HP and LP

HP and LP was Originally Posted on August 17, 2005 by lavarock

It’s a month filled with HP’s and LP’s.

The first HP is Hewlett Packard, the computer/printer company. As careful readers may note, I used to work for HP; that is until they decided that I needed to take an early retirement. It was their way of cutting costs. I took the package for a couple of reasons.

First, they were paying me a bonus based upon my years of service and also an extra amount if I signed an agreement not to speak out against the company for like 1 year. Ever notice that many people leave a company and it takes a while to bad-mouth them? Now in my case, I won’t bad-mouth HP because I was well paid and treated great. I just wish I could have stayed longer. HOWEVER, the company is no longer the place it used to be! This bonus was placed into my retirement account and I could not touch it until I’m 57 or older. However, this money is also tax-deferred, which means that when I am 57 or older and start taking the money out, I will be taxed at my then current tax rate. If I am not earning much at that age, the money may be close to free. It also forces me to save.

The second and perhaps better reason to have taken the package was that HP offered me a medical package that while not fully subsidized, certainly was cheaper than if I had to get medical on my own. Staying with the company meant that they might let me go instead and I would have to accept COBRA for 6 months of medical and then be on my own. I opted for the guarantee of cheap medical rather than the possibility I would be jobless and medically challenged!

It turns out that many people got placed into that position when their department was eliminated soon thereafter.

The reason this is mentioned now is that HP is again offering an early retirement to some employees and a coworker of mine who made it past the last round of layoffs is now being offered early retirement. Since it sounds as though she is being offered the same deal as I got, I suggested she “take the money and run”! I do realize that this is a very difficult decision for most of the people involved and I had second thought right up to the last hour when I had to fax my paperwork in. The main question was, do you take a sure thing or do you pass it by and hope that you can continue to pass by unnoticed while collecting a great paycheck? A friend and coworker was offered the same deal as I and also took the package. Within 6 months his department had been outsourced overseas. Speaking of overseas, this current coworker who must make the decision may have help. It appears that accidentally a spreadsheet was sent around with names and departments on it. Her name had a few pieces of information by it. They included the following two questions: “Must this persons job remain in the US” and also the question “Does the customer require this job remain in the US?” The answer to both questions was NO. So it appears someone overseas could do this job (and probably cheaper).

Years ago this woman worked on an operating system, which was proprietary to HP. Now she works with unix or Windows products. I reminded here that there are experts in these operating systems being turned out every day. That does not bode well for staying at HP and not taking the package. The downside is that she must now look for a job and that is not easy after working for a single company for a decade or two.

So I want to wish all these people good luck and hope that things go well for them. It is a very difficult decision, which I also made. I think I really made the right decision to leave when I did.

I recently attended a Farm Bureau gathering and learned how to calibrate and use a moisture meter for determining the moisture content of both parchment and green coffee. Parchment as you may know is what is taken out of the cherry and green is milled parchment. I’ll be posting some photos of this and the farm soon so stay tuned.

In other items, Our Cream of the Crop competition went very well and we had many hundreds of people attend. We got nice coverage in the paper and this event will continue to grow in popularity each year.

My coffee is being displayed and sold this weekend in Honolulu at the “Made in Hawaii” event. Our coffee council has a booth.

I bought some canopies to use for my coffee plant nursery. I set them up in the clearing beside my garage. After the plants start to grow I can remove the canopy to allow them to mature in full sun.

I bought a water timer and controller and valves to attach to the PVC pipes. This will allow me to automatically water the plants, even if I am away. I have to be careful hooking up the pipes to the water supply lines. All pipes for the house are connected on the output side of a water pressure reducer. This keeps massive pressures in the lines from breaking pipes. However, all the pipes on the outside of the house and for farm use, are on the water main side of the reducer, thus at full pressure. That pressure may be 125 pounds per square inch; which is considerably higher than many water products like these watering valves are designed to work with. Thus I need to label the High Pressure (HP) and Low Pressure (LP) pipes so I can easily tell them apart.

Another issue is that all farm use of the water from the county must be separated from household use by use of a backflow regulator. This backflow unit keeps water from draining back into the county water supply from a farm. This is very important because some farms use fertigation on the farms. Fertigation is the process whereby you inject a liquid fertilizer into a water flow destined for crops. The water/fertilizer mix cannot be allowed to backflow into the drinking water. Thus everything other than the house will also be segregated from the other water lines. I have been approved for catchement tanks and may not be needing country water for everyday farm use, but in a drought, I may need to still rely upon some county water and must have the equipment in place.

So today I have been mounting the water controller on the wall and figuring out how to program it. I need to get some PVC and run that to the canopies and decide what type of sprinklers to use. I need to conserve water but also need to effectively water the plants. I am thinking either sprinklers like are used in yards around shrubs, or perhaps the same type of sprayers used in many fresh vegetable areas of supermarkets. I also have to get some skids to keep the plants up off the ground. Some people build tables so they don’t have to bend over. Hmmm. I may be too cheap to spend that kind of money J

I am working on a couple of deals, which may have me supplying hundreds of pounds of roasted coffee each month to customers. That certainly will help cash flow.

There is a growing concern about a group who was able to slip a bond through the state legislature and we are holding a very large meeting this Friday. Many of us feel that this could very horribly affect the Kona Coffee industry. A representative of the Governor will be there and surprisingly, I am hearing the company involved is NOT sending anyone… It will be interesting to see what Fridays meeting will uncover.

Don’t forget to visit http://ItsKOna.Com10% discount on anything in the Roasted Coffee category.

Until later, I remain you blogger, Mark.