Jim Wendler on teamwork:

Teamwork is not something that can be taught without consequences. We?d like to think we are all about Teamwork until the shit hits the fan; then it’s every man/woman for themselves. This is the same thing that people do in marriages, relationships and in some cases, as parents. It’s easy when it’s easy but no one wants to stick around when it’s hard.

Teamwork is spreading the credit when it goes well and not selling your co-workers out when it doesn’t.

90% of the time people point fingers and go to the boss and complain/bitch about co-workers. Unfortunately, these kinds of people are rewarded.

TEAMS are built strong by three things:

1. Strong leaders.
2. People who are willing to fulfill their roles.
3. Team is willing to take care of problems internally,

Teams work together to bring everyone into the group.
Teams work together to make sure there is success.
Teams don’t tattle on others like a 10 year old.
Teams work to make weak people better.
Teams have a strong leader; the leader delegates and doesn?t reward suck ups.

Full article.

A couple of nights ago, Wife and I were sitting in the bedroom talking when we heard a sound we’ve heard before.

Coyotes.

But we’ve never heard them this close to our house. It sounded like they were in the greenbelt immediately behind our house… not far away at all.

Honestly I wasn’t too concerned because we were inside, so what can they do (the neighbor’s cats were the ones in danger)… but all those howls do get your attention — it certainly got Sasha’s attention. Puppy-girl went into “seek and destroy” mode like a good defender. I didn’t let her out tho because frankly if the yotes were in the immediate area I didn’t need her getting into anything — that’d be an ugly fight to break up.

I went outside to look around. I did see some shapes/eyes scurry away but I wasn’t in the best position so I have no idea what I saw. But as I kept scanning (thank you to 200 lumens of Streamlight Super Tac X) eventually I caught a few pairs of eyes staring back at me. I watched for a little while trying to determine what they were. Still not 100% sure but we have a few guesses based upon the glow of the eyes.

Wife found this online. She didn’t provide me the original source URL, just emailed me the contents:

Funny to see your post on here tonight. I was just perusing a website about this very topic earlier today. Here’s its link: http://wildlifedamage.unl.edu/handbook/Chapters/html/eyeshines.htm

It mentions that there are things that can affect the color that an animal’s eyes will reflect:

Here are some other factors that also may influence the color of the eye shine:

* Distance of light to the subject
* Intensity of the light
* Line of sight or perspective of the viewer

It also gives the following list, which varies from several accounts mentioned here in this post. But it piqued my interest anyway, so I thought I’d copy/paste it in case someone else might find it interesting. Here it is:

What are the colors of an animal’s eye shine?

The many factors that affect eye shine contribute to the various reports of eye shine color, even within the same species. The following list is a good example of this (The most likely color is listed first.):

* Domestic dog-green, emerald green
* Coyote-bluish green, emerald green
* Domestic cat- yellowish green, green, yellow, reddish
* Bobcat-yellow, bright yellow, emerald green
* Raccoon-emerald green
* Weasels-green
* Opossum-light or bright orange, pink
* Alligator-red
* Deer-greenish white, yellowish white, green, white, orange, bluish green
* Black-tailed deer- brilliant blue
* Flying squirrel-reddish orange
* Birds-red
* Rabbits-red
* Cattle-bluish green, yellowish white

So there you go. Eye glow, and how it can help you identify what you’re looking at.

I went looking for the referenced website, but that page doesn’t exist any more. But what there is now is the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management. Looks like a collaborative effort between Cornell, Clemson, University of Nebraska, and Utah State. Poke around that website a bit. It’s quite interesting at how to identify and deal with damage caused by wildlife.

It’s become a mantra that every time we switch our clocks for Daylight Saving Time, we should do some other things.

The one you most often hear is to change the batteries on the smoke detectors in your home. A good thing for sure. And if you don’t have smoke detectors, get some.

What are some other useful things to do on a semi-annual basis?

• If you have a home alarm system, test it. IMHO better to do this monthly, but semi-annual is a good start.
• Change batteries in other things. For instance, if you have flashlights for emergency use in your car or home, change those batteries. Use batteries as a backup for a safe? Change them. Use batteries in a scope? change them.
• How about your carry ammo? There’s much debate over how often to rotate your carry ammo, but an oft-mentioned guideline is every 6 months.
  • While you’re at it, how are your magazines and their springs?
• Sharpen knives. These could be your every day carry knives, or even the knives you use in the kitchen. This may be something to do more often than semi-annually, but some people rarely sharpen knives so….
• Check the air in your car tires. Weather’s changing (getting colder).
• When was the last time you changed the air filters in your house? I have to change mine monthly due to children with allergy issues… not to mention a big fuzzy dog shedding clogs things up much faster. But again, I know some people rarely do this so….

I will agree that many of these things are something you should do more often, or could stretch out and do perhaps once a year. The main point is to be aware of the need to do them and find a schedule on which to perform them. One nice thing is so many of us now have electronic gizmos like iPhone’s with calendaring systems. Set yourself a reminder — a repeating reminder — to perform these tasks on a regular basis.