NC business goes for $925 million

One of North Carolina's home grown businesses sells for $925,000,000!

Burt's Bees has been on the market for one month and Clorox corporation plans to purchase it for $925 million. The deal will close by the end of 2007 and will remain in Durham, NC, and keep it's current chief executive, John Reploge. Burt's Bees has a strong reputation in health and wellness directions and compliments Clorox company's new Green Works line of natural cleaning products.

News & Observer
October 31, 2007
Vicki Lee Parker

Clorox to buy Burt's Bees for $925 million

Just over a month after being put up for sale, Burt's Bees, the Morrisville-based maker of natural personal-care products has a buyer.

Clorox Co., of Oakland, Calif., said this morning that it plans to purchase Burt's Bees for $925 million.

Clorox executives said the purchase will allow it to expand beyond its core business into the fast-growing consumer care market.

"The Burt's Bees brand is well anchored in sustainability and health and wellness," Donald R. Knauss, Clorox chairman and chief executive said in an statement. "Combined with our new Green Works line of natural cleaning products, and Brita water filtration products, we can leverage Burt's Bees extensive capabilities and credibility to build a robust, higher-growth platform for Clorox."

The company also reported said that Burt's Bees, which was founded in 1984, will remain based in North Carolina and continue to be headed by John Reploge, its current chief executive.

The deal is expected to close by the end of the year and is subject to regulatory approval. Original article...

Botched paving costly to DOT and NC taxpayers - $21 million

The botched paving job on Interstate in North Carolina cost taxpayers at least $21,000,000 dollars and many months of commuting hardships and misery for drivers.

At the tail end of a multi-year project to implement a major expansion of I-40 between Durham and Chapel Hill, NC, inspectors discovered that miles of new concrete pavement was breaking apart. More studies showed that the top layer of concrete had not been installed correctly and was breaking down even before the project was complete.

The project was already late and had cost taxpayers much more than originally planned and a major part of the work had to be torn up and reworked by contractors. The $21,000,000 repair is yet another demonstration of major mis-management and poor planning within North Carolina's Department of Transportation. The extension added another year of misery for weary commuters traveling the road each day.

Unfortunately for taxpayers, Governor Easley's hand picked director for the DOT, Lindo Tippett, has never admitted any responsibility for the blunder and has remained unscathed while lower level state employees were reprimanded and, in some cases, fired for the mistake. The Governor has not seen fit to replace Mr. Tippett and new reports emerge weekly of additional long postponement or cancellation of many needed major projects and continued severe budget shortfalls as taxpayers foot the bill for gross mismanagement and incompetence in the state's operations.

A new article has appeared in the October issue Asphalt Magazine by the manufacturer of heavy equipment that was used to tear up the broken new concrete and gives an interesting view of the magnitude of work required, done only at night, to undo the botched paving work. The contractor has now completed repairs made under a $21 million project. Interestingly enough the state threatened the contractor with significant fines of $10,000 per hour if workers had not moved out of the way of commuters by morning as the project was carried out.

Read more of this fascinating use of technology to repair one of North Carolina DOT's largest blunders to date....

Asphalt Contractor magazine
October 30th, 2007

Failed concrete overlay milled, replaced with HMA

A failing concrete overlay on I-40 near Raleigh-Durham, NC, was determined by the North Carolina DOT to be in need of replacement. The specifications for the project provided that the concrete overlay be removed by cold-milling and replaced with hot mix asphalt (HMA) each night.

The Lane Construction Corporation was awarded the $21-million project for the North Carolina DOT, and has undertaken the milling, while its Rea Contracting LLC affiliate performed the HMA placement on strict nightly schedules.

"We're grinding anywhere from 3 to 3.5 inches of concrete overlay off the Interstate using a Wirtgen W 2200 cold mill with full lane, 12-foot 6-inch drum," says J. Todd Moore, superintendent of the I-40 project for Lane. "We have approximately 21 lineal miles to do, two lanes eastbound, and two lanes westbound, as well as all off ramps and acceleration lanes."

The existing pavement is three lanes wide each way, with the third (inside) lane made of full-depth concrete, recently reconstructed. The concrete overlay being removed had been placed over existing Portland cement concrete and was experiencing spalling at the joints, and patched "blow-out" potholes where heavy traffic was pulling material from the pavement.

"We have about 290,000 square yards of concrete removal required for this project," says Richard Snow, P.E., construction manager for Lane. "Our average pace of 2,200 lineal feet per night of lane works out to about 2,700 square yards. On weekends we do a lot more with our marathon closures. While we still keep one lane open, we are able to keep the two lanes closed 56 hours straight."

"We're finding both conventional and high early-strength concrete in the overlay, but the W 2200 is chewing right through it all," Moore says. "We've used the W 2200 for scarifying concrete as well, but this 3.5-inch-deep cut is more of a test for the machine during the four hours we work each night."

New open-space tooth pattern

A new open-spaced tooth pattern drum design which applies more horsepower per tooth, but with fewer teeth, was being used on this cold mill.

"We're using Wirtgen teeth with 1.25-inch spacing of teeth on the drum, with some 130 teeth on the drum," Moore says. "We're not using up as many teeth on the drum as before, but it's grinding up the concrete more efficiently, and pulling the material off the existing concrete. It's coming up in a little bit larger chunks, and the milling is more efficient. It's leaving a nice pattern on the pavement, and both the state and the paving contractor are well-pleased."

Nonetheless, Moore and his crews have experimented with the right configuration for the drum and machine.

"At one time we slowed the cutter drum down, but had no success with increasing footage, because teeth were breaking off as the drum was going slower, and not keeping up," he says. "We brought it back to its original speed - about 21 feet per minute, and now things are rolling. Because we're limited at night to what can be repaved before rush hour, I'll open up anywhere from 2,000 to 2,600 feet, depending on how tight the concrete is in our four-hour period."

Thus a given night would see Lane begin milling after 8 p.m. and conclude about midnight, with Rea Contracting paving the next four to five hours, with the last hour striping and removal of the traffic control pattern. "We have to be off the Interstate by 6 a.m., with penalties of $10,000 per hour," Moore says.

Superpave replaces concrete

The concrete overlay was being replaced by two lifts of a Superpave mix, PG 76-24 polymer modified binder, with 9.5 D mm aggregate. The first was a 2-inch lift, followed by a 1.5-inch lift on top to bring to grade. The HMA was provided by Rea Contracting out of its Northern Raleigh plant. North Carolina DOT specified a material transfer vehicle be used between truck and paver.

At midnight, the milling and paving supervisors meet to run numbers as to how far the milling can go that night, so both crews can finish their jobs that morning.

"We see how far we will mill, so we can finish milling and Rea can finish paving, all at a happy medium," Moore says. "We also have to figure in cutter tooth changes, and that will slow us down a little. Right now we do a complete cutter tooth change every 1,000 to 1,100 feet; the more efficiently we can change the 130 milling teeth, and install new ones, the faster we can get back to work."

Lane's complete tooth change using Wirtgen quick-change toolholders will take about 15 minutes.

Hydro-sweeping and infrared drying

Following the W 2200, a standard street sweeper was cleaning the milled surface, followed by a contract hydrovacuum truck which was water-blasting any remaining material off the surface, and vacuuming it into a tank for disposal.

"We're picking up the heavy stuff with the sweeper, and then we have a 36,000 psi-capable hydrovac truck clean the pavement with sprayed water, and vacuum up the water and any fines," Moore says. "This surface has to be totally spotless before we apply our tack coat."

And because the surface has to be bone-dry before the tack coat - and not much time in which to dry - Lane was using an infrared heater truck with generator to dry the milled surface prior to tack and overlay. "The truck has two 195-mph blower fans which blow off any standing water, and heating coils which evaporate any remaining moisture."

Lane's W 2200 with full-lane width drum was giving Lane the power and reliability it needed to keep this project on schedule and in budget.

Moore was finding that the new Eco-Cutter drum from Wirtgen was keeping the job moving along with accrued savings from use of fewer teeth. "This is the first application for which we've used this full-lane drum," Moore says. "This application is nice for the full-lane drum because it's one lane, one way, without having to back up and go. And the drum has a coarser pattern to it. My feeling is, 'the coarser, the better', because the asphalt can hold tighter in the voids than it can in a smoother surface."

Fewer cutting tools on the new Eco-Drum means less resistance to cutting and a higher rate of advance, with lower tool costs per milled cubic yard. These drums, with smaller number of point attack tools, make sure work proceeds more quickly and cost-efficiently.

Despite the fact that the standard-width Eco-Cutter may equipped with only 114 cutting tools, its performance with 1-inch tool spacing is roughly 20 percent higher than that of a standard milling drum with 0.6-inch tool spacing when working in hard asphalt and at a milling depth of 8 inches.

About the Wirtgen W 2200

The W 2200 is designed for big, continuous cold milling projects in which a pavement must be removed mile after mile. The high-horsepower, deep-cutting, high-production

W 2200 lets users mill large projects in a short period of time.

The W 2200 has a standard cutting width of 87 inches, four large D-6 crawler tracks, a milling drum with a high-efficiency mechanical belt drive, and an efficient front-loading system. It has a mechanically driven milling drum and two-part slewing front-end discharge conveyor of variable height. The machine travels on crawler tracks. Robust welded construction with mounts for the individual function modules and superstructures. The tanks for diesel fuel and water are integrated into the chassis. The hydraulic fluid tank forms a separate unit.

Its maximum cutting depth is 14 inches and with the optional Flexible Cutter System, can cut up to 14 feet 1 inch wide. The W 2200 has an operating weight of 96,342 pounds with a 900-hp power plant.

The walk-through operator's platform with access ladder on each side is located in the middle part of the machine. It is equipped with two identical control consoles which can be pivoted and vertically adjusted. Both control consoles and the right-hand driver's seat can be displaced outwards beyond the edge of the machine. The steering and feed control operate with electrical proportional action and are controlled via joysticks.


The Wirtgen information and diagnosis system - called the WIDIS 32 - provides the driver with comprehensive up-to-the-minute information on the current status of the engine and hydraulic system and generates visual and acoustic alarms when necessary. The crawler tracks are suspended from the chassis via round cylinders, the height of which can be adjusted hydraulically. The height of each crawler track can be adjusted individually. The height required for the milling depth is adjusted via the two cylinders at the front, while the rear crawler tracks form a full floating axle. The large lift ensures considerable ground clearance simplifying such difficult maneuvers as reversing or loading and unloading the machine from a low-bed truck.

Sign of the times - re-elect nobody

Running for elected offices these days requires candidates to deal with a lot of public hostility toward government and elected officials. This sign was placed along area roads along with those of candidates running for Cary and Wake County offices in October 2oo7 and encouraged voters to not re-elect anyone already on the Cary council.

This sentiment is becoming a factor anyone running for public office must consider and may bring significant change in local, state and national government, even for some that have worked hard to serve the public faithfully. Now, more than ever, candidates need to listen to constituents and tune campaigns to provide a choice voters will believe and make at the polls.

Much of the public is so unhappy with all levels of government and how things have been handled by the Bush administration that the handwriting is on the wall for anyone in office that has supported the current administration. The possibility for a tidal wave of change in government is looming and the elections in 2007 and 2008 will bring a complete change in who leads and makes decisions for the foreseeable future in local and national government organizations.

Saint Joseph sells homes

Don't believe that burying a St. Joseph statue will help you sell your home? Some do, and it's becoming a service that one realtor offers with her listings.

During times when homes don't resell quickly some sellers will try the practice that others might call a superstition. "The practice of burying St. Joseph borders on superstition today", said Stephen Lewandowski, the deacon of St. Joseph's Catholic Church on Poole Road in Raleigh. "And superstitions, such as believing in good-luck charms or that black cats bring bad luck, are no-nos", he said. "It's not really sanctioned by the church," Lewandowski said.

In 2005, we were trying to sell a small home left to my wife and her brother in a market where there were lots of houses for sale and not many were moving. We heard of the practice of burying a St. Joseph statue upside down in the yard and thought that it couldn't hurt since the house was not moving anyway. After digging around for a suitable spot in an area in front of the porch (and looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was looking) I buried the little statue we had bought just to see if it would help a couple of feet from the house, upside down and facing backwards. Just like we were told it had to be done.

Interestingly enough, in the next few weeks we actually got more visits and got a couple of offers. All when houses in the area still were not selling. One of the potential buyers became interested in the house and we negotiated until arriving at an agreeable selling price and the house was sold in a few days!

Call it superstition, coincidence, blind luck or whatever you wish... the house was not drawing buyers until we decided to bury the St. Joseph statue. Then with a little added help the house sold!

Read more about this fascinating possibility...

News & Observer
September 29, 2007
Jack Hagel, Staff Writer

Sellers seek Saint's help
Can't sell your home? Some bury St. Joseph and pray

When Meredith and Will Vaughn put their home on the market a year ago, they were certain it would sell quickly.

The townhouse is in the popular Five Points neighborhood near downtown Raleigh, where buyers were getting into bidding wars over nearby houses.

Days went by. Then weeks. Then months. The Vaughns, carrying two mortgages, needed a miracle.

"We were already praying," said Meredith Vaughn, 29, who has since moved to Martinsville, Va., where she and her husband will be closer to family when their first baby is born in March. "But we thought: If we do something tangible, maybe that would help, too."

They turned to St. Joseph, who is considered by many desperate home sellers and real estate agents to be the patron saint of house hunters and sellers.

The Vaughns bought a 4-inch St. Joseph statue and followed the instructions: Dig a hole, bury the statue upside down, say a special prayer and wait for an offer.

Several months later, they're still waiting for an offer. "But we've had a lot of people look at it," Meredith Vaughn said.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. And as home sales have slowed locally and across the country, more sellers are taking similar leaps of faith.

Rows of St. Joseph packages that proclaim "Faith can move mountains ... and homes!" hang on a wall at the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors store in Cary, where real estate agents stock up on "for sale" signs, key boxes and the like. Read more...

Time for major NC DOT change

Yet another blunder by the NC DOT - this time hiding what tax dollars paid for...

A string of news articles in recent months has underscored poor management, incompetence and arrogance in the NC DOT organization. The $20,000,000 costly blunder on improper pavement on I-40 near Durham and Chapel Hill wasted enough tax dollars to more than cover the gap in funding to allow construction of the urgently needed western segment of I-540 to begin. Inadequate planning and funding of new construction vital to expansion of the state's road systems is often discussed in news articles and the DOT organization still has no plan on how to meet badly needed construction and maintenance projects around the state. And now the Governor has had to step in and order Lindo Tippett, Easley's own appointed DOT Director, to release documents related to a $3.6 million contract with a management consultant firm hired by the DOT to evaluate the DOT's own performance.

It is clear that those in charge of the DOT don't have a clue how to manage the organization, much less handle planning and budgeting to meet transportation infrastructure needs of the state. This is one more in a string of problems popping to the surface with a number of appointments made by Governor Easley to run key parts of the state government.

A News & Observer editorial just out states "All this is an embarrassing miscue. The longer DOT lets it continue, the more the department's reputation and credibility will crack like the concrete on the stretch of I-40 that crumbled under the weight of a previous foul-up."

Read what the editorial reveals about the latest of many blunders within the DOT structure and waste of tax dollars...

News & Observer
October 2, 2007
Editorial

DOT's blackout
State transportation officials go against their responsibility to taxpayers in trying to keep a consultant's report secret

It's as sad as it is outrageous when state officials release documents with sections blacked out to keep secrets from the people those officials are supposed to serve. It shows arrogance -- the agency involved doesn't recognize its obligation to public disclosure -- and it evidences a distrust of the people themselves.

An egregious example of all this has just surfaced at the state Department of Transportation, which has behaved secretively at best in regard to a $3.6 million contract with a management consultant. The outside firm was hired earlier this year to assess the DOT, an agency long troubled by interference, inefficiency and internal discontent.

Contract details were blacked out wholesale in documents released to The News & Observer. Even worse is that DOT officials haven't required the consultants, McKinsey & Co., actually to supply a written report. The consultant's findings are being delivered orally, and behind closed doors.

Simply put, the state is spending $3.6 million for information and advice, but it has nothing to show the public.

Said Mark L. Foster, the DOT's chief financial officer, "No, there is no report .... Read more...

Women treated differently from men for heart problems

According to two new studies by Duke University, men are far more likely to receive needed heart treatment than men when having similar risk factors. The study highlights the finding that women and minorities are treated differently from the way men patients are treated and the difference requires more diligence in seeking our second opinions and equal treatment.

The new findings show that the use of implantable cardioverter defibrillators, small devices that shock an irregularly beating heart back to a normal rhythm, "are used two to three times more in men than in women with similar symptoms, even though heart disease is the leading cause of death among women. The device is also used more in white men than black men".

Researchers found that the devices were "vastly underused among patients who appeared to be eligible for them, and when they were used, men were most often the beneficiaries". For every 10 men who got the device, only three or four women did. Seven black men got the device for every 10 white men. It was also found that only 35 percent of those eligible for the defibrillators devices got one - women were 50 percent less likely than men to receive them, and black men were 25 percent less likely than white men.

Read the entire article...

News & Observer
Kristin Collins, Staff Writer
October 2, 2007

Study: Women less likely to get heart device

Men are far more likely than women to receive a simple life-saving heart treatment, even when they have similar risk factors, according to two Duke University studies released today.

The studies, to be published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, are the latest in a growing body of research showing that doctors still treat women and minorities differently from the way they treat white men.

"Unfortunately, there's one recurring theme from all these kinds of studies," said Kevin Schulman, a Duke internist who worked on the new studies. "It's that you really have to take care of yourself, be aggressive, get a second opinion. The system's not consistent." Read more...

Toxic friends - avoid them all

It's good to have friends.

Some are close and are always available to talk over problems with. Some are just friends that may be fun to be around but can drag you down and keep you from being at your best.

Avoid friends that are negative or seem to be less than supportive in things you say and do. These so called "toxic friends" can cause you to be unsure of yourself, lower your self-esteem and cause you to not be at your best when you need to be.

Read more about clues that can help determine which friends are good and which should be avoided...

News & Observer
October 1, 2007
Julia Feldmeier, Special to the Washington Post

Five toxic types to avoid as friends

Ah, friends. We can't live without 'em, right? But what of our pals who, instead of empowering us, make us feel a little less confident or a little more aggravated? That's toxic. Here are five types to watch out for in your social circle:

The Naysayer. You have a great idea for a new business venture. It's a pipe dream, you know; you'll probably never get the start-up capital to go forward, but the idea excites you anyway. Your friend laughs and says you must be kidding. "They're not supportive. They tell you the ways it could possibly fail," Marni Kamins, co-author of "The Breakup Repair Kit," says of this kind of friend. "They're a negative person."

The Passive-Aggressive. This is the friend who notes aloud that you just got a new haircut but says nothing about whether it looks nice. "It's the friend that strikes when you're talking about your love life or when you've just achieved something," says Mike Albo, author of "The Underminer: Or, the Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life" -- and instead of making you feel good about yourself, he shoots you down.

The Peer Pressurer. You've got to get up early Sunday morning to study for the LSAT. Your friend knows how important this test is to you, knows how much you need to study. Yet when you try to exit the bar at midnight on Saturday so you can get some rest, she calls you lame -- stay for just one more beer! "They don't respect your boundaries," Kamins says. "They only want to do what's best for them."

The Plan Breaker. The two of you are on for Saturday night dinner: pizza and beer while you test out your Nintendo Wii. Whoops, no, you're not: A co-worker has invited him to a Nats game. Box seats. Sorry -- those dinner plans weren't definite, were they? "They say they have plans with you, and then they're subject to change at the last minute," Kamins says. "They cancel on you because something better came along."

The "You're Making Me Into a Bad Friend" Friend. It's hard to place, but something doesn't feel right when you're with her. You feel anxious or competitive. "Do you silently cheer when bad things happen to her?" asks Patti Kelley Criswell, co-author of "A Smart Girl's Guide to Friendship Troubles." "Do you feel guilty afterward because you said things or thought things that you know are not what good people do? A toxic relationship is one that brings out the worst in you." Original article...