Be sure to click the tour / play button on the top left-hand side of the screen. Lasting a couple of minutes, the tour takes you further into the universe with some great visuals and a big space soundtrack. You can zoom and pivot around from there.
(Note: It says it’s made for Google Chrome, but I fiddled around on Firefox just fine.)
Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
SpiroFlo shares some brief commentary on a long resignation letter sent by a disgruntled Whole Foods employee.
A lot of people like Whole Foods—their commitment to natural/organic produce, local communities and the environment—but a resignation letter from a now ex-employee is looking to burst the bubble.
To start with, the letter is long, really long, and not that all that interesting. Most people aren’t surprised that a supermarket chain has some easily criticized practices in at least some of their 300+ stores. The big problem is that “healthier” stores like Whole Foods—much like the green industry—can use the “we care” aspect to capture a more conscientious crowd while not really doing anything different. While most people are not fooled by this marketing magic, they might not be aware of just how similar to an everyday grocery store Whole Foods really is. According to the writer, they’re “a faux hippy Wal-Mart.”
A “faux hippy Wal-Mart”? Yeah, I guess I can see that in the lettering…
Now let’s be honest: Resignation letters sent to the whole (pun!) company are designed to go public, and they don’t go viral without a level of dirt digging. Thus this letter has—surprise!—extensive criticisms of their “we care” practices and a number of name redacted personal insults.
Apparently it’s not enough to leave a job that didn’t work out, griping to your friends who will, in turn, not shop there anymore. Nah, you’ve got to make it a public gripe that, while it will fizzle quickly in the blink of a closed internet tab, still gets taken as credible from someone who may just be bitter.
These claims (along with follow-up articles) got propelled along by Gawker, the super classy folks who feature things like stolen celebrity sex tapes. All this is to say, while much of it is likely true, take it with a grain of salt (organic or otherwise).
Personally, I was never up for paying nearly ten bucks for eggs anyway.
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Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
SpiroFlo shares some pilot confessions on how long your flight really takes, the truth on turning off your electronics during takeoff and landing, and where pilots can use their in-flight (licensed) guns.
“We’ll make it up in the air” is a bogus phrase because of how little time they can make up vs. how much fuel they’ll waste, yet you often still land on time. How so? Because airlines lie about how long flights actually take. This happens partly because a) moving multiple people naturally involves contingency; and b) if said people knew about said contingency, there’d be a pile of gripes
I’ve got a friend who’s a pilot. This friend texts from the plane. While in flight.
At first I thought, “Shouldn’t you be watching the road, or uh, the sky in front of you?” According to him, with so much of plane travel being automated, he could stare at the console the whole time and likely still take off and land safely.
That bit about turning off your electronics during takeoff and landing? My pilot friend thinks it’ll go away soon, as all they really get is a bit of hum over the equipment. He’s legally allowed to keep a gun in the cockpit, too, but only there and only on his plane. A pilot recently lost his license because he came out if the cockpit, gun brandished, and tried to commit a citizen’s arrest. The belligerent passenger called him on it, and as the pilot’s authority stopped at the locked door at the front of the plane, he’d overstepped the limit of where and how he could use that weapon.
Maybe you’re like me where you wonder what would happen if a pilot was placed in the unfortunate position where he had to fire on someone trying to get into the cockpit. I know they’d be half-deaf firing that thing in such a small space, but what if they miss and the bullet strikes the plane? I’ve seen action movies where someone gets sucked out of that teeny depressurized hole.
Apparently it doesn’t work that way either. You can cover the hole up and will be fine until landing. A towel will probably do (hope they don’t hit the window or a passenger).
Now action movies aren’t accurate? Maybe cool guys do look at explosions.
Well, here’s what I planned to write about in this blog: Recently I was on a business trip—an early flight from the Midwest. De-icing (where they spray chemicals all over the plane to remove/prevent freezing) was a gimme.
That day I got a pilot who was publicly honest over the intercom: “We’re going to turn off the air because the de-icing fluid smells bad,” he said. “You can try fiddling with your air port above you if you really want to, but it still won’t work.”
He then went on to say, “We will land on time.” I waited for the lie about making time up in the air, but instead this pilot said, “We’ve got three hours and 20 minutes allocated for flight time, but it only takes two hours, five minutes, so we’ll be fine.” It’s the first public acknowledgement I’ve ever heard of that.
Unfortunately, he did not explain the airlines’ obsession with peanuts. Some secrets just go too deep.
* * *
Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
SpiroFlo shares a quote from Carl Sagan on the value of earth.
It’s Earth Day. That day that’s important enough to show up pre-marked on my calendar, but still gets enough flak for, a) 24 hours not being good enough for such an important issue (when something like Mike the Headless Chicken gets a two-day annual festival); and b) that even promoting Earth Day—using physical materials for advertisements, power and energy for online promotion—can be criticized for doing the very things environmentalists want us to scale back.
Personally, I think it’s too easy to be a cynic without considering the positive merits. All you need is one more gripe and you never need to build anything. You just tear down the work of others. So if nothing else, Earth Day reminds me of Earth-related things I’ve appreciated along the way, including this quote from Carl Sagan:
And the next part that usually gets left off in our “meme it down for me” (and include a picture of a cat) internet culture:
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
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Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
We live in a wired world. It’s telecommunications everywhere, and that has to be backed up with contingencies and redundancies. As highlighted by the first half of the following infographic, all of that is a massive power drain—be it represented by a growing toaster army or meaningful location visual. The second half of this infographic—on how to make data centers greener—is more iffy, as solar and wind energy potential is often based on what people would like it to be (without problems, of course) rather that what it actually would be.
In the same way that the cell phone that fits in kids’ pockets today is more powerful that the computers that filled up rooms decades ago, there’s a lot of energy to conserve in this area:
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Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
Vortex Tools looks at a recent infographic release from the White House on the Energy Security Trust and explains why it makes a flawed boast.
So the White House recently released this infographic explaining the perks of the Energy Security Trust:
There’s a lot that sounds good here—no extra costs, more clean energy, and supporting American jobs, research and innovation—but there’s an obvious burning question that this style of marketing often misses: If this $2 billion revenue is from profitable oil and gas companies, and it’s used to “shift our vehicles off oil for good,” why would the oil and gas industry support it? Natural gas isn’t enough (as an industry that has yet to recover), and anyone in oil and gas just assumes it’d be next on the chopping block anyway.
If I looked at Bill Gates and said, “I want to take some of your profits and use them to invest in companies that will shift computer use away from PCs for good” I’d expect him to look at me and say, “Um… no.” So when I see this type of stick it to ‘em marketing, I just assume that there’s something dishonest going on. While I’ve run across some in-depth rebuttals already, the short version is this:
The oil and gas industry is only giving what they have to, by royalties and fees paid to the government for using federal land.
While there is no increase in the budget for this program, these funds could be used to pay down the deficit.
These types of subsidies already exist… and many would argue that they already don’t work. I spoke to a guy who got out of solar recently. He said, “We’re all playing a game of last man standing, waiting for the subsidies to stop so that we can cash in after many solar companies crash. The only way to make money as a small, innovative company is to get acquired by the big energy companies, because they’re the ones with the funds to last to the end.” Who are the big energy companies? They’re the ones who’re tied to the oil and gas industry, either directly or indirectly, so you’re just pouring in money to delay the inevitable and still have the guys you don’t like make a profit (if that’s your bent).
While there’s duplicity for subsidies, not surprisingly, none of the Energy Security Trust is going towards oil and gas expansion in the U.S.
Of course I hope that the Energy Security Trust increases jobs, innovation and clean energy, but when I see flawed tactics covered by iffy marketing, I’m not expecting much.
* * *
Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
SpiroFlo looks at how drought conditions are shaping water utility pricing and why some of these increasing costs are necessary.
Last time, I covered how Colorado has officially moved deeper into its drought, hitting the stage two level (meaning forced water restrictions as opposed to mere suggestions). In recently attending a Q & A with Denver Water CEO, Jim Lochhead, one of the main topics that came up was how they’re reacting to drought conditions. After hearing his comments, I have to say that while Denver Water isn’t government run, when I look at some of their pricing tactics, it feels like it is. Here’s what I mean:
Denver Water is aiming to reduce water use in Colorado by 20% in 2013. With the stage two drought limitations, this seems like a fair goal. However, on May 1st of this year, Denver Water will assign people a “drought charge” – a fee assigned to cover their reduced revenue from customers’ reduced water use… which Denver Water is enforcing with their rules and fines.
I don’t think this is completely unfair—given that there is actually less water to use with the drought, and it needs to be aggressively conserved—but Denver Water’s customer fees went up in 2010, too. They didn’t go up then because of a drought; they went up because 2009 was such a wet year and people didn’t use enough water.
So in the end, if you don’t use enough water because of good water conditions, you get charged more, and if you aren’t allowed to use water because of drought conditions, you get charged more. Admittedly, this feels like any old company that charges its customers more because they’re not making enough, but there are some differences. First off, people need clean water and someone has to treat it. Every utility has fixed costs: the base level pieces that are required to maintain any business at all. For Denver Water, these fixed costs include maintenance of pipelines, infrastructure and the overall system—you know, the parts necessary to treat and deliver clean water. According to Lochhead, as Denver Water does a decent job of keeping their fixed costs down—which make up 20-30% of their costs, as opposed to the 40% average for other utilities—only 4% of the customer’s rate is made up of these fixed costs.
Inevitably, there is that awkward conflict where Denver Water is providing a need (with fees that are at least somewhat regulated on the state level), yet, like any business, they’re trying to make a profit. Considering 2012 and 2013 will stack up as the two worst consecutive water years in Colorado history—and Denver Water is slated to lose $50 million in 2013 alone—water utilities are not in an enviable position.
That said, should water utilities simply feel the pains and costs of slower years like any other business, or with the need of clean water on the line, are they allowed to? If their provision of a need doesn’t allow them to face the pains of drought years, should they be allowed to reap the rewards of good water years? However it goes, I’m not sure you can argue that a different company could do a better job without being allowed to have a successful business model.
* * *
Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
Whole Foods Criticized in Resignation Letter
May 1, 2013 by spirofloblog
SpiroFlo shares some brief commentary on a long resignation letter sent by a disgruntled Whole Foods employee.
A lot of people like Whole Foods—their commitment to natural/organic produce, local communities and the environment—but a resignation letter from a now ex-employee is looking to burst the bubble.
To start with, the letter is long, really long, and not that all that interesting. Most people aren’t surprised that a supermarket chain has some easily criticized practices in at least some of their 300+ stores. The big problem is that “healthier” stores like Whole Foods—much like the green industry—can use the “we care” aspect to capture a more conscientious crowd while not really doing anything different. While most people are not fooled by this marketing magic, they might not be aware of just how similar to an everyday grocery store Whole Foods really is. According to the writer, they’re “a faux hippy Wal-Mart.”
A “faux hippy Wal-Mart”? Yeah, I guess I can see that in the lettering…
Apparently it’s not enough to leave a job that didn’t work out, griping to your friends who will, in turn, not shop there anymore. Nah, you’ve got to make it a public gripe that, while it will fizzle quickly in the blink of a closed internet tab, still gets taken as credible from someone who may just be bitter.
These claims (along with follow-up articles) got propelled along by Gawker, the super classy folks who feature things like stolen celebrity sex tapes. All this is to say, while much of it is likely true, take it with a grain of salt (organic or otherwise).
Personally, I was never up for paying nearly ten bucks for eggs anyway.
* * *
Colin McKay Miller is the VP of Marketing for the SpiroFlo Holdings group of companies:
-SpiroFlo for residential hot water savings (delivered 35% faster with up to a 5% volume savings on every hot water outlet in the home) and industrial water purification (biofilm removal).
-Vortex Tools for extending the life of oil and gas wells (recovering up to 10 times more NGLs, reducing flowback startup times, replacing VRUs, eliminating paraffin and freezing in winter, etc.).
-Ecotech for cost-effective non-thermal drying (for biosolids, sugar beets, etc.) and safe movement of materials (including potash and soda ash).
Posted in Green Commentary, SpiroFlo | Tagged Current Events, Green Commentary, health foods, natural foods, organic, SpiroFlo | 1 Comment »