourself with the how your boat responds to the tiller. If you're in a canoe, know how to steer with efficient paddle strokes. Do your practicing in calm weather in a sheltered place before you venture out into waters that can suddenly become choppy or into strong currents.

DON'T PANIC as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy recommends in big friendly letters on the cover. If you know your boat and you've practiced with it and take the precautions we've suggested above, you should be okay. The two deadliest things, that will kill you out on the water, are arrogance and ignorance.  Be smart and be skilled and know your boat.

Have fun out there on the blue water!

© 2017 by Tom King


References:

Andrew Kim Law Firm: Common Causes of Capsizing Boats

The Bass Report; Preventing Capsizing

The Florida Course – Boater Education: Boating Emergencies - What to Do


Should We All Become Entrepreneurs?



Changing the Way We Do Online Job Hunting:

I represent two sectors that online jobsites tend to ignore.  When I look through the list of "industries" on job sites in order to choose my particular industry, I find that there are often two industries that tend to get left out.  One is freelance commercial writing and independent publishing. It's a category that most people don't think of as a thing. The other industry is Nonprofits.


I've worked for 40 years in the education and nonprofit sector, leading teams or as a part of teams for five successful organization startups and one reorganization. I've written grants, run programs, was CEO, public relations director, development officer, educator, and program director for more than 40 years. I've been working as a consultant and freelancer for 11 of those years now.  I've taught workshops on special event fund-raising and collaborative grant-writing. I was appointed to state advisory committees and organized successful local stakeholder initiatives. I've raised millions for a wide variety of small to medium-sized nonprofits. I'm a published author with five books to my name, three dozen ghost-written books in someone else's name and more than 2000 online and traditionally published articles. I publish articles on 8 weblogs.

The trouble is that there really isn't an industry listing on most job sites for what I do.  There is an untapped market out there for workers whose skills don't show up on most job searches. Thousands of new and existing nonprofits are out there, for instance, desperately trying to address some community need or other. They have a mission. They have a vision. They know what they want to do. The problem is these groups are usually long on program operating talent and way short on development and fund-raising skills.  This is where I see the Internet coming into play.

What these startups and expanding nonprofits need is access to development and fund-raising expertise that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. There are a lot of "professional" grant writers out there that will happily charge you that arm and a leg to tell you what to do. Once you pay them, they tell you what you should do without actually helping you do it. Most small organizations can't afford people like that. Sadly many of them promise things they cannot deliver and charge prices the groups cannot afford.

What there is a need for, is a mutual cooperation network of nonprofit professionals who are willing to provide expertise to the smaller nonprofits when they need it the most. Many of us who work in the nonprofit sector are willing to work part time or on a consulting basis for reasonable fees. The don't call them nonprofits for nothing and NPO staff often have to supplement their income to continue doing what they love. I've raised millions for new organizations, often without pay, while working for other organizations. I did it mostly because the organizations I helped had no idea how much time and energy it costs to write a grant and me, being an old softie, couldn't bear to see them fail because what they were doing was such a good thing. This is how you retire without a pension in the nonprofit biz.


We need some kind of broker agency that is willing to communicate directly with both service providers and with clients about what they can rightfully expect from those providing services. Potential employers need to be educated with regard to how to insure they receive professional quality service from those they hire and what they can legitimately expect. This approach should carry with it an expectation that the moonlighting entrepreneurs will already have a level of expertise in what services or products they are offering and that they will bring that expertise with them.

The freelance commercial writing/independent publishing sector is another "industry" that gets short shrift on online job sites. Publish is changing drastically as publishers become more risk averse and less willing to try new things or publish new authors. A small independent author who gets how to do marketing can independently publish a book for relatively low cost with the aid of eBook technology and the new print-on-demand publishers. Unlike major publishing houses, these indie author/publishers have virtually no overhead, no permanent staff and can return to themselves as authors, royalties on their work five to 10 times higher than they can get with traditional publishers. The author retains control of his work, can reintroduce work from his backlist at will, and, so long as he's listed on sites like Barnes & Noble, Amazon, I-Tunes and others, will receive ongoing revenue that doesn't end when a publisher runs out of printed copies.  An author can sell five or ten thousand books and make a tidy profit, where in traditional publishing, such a book would be considered a flop and the author would receive little or nothing.

We need a jobsite willing to develop a way to broker publishing skills like book design, writing, graphic art, marketing and editing that would put together teams to publish a book the group likes and believes in. Such a collaborative approach would allow team members to either be paid up front by the author or if they think the book will be the next "Harry Potter", can share a percentage of future royalties. Each book project would be like an indie movie project in which the actors, crew, director and producers come together, create the film and then disband and move on to something else. The only difference is the end product would be a book.

I think there is a need for collaborative tools for these and potentially other industries that can use teams of independent players to accomplish specific jobs without burdening down the members of the team with the salaries and overhead of a permanent business.  I've used this approach to collaborative grant-writing and helped create funding streams for dozens of small nonprofits.  Instead of competing against one another for the whole grant and likely getting nothing, these teams of organizations work together collaboratively and because they do they increase the likelihood that they will actually win the grant. For training in how to do this, contact "A Circle of Ten", an East Texas group that teaches collaborative grant writing and program development.

I read a piece in Forbes  the other day that posits that to survive in today's economy, we're all going to have to be entrepreneurs.  In order to accomplish that, we will need tools that help entrepreneurs to collaborate. I think the industry that spawned jobs.com and monster.com needs to take a step beyond mere employment and take a hard look at work as something you create rather something you merely find.

As a baby boomer, I've discovered that for me about the only way to find a job is to create one. Employers take one look at my white hair and you can see them mentally calculating the cost of my health insurance. My situation is tougher than some, as I have to work from home because of a disability in my family and I have to stay close to the house. The thing is that, with computer technology, the Internet and a changing cultural definitions of work, people no longer have to spend two hours a day commuting to sit all day in a cubicle. My commute is a walk across my living room to the rolltop desk in the corner. I don't have to start up my car. I just put on my socks. Saves energy. It's safer and a lot more pleasant as far as my commute goes. It's true I'm a tough boss. I work longer hours and a lot harder for me than I ever would for a "boss".  I have a direct relationship with my clients and nobody to blame but myself if anything goes wrong.

I wonder whether a model similar to what Uber does where clients rate those they hire and people hired also rate their clients might be the jobs model of the future. Perhaps there should be a "partner" model rather than just a client/provider model. And what about multiple partners.  If a neutral player could facilitate the financial aspects of such temporary team partnerships for a reasonable fee, I think you'd find a market for that. I love to write. I hate bookkeeping. If somebody would do the financials for a project and send out checks with social security and withholding taken out and a W-2 at the end of the year, I think entrepreneurs like me would rise up and call you blessed.

Heck, you could even hire moonlighting accountants as team members for such projects. Give them a model for how to manage the books with this sort of on-line broker acting to insure nobody gets embezzled. It could be another way to monetize such a jobs brokerage and the members who provide services would actually get something in exchange for the 10% or whatever that one would charge for handling the bookkeeping.  Upwork takes 20% and I get nothing much for it. They're just another organization taxing me is what it feels like.

At any rate, I'd love to see somebody in the field of entrepreneurial employment do some of these things. Who knows what other industries could move away from bricks and mortar to become dominated by fast, flexible small business entrepreneurial entities. I think the times they are a' changing and this could be somebody's "Facebook" moment if they jump on it.

© 2017 by Tom King

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Organizing a Local Initiative




Who Gave You Permission to Do that?

Someone asked me something like that once. We were trying to find rides for seniors and people with disabilities who can't drive so they can get to the doctor, to the grocery store and to church. He was a development director for one of the largest charities in town. What he really wanted to know was whether we had the okay of the local good old boy network BEFORE we started looking into the problem.

"Who gave you permission to start a transportation initiative?" he asked.

The answer: Nobody did!

So, without permission, in 7 years we tripled the funding for rural transportation for seniors. We forced the rural transit provider to drop discriminative practices. We engaged private sector transportation providers to help get folks with disabilities get to and from jobs. We stopped predatory "coyote" drivers from exploiting the families of farm workers in small rural colonia's and helped the women get an affordable ride to town to buy groceries. We did so without raising taxes by so much as a nickel.

For our troubles, I got a nasty letter from the executive director of the local Council of Governments. The director of the state Transit Association called me "anti-transit".

A friend warned me to check under my truck for funny wires before I started it. She'd done the same thing in Missouri as a young lawyer when she did an audit of the local Council of Governments. They were, at first, very cooperative - told her to feel free to inspect everything except, the transit program. It, he assured her, was in fine shape. So, being my ind of troublemaker, the first thing she looked at was the transit program and discovered vast amounts of graft and embezzling. I made it a practice of checking under the truck.

I figure we must have done something right if we upset so many good old boys!

There has been a lot of rhetoric in recent years about an old African proverb. "It takes a village to raise a child." Somehow, folks of a certain political persuasion have come to believe that Washington, DC is just the village to do that. I'm not sure on what planet the federal government is considered a village, but it is surely not in this solar system. The proverb is dead on, though. I know from experience. I grew up in such a village. Back when I was 12, If I had been seen throwing rocks at a street light in Keene, Texas by any one of the town's mothers or grandmothers, word would have reached my Mom before I could have made it home at a dead run. Mom would have met me on the porch, her arms crossed and tapping her foot in a way that boded no good for me.

There is no power on Earth for getting things done effectively and humanely like that of a small community. That's the village those old Africans were talking about. Local communities, united together to fix their own problems - that's what the proverb means. They aren't talking about vast unwieldy social programs.

Individuals, political figures, and people working in small to mid-sized nonprofits in rural and small towns, local neighborhoods and communities can do a lot of good if they don't mind sticking their necks out a bit. There's nothing at all like a stubborn, righteous person for getting things done in smaller towns. Sometimes, all it takes to get the ball rolling is for someone to tell the truth publicly. You'd be surprised how many people are afraid to say that something is terribly wrong in their community, even when everyone knows it. Often the brave soul asking foolish questions in front of God and everybody is all a community needs to get up on its hind legs and take care of business. Local initiatives usually start this way.

A good local initiative's leaders need to help inexperienced, but passionate local stakeholders to successfully network, write grants, create new programs and solve problems in their own communities. These stakeholder groups don't need a mandate from Washington. They don't need the okay of whatever good old boy political network runs things in their state. What they need is help figuring out how to do what needs doing.

We call it "doing good without permission". You'd be surprised how many government bureaucrats you will manage to aggravate by doing that.  I was driving through the country yesterday and saw a crude sign in front of a tiny country church advertising a "Soup Kitchen". It wasn't sophisticated. It wasn't politically correct. Yet struggling rural seniors were getting a hot meal. The church started the soup kitchen because Meals on Wheels and food bank programs have been having getting food out into the rural areas and there were a lot of older people out here in the sticks that need a hot meal every day. So neighbors pitched in and are helping their grandmas and grandpas and struggling families that have been laid off, have lost jobs or businesses or who have had the family wage-earner die suddenly. By the time a government program could have been put together, isolated seniors could have been starving. They didn't because their neighbors acted quickly and solved a problem with the resources they had.

Another local church found that our rural transit district didn't provide service for shopping trips to Walmart. One of the church deacons convinced the congregation to buy a school bus and once a month on the day seniors received their Social Security checks, the church sent the bus around to pick up everybody and take them to Walmart. Walmart and the McDonald's in the store set up morning breakfast and bingo for the group at 6:30 AM on the day. On Sunday's the church picked up transportation challenged folk and took them to the church of their choice - a service the Council of Government's federally-funded Rural Transit Program claimed that there was no demand for such things and refused to provide those sorts of transportation services.   

Groups like this would like to keep their programs going permanently, but they don't know how.  The trouble is that the folks running things on the government side see these kinds of local efforts as encroaching on their territory. The Food Stamp folks in our part of the woods started complaining when East Texas church's food pantry programs began cutting into their business. At one point, they actually started a marketing campaign to bring people back to the Food Stamp program that were forgoing the miserable application process for Food Stamps and being fed instead by little church food pantries. Now, the Food Banks that supply those church based pantry programs suddenly found it harder and harder to get the food supplies they once did as the federal government tried to centralize all anti-hunger programs under government control.

Small to mid-sized charities also face stiff competition for increasingly limited Foundation grants. Big charities with fat development budgets and marketing resources dominate the competition for what grants and other funding remains out there, especially over the past 8 years as the economy went into a long slump. Local charities are having to do more, with less money and they're doing it with organizations that don't have the aggressive development resources they need to find funding to keep their doors open.

That's where local heroes like you can help address the needs in your towns and neighborhoods that were not anticipated up in Washington's central planners. Local charities and churches need smart community leaders and volunteers to help the people who create and run local charities and work to create programs that address local needs.

Technology can be a real friend to communities if we let it be. We have the technological tools and resources to reduce the cost of creating local solutions to local problems. Technology can reduce travel costs, improve access to information critical to problem solving and help to build collaborative networks using 21st century telecommunications and Internet based tools. In every community there are wise and wonderful people with the skills and smarts to solve a myriad of problems that exist in our home towns - problems that nobody in Washington has ever thought of, much less designed a "program" that will fix it.

These are tough times.

Small charities can't afford expensive development officers, much less afford an extensive development and fund-raising program. Yet, foundations and government funding sources increasingly require more and more networking, inter agency cooperation and program coordination before they'll give money to local charities. This is an expensive and time consuming task, something most nonprofits can't afford.You can help the little nonprofits and faith-based ministries survive in this era of crumbling economies.

Helping the little guys trying to do good in your home town maximizes the amount of good you can do. First off, you don't have the federal government taking 40 to 60 percent off the top for admin costs and to pay overweight bureaucrats sitting in cubicle warrens in local, regional, state federal office buildings, and in Washington DC to generate paperwork for each other. Local nonprofits, church-based and community-based organizations operate for a lot less money. To even get grant funding, these guys can't show more than a 7 to 15% admin costs.
  • They aren't making government salaries.
  • They don't have government health benefits.
  • They spend on average less than 8% of their entire budgets on admin costs.
  • Many go without pay altogether.
  • Millions of volunteers work with them.
  • Tens of millions are given a hand up.
  • Tens of millions of lives are changed.
  • We can help them do even better by providing badly needed expertise.
These are amazing people. They don't have to ask the government for permission to help the homeless, to shelter a battered wife and her kids, to feed an elderly person or to help someone who's fallen on hard times to get back on his feet. Why should a community have to ask someone in Washington whether the widow next door deserves to have a couple of neighbors mow her grass or paint her porch for her? Why should our neighbor have to file stacks of humiliating paperwork when all he needs is a couple of bags of groceries and a ride to work for a few weeks till he gets on his feet?

You can help your community do-gooders to, well, to do good! Here are a few things you can do to get involved.

  1. Volunteer - Find some event or fund-raiser that needs help and sign on. It's a good way to get in touch with what the good-guys are up to in your community.
  2. Join a nonprofit board - It's a great way to get your feet wet and it's not terribly hard to get an invitation. Find a board member and get to know him or her. It's not hard to wangle an invitation.
  3. Help raise a little money - Board members are expected to do that.
  4. Go to speeches and workshops - Meet people and hear people talk about community issues. Talk. Get to know the players and the issues.
  5. Keep up with the news - Ask yourself as you are reading, is there something here that we need to fix. Have you got a homeless problem people are talking about? Did you spot a news story about an elderly couple that died because people didn't check up on them? Is there something an existing group or agency could have done to prevent it?  It's that sort of thing that helps you identify things your community needs to have addressed.
  6. Build a network - The more people in key positions you know, the more community leaders you touch base with, the better you'll understand how to go about problem solving and who to talk to that can help you.
  7. Don't be afraid to speak up - There are no stupid questions. Ask them at community meetings, city council meetings, county commissioner's meetings, public comment meetings, issues review boards, etc.. You'll find out who and what is important as you go along.
  8. Offer to sit on committees or to organize stakeholder groups around a specific issue. You'll know you're headed the right direction when somebody asks who told you that you could do what you are doing.
Every community has it's good old boy network. Sometimes they can be engaged to help and sometimes they can't.  I've worked with groups that came up with great ideas only to see them go nowhere because they depended on the powers that be to make them happy. I sat on a Disabilities Issues Review Board for the city once and we came up with a simple and inexpensive solution to a problem our people were having.  One of the more experienced members of the board piped up.

 "It'll never work," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it makes too much sense," he explained.

Being a local hero is not without its risk. You have to learn a lot about schmoozing and a good bit about politics, but you'll be surprised at what a difference you can make in the world.

© 2017 by Tom King
  


Friday, May 26, 2017

Casting Toy Soldiers


I have a secret hobby I don't tell a whole lot of people about. I collect toy soldiers. It started when I used to buy bags of plastic soldiers for a buck at Ben Franklin's Five and Dime Store. I've still got my soldiers from way back then. My wife says I'm a packrat. I like to think of myself as a collector.

There are all kind of online and retail stores that sell toy soldiers in a variety of scales and materials. I'm not terribly picky. I just like setting up little armies and battlefields, but some folk get really into recreating specific historical battles.  If you want to get really into the hobby, you can even build your own soldiers. In exchange for some time and work, you can not only come up with a greater variety of soldiers for your layouts, but you can also save yourself some money by learning the art of molding lead or composite soldiers. 

Making your own soldiers is a great way for history/militariana  buffs to capture a moment in history. If you're a gamer, it's a way to impress your fellow board gamers with your awesome playing pieces. And you can make your playing pieces more realistic. If you're just into the art of the thing, creating molds is a fun and potentially profitable way to interpret what is a fascinating subject.

Here's how the process works:














Materials:
  • Lead bismuth and tin ingots or other meltable metal material (avoid lead as it is too toxic)
  • Release powder
  • Lead soldier molds. You can buy these or make them. For this how-to, we'll focus on working from the molds and look at making molds in another blog.
  • Support boards
  • Metal clamps
  • Casting ladle
  • Bunsen burner
  • Wooden kitchen matches
  • Exacto knife and/or fine metal clipper pliers
  • Fine wire brush
  • Hobby paints, undercoat and clear varnish
  • Hobby paint brushes
Directions:

  1.  Lay out the molds you are going to use on a flat surface. 
  2. Brush the inside of both molds with release powder - both mold halves. Tap the mods together to remove any excess powder.  
  3. Test fit the mold halves and make sure they are lined up properly. Many commercial molds have notches to help insure a proper fit.
  4. Once the mold is line up, lay boards on either side and clamp the mold halves together. 
  5. Prop up the casting ladle and cut up bits of metal ingot if you're molding with lead. Place them in the ladle and heat them over the burner until the metal melts and liquifies.  
  6. Test the temperature of the metal with a burnt kitchen match. If you touch the match to the metal and it smokes, it's ready to pour. 
  7. Pour the melted metal from the ladle into
    the mold holes in the side of the molds. As you pour the the liquid metal, tap the sides of the molds with a tool to help the metal settle into all the little nooks and crannies inside the mold.
     
  8. Let the molds cool for at least 5 minutes or so. Longer is better. Once the metal has cooled and hardened, unclamp the boards holding the mold halves together and remove them. 
  9. Now gently bend the mold apart and away from the metal figure.  If the mold makes multiple figures, then you'll have a figure tree with multiple figures or parts. 
  10. Use the Exacto knife or fine clippers to free the figures from the figure tree and to trim any metal which may have flashed between the edges of the mold half.
  11. Finish the figure with a fine wire brush along the seams to clean up the marks from where the molds came together. You might want to finish with some fine metal sandpaper to remove the lines entirely.
  12. Finish your figure by spraying it with an undercoat before doing the final painting.
  13. It's easy enough to find excellent color illustrations of uniforms online. Paint one color at a time  and allow to dry before doing the next one. Do large areas first and add fine details last using a fine tip brush.
  14. This will improve the look of the paint. I finish my soldiers with a light spray of satin varnish (not glossy) to keep the paint from being flecked off, especially if the figures are used for gaming where they will be handled a lot.

Advanced Soldier-Making

You can make your own molds with materials available from the on-line suppliers listed below and some of the more esoteric hobby shops. Books and DVDs are available on the Internet, that will tell you everything you need to know. 

One thing though. You need to be able to work in very small places. You are after all, creating what are in essence, very small sculptures. If you've got the artistic ability, it can be a lot of fun to make your own stuff. RTV Silicone and plaster are two popular mold-making material. Plaster is rather less durable for making molds. If you have well crafted figures that lend themselves to mold-making, you can always make new molds.  If you have older soldier figures that aren't under somebody's copyright, you can recreate them by making molds and using the molds to reproduce them. If you are any good at carving, you can make your own originals.

Summary

Start your collection by concentrating on molds from a specific era or type of soldier. You may even concentrate on a specific battle if you'd like if you're planning a diorama or gaming around a specific scenario. Be sure and get molds for equipment like cannons, limbers, horses, abatis, stacks of cannon balls and other things necessary for a battle scene. If you'd like to hook up with fellow hobbyists, join Treefrog Treasures' toy soldier forum. You'll meet a huge crowd of toy soldier makers and collectors with just a whole world of information about the hobby.

Making soldiers is a fun way for history/militariana buffs to freeze a moment in time; for gamers a way to make the playing pieces more realistic; for artists, a way to interpret a fascinating subject.

References:

  1. The Miniatures Page: Making Molds 
  2. The Miniatures Page
  3. Treefrog Treasures: Military Miniatures
  4. Miniature Molds: Casting Molds
  5. Dunken Company: Casting Molds
  6. Popular Science: Gray Matter - Recasting the Hazardous Toys of the Past 


Thursday, March 16, 2017

Does My Kid Have ADHD?

A Cautionary Tale


Is your obviously intelligent child having trouble in school?  Does he daydream, have a lot of trouble focusing in class? Is he (or she) disruptive and not doing well in class. Is it time to get the kid started on Ritalin? 

A couple of things first. If you are worried about ADHD or autism, find a good child psychologist and have him evaluated. Don't start with a doctor or pediatrician. There's no physical test for psychological or behavioral issues. Physicians have a protocol for these things and too often it starts off with Ritalin. 

Don't go that way. Get the diagnosis first. 

With ADHD the best thing is not to rush them into school. If I had my way I'd start an ADHD kid in school when he was ten years old. Give him time to settle down. He'd catch up in no time because he or she would be better prepared socially. 

Unfortunately, schools don't let you do that. 

ADHD is actually not a specific single disorder. It's a cluster of symptoms that can actually be caused by one of four or more different problems. 
  1. True deficits of attention - Classic ADHD is caused by lowered glucose in the frontal lobes of the brain. Ritalin works well for that as a stop gap. It's one of the most dramatic effects in psycho-pharmacology. If it doesn't work amazingly well, it ain't real ADHD. 
  2. Tourette's syndrome. This can start out with attention issues and then develop into twitches and then the full outburst sorts of behaviors you get with Tourettes. There are some medications that help. 
  3. Childhood depression - Depression can be triggered for a variety of real reasons (divorce, illness, death, loss, etc.). Depression in kids can cause attention problems. This can be treated with counseling and anti-depressents. 
  4. Bipolar disorder - Both the manic and depressive cycles cause attention problems early on in kids before full bipolar develops. There is a family history of bipolar in both sides of my own family. 
If you start looking at your family history, you may more quickly find the source of you child's attention problems. My own son started showing symptoms early and we thought it was ADHD at first. If we'd known it was bipolar, we'd have done different things to attempt to treat it. ADHD treatments were ineffective.

If your child is having symptoms that look like one of these issues, do your best to keep the child away from pot and other drugs when they hit junior high and high school. Pot use and other drug abuse, for instance can actually trigger earlier onset of full blown bipolar disorder and may , and that is not something you want to kick in when you're kid is also struggling with puberty issues.


Be sure and let the psychologist know about family history of mental illness. That's why it is better to start with the experts. If there has been any trauma in the family or the child has suffered a head injury or some other powerful event. These can trigger attention issues.

And for kids with attention problems, you might try a programmed learning approach that he can do at his own speed. Do not underestimate the power of learning by activities which give the child immediate feedback. It's why a kid who can't pay attention for ten minutes in school can spend hours playing a video game. Video games provide instant feedback which re-engages attention continuously. There are home-school programs that are really good for that sort of thing.

© 2017 by Tom King

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

Clear the Ice Off Your Windshield SAFELY!



Introduction:

It’s the time of year when snowstorms turn to ice storms and lay down coats of ice over our windshields. Nothing is worse than hacking at a sheet of ice on a miserable morning in the middle of a nasty ice storm and trying to clear the ice so you can go to work. You can run your car with the heater on and after a while you can break loose the ice by hacking at it with an ice scraper.  Then there’s when you’re in a hurry and have to drive to work with a 12 inch hole in the ice in front of the driver’s side (see above) and the side windows down so you can hang your head out. Who needs it?

The easiest way to clear your windshield is by going out the night before and throwing a tarp over your windshields. Unfortunately, we don’t always get warnings of ice storms the night before. So next time you go out to get in your car and go to work, find the windows coated with ice here’s what you can do to safely remove the ice and get on to work without cracking your windshield.  And best of all it’s cheap and uses stuff you can find in your cleaning closet.

Materials:
FYI - A hockey stick is NOT a good window scraper.

  • Cold water
  • 2 household sprayer bottles
  • High quality ice scraper
  • Warm gloves
  • Isopropyl Rubbing Alcohol
  • Vinegar
  • Dishwashing Liquid

Directions:

  1. Mix ½ cup rubbing alcohol with 4-5 drops of dishwashing detergent. Pout the solution into one of the sprayers and mark it.
  2. Mix 3 cups vinegar and 1 cup cold water
  3. Put on your warm clothes and gloves and grab your ice scraper and bottles of solution.
  4. Spray the ice over the windows and mirrors with the alcohol/dishwashing liquid solution and let it sit 5 minutes.
  5. The ice should lift off the glass. You may have to break it loose from the frame of the windshield or the metal edges around the mirrors with the ice scraper.
  6. If the ice is very thick, you may have to repeat spraying the ice with the alcohol/dishwashing liquid solution a time or two to get the ice to release.
  7. Once all the mirrors and windows are clear, spray with the vinegar/water solution to clear away the soapy residue and you’re done. Make sure and clear the entire window for you own safety and so you won’t get stopped by the cops.

This is NOT the fun way to remove ice. It's hard
on your hands and your windows.
You can also spray your windows the night before with the alcohol/dishwashing liquid solution to prevent ice from forming and sticking to your windows. You can also take the bottles along with you to work and spray the windows before you go in, in case another ice storm hits while you’re at work.  Of course a tarp is best way to keep ice off your windows if you have to park out of doors, but if you don’t want to fool with that, the spray on solution works too. Before you drive home spray with vinegar water and wipe the windows clear. 

Whatever you do, don’t use hot water on a frozen window of any other heat source for that matter. It can crack the glass, especially at very low temperatures. Salt on the car windows is also a terrible idea because of the danger of rusting and pitting metal car parts. Avoid hitting the ice because at low temperatures your car windows are easier to break.  

Especially don’t use antifreeze on your windows. It tastes sweet to animals and is highly poisonous. Spill some on the ground and you can accidentally kill your neighbor’s pets.

References:

WBNT-10TV:  AAA Offers Advice for De-Icing Your Car

Dollar Stretcher: Homemade Window De-Icer

Reader’s Digest: 12 Ways to Use Rubbing Alcohol