Saturday, March 03, 2018

Covering the Bases

This week… I am in Las Vegas at BEC and I will have my review and wrap up on the event on my post next week.  With more than 500 people in attendance I truly expect some very interesting conversations and great insight into our world and as always I look forward to sharing some of my experiences here with you.

--  One person who is usually at BEC and won’t be here will be George Sultage of Vitro.  As I wrote a few weeks back, George is battling a health issue and can still surely use all positive thoughts and prayers.  We will miss you at the conference George and hang in there!

--  Economy wise it has been a pretty volatile since my last post.  The stock market had some terrible days and some less than cherry forecasts came out.  The possibilities of tariffs were openly discussed by the US and that was not accepted well by many.  In the meantime I point to a post from ITR Economics (you may remember them from having a yearly speaker at the Glazing Executives Forum) noting that 5 leading economic indicators are now trending lower and this came out before the stock market saw its declines. Add in some fears with regards to the homebuilders and the residential forecasts and quite frankly it was a skittish week.  Hopefully this week will be better, but is surely now more important to keep an eye on all of the metrics out there.

--  My good friend Marc Deschamps of Walker Glass announced his retirement and that is going to be a huge knowledge and personality loss to our industry.  Marc is a wonderful man who was extremely dedicated to his company and industry.  A tremendous volunteer, the amount of time he gave up to help push industry topics forward was amazing.  His departure will leave a hole in a lot of efforts that is for sure. Personally, I am really going to miss seeing him and his awesome suits and style at the various glass industry events.  Best of luck and fortune to you Marc and ENJOY retirement my friend…. You earned it!

--  Recently I wrote on licensing and certification and I got a few questions on the process and the organization.  A very good overview handout is here.

--  Also this week a pal of mine called to ask me about the Silica Rule via OSHA.  It is real folks and as frustrating as can be.  Glass Magazine has written some excellent pieces about it and in case you missed it you can click here and here.

--  Last this week…. I have one kid in college and one about to go in the fall.  So I had to laugh when I was told about a major being offered at Northern Michigan University.  It is in Marijuana.  Yup.  But it’s not as easy as it sounds… interesting story and will be fascinatingto see how this takes off.

LINKS of the WEEK

I love it when justice works out!

Bizarre and brilliant!

More bizarre stuff and frightening

VIDEO of the WEEK

This is crazy cool.  It is a mash-up of the 2 amazingly different songs into one and it works incredibly well.  I am a fan of both songs; so hearing it this way blew me away…  good creative stuff.



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