Trends

Solar Eclipse

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As the hype grows, I’ve been thinking about the solar eclipse on August 21st. Thanks to Waffle House, I found this handy map (see right) in case you want your eclipse viewing “Smothered & Covered”. I heard on the radio that Krispy Kreme was planning competing events. Chocolate Glaze! Unfortunately, Indiana will be mostly bypassed for the total eclipse. We’ll only get a side view. That should still be cool and weather permitting, I’m sure I’ll step out side to check it out.

Picture of Sanford Stadium from ajc.com article

My friends around Atlanta are planning parties and events. Any excuse for a party and a day off work, right? The University of Georgia is planning a party in Sanford Stadium. (Article here) Do you tailgate for an eclipse? Knowing the Bulldogs, the answer to that will be a resounding YES! Ha!

Nest Thermostat asking to activate their eclipse rush hour savings

One of the other interesting tie-ins I saw was with the Nest thermostats. I’ve talked about them before here. They’ve been through a few updates since then and I chose to install one in my home. So far I’ve been pleased. More than similar devices, I have observed Nest really trying to make the green connection and not just personal energy cost savings. They send out a report on how many “leafs” you earn each month for energy savings along with a comparison to other Nest owners. There is a running total on their website showing their estimate of how many Kwh of energy that has been saved by their devices.

The tie-in to the eclipse is that in their blog, Nest repeats a report that suggests the solar eclipse, as it blocks out solar panels, will reduce green energy production by as much as 9,000 MW resulting in traditional systems coming back on line to pick up the slack. “At Nest, we think of these high-demand times on the energy grid as rush hours.” They suggest that if you opt in, their thermostats will automatically cool your home a little extra before the event so that it can reduce the load during the event. Personally I think that’s as much marketing as an actual need, but it’s still an interesting concept and it’s another reminder of how the Internet of Things continues to find new ways to work for us.

For those of you in Culver, there is going to be presentations this Saturday at the Culver Union Township Public Library at 10:30 and noon talking about the eclipse. (The noon event was added after the flyer came out.) Dr. Angela Meyer from Culver Academies will give the presentation. Those that attend will receive NASA approved viewing glasses for Monday’s eclipse. This should be an informative event!

Maybe I’ll see you out in the semi-darkness on the 21st. That is if I don’t accept an invitation to go to Atlanta and get the full effect! While I doubt this will be any kind of life changing event, it is one of those cool and rare physical phenomenons of which we should all take advantage. Hopefully for most of us it’s not literally a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it is pretty rare… And unlike most astronomical events, you don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to see it! Bonus!

Charley Creek Inn Ribbon Cutting

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Ribbon Cutting for the Courtyard – May 5, 2017

I’ve been a little slow getting things up on the site this summer. There’s been a lot going on. Thanks to the Wabash Plain Dealer for the picture from the event.

Howard Kaler, General Manager of the Charley Creek Inn, tells me that the Courtyard has been an enormous success. There are already over 20 different events scheduled in the Courtyard in July. We’re pretty proud of it. You can see additional pictures here. There are some additional pictures elsewhere in the blog showing the construction.

I recommend that you check it out if you’re in the area. Heck, personally I think it’s worth a special trip!

MCEDC Successfully fills the Commerce Building

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Commerce Building - New home of Pretzels, Inc.
Commerce Building – New home of Pretzels Inc.

MCEDC has been pleased to have the Commerce Building, a new shell building in Plymouth, to market to companies considering our area. Started in 2014 and completed in 2015, the Commerce Building has been responsible for bringing many companies to Marshall County that wouldn’t have otherwise considered us. At least one new business start-up, investing millions and providing hundreds of jobs, located in Marshall County this year because of coming to see the Commerce Building. The power of having a shell building to show has proven its value to us.

Below is a press release on the relocation of Pretzels Inc. to Plymouth. A good company and a good fit for Plymouth. Now we need to figure out how to keep this momentum going forward.

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Snack Producer Plans to Add Second Indiana Facility, Create 65 New Jobs

 

Plymouth  – Pretzels Inc., a pretzel and snack producer, announced plans today to expand its operations here, creating up to 65 new jobs by 2020.

“Here in Indiana, we have worked diligently to establish Indiana as the best place to do business by reducing regulations, cutting taxes and investing in our workforce,” said Governor Mike Pence. “Today’s news is evidence that Indiana is a state that works for companies like Pretzels Inc. as they continue to choose Indiana to grow their operations. As we enter into our third century, we will continue our economic momentum by equipping our job creators with the tools they need to succeed and creating a pro-growth business environment.”

The company, which is a pretzel and snack food private label provider, will invest approximately $15 million to purchase and equip a 45,000-square-foot facility at 2910 Commerce St. in Plymouth. The new plant, which will be the second Indiana location in addition to its Bluffton-based headquarters, will be responsible for the production of peanut butter and bulk pretzel products and will replace the company’s Pennsylvania-based manufacturing facility. Operations are expected to start at the beginning of 2017.

Pretzels Inc., which currently has 330 full-time employees at its headquarters in Bluffton, Indiana, plans to hire plant management and supervision, packagers, bakers, machine operators, quality control technicians and sanitation, maintenance and warehouse workers for its new center. Hiring will begin later this year.

“We are excited about the opportunity to build our new plant in Indiana and particularly the Plymouth area,” said Chip Mann and Steve Huggins, co-owners of Pretzels Inc., whose fathers started the business over 40 years ago. “We are lifelong Indiana residents and are pleased to continue the growth of our business in our home state.”

Founded in 1978, Pretzels Inc. is a family-owned business headquartered in Bluffton, Indiana. The company offers pretzels in over 50 shapes, 20 sizes and 900 varieties for both store brands, private labels and its own Harvest Road products. Its fastest growing product line is peanut butter filled pretzel nuggets, which will be produced at the new Plymouth-based facility.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered Pretzels Inc. up to $350,000 in conditional tax credits based on the company’s job creation plans. These tax credits are performance-based, meaning until Hoosiers are hired, the company is not eligible to claim incentives. The city of Plymouth will consider additional incentives at the request of the Marshall County Economic Development Corporation.

“The City of Plymouth is proud to welcome Pretzels Inc. into our community,” said Plymouth Mayor Mark Senter. “Plymouth will see the benefits of job creation and a strengthened economy very soon thanks to a team of both state and local leaders who have come together to make this project a reality.”

The Hoosier state ranks first in the Midwest and fifth nationally for the cost of doing business and companies like Pretzels Inc. continue to choose Indiana to grow their operations. Today, one in five Hoosiers work in the manufacturing industry and more than 8,500 industry establishments are located across the state.

Build Your Future Indiana

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Build Your Future Indiana CoverLest anyone think I know when to stop beating a dead horse, I thought I would share some pictures from the Build Your Future Indiana guide. It’s sponsored by Associated Buildings and Contractors of Indiana/Kentucky and as a Board Member, I received a copy at a meeting last week. The guide promotes construction as a career in Indiana. (I plan to share my copy with Jerry Chavez at MCEDC the next time I see him.) It gives job descriptions and base wages for careers in various construction trades.

Build Your Future Indiana BackOne of the things that currently is a problem in Indiana is finding construction workers. We need to encourage young people that the construction industry is a viable career and educate them that it is a career with potential, but one that requires mental as well as physical skills.

So about that poor horse… I’ve reprinted the rear cover of the guide to the right. Notice the Wind Turbines in the background? Seems that when I go to most other areas of the State, they’re proud of Indiana’s alternative energy initiatives. But not Marshall County… Even though we have people that work in the wind conversion industry living in our county and manufacturing parts for the industry in our county.

Build Your Future Indiana Wind Turbine TechMost pages in the guide have three trades per page. The Wind Turbine Maintenance Tech gets his own page and apparently around $46k per year. Sounds like it could be a sweet gig!

Okay, I’ve beat the poor beast enough. As if I hadn’t beat him enough here and here and here. Feel free to search for “turbine” in the search box on the right if you want more. Try “Extended Territorial Boundary” if you want to see me get really wound up!. No guaranties that I won’t run across something else that warrants a rant about this, but the poor horse could be an extra on The Walking Dead at this point…

Two Spaces

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One of my best friends, Kim Whitten, is a lurker here. Since I am HORRIBLE about proofing my own work*, I always ask her to tell me if she finds any errors. Recently she pointed out that I use two spaces after periods, which was old “typewriter thinking” and if I didn’t want to show my age, I should stop that. This was the first I had heard of this, so immediately I assumed that this was a product of Twitter and Texting, where you have limited characters. Surely formal writing should still observe the two space rule I’d learned in school? Nay-nay!

Kim sent me to the Cult of Pedagogy website where I read a couple of articles on the subject (here and here) along with a sometimes heated comment argument thread. Apparently this has ALWAYS been wrong. It’s a product of the manual typewriter era, when the original typewriters produced documents in a monospace font style without proper kerning for the skinny letters like “i” and “l”.

I went to my favorite snide grammar guide, “The Oatmeal“, but he let me down on this one.  A little more looking took me to Slate. It would appear that those in the single space camp are quite the Nazis about it too, as illustrated by this quote in an article from Slate: “Forget about tolerating differences of opinion: typographically speaking, typing two spaces before the start of a new sentence is absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Ilene Strizver, who runs a typographic consulting firm The Type Studio, once wrote. “When I see two spaces I shake my head and I go, Aye yay yay. I talk about ‘type crimes’ often, and in terms of what you can do wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment. It’s a pure sign of amateur typography.” Hmmmmm… If Ilene ruled the world, I would be serving multiple life sentences by now.

I’m not sure why I chose to take typing in high school, other than the fact that I didn’t like study halls and it fit my schedule. Whatever the reason, I will be forever glad that I did. I make a point of recommending typing class to any kids that I might influence. I think it’s unfortunate that typing is falling out of vogue due to the use of texting on phones and the hunt-and-peck writing used by most tablets. (I’ve ranted about that in the past.) I still think it is one of the most useful tools that I learned in high school. It is a skill that I use daily. And for that reason, changing from two spaces to one is going to really slow me down… There will be a lot of backspacing to remove that extra space. The double strike of the space bar by my thumb at the end of a sentence is just too ingrained.

Surprised
Mind Blown!

Far be it from me to want to appear old-fashioned and outdated. I will do my best to lose the double space… going forward. It is definitely not worth it to me to go back and “correct” things I’ve written in the past. The thought that I could be judged negatively on this is somewhat mind-blowing, but stranger things have happened in our politically correct world. I don’t want to be doing hard time if Ms Strizver or some other typesetter becomes emperor of the world!

“Stop doing this!” image borrowed from Cult of Pedagoy

“ing.” image borrowed from Slate

* Somehow my brain seems to go into autocorrect mode when I read something I’ve written. I know what I meant to say, and I gloss over my errors as if they weren’t there. Conversely, when reading someone else’s work, if I run across one spelling or punctuation error, I immediately and irretrievably slip into proof-reading mode. I am picking up on every mistake along the way while struggling to get back to reading the content.

PS – And just for fun, I left one double space after a sentence in this article so the anal among my lurkers have something to do…