What's neat with Ken Patterson? It's always neat with Ken Patterson. October starts right now. Watch it! What's neat for October 2016? I'm your host Ken Patterson and this month is your ticket to ride to the St. Louis Railroad Prototype Modelers Meet held in Collinsville, Illinois at the Gateway Center. 13,000 square foot with 40 manufacturers and vendors and many modular layouts. There were over 1,800 models on display in all scales. There were educational clinics to improve your modeling skills. Our friend Dave Hussie was there representing Canon and Company. Scale Code Paint had a pretty nice display. Shane Wilson and Paul Ellis from Scaltrains.com set up a pretty nice trade show booth. Our friend David Leibach from Tangent Scale Models had four new models announced this year and our very own Mike Buddy and Dirk Reynolds shared some of their latest modeling projects. We feature 15 manufacturers and one modular layout in this 40 minute edition of What's Neat. This What's Neat is put together to be one of the most entertaining and fastest 40 minutes in your month. And that's the lineup for this October 2016 What's Neat. I've run into Shane Wilson at Scaltrains.com and it's really cool to see manufacturers coming to this RPM Meet here in St. Louis. Shane, why is it that you felt the need to come to this show? Okay and first of all thanks for stopping to see us here at the RPM Meet in St. Louis. Really appreciate your time. And you know for us it's one of the opportunities for us to showcase our models. When we started we created four different brands and two of our brands really cater to the RPM model. One is the Rivet Counter brand, the other is the museum quality. And what better place to showcase your products than at the largest RPM Meet in the country. There's several hundred modelers here. They just announced there's over a thousand models. So it's a great way for us to meet the customers who really are going to buy our high-end products. Wow, so there you go. There's an endorsement for the show. And I'd like to see more manufacturers come to this show next year. The St. Louis RPM Meet held here in Collinsville. Thank you Shane. You're welcome. Thanks for coming to see us. Okay. I've got Dave Hussie here from Canon and Company. And Dave tell us something about your new kits that you're showing at the show. Okay. I'm making a series of laser cut boxcar kits. They're a craftsman kit that's composed of several layers of laser cut styrene to produce boxcars that are not available by other means. The kit includes the laser parts and maybe doors or ends depending on each kit. You know, and then I also supply a roof under frame, you know, and ends that I procure from other companies such as Athern, Atlas, Accurell, Paloco. Those are very nice parts. Very crisp castings. And we've got decals for some of the cars. And then we're also branching out into laser cut lumber loads that, you know, there's a recent wheels of time flat car came out. That's nice.  So I've got the laser that I have for making the kits. So I'm making, you know, cutting up some strips of wood and laser engraving them. And in various board sizes. And the modeler gets a package with 10 strips of wood.  Those look really terrific. How has this RPM shell been working out? Is this your audience? Is this the clientele? Yeah, very much so. You know, if I love this, you know, St. Louis meat, it's probably in my opinion, you know, the best meat going right now. You know, the fact that it's all in one location. You know, everybody's in the same room all the time. And you know, you end up getting the chance to talk to people and meet your customers. And get to see you, Kenny.  Everybody loves you, Dave. I appreciate it. And we hope you have a safe trip back. Okay. Good enough. Thanks. Good to see you. All right. He's got the most impressive off-the-shelf looking models that are available on his website to the public. So I wanted to talk to Dave here because he's got just a beautiful table, as you can see in this video footage. And I want him to tell us a little bit about his company. My promo load started about four years ago, building pipe loads. And it's evolved into building loads and custom loads for anybody. And, you know, I take photographs or out rail fending and come home and put them together the best I see and the best way I can. The rail load that you've done almost looks like a model that needs to be on the contest or on the presentation tables. It is just such a magnificent idea and the creativity that went into creating a full-length rail carrying system that is able to bend and work around the corners. How did you do that? That's correct. There's a lot of trial and error. Like everybody else, we tried nickel silver rail, which won't bend at all. I went to have found a plastics company to extrude styrene rail. And that was the ticket to make it work. And laser cutting the decks and the racks for the cars was pretty straightforward, just copying the prototype. But finding somebody to extrude rail and understand the concept of the welded rail train, that was a little bit of a challenge. You know, you approach some companies and you're talking model trains. You know, they want to talk to Boeing. They don't want to talk to me about model trains. So I found somebody, a small company, and had rail extruded and that answered the question. The trains performed flawlessly right down to 28-inch curves. And your airplane load looks so incredible, man. Well, thank you for showing and sharing your stuff with us on What's Neat. Check it out, folks, protoloads.com. These are some pretty impressive models. Thank you, Ken. I'm with Scott Thornton here at the Prototype Meet. And he's got a new throttle called the Protothrottle, which will work with any DCC system. And it also gives you all the features with an actual locomotive. Scott, tell us about this exciting new radio-controlled throttle. Well, thanks, Ken. What we're trying to develop along with Iowa Scaled Engineering is a throttle that works with any DCC system out there that replicates what you would experience if you were in a real cab of a diesel locomotive operating the actual control stand. So the throttle, this is just a first-generation prototype. So it doesn't have everything on it right now. You can see it here on some of our graphics that we have. We're going to have a spring-loaded horn. We've got the bell. We've got an LCD display that you can program things into the throttle. We've got a nine-position, so the idle and all eight-position detented throttle handle, as well as the reverser for forward, neutral, and reverse, as well as a feathered smooth operating brake. And then the lights at the bottom. Since this is a first-generation, the throttle will also have on the final version curved bezels, like you see in a prototype cab, and will have knobs here. And then the faceplate is aluminum, and it will be finished better than what you see here. No, this is pretty neat. It's lightweight. It's got a really good feel to it, and it's radio-controlled. That's important. Now, you could use this maybe with the Garden Railroad guys? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So how would folks get a hold of you to get a hold of a product like this? You're setting up a website. You're working on that now? We're working on that right now. I blog on the Model Railroad hobbyist site, so you can find information there. If you want to contact me, you can reach me at my phone number, which is... Do you want my phone number? Okay,<PHONE_NUMBER>. Or I've got an email at info at designgrid.com. And what's going to be the price point of this when it comes out? We're thinking right now, if you bought the throttle, it comes also with a receiver, a wireless receiver that you have to buy once. We're thinking 450 to 500 range, and then if you buy additional throttles, they'll be cheaper. And about how long before this makes market? We're hoping to have it by the end of the year. Well, thank you very much, Scott, for sharing this with us. Thanks, Ken. Well, one of the more beautiful narrow-gauge layouts that's set up here at the prototype modelers meet is the Mud Hens. Now, this club has been around for a great many years, more than 35 years, and this layout is about eight years old. And I'm here with Chuck Graham, the president of the club. Chuck, tell us a little bit about how the show's going for you. What kind of reaction do you get on the layout? It's going pretty well after the initial setup glitches, which we always have with modular layouts, but it's been well received by the crowd. They've had a lot of questions about how it's been built and who's done the backdrops and that sort of thing. So it's been a good show. About how many modules did you all set up this time? There are 10 set up right now. 10 modules. There are eight in a loop, and we have a branch line that has two tables in it. I'm really impressed with the lighting on the layout. The track light heads give good color to everything. These are daylight lamps that we used, the lights we've had for quite a few years. They were off our original layout and modified them a little bit, but they work well. How about those Blackstone models? Oh, they do fine. They really run well, and what's nice is they actually run right out of the box. There aren't too many models that do that. Well, thank you for sharing this beautiful layout with us on what's neat and setting it up for the RPM Meet.  We're talking about it. We'll also be at the National Narrow Gauge Convention next year in Denver. Oh, and you know what? In four years, it's right around the corner. That's going to be here in St. Louis, isn't it? Yes, it will be. That'll be a good year. All right. Well, thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Look who I found here.  Yeah, we are. We're demoing our 155 Anthem airbrush and our Model Flex paint today, Ken. It sounds like a brand new airbrush that we need to test on the show, but it was really exciting watching all the people. I saw so many people painting and having a good time. Well, thanks. We're all having a good time here, and we're showing everybody how Model Flex paint works and how good product it is to use. Cool. Well, thanks a lot, John. Thanks, Ken. We look forward to seeing you again. I'm here with Chris Palomeras from Athern, and they've set up a booth here at the Prototype Modelers show. Chris, tell us why are you at this show? What is it that brings you to the Prototype Modelers meet? Why does Athern set up here? Absolutely. We're here to support our Genesis customer, our Genesis customer is the higher level customer that sees the detail and the prototype accuracy down to the row number. That's how sensitive the Genesis customer is, and we want to be here to support that. And as a company, we also engage with very informed individuals who have just researched these things. They have all the prototype information that we're looking for, and they submit it to us. We get to talk one-on-one with each other, point out certain things, and then just start moving forward on certain projects based upon the information we collect here. It's really important, and it really makes things go quicker. Great. Well, it's a nice display, and I hope the clientele you're looking for is here at this show. Well, we've been getting a lot of interaction between people, asking about when new projects are coming, what's up, what's next, and we're always happy to interact with everybody and say hi. Cool. Thanks a lot, Chris. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Ken. Now, you'll remember Mike Skibby from last year. He was with us with the Midwest module track layout here at EndScale, and they've brought the layout again to the prototype modelers show this year, and they've got some new modules. And Mike and Matt are going to tell us about the new modules. Is that right? Yeah. So we're set up here about a 20-foot by a 65-foot layout this year. All our guys enjoyed coming out to St. Louis last year, so we made it back to the show this year. We do have a couple new modules in line. The first one here is Powerton, and Matt's going to talk about that a little bit and show you around. No, this is great. I like the walk-in design, the way we can walk in the middle of it. This is really cool the way you got it set up this year, Mike. Thanks. Now, you all remember Matt from Fox Valley Models, but he's really involved in this module track group, and he's going to tell us about their new module that they brought to St. Louis this year. Well, if you followed the layout all, you know, it's based on prototype scenes of the Milwaukee Road. And as guys build new modules, we kind of follow the prototype as close as we can. The newest one here is called Powerton. Powerton is a location coming out of downtown Milwaukee, and it was at the base of Lake Hill. So heading south on a train to start the ascent of Lake.  This is the electric line itself, but these light cars will go down to the lakefront to the power plant, and these will come back. And it was a sole purpose for Powerton. So this is just the latest module. There's some more under development. We may see some more down the road. Now, we love looking at this layout, the details, and the way the scenery and the modules blend together. It's just a winner every time you set it up. That was the end of the call. Thanks a lot for bringing that to St. Louis again this year. Absolutely. Any time. Happy to be here. Okay. I'm here with Jeff Adam from Motrack Models, and he's here, too, at the prototype modelers. Meet a lot of manufacturers at this show. Jeff, tell us about the show for you. This is a great opportunity to get my name out here in the Midwest. I'm out here to represent all my laser-cut kits, freight car loads, all kinds of stuff. And I've heard something about best models. I actually purchased Best Train's structure lines. Okay. It's 125 kits, and I will be converting them into N, H, O, S, and O scale. That's a lot of work. I've heard Scotty Mason talk about that product line a lot. And Motrack Models, too. I've heard him mention your company a lot. And it's finally great to be able to meet you here in St. Louis. Same here. So we wish you the best at the show. Are things going good sales-wise? Yes. This is a fabulous show. I've been here. This is my fourth year doing this show. Super. Well, Jeff, we're glad to see you. Thank you very much. Thank you again. One of the things that surprised me is this freight car load. So I really call them Mr. Freight Cars. And, John, I did that one freight car load with the combines. But with you, I got the ride-and-drive a real combine. Thank you for that experience. Tell us about your freight cars and your company, John. And I'll just straighten it out. It's a thrill to drive a combine when you don't have to. When you have to do it day after day, it's not that much fun. That was more fun than a boat. Our freight cars are made by my wife and I. We're just two old folks out in the country trying to survive. We love what we do seriously. Been doing this forever. And they're all handmade. We come up with the ideas, have it made, do it. Everything's made here. I don't just love what we've had for years. No, they're very impressive. What's the price point on models like this? The highest we have currently is $129 with the scale trains on the flat car. And these come all pre-built and you can order them from your website. And where would that be? moondograilcars.com These are really nice models. Thanks for showing them at the RPM Meet. How's the show working out for you? Do you like the show? Fantastic. Good. All right, well that's John O'Donnell. Moondog Railcars. I don't care about me. We're promoting this. There you go. John O'Donnell. Moondog Railcars. I'm standing here with Andy Harmon. I met you in Long Beach, California back in 1996. I think it was.  I think you were the very first person with a blog or a website about trains that kept us up to date along with that diesel list. I know you were helping with that a little bit. I don't know if it was the first freight car. The freight car list? The freight car was the first and at that time there was a consensus. It's like, well, I don't think there's to be that much interest in diesel. So I started a diesel list and got 350 people signed up for it. That was 20 years ago, wasn't it? That was 1998. So it's been a little bit. What have you got today? I see one of your scratch-built cars. This is a New York Central observation car for the last edition of the heavyweight version of the 20th Century Limited. It's a car that's been never done anything but brass. Based on Branchline's Pullman kit, which I'm quite familiar with and very fond of. So I chose it as my starting point. I was very generously provided with some plans for this, which made the whole process much easier, but it was still a lot of work. Sides are sliced and diced many, many times, including the high windows. By the time I did the final two pairs of windows, I actually knew what I was doing. So they actually look pretty good. The others don't look quite so hot. It's got a free-state LED lighting system in it. The interior is all right up against the walls. I removed any endoskeletal material there. It has laser-cut window glass. The roof is kit-bashed from Walther's wide-deck roofs and a whole lot of styrene and superglue. I'm currently waiting on Tom Madden to get me a resin version of this roof that's more correct, which will replace this one, which is why this is all just tipped up in here. How much time have you got on this model, Eddie? Probably 80 to 100 hours. It really took me about a year and a half to build it, but I had interruptions along the way and I started working on it again back in the fall and tried to have it done. I was actually doing this roof work in hotels in Florida to get it ready for the... I had a clinic on this car at Cocoa Beach back in January. So this also uses my little power pole idea to pass power up so that I don't have wires running through the floor of the car. I actually have a pole of bronze soldered to the truck pickups. Okay, that makes sense. There's wires up in the air. And that way, the wires, you can't really see it with the roof on. That's a good trick. The car has a constant capacitor lighting system. So even if the pickup current is intermittent, the lights stay on. In fact, you take the car off the track, the lights will stay on for about a minute and you take it off the track, which is kind of cool. And all these cars have the same lighting in them, but this one was the one that was really a whole lot of work to build. And I've got about six to eight more cars to build to complete this train. It's the 1935 to 1938 heavyweight 20th century. Everybody's familiar with the streamlined century, the Dreyfus Hudson. This is what it looked like right before that. The very last version of it that was heavyweight Pullmans. No, it's really nice.  And the show's been good. He had a lot of comments, a lot of people. A lot of people. I got a very mixed, as usual, I have multiple decade disorder. So my modeling focus is somebody walking up and looking here would have trouble figuring out just exactly what it is I model. And I could say I modeled the 20th century, not just the train, the century. Correct. But I have this passenger train fetish, but my actual modeling era is 1970s and NW. And that's what I've tried to concentrate on. But passenger car bug is independent of all that. And I've modeled a lot of particularly New York Central stuff. I like a challenge. Now, Andy, your work is amazing. And listen, I want to thank you very much for sharing it with the What's Neat viewers. So have a safe trip home. And it's great to see you, buddy. All right, good to see you. I'm standing here with Keith from Plano Model Company. And I got to tell you what, I used to sit in the real estate company 20 years ago and talk to Keith about the different projects you were working on. So we could include a lot of your detail on the Midwest Valley modelers layout back then, which was a super detailed layout. How is the show going for you, Keith? Tell us about your new products and a little bit about what's going on. Well, the show goes great for me every year. I always enjoy this show. It's a great show. There's a lot of people that appreciate using my product. I get to meet them. So I do enjoy coming to the show every year. This year, the only real new product I had would be a 60-foot boxcar walkway. That was about the only thing I was able to get out this year. But there's several new projects in the works. Actually, one of them is the MP Covered Hopper conversion kit for the Atlas Slendicle Hopper. I'm working on that and hope to have that available for next year's show. Now, this is about, what is it, the seventh or eighth show I've seen you set up at here? Actually, fifth. Fifth show. Fifth show. And you know he wouldn't be coming here every time unless it worked and paid for itself. So this is a demographic. The customer that you want to reach at this show is kind of the way I look at it. So, yeah, I enjoy... The show does work out for me and it's the only show I do every year, but it's a great show. Well, thanks for coming to St. Louis. Keith, it's good to see you again. You too. Thank you. All right. I'm standing here with Nick from Moloco. I would say 10 different variations of free cars. Nick, can you tell us a little bit about your company to the folks that are really unfamiliar? It's a small niche company that makes them pretty neat stuff. Introduce yourself to the what's neat folks. Thanks, Ken. Yeah, we've been in business since 1996. So we've been in around for 20 years. We started off in detail parts and now we've progressed to ready to run for the last six years. We've got 10 paint schemes available at the moment under four different car body styles. So we've got some Santa Fe red cars. The Topeka built Ripside RBLs. And then we progressed through General American of three different other styles. Different plug doors, either they're centered or they're offset. Okay. And is there a website where folks can go to to find all these beautiful models that you're talking about? Yeah, it's www.molocotrains.com. And tell us, I want to know the name of the company and how you arrived at the name of the company. Okay, so my name's Nick Molo and that's my last name. So it's Molo and then Co Company. Okay, that's cool. Well, Nick, you've been here. I've seen you at the show about eight years now. You've been at this show. That's right. That's done very well for you. Yes, it's very well. And I've been here when it was pretty small and helped to build it up. No, we appreciate that. Well, thanks for being on What's Neat. Okay, thanks, Ken. Cheers. I got Chris Palameras here and you know the one thing that I really enjoy. He's not just an account, but he's a farmer. He's a modeler like the rest of us. And that's the one thing I can appreciate. And Chris got super excited about something here at the show. And I got to let you, I'm going to give the microphone to Chris and let him just tell you what he found. Well, what's going on here is the modular signal system. And pretty much what it is, it's plug and play signals for a modular layout, it's self-configuring. So it could just literally plug into each cell, each other, as far as the boards are concerned, the boards drive the signals. There's also intermediate boards that kind of let you, let the boards on the end, the signals know what's going on in between them. And the beauty of this is, being modular, you become really painfully aware of the lack of products out there that are kind of for a distributed signaling system. Most of the time they come and show up like, this thing can drive 30 signals. Well, it doesn't really lend itself well for a modular layout where you need to have one board drive a pair of signals. Nothing like that really existed out there. And nothing that was simple to set up. And that's what we really needed in the modular environment. You don't want to spend a whole lot of time fighting with electronics, getting the signals work. And that's the beauty of this. This is something that Greg Furman and I initially worked on together back in early 2000s. And we always hoped that there would be a company that would take this to the next level and offer an intense solution. And I walked into the RPM meet, had no idea about Iowa scale, and I'm looking at it. I'm like, is this an MSS space? And Nathan responds, well, yes it is. So I was floored. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is something that I worked with Greg Furman to develop. So here it is. Iowa scaled engineering. Is this something simple I can do? Yes, this is even something that you can do, Ken. And that's reassuring. This is the one thing that truly intimidates me is signaling systems on a layout. You don't see crossing gates on my layout. I'm afraid of it. There are things I just don't do. There's orange cables on there, Ken. What you do is you plug each board into those orange cables, and then you wire in the signals to the board, and you're going. And it works. And it works. Okay, well that's really cool. And it doesn't matter which way you have the board positioned, it figures it out. So Iowa Scaled is there a website we can go to to check this out? Yes, there is. What is our website? Iowa Scaled. I-A-Scaled.com. I-A-Scaled.com. All right. So don't forget to put that CG on. That's pretty neat, guys. This is neat. Absolutely neat. At least for me. And others out there that like signal. I don't know. Look at this. I ran into Bob Vickley here in San Luis. Bob Vickley used to work with Bob Schleicher from Real Model Journal. I remember those days. I remember those days. What do you do in these days, Bob? Mainline laser, a new company. Mainline laser, a new company. What are you making? What are you making? What are you making? Laser structures. And we're distributing projects for products for Betham car works. We're going to go over to your table. We're going to go over to your table and come talk to you in a few minutes. You got it. We'll see you over there. Take care. So I did finally make it over to Bob Vickley's area here. And Bob's got Mainline Laser, a new laser company with a new product coming out here, Southampton Station. Bob, tell us a little bit about this new adventure you're doing. Well, it was an outgrowth of a company I used to work with. And a bunch of guys said we need another laser company. Bob, would you do it? You know about it. You need another laser company. Yeah. So we started in John Green's over here on the board. And he's one of the instigators along with Bill Schneider of Repito. They were all involved with Branchline at one time. I'm really happy to see you getting back into the industry here with the new line of kits, Mainline Laser, Bob Vickley. And you got a website here, www.mainlinelaser.com. We got laser and there's two more R's, Railroad. There are some R's in there. Mainlinelaser.com. You can see it right here on the bottom of the screen.  We all love Bob Vickley. Look at it, look at it. It is a kiss of death. All right, guys, thanks. Great to see you, man. One of my most favorite people of the show manufacturer is David Lambock from Tangent. Dave, how's the show working out for you and tell us what you got this year new? Well, thanks for letting me talk to you guys, Ken. Appreciate it. Well, this year we have a couple new cars to show. Of course, Tangent Scale Models does new freight cars all the time. This is our fourth all-new car in the past 12 months. So the past year we've done four all-new cars, and that new car is this one here. It's the 40-foot Pullman Standard High-Q Boxcar. We debuted this at the NMRA Train Show a month ago in Indianapolis, and we have these for sale now in four different road paint schemes, sorry. And we also want to talk a little about some of our other cars we have here. We have our new air slide-covered hoppers. These were released for the first time last November, and we released these in eight different paint schemes back in November, and since then we've released about a total of 20. And here's one of them. We have four different B&SF buffer cars complete with the anti-skid plates on top, anti-skid paint on top, and with all the paint outs and the conspicuity stripes and all the things you might find normal on those. We've also done one as a B&SF paint out as well, where it's a Santa Fe car with a paint out. So this is ready to weather right now for the guys that like to weather. That's hot. That is kind of cool. And then we've got those in all kinds of schemes. Going back to the 60s, for example, Northern Pacific is one of the schemes that we have. This goes back to 1968.  That's nice. And then finally, we have a few other colorful ones that are kind of cool. This one kind of harks back to my childhood. I really liked the Brock's Candy corn. It was one of my favorite things. I thought we should have that in model form, so I did that. And then a few other ones we have is this activated carbon car.  A lot of people are kind of grabbing these right now on the internet. I saw a fellow yesterday at your table saying, hey Ken, I'm getting my 12 tangent cars today. Yeah, we've had a lot of bulk sales. Of course, we give discounts for buying in sixes and twelves when you buy direct with tangent. So that's one of the things that we offer our customers. That's pretty nice. Since I last saw you, though, we've released quite a few other new cars. We released this Pennsylvania Railroad corrugated side gondola. The corrugations are both inside the car and outside the car, which is really a neat thing for weathering, especially for people that like to weather cars. In September, we're going to have more of these in Penn Central and in Conrail. And we also make coils that go with them. There's a coil rack inside of the Conrail car. So you can actually buy the coils and put them inside the coil rack and have a coil train, which is pretty neat. It goes with other manufacturers' cars, too, that are in coil service. That's a really nice thing for prototype modelers, especially of Conrail, which those cars went everywhere hauling steel. Sure. And then we've done some other covered hoppers. Recently, our 70s covered hopper line has a bunch of new paint schemes on it. And we just continue to pump out new cars. How many cars have you got now? How many total models? Tangent now has 15 tools. So we have 15 cars that are on the market. That's really great. I remember the last time we talked, was it like seven or something, did you say? Maybe. It's been a couple of years. That's great. David Leibach just keeps on making those really cool, unique models that we all like to have. Well, yeah. I'd like to close and just say, I really appreciate the opportunity to present to your viewers. And I want to thank the people out there for supporting Tangent. This is a family-owned and operated business. We're not a corporation. We are family-owned and operated. We make this stuff. It's a labor of love for all of us.  So we really wanted to let everybody know we appreciate the business and the enthusiasm. And we try to bring that enthusiasm to everybody that we work with. So thanks so much for the business. You're awesome, man. Thank you very much. And that's why he's one of my favorites. Thank you very much. Thanks, Ken. Appreciate it. I'm standing with the gentlemen once again that are responsible for the railroad prototype modelers meet here in Collinsville in St. Louis. And I've got Lonnie and Daniel and Dave here this year. Guys, tell us this year how the show did. Go ahead. The show did wonderful. We have 13,000 square feet of floor space here. We have 40 vendors here. And it's our largest show yet. And we are the largest show in the United States RPM-wise this year. We had a great turnout with models this year. We had numerous scales, over 1,800 models, everything from locomotives to cars to buildings. A great turnout. And we had about 500 attendees, largest record we know of, and we had one famous person. What is it with the paparazzi? My God. Okay, so it sounds like we had a great show this year and you've got the dates for next year. Okay. June 23rd and 24th, 2017. Okay, June. Mark your calendars. We're a little earlier next year. Okay, so mark your calendars now. We'll see you next year. Okay, good deal. Well, thank you very much, guys. And with that, my work was over covering the show. And each night after the show, I had friends and guests over in my studio out in the bluff. The trains on the layout ran smooth with no problems. With cooler temperatures outside, the weather was just perfect for a bonfire. Inside, Joe Steinman very skillfully flew a drone around the layout, giving us yet another cool way to view the model railroad from the vantage point of a simple housefly. And with that, you've seen another successful RPM meet presented in this October's What's Neat video. I hope you can attend next year's Markdown the show dates on the calendar June 23rd and June 24th of 2017 in Collinsville, Illinois. And that is a suburb of Metro St. Louis. So I hope you've enjoyed this video and I hope to see you next year at the show. And that's What's Neat for October, 2016.


My name is Dr. Pinoc and Jethwa. I am the medical director of Cerebral Vascular Neurosurgery at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. When I was in medical school, I thought about all the different specialties that were out there and none of them really excited me as much as dealing with the central nervous system. And then when I started actually interacting with neurosurgical patients, seeing how tremendous impact that neurosurgeons can have, dealing with patients with brain aneurysms was the thing that probably solidified that this was the career path for me. When you go into neurosurgery, you're kind of one of those types of people who, you know, likes dealing with complexity and being able to have patients have good outcome despite very difficult problems. You don't just have to be a good surgeon and have a lot of, you know, different tools and tricks in the toolbox, but you also have to be a good doctor because a lot of what we do isn't just the surgery part of it, it's everything we do before and after the operation too. It's really, really important to take time with your patients more than anything else because it's people talking, getting to know who they are, getting to know what they want out of, you know, the next phase of their lives, what they want their quality of life to be, what risks they're willing to take. Try and be a real person and try and, you know, get to know these people at a personal level, you know, taking five minutes to do that really helps solidify that, you know, doctor-patient relationship and that's where the basis of trust comes.


Item number SCP-078 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures SCP-078 is to be left hanging on the wall of its containment cell and physically unplugged. The sole outlet in the room should be controlled by a switch, which must be left in the opposition at all times unless SCP-078 is undergoing testing. All who enter the containment room should familiarize themselves with the position of the switch so that they can locate it with their eyes closed in the event that SCP-078 is accidentally turned on. Description SCP-078 is a pink neon sign approximately 1.5 meters long that displays the phrase «too late to die young». It was initially recovered in the town of ████████ after Standard Foundation data mining protocols recorded at an abnormally high death rate due to starvation or other forms of self-neglect. While powered off, SCP-078 has no abnormal properties and may be observed without effect. Viewing SCP-078 for less than 10 seconds while it is powered on has no effect, nor does indirect observation. Subjects who cannot understand SCP-078 due to a lack of ability to comprehend written English are also unaffected. However, any subject that views SCP-078 for longer than 10 seconds will, when viewing any handwritten piece of writing, occasionally perceives extra sentences. These sentences are not written in the subject's own style, or in that of the surrounding text, but consist of a random style that differs from note to note. They add in to SCP-078-01 and always are phrased as if to assuage the subject's guilt on some matter or decision they feel guilty about. For example, a D-class personnel who was convicted of murdering his wife in a heated argument read the sentence, she deserved it for not doing what she said in his handwritten journal, while Dr. ██████ who left his family to work for the Foundation and was accidentally exposed found the sentence, your work will save humanity, in his notes on SCP-█████. At first, the effect is beneficial, with affected subjects reporting greater peace of mind after exposure to SCP-078. However, the sentences shift from emphasizing the positive consequences of actions to de-emphasizing the negative ones on a timescale of one week. After ████, two days later, found the sentence, they never loved you anyway in his personal journal, moreover, the writing will start giving justifications for acts the subject has never felt guilt over, or which the subject has already rationalized. The subject will then start reconsidering his justifications for those actions, as well as attempting to justify any further actions that they take. The need for rationalization increases as time goes on, and they will start vocalizing their thought processes, and by the end of one week, any task the subject performed more trivial than the basics of survival will induce a bout of neurosis, as the subject attempts to rationalize why they did not instead take some other action. By the end of two weeks, the subject is unable to eat food. After the first bite, they will spend the next hour justifying why they ate that specific part of the meal first. Death due to the amount of nutrition follows unless the subject is fed intravenously. The E-class personnel who have reached this stage, as well as ██ researchers who are accidentally exposed, are kept alive for purposes of study and to see if a cure can be found. The sole exception to SCP-078's effects is SCP-078 itself. Any subject who views SCP-078 a second time will see it displaying increasingly more guilt-inducing messages as duration since their first exposure increases. All subjects who have viewed it a week after initial exposure have attempted suicide. Addendum 078-01 D-19384, whose handwriting with an unusual mix of cursive and print, was exposed to SCP-078 and was then terminated to reach in the consequence-free stage. Subsequently, other subjects have reported seeing sentences in the same cursive-print mix. It is possible that those who die after being exposed to SCP-078 are incorporated into it in some way.


We are back in the field again and I think it's 103 days after sowing now although we had some re-sowing and replanting so it's not quite accurate because we have quite a few places which we have planted later so and that creates a challenge now because we somehow need to figure out when to harvest this field and there are various ways to do this and we have an expert here with us today Martin Gummert who is our post harvest specialist and also leads the Erie Programme 4 so we'll ask him for help to help us determine where we are and what we do next. Okay so as Ahim said there are different ways to determine whether the crop is ready for harvest so the easiest is basically to look at the color of the grains so if you have 80% of the grains in a panicle colored straw yellow then that's an indication that it should be right. Another way to determine whether the crop is ready for harvesting is look at the hardness of the grains and the grains in the bottom of the panicle should be in the hard dough stage so when you basically open the grain and you look at it it should still be a little bit soft but not too soft like when you make a hard dough for cooking. So when you squeeze it you now should probably cut the grain rather than mash it up so to speak. It should not keep brittle yet. So we start with a visual estimate of how ready the crop is and we first look at the proportion of yellow grains the proportion of straw yellow grains now Martin has suggested an ideal amount for harvest would be 80% yellow now in front of me here we always have an issue as to whether it's representative or not it's probably 50 to 60% yellow something of that order it's not quite ready yet. Now a more objective and professional way to assess how how ready the crop is will be to measure its moisture content yep and this is one way to do that this is a moisture meter so called moisture meter it measures the resistance of the crop which is basically dependent on the moisture content and you have a small sample tray so you take a sample from a panico as Lee said 80% of the of the grain should be straw yellow that basically says 80% of one panico. Getting representative is always a challenge there's a challenge there. So you take a small sample like this fill it in there and then what you do with this instrument basically you crush it oops can I give you this you turn the knob and crush it turn it all the way to the end and then you measure the resistance and that gets translated in the reading of the moisture content and in this case it's 21.6 percent. Now what we're going to do is mix the greener one of harvested and because this is a very small sample it's not really representative neither for small plot nor for the field so what you have to do is you have to in one location you should to different at least three different measurements so now in this sample for example you have a lot more green grains than in the previous one so the reading should be a lot higher 27.9% and you would take at least three samples and then you have a button here where you can average the readings and then you get the average reading for that location and then what you have to do is basically also measure in a representative way in the field because the crop doesn't match your evenly everywhere in the field. We're facing the final tricky decision to irrigate or not to irrigate that is the question so we're considering how moist the soil is now how moist is the soil now moist right we're considering what the weather's like what's the weather like high dry and we're considering how long we'd expect until we harvest and our consensus is about 10 days to two weeks something of that range it'll be close to two weeks time before your back to do the deed so we need this to last to finish properly I think it needs the two weeks but it's moist it's heavy clay and we do want our combine to stay on the ground not to explore the underground all right keep it dry yeah I would have if it was an experiment and I knew that we would be doing hand harvesting I would put on another irrigation just for safety but we need to figure out that we have to come and visit combine and so the carrying capacity of that so we'll be the deciding factor and we can't delay harvest because we see some lodging coming in so I'll go with the majority would yeah I agree so no more irrigation let's see but I pray for a little bit of rain tonight maybe well on recent patterns I think you'll probably have that have that wish granted so there we have it we won't irrigate again and we'll it'll be in approximately two weeks we'll come back and harvest about no second


Welcome to your presentation on Strengths, Needs, Attitudes, Preferences, and Temperaments, otherwise known as SNAP-T. In this presentation, we're going to explore the concept of SNAP-T. Review the different learning styles a little bit. There's a whole different presentation on learning styles. We'll identify the characteristics of each dimension of temperament, discuss the levels of Maslow's hierarchy and how that applies to people's needs, and identify other characteristics which may yield specialized needs. So SNAP. SNAP stands for Strengths, Needs, Attitudes, and Preferences. Strengths are the tools that people already have that have worked for them in the past, at least a little bit. Now these strengths may not have been 100% effective, but we can use those and build upon those in order to help them strengthen their strengths, if you will. Needs are what we need. There's a difference between needs and wants. You know, you may want a lot of things, but there are only a few things that you really need, and some of those things require accommodations. And we're going to talk about what that may mean. You know, for example, if you need to have some quiet time when you work, that you need to make accommodations so you can make sure you get quiet time if you have difficulty filtering out external stimuli. Attitudes are basically what you think, what motivates you to get things done.  Your learning style is how you best take in information and actually learn stuff, go figure. And your temperament talks about your innate tendencies for how you like, your environment, what kind of information you pay attention to, what's meaningful, and basically how you structure your time and your time management style. So strengths are the things the client is good at. And we want to look at these in terms of transferability. If someone is a really good communicator, that's awesome, because that means they'll probably have success in relationships. But if they're a good communicator, that can also transfer into the workplace. It can also transfer into writing effective change plans. Those skills, those strengths that a person has can be used for a lot of different things. If someone is good at detailed oriented projects, you know, you want to look at, okay, if they're really good at building things and focusing on the details. For me, I could never be a carpenter because I cut things at a kind of a good enough level, not down to a 16th of an inch level. That's just how I function, and it's really hard for me to be that exacting. So you want to look at what skills someone has that can transfer into helping them achieve their goals. Strengths are how the client learns best and has coped in the past. If someone learns best by discussing information, by applying information, then let's encourage them to participate in support groups. Let's encourage them to do workbooks. Let's encourage them to apply the information that we're talking about to their current life. Strengths also give the client hope because it's something that they already do, and they can say, yeah, I already know how to do that. So that gives me hope that I may be able to do what I need to do in the future. And it's what the client already knows about. For example, the condition, if we're talking about depression, if the client already knows a lot about depression, then that's a strength. If they already know about recovery methods for depression, that's a strength. And most clients have at least a general idea about what does and does not work for him or her, which is a strength. Why is that a strength? Because it helps us narrow down what our focus is going to be. There are so many different options, so many different causes of depression, so many different recovery methods, that if the person knows generally what makes his or her depression better or worse, then we can focus there instead of having to try to sort through a haystack to find the needle. Needs are those things a person, guess what, needs in order to be happy, healthy, and sober. Emotional needs, we all need to feel happy and content and efficacious. Efficacious means that we feel that we can accomplish things that we set our mind to, so we feel competent. Everyone has those emotional needs, those go along with self-esteem. Our mental and cognitive needs talk about what we need in order to best learn, what kind of information we need, and that can be everything from the language that it's presented in to how it's presented. My daughter is dyslexic, so there are certain accommodations we have to make when she is learning, especially when she's reading, in order to help her get that information basically off the page and into her mind. Learning needs to understand the condition and interventions, so we need to help people figure out how are they going to best learn about whatever their condition or conditions are, and I use the term condition loosely, that can mean relationship problems, that can mean communication issues, that can mean depression, anxiety, addiction, cancer. What we want to do is figure out how can we best get the necessary information to this person about the issue that they're dealing with and about interventions to deal with that issue, so they can start becoming educated and empowered to make decisions that are effective for them. And physical needs include assistive devices, glasses, hearing aids, like I said with my daughter with dyslexia, she needs to have everything that she reads, if she reads it on a computer, which is a lot harder for her, she needs to have double spacing between the lines, because when the lines are crammed together, she has a hard time actually reading what's there. So understanding what people need in order to most effectively function. Frequent breaks, not everybody needs frequent breaks, but some people do, so if someone needs frequent breaks to either process information, or for example at work, if they need frequent breaks in order to sit down because they've got back problems, that's a physical need that we need to attend to, and we need to take that into consideration when we're looking at what kind of jobs might be a good fit for this person.  And other physical needs may include medications that can be psychotropic medications like antidepressants, or pain medications, arthritis, cholesterol, there's lots of meds out there, but what do they need in order to be healthy? Because part of happy, healthy and sober is obviously healthy. And part of happy is not just emotionally happy, it means achieving goals in multiple areas of life, work, home, family, relationships, there's a lot more to life than just recovery. Social needs, we all need friends. Some people do really well with a couple of friends, some people have a lot of acquaintances and really thrive off the energy of interacting with lots of people. And they need to have an understanding of healthy relationships. In order to form a healthy relationship, you need to know what constitutes one. Environmental needs include safety, temperature, comfort, time of day, transportation and childcare. So safety needs. If someone doesn't like to be surprised, a lot of times, and I mean, most people don't like to be surprised, but some people tend to be more on edge. If they can't see the entrances and exits or if they have a window behind them. So in order to accommodate those environmental needs, how can you adjust the environment so the person feels safer? Temperature. I mentioned before that I get cold really easy, but I also get hot really easily. So figuring out how I can accommodate that no matter where I am. I bring a jacket wherever I am and I tend to dress lightly. So when I get hot, I can take off my jacket and maybe another layer and be more comfortable. Comfort also applies to things like desk chairs. If you've got low back problems, making sure you've got good lumbar support. If the lighting is not correct, we want to make sure that people are not using extra stress or creating pain or extra distress by being uncomfortable. The time of day is important. We all have times of day where we're more focused and prefer to work. I'm a morning person. I know people who don't even really start getting out of their fog until four in the afternoon. And while I don't understand it, I say kudos to them because they're the yin to my yang. Transportation, if you can't get from point A to point B, it's going to make it harder to get to your doctor's appointments, to get to your recovery meetings, to get to your job, to pick your kids up from school. So transportation really is a need that we need to consider. And childcare. If someone is working and they don't have childcare, it makes it very difficult. If they don't have good childcare where they can feel confident that their child is safe and well cared for, it's going to add extra stress and probably contribute to distress and maybe relapse. So we need to look at what our people's needs globally, emotionally, mentally, socially, physically and environmentally. In addition to their needs that we've talked about, we need to understand how they learn. How they best take in information. Can they hear something one time and they've got it? That's an auditory learner. Do they see something or read it one time and they've got it? That's a visual learner. A kinesthetic learner will learn best if they actually do it. Most people are a combination of two or all three. For example, I tend to be more visual kinesthetic. I can read things really well. I can remember things that I read really well, but I also like to apply it and practice it and manipulate the information. If I'm learning how to drive somewhere, if I sit in the passenger seat while we're driving somewhere, I'm not going to remember a dagum thing. I have to actually do it in order to develop some muscle memory and actually remember the cue points. So I know for me, I'm a visual kinesthetic learner. Auditory kind of falls to the back burner when I'm learning things. And then how you process information. Once you get all that information in your head, how do you process it? Do you take it all in and then take a break so you can synthesize it and have an aha moment? Or as each piece comes in, are you adding it to the puzzle? Think about when you do puzzles. When I do puzzles, I do the frame first and then I create little piles of like pieces. You know, it looks like this will form the flower. It looks like this will form the puppy. It looks like this will form whatever. And then I try to put them together. I'm a reflective learner. I take everything and I kind of group it. And then I take a moment to reflect and synthesize. Active learners do it as they go along. They'll just pick up a piece and go, well, I think it should probably go here. And finally conceptualization. Sequential versus global. I'm a global learner. I need to have an overview. My daughter laughs because we went to see Minions and I didn't know what the movie was about.  She was sitting in the movie theater trying to look up on IMDB what Minion was about before the movie started because she needed to have an overarching concept. And she thinks that's the funniest thing in the world, obviously. But it was true, unfortunately, I will be the one that will read the table of contents of a book before I read it. I will read the back cover before I buy it. Sequential learners, they're happy just knowing what's going to be in this chapter. And then they'll figure out how the rest of the stuff tacks on as they go. I have a hard time organizing information if I don't have the big picture first. So we want to present information so people hear it. They see it and they apply it. As we do that, we want to take care to take breaks periodically to let them reflect on it, maybe do a worksheet, maybe just think about it for a minute or apply it to a scenario to make sure that your reflective learners have had a chance to process it. And then you want to really present the big picture first. But at the end, you also want to summarize and go, okay, today we were learning about this particular topic and we covered these particular skills. Tell me two ways that this may apply to you next week and then ask your client to answer that question. It will help solidify everything for him or her. Then we move to attitudes. This is what motivates people. What are their attitudes about themselves? If they feel like they can do it, they feel like they can accomplish it, they think something's a challenge, those are positive motivating attitudes. If they feel like they're going to fail, if they feel like it's not worth the effort, then those are unmotivating attitudes. What are their attitudes about others? A lot of times, there are things that we do that we need help with because we can't do everything. But if you have a poor attitude about others, you don't think they're actually going to help out at all. Think back to when you had to do group projects in high school or college. I always dreaded group projects because there would be six of us and usually four would just kind of coast and then there would be two of us doing the majority of the work. If that's your attitude, then you are going to dread working with other people and you're going to try to do it yourself. In retrospect, maybe if I would have had more information about their learning styles and what would have motivated them, we could have engaged them better. But that wasn't my target at that point as a group member. I just wanted to get it done and get an A on it and be done with it. Their attitude is about the condition or the target issue. If they think it's hopeless, they're not going to be very motivated. If they think there are exciting opportunities for change and they think they can accomplish it, then they're going to be excited, which is why we need to make sure as coaches and clinicians, we put in frequent small successes, staying clean for a day, reducing your crying sessions so you're only crying a little bit for 10 minutes once today instead of every hour. We want to make sure they see small improvements and they give themselves credit for that. A willingness to try and learn new things they were doing the best they could with the tools they had at that point in time and it wasn't working. Now they've come to us, maybe they've gone through treatment or they've gone through self-help. They're at a point where they know kind of what direction they want to go and they just need somebody to help them implement the plan and they come to a coach and we say, okay, let's figure out how you're going to enhance the strengths that you have and look for some new tools that you may need to learn and we'll point you in the direction of resources to learn those tools will help your practice and do all that kind of stuff. So that's wonderful. But the client needs to be willing and not go, well, I already tried that. If you start running into yes, buts, and I already did that and it didn't work, then you want to turn it back around on the client and ask them, what is it you think would help? Or in what way can we get around this stuck point? Interventions in recovery, what their attitudes are about those interventions in recovery. Some people will be like, I'm not going to call myself an addict every day, that's just not what I'm going to do. And some people will take the other stance and say, I need to remind myself every day that I'm an addict. Depending on your point of view is going to really reflect on which one of those that you adhere to. I want to know what my client's attitudes are about the concept of being an addict and the disease concept versus the cognitive concept. I will not go to those meetings. I had a client come in one time and she was adamant. Oh my gosh, she didn't know me from Adam's house cat and she came in and she sat down. We were five minutes into the assessment and I had asked her whether she'd ever been to 12 step meetings because that's a question on our assessment. And she went off on this diatribe of how she doesn't go to those meetings. She's not going to go to those meetings.  And I think there was more to it than that. And I just sat there patiently listening and I'm like, okay, what are you going to do instead? And she sat there sort of dumbfounded for five or 10 seconds because nobody had ever responded that way. Usually the response was, well, you have to go to those meetings. My response was, well, if you're not going to do it, what are you going to do instead? We need to find a way to develop social support for you. So how can you do that? That's going to work for you. The concept that everybody relapses, addiction, mental health, regardless, if you believe that everybody relapses and that's your attitude, then does that set you up and kind of give you an out for relapsing? I don't know. That's something to talk about with your client. What is their attitude towards relapse? What does relapse mean? Is relapse a necessary part of recovery? And what do you do if relapse happens? Another topic that comes up a lot in addiction recovery is with people who believe they need medication assisted therapy or medication assisted recovery, such as Suboxone, Methadone, and even antidepressants and some of those medications. Now, whether or not your client does or does not need them, that's not, for me to say, that's between them and their doctor. But I do want to know what their attitudes are towards the medication, why they think they need it, what they think it provides, so I can better understand their attitude toward recovery and it may provide me some insight into what some of their concerns are about the recovery process. Decisional balance. We've talked about this in different activities. We've talked about this in different classes and it will keep coming up. This is one of the best ways to help people increase motivation. You want to help them look at the benefits of the old way. And if you start out with this, they kind of look at you like you're crazy because most people don't ask them, well, what was the benefit you were getting out of smoking weed? We need to know that because it was rewarding. If we don't figure out what function it was serving, we can't figure out a different way to accomplish that same goal. So what were the benefits to the old way? We need to eliminate as many of the benefits as possible or replace them with healthier alternatives, which is the red means stop and the green means go in this particular chart. So for the red, we want to eliminate or replace the benefits of the old way. And going down to the other corner, we want to eliminate or replace the concerns about change, concerns I have about changing or my negative attitudes. When people go on a diet, one of the concerns they have about eating this new way is they're not going to be able to have their favorite foods anymore. You know, there's definitely something to consider. So how can you make that less of a concern? How can you make that work for you so it doesn't end up sabotaging the changes you're trying to make? Then we want to look at the benefits to the new way. You know, this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard work. I'm not saying that it won't be. However, what are the benefits? Why is it worth all of this effort? What's going to be different in your life that makes it all worth the effort? And then increasing people's awareness of the drawbacks to the old way, the things that I don't like about the old way or staying the same would be and the reasons why I need to change. So asking them these questions, having them reflect upon them, I generally give the decisional balance exercise as a homework assignment. And then we process it in the next session because I want people to really have a chance to put in as much detail as possible. And preferences, people's temperament impacts their strengths, needs, attitudes and preferences. Temperament is comprised of basically four dimensions. And I don't want you to make it more complicated than it really has to be. I mean, you can get way down into the weeds. But let's just stay up here right now. The first component deals with their environment and energy and how they engage with people. The second component is how they conceptualize things if they focus on details or the big picture. The third component is what motivates them and it makes things meaningful. Is it facts and details and logic or what makes them feel happy and what seems to be the best as far as relationships are concerned? And then the fourth dimension focuses on time management and structure. How do they go about organizing their life and getting things done? Do they like day planners? Do they like structure? Or do they like spontaneity and kind of flying by the seat of their pants? These are sort of innate temperaments. These are innate traits that we're not going to change. So we need to figure out how to help people work with them. Ultimately, they are going to gravitate toward their preferences, regardless of whether we want them to or not. So we need to help them figure out how to make it work for them because one type is not better or worse. It's just different. The cool thing is if you take two people who are on opposite ends of the spectrum and you put them together, they can either fight like cats and dogs or balance each other out. So remember, the overarching concept is on a continuum. One end of the continuum is not better than the other. So being structured versus being spontaneous is not better or worse. It's just different. Most people are somewhere in the middle. So you'll go through some of the characteristics we're going to talk about and you'll go, well, I've got a little bit of that, but then I have a lot more of this. So which am I? And the answer is both. But being aware of your preferences is what's really important in reducing stress in your life. So how can we apply this? We can apply this to improving communication, increasing motivation, helping people select effective interventions, and relapse prevention planning. The first dimension, how people prefer their environment and interact with people. Extraverts tend to be expansive. They're just wide open. They're easy to get to know. They love meeting new people. Figure things out while they're talking. Often enjoy background noise like TV and radio. They're more aware of what's going on around them than inside them. Don't mind interruptions and are often considered good talkers. You know, these are the people I'm thinking of as teachers because they're in the classroom. They've got interruptions. They've got noise going on. They're constantly aware of what's going on around them.  And a lot of times they have to figure things out while they're talking and kind of on the spot. When we're talking about recovery, knowing that extraverts draw energy from other people, they get energized by being in a classroom, by being around a lot of other people. And they love meeting new people. So this is going to be good. Any type of support group, they're going to feel right at home in. They're going to have a really easy time making connections with other people that are out there. And they have a lot of people that they consider friends. One of the challenges in recovery is the fact that they know what's going on around them rather than inside them. So they're attuned to what's going on in the environment. And inside, they may be getting stressed. They may be getting bored. They may be getting tired. Something or anything can be going on inside them. And they may not notice it because they're so focused on everything else. It's like when you take a kid to the zoo for the first time. They get exhausted by the end of the day and they start melting down, but they don't realize it because they're so stimulated by everything that's going on around them. So in recovery, the extrovert needs to make sure to take time out a couple of times a day, and I've suggested it before at every mealtime, to do a body scan, to do a mindfulness scan, just to make sure that they know how they're doing inside emotionally, mentally, physically, and make sure that there's no weaknesses coming up. Introverts are intense and passionate. These are the people that can dive into something and work for 16 hours straight. They may be more difficult to get to know and have to exert effort to meet new people. A lot of times they only have a few close friends because it's a lot of effort to meet new people. They take in information and like to figure things out before they talk. So if you know somebody who will take in a lot of information and then they'll go out on a run or they'll go sit out on the porch or something, while they process it, they want to figure it out before they talk. Extroverts like to talk it out. Introverts prefer peace and quiet as opposed to background noise. They need to be able to focus. They're more likely to know what's going on inside them than rather than what's going on around them. Dislike being interrupted and our good listeners. So an introvert is going to be one of the people that you think of as being quieter. They're not going to be the life of the party. They're going to sit back and observe and they're more aware of what's going on inside. So in recovery, we want to make sure that they're also paying attention to what's going on around them so they don't get caught in a situation they don't want to be in. As far as motivation, well let's go back to introverts for a second. Some of your support group meetings, like your big 12-step meetings, are going to be overwhelming to the introvert. They'll do better in big book studies or in small support groups with maybe four or five people or online support groups where they can hang back for a second and kind of get to know people and find a group that's small and seems to be more in alignment with who they are. But it takes them time to kind of warm up. Motivation-wise extroverts are motivated by energy. They're motivated by being around other people. They're motivated by activity. When I go to the gym, I get really motivated because there's other people around the TVs are on. There's all kinds of stuff buzzing around and that gets me energized. Someone who is an introvert may get overwhelmed by all that stimulation. When we talk about thinking versus feeling, we're really talking about how people are motivated. Thinkers are motivated by facts. They respond easily to people's thoughts as opposed to their feelings. They want to apply objective principles. They can assess logical consequences. Think it's more important to be just than merciful. Think about things through a true false lens instead of a good bad lens, so like a legal lens instead of an ethical lens maybe. And may think that those who are sentimental take things too personally. Thinkers may argue both sides of an issue from mental stimulation. Think attorney. Attorneys really like justice, responding to thoughts, being objective, and arguing both sides of a situation to kind of see both perspectives. When you're dealing with somebody in recovery who responds this way, you want to encourage them to look at the logical consequences of what they're thinking about doing or the choices that they're making. You want to give them objective principles to learn about and to apply. And you may also have them play devil's advocate, have them argue both sides of an issue in order to come to a conclusion. If your person is more on the feeling side, they think about things like care, compassion, what makes them feel good, what makes them happy. They respond to people's values and they want everybody around them to be happy. They tend to be very sentimental and they're good at assessing the human impact of things. They believe it's more important to be caring and merciful and look at things through a good and bad lens. They may think that those preferring objectivity are insensitive and really prefer to agree with those around them. So if you're dealing with somebody who's a feeler, they're going to be more motivated if they're surrounded by people in recovery who are like-minded. They like to agree. They don't like to cause waves. They like everybody to be happy. So we want to make sure that they're in an environment that encourages happiness and contentment. Now, sensing versus intuitive refers to how people deal with information. Sensing people are practical, realistic, detail-oriented, would rather do than think. And they may see the details and ignore the big picture. When we're talking about recovery, they may get so caught up in the details of what they need to do in order to recover that they miss the big picture of they're supposed to be having fun and having a more pleasurable, happy, stress-free life. So we need to get them to stop, step back, and look, and reassess the big picture regularly. What's going on in the big picture? Okay, you had this little slip-up, but in the big picture, how are things going? They also believe if it isn't broken, don't fix it. So if you're trying to get people to change something they don't see a problem with, you're going to be kind of banging your head into a wall. Focus on things that they're motivated to change. The person who is intuitive is more of the imaginative dreamer. They think about the possibilities. I tend to be more on the intuitive side. I love to write grants. I like to think about the big picture and live in the world of possibilities. Anything I see, I think, can be improved upon. And whether I have the skills to do it or not is, you know, up for debate sometimes. But I always look for how could you make this more energy efficient? How could you make this easier to do? How could you make this run more effectively? I'd like to focus on complicated abstract problems. And I see the big picture, but I'll admit I can miss the details. So again, when you're working with someone in recovery, if they're intuitive, they may see the big picture about I need to go do things that make me happy. Well, yes, that's wonderful. However, we also need to pay attention to the details of are you doing your mindfulness scans? Are you taking care of yourself?  The intuitive person can focus too much on the future and possibilities and forget about the present. So again, in recovery, it's important for if you're working with someone who's an intuitive, they're always talking about what they're going to do in six months or when they get their kids back or sometime in the future. And we want to make sure that we acknowledge that and we'll reinforce that but also focus on what are you doing right now that's going to get you closer to that. And finally, judging versus perceiving. This is your structure. These are your spontaneity people versus your day planner people. I'm a day planner person. I like to plan ahead. I thrive on order. I really like to get things done early on the type of person if a paper was due on Friday, I would have it done on Tuesday, because I wouldn't want to have to worry about whether I was going to get it done or the computer would crash or anything like that. I have limits that I work within and I may be hasty in making decisions, because I take the information. I'm like, Okay, I got what I need. Let's make a decision and let's go. I tend to be time and deadline oriented. I think those preferring spontaneity are too unpredictable, but they're excellent planners. So in recovery, someone who's a judge is going to be one who is good for helping organize a group. They'll be good at communicating deadlines. They'll be good at laying out goals and interventions. They'll be motivated by structure. However, life isn't always structured. So we need to help these people figure out if life throws you a curveball, how are you going to deal with it? I have a plan A, but I also have a plan B and a plan C most of the time, because this helps me plan and be structured when life is not so structured. We want to encourage our clients to do that in recovery. Always have a plan B and a plan C for recovery, for relapse triggers, for anything that might be stressing you out. And perceivers adapt as they go. They're flexible and tolerant. They thrive on spontaneity, get things done at the last minute, depending on a spur of energy. They're always craving more information, but may fail to make decisions in a timely manner. They're good at handling unplanned events, but may not make effective choices among the possibilities. Now, one of the people I worked for for almost 15 years was very much this way. He was able to deal with anything that you threw at him. But if he had to make a decision, I always knew that I would talk to him about it on Thursday if I wanted an answer on Monday, because he'd have to consider all the different permutations and possibilities and get more information. That was the way he functioned. When things happened, when grants came up, it would be instead of, we've got two months to get this done. We've got two weeks to get this grant written, so everybody plan on working late for the next two weeks. Things were getting done at the last minute or depending on a spur of energy or whenever he ran across them. It was like, ah, sure, there's plenty of time. Let's get it done. In recovery, we need to make sure that people don't always fall back on thinking that there's plenty of time, because sometimes there's not. They need to have some structure in their recovery plan, whether it's making sure that they're doing fun things, eating well, getting enough sleep. If they're in recovery from an addiction, going to a meeting or doing something with sober social supports is going to be important, and they need to include that. Whereas a judge or somebody who's structured might use a day planner, somebody who's a perceiver will do better with to-do lists, maybe a daily to-do list or even a weekly to-do list. I have to get all these things done this week, and I'll figure it out as I go. Encouraging people to be aware and work within their temperaments instead of trying to be something they're not is going to go a long way towards helping them achieve sustained recovery. A client with depression and a history of addiction wants to, quote, stay in recovery. So what do you need to know about his strengths, needs, attitudes, and preferences? One of the things you want to know is what has worked and what hasn't worked. When you talk about needs, you know, remember it's not just your emotional needs. What do you need mentally? What do you need to help you learn best? What do you need to stay on track? What are your motivating factors? What are your attitudes about what your options are? And how can we make this work within your personality, within your temperament, within your preferences? Treatment involves helping people learn what's causing their distress and tools to manage it. Effective change involves helping people maximize their strengths, consider their needs and motivations, address their attitudes, both positive and negative. We want to enhance the positive and deal with the negative and work in harmony with their own preferences instead of trying to be something that they're not. As a coach or clinician, it's important to pay attention to the potential pitfalls of your treatment or discharge plan based on the person's strengths, needs, attitudes, and preferences. A lot of times, if people relapse, we can find out that we missed something in our assessment. Learn from that, adjust the treatment plan, and move on.