Email mistakes

I got this in my inbox the other day and it hits all the right points.  I think I’d only add two others,

• Replying to all, when you really are writing to the sender of the email.

• Forwarding out email virus warnings and other “death and doom” type messages, without verifying the alleged threat is true.

Anyway, credit for the 10 Top Email Mistakes given below goes to Robert Half.

If you’re like most professionals, you use e-mail in the office on a regular basis. Because of its immediacy and relative lack of intrusiveness, it’s the communication method of choice for many workers, including, chances are, your boss. According to a Robert Half International survey, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of executives polled prefer e-mail over other forms of communication.

While hitting “send” may be an effective way to get your ideas across, doing so too quickly or without a lot of thought can send the wrong message. Here are 10 common e-mail mistakes and tips for avoiding them:

1. A vague subject line.
The subject line not only lets the person receiving the message know what it’s about but also provides him or her with a reason to read it. Some people – and your boss is probably one of them – get hundreds of e-mails each day and may not have the time to open each of them. The subject line acts as the window into the message and can also indicate its urgency, so be specific with what you write there.

2. No sign-off.
A weak signature is almost as bad as a weak handshake: Both convey a lack of professionalism. A signature at the end of your e-mail should include your e-mail address, physical work address and phone number. Including these details gives recipients multiple means of contacting you. This information is especially important for people to whom your e-mail might be forwarded or individuals either outside the company or in another office.

3. “Im writing re: the meeting @ 3.”
Many people take a casual approach when using e-mail. But what you write is a reflection of your professional self, so take the time to craft complete sentences, use proper grammar and check your spelling. And don’t depend solely on your computer’s spell-check function, which won’t find misused words; review your e-mail carefully before sending it.

4. Going on and on and on.
This strategy might work for the Energizer Bunny, but your goal when crafting a message should be to keep it short. You don’t want to write the e-mail equivalent of a novel, so get to the point as quickly as possible, using both short sentences and paragraphs. At the same time, you don’t want to write too brief of a message, which could make you appear curt.

5. SHOUTING IT OUT.
Some people like the ease of typing in all capital letters. What they may not realize is this is the online equivalent of shouting, so avoid the temptation of using the caps lock button.

6. Striking the wrong note.
Unfortunately, it’s easy for tone to be lost with the written word, especially in shorter messages. An attempt at humor, for instance, may be read as something offensive or inappropriate. If you’re not sure how something you wrote will be interpreted, err on the side of caution and leave it out.

7. Weighing others down.
If your e-mail inbox is continually clogged, you know how frustrating it can be to receive large attachments, especially when you don’t want them. And, according to a survey we developed, executives agreed, ranking the receipt of large, unsolicited files as the most annoying aspect of communicating via e-mail. Limit the distribution of massive files to people who absolutely need them.

8. Sending to the wrong box.
Before you send a message, always double-check the list of recipients. Many e-mail programs automatically fill in information you’ve previously typed, such as the e-mail addresses of frequent contacts. If you have multiple people in your address book with similar names, you could mistakenly choose the wrong person and send him or her a message intended for someone else.

9. Mixing business and pleasure.
When the information is confidential or sensitive, this move could limit your career. Any time you use your work e-mail account, the message should be business-related. After all, you are using your firm’s resources, and the company has the right to monitor your communication. Get to know your organization’s e-mail policy, and have your friends send non-work-related e-mail to your personal account, which you can check at home.

10. Over e-mailing.
Do you find yourself typing a long message in order to avoid confusion on the recipient’s part? Do you hesitate to click Send because you think your contact might forward your message to someone who shouldn’t see it? E-mail is best suited for quick communication, and, in situations like these, it’s wise to call your colleague or speak to him or her in person instead.

With e-mail correspondence becoming increasingly important in the workplace, you can only benefit from learning how to craft an effective message. So keep the above tips in mind the next time you sit down at the keyboard.

Heating oil prices turn firewood into hot commodity

Looks like we are returning to the old method of heating our houses!

USA Today

By David Sharp The Associated Press

DURHAM, Maine — On a recent scorching-hot summer day, workers at Reed’s Firewood used heavy equipment to cut and split logs into firewood until it was too dark to see.

Despite its relentless pace, the family-run business is failing to keep up with demand as homeowners shellshocked by the price of heating oil look to firewood as a way to lower their bills this winter.

The cost of seasoned firewood in Maine has jumped about 50% from a year ago, but it remains a relative bargain compared with heating oil, which is nearly $2 a gallon more than it was last year. Many customers are doubling their usual orders, and some firewood dealers are turning away customers. “We’ve really never seen anything like this before,” said Lloyd Irland, who teaches forestry economics at Yale University.

While most heating oil customers aren’t abandoning the fuel altogether, they’re using less by upgrading furnaces, turning down thermostats, insulating their homes and turning to alternative fuels. A survey by the Maine Forest Service found most dealers out of seasoned firewood and some short of green wood, which doesn’t burn as well because it isn’t as dry.

Paul Reed, the owner of Reed’s, tells customers he has plenty of firewood, if they’re willing to wait until December and accept possible price increases.

For the first time in his 23 years in the business, volatility in the market has forced Reed to abandon fixed pricing that customers count on. His price for a cord — a tight stack 4 feet high, 4 feet wide and 8 feet long — rose from $190 early last winter to $255 for green and $300 for seasoned wood.

Firewood remains a deal for those who don’t mind the hassle of lugging it around and periodically feeding their wood stoves or fireplaces.

A cord of firewood has the same heating potential as 155 gallons of heating oil, said Peter Lammert of the Maine Forest Service. Thus, a cord of seasoned firewood costing $300 is a bargain compared with 155 gallons of heating oil costing $685.10, based on $4.42 a gallon, the statewide average.

It’s a stark contrast to the mid-1990s, when heating oil sold for 79 or 80 cents a gallon and a cord of seasoned firewood was about $125. Oil was so cheap then, trading at less than $20 a barrel vs. $115 today, that Reed resorted to calling longtime customers in the spring to drum up orders.

Today, Maine’s firewood producers are heavily competing for the same hardwood logs used by paper mills to produce pulp. Both are paying more because loggers have to pay so much more for diesel fuel, paper industry officials say.

The rush to buy more firewood is having an impact on heating oil dealers. Last year, heating oil consumption fell 13% nationwide, in part because of homeowners’ fuel-efficiency efforts, said John Huber, president of the National Oilheat Research Alliance. Huber expects consumption to drop again this winter, but not by as much.

The run on firewood started last winter, when heating oil surpassed $3 a gallon and kept on climbing. This summer, some customers were close to panic as heating oil approached $5 a gallon before dropping over the last couple of weeks.

Heating oil is the dominant home-heating fuel in New England, ranging from 75% of homes in Maine to about 40% in Massachusetts.

David Rooker feels lucky that he was able to get the two cords piled in his driveway in South Portland: “With the price of heating oil, we’ll have fires every night.” He estimates he saved $1,000 on oil the first year he installed a wood stove.

Reed’s, Maine’s largest firewood dealer, has a pile of logs stacked 20 feet high and stretching more than a football field long. The company expects to deliver nearly 4,000 cords, a record.

But other dealers are struggling to get raw logs.

Southern Maine Firewood, a large dealer in Gorham, had only 100 cords recently but orders for 1,000. “It’s just a nightmare right now,” owner Jake Dyer said. “You’d think in a state like this that you could get wood.”

BioEngergy That Helps Fight Climate Change

What if you could take any organic material, and turn it into energy, and solve the climate change crisis at the same time?

Read the following article also found here for more information about this simple process called Biochar.

May 11, 2007

Simpler way to counter global warming explained: Lock up carbon in soil and use bioenergy exhaust gases for energy

By Susan Lang

Writing in the May 10 issue of the journal Nature, a Cornell biogeochemist describes an economical and efficient way to help offset global warming: Pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by charring, or partially burning, trees, grasses or crop residues without the use of oxygen.

Provided

When bioenergy is produced by pyrolysis (low-temperature burning without oxygen), it produces biochar, which has twice as much carbon in its residue than that from other sources. This makes bioenergy carbon-negative and improves soil health.

This process, he writes, would double the carbon concentration in the residue, which could be returned to the soil as a carbon sink. The exhaust gases from this process and other biofuel production could then be converted into energy.

This so-called biochar sequestration could offset about 10 percent of the annual U.S. fossil-fuel emissions in any of several scenarios, says Johannes Lehmann, associate professor of soil biogeochemistry in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Cornell.

“Biochar sequestration, combined with bioenergy production, does not require a fundamental scientific advance, and the underlying production technology is robust, clean and simple, making it appropriate for many regions of the world,” said Lehmann. “It not only reduces emissions but also sequesters carbon, making it an attractive target for energy subsidies and for inclusion in the global carbon market.”

Most plants pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it up in their biomass or in soil organic matter. But taking this a step further, Lehmann recommends heating the plant biomass without oxygen in a process known as low-temperature pyrolysis. When returned to the soil, biochar creates a stable, long-term carbon sink.

“Biochar also has been shown to improve the structure and fertility of soils, to enhance the retention and efficiency of fertilizers as well as to improve the productivity of soil,” said Lehmann.

Capturing the exhaust gases from the pyrolysis process produces energy in such forms as heat, electricity, bio-oil or hydrogen. By adding the biochar to soil rather than burning it as an energy source (which most companies do), bioenergy can be turned into a carbon-negative industry. Biochar returned to soil not only secures soil health on bioenergy plantations but also reduces greenhouse gas emissions by an additional 12 to 84 percent.

Compared with ethanol production, pyrolysis that produces biochar and bioenergy from its exhaust gases is much less expensive, Lehmann said, when the feedstock is animal waste, clean municipal waste or forest residues collected for fire prevention.

Lehmann said that as the value of carbon dioxide increases on carbon markets, “we calculate that biochar sequestration in conjunction with bioenergy from pyrolysis becomes economically attractive when the value of avoided carbon dioxide emissions reaches $37 per ton.” Currently, the Chicago Climate Exchange is trading carbon dioxide at $4 a ton; it is projected that that the price will rise to $25-$85 a ton in the coming years.

Dependency on Foreign Oil

Well you have to admit it makes sense. Why would you want to be dependent on imports from another country anyway. Yet, we have been doing this for some time now. OPEC has been setting the cap where they want it, this keeps us handicapped and dependent. This regularly causes inflated prices. It’s time the U.S. take measures to protect our economy from imposed shortages by OPEC and the inflated gas and oil prices caused by it.

Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 5, 2008; A04

LANSING, Mich., Aug. 4 — Sen. Barack Obama called Monday for using oil from the nation’s strategic reserves to lower gasoline prices, the second time in less than a week that he has modified a position on energy issues, as he and Sen. John McCain seek to find solutions to a topic that is increasingly dominating the presidential race.

In a speech here, Obama outlined a plan to reduce an addiction to foreign oil that he said is “one of the most dangerous and urgent threats this nation has ever faced.” He repeated his call for a $1,000 “energy rebate” for low- and middle-income families that would be paid for by a windfall-profits tax on oil companies.

The Obama campaign did not predict how much releasing reserves would lower gas prices. But it said prices at the pump went down more than 19 percent within two weeks when President Bill Clinton made such a move in 2000.

His proposal comes a month after Obama said he would consider using oil from the reserves only in a “genuine emergency,” such as “terrorist acts.” Aides said the plan is not a reversal because he would replace light crude oil in the reserves with less-expensive heavy crude. They also noted that the senator from Illinois last week described the country’s economic conditions as an “emergency.”

The Bush administration said it opposed using oil from the reserves when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for it last month. McCain mocked the idea on Monday.

The proposal, along with Obama’s comments last week that he would consider expanding offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy bill, illustrated how both candidates are trying to find quick fixes to $4-a-gallon gas and other rising energy costs. McCain had also opposed additional offshore drilling until reversing his position in June, and he has called for a suspension of the federal gas tax.

But their proposals reflect a problem both candidates face: There are few ways to dramatically reduce gas prices, even as voters demand solutions.

Obama emphasized on Monday that using reserves is a temporary fix and that drilling is not “a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution.” McCain has said that drilling would have a “psychological” benefit for consumers; his proposal to suspend the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax was ignored by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and criticized by economists, who said it would not lead to a noticeable change in prices.

On the stump, McCain talks frequently about electric power, a subject that energy experts say will do little to affect gas prices. His plan to build 45 nuclear power plants, which he will highlight with a visit to a Michigan plant Tuesday, would take decades.

McCain’s aides said Obama’s proposal to tap the nation’s oil reserves amounts to his second position on the issue in a month. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said the idea is “not a substitute for a real plan.”

“The strategic oil reserve exists for America’s national security strategy, not Barack Obama’s election strategy,” Bounds said.

At a small-business forum near Philadelphia on Monday, McCain called on Obama to insist that Congress return from its August recess to confront high gas prices and the energy crisis. He urged immediate drilling off the nation’s coast.

“We have to drill here and drill now. Not wait and see if there’s areas to explore, not wait and see if there’s a package to put together,” he said. “But drill here and drill now.”

McCain has aired ads attacking Obama’s positions on drilling. On Monday, Obama responded with an ad blasting his GOP rival for accepting millions in contributions from oil company executives and for advocating a corporate tax cut that would reduce taxes on oil companies.

In his speech, Obama pledged to eliminate the need for oil from the Middle East and Venezuela within 10 years by growing alternative sources of energy and through conservation.

His long-term energy plan includes creating a million 150-mile-per gallon plug-in hybrid vehicles within six years; requiring that 10 percent of U.S. energy come from renewable resources by the end of his first term; and reducing U.S. demand for electricity by 15 percent by 2030.

Obama said he would give a $7,000 tax credit to those who buy plug-in hybrid cars. They won’t be mass-produced until 2010, but aides said the candidate wants to encourage carmakers to move toward producing more energy-efficient vehicles.

“I want the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow to be built — not in Japan, not in China, but here in the United States of America, here in Michigan,” Obama said to loud applause.

McCain has said he would invest $2 billion in clean coal technology and has offered a $300 million prize to whoever invents the next-generation electric motor for cars. He would give a $5,000 tax credit to those who buy cars that produce less pollution.

Obama’s shifts on offshore drilling and using the petroleum reserve come as polls show that large majorities back increased drilling to reduce gas prices.

The issue is complicated for the Democrat, as many environmental groups are eager to see Americans drive less and are sharply opposed to increased drilling. Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that endorsed Obama in May, said in a statement that “it’s so disappointing to see Obama now say he would consider expanding offshore drilling, even though he knows it is not a real solution to the energy crisis.”

Obama has also suggested Americans could save money on gas by fully inflating their tires — something that police departments and other government agencies across the country have done to conserve fuel.

The McCain campaign has ridiculed Obama, saying it is a tiny solution to the gas problem. On his plane Monday, McCain’s staff handed reporters tire gauges with the words “OBAMA ENERGY PLAN” stamped on them.

Shear was traveling with McCain. Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report from Montana.

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