100

I've been busy this week getting the latest census operation (VDC) up and running for my district.  This is a challenge as this operation's initial roll out seems much more chaotic than the start of the last census operation (NRFU).  This afternoon I finally got my complete list of team members.  Friday afternoon.  Before the July 4th holiday weekend.  Talk about great timing.

This evening I took a break from census work and checked my pocket gopher traps the first time in several days.  I caught two more pocket gophers and now my year's total is 100 dead gophers.

I also checked the river and it is falling at a steady rate.

The grass is growing but so are the weeds.

The horses are behaving.  They are still in the corral.   I've noticed that they favor certain areas as the very tall grass is eaten down to the ground while most of the rest of the corral still has tall grass.

Census redux

I am working for the census again.  And here you thought the census was over once you mailed in your questionnaire.

The next census operation is to verify the housing units that were found to be vacant or were to be deleted for a number of reasons, such as, it couldn't be found, it burnt down or was otherwise destroyed, or was a duplicate address to another housing unit or location.  The census bureau wants to double check they aren't missing someone.

This is a smaller operation as the number of vacants or deletes are a small minority of all housing units.  This operation is called NRFU-VDC for Non-Response Follow Up - Vacant Delete Check.  Of course, with all of the barns, chicken coops, hunting sheds and garages that were initially mapped as housing units, and the large number of vacant for sale or rent, or foreclosed houses, we may have a few more 'housing units' to double check than I expect.

Last week I, other NRFU crew leaders, and potential crew leaders were trained about the new operation.  As the Field Operation Supervisors (FOS) were not chosen yet we were trained by the FOSs' supervisor out of Missoula.  The class got rocky at times as the supervisor got defensive a few times to our questions and/or comments.  We weren't criticizing her but questioning some of the procedures we had to follow and trying to explain some real life situations we encountered and how best to handle them.

The crew leaders and crew leader want-a-bees then taught this class later that week to the people who will be double checking the vacant and deleted units.  In my - and other people's - opinions the class was overkill.  We could have quickly highlighted the differences between NRFU and NFRU-VDC when we met our team and gave them their initial assignments.

As the VDC operation is smaller than NFRU, some districts were combined.  Less districts means less crew leaders.  Another change was my former FOS moved and we got a new FOS.  It appears she decided to 'clean house' and go with a number of new people as crew leaders.  There is a little bit of controversy and hurt feelings about how this was handled.

Because I will be going over to the 'dark side' in July Missoula decided not to make me a crew leader again.  This somewhat makes sense as they weren't sure I would be around until the end of VDC.  However the person they chose to handle my old district - which was so large it wasn't combined with any other districts - apparently blanched when he was assigned my old district.  And he was an experienced crew leader.  After sleeping on it overnight he decided he didn't want to do it and quit the census.

I hadn't heard anything about census work since last week until this morning when the new FOS called me asking (with desperation?) me to come back and handle my old district. Suddenly my going over to the 'dark side' was no longer an issue.  I accepted and then spent the rest of the day getting up to speed on all that I missed.  Because I wasn't part of it from the start I had to go forward with decisions the 'crew leader for a day' had made, and not all of those decisions were ones that I would have made.

But such is life.  Well... I am up for the challenge.  I better get to bed as I have to meet with some of my new team members later this morning.

Sun river census

The sun came out Friday.  I didn't get to enjoy it until late Saturday afternoon.  That is because there was a push from the main office to get the final census questionnaires finished for my area (my district plus 7 other districts) and the area west of ours (another 7 districts).  It was a scramble as we learned on Friday we needed to get this done by Monday.

Because next month I will be going to work on another unrelated census operation, when he left Wednesday my boss didn't select me to replace him as operations supervisor.  He selected as his replacement his second choice, as Michelle likes to tell me and others.  She jokes about it but I wonder if she has some hurt feelings.  It would only be natural.

The area to our west had their operations supervisor suddenly quit Monday so Robert was brought in to finish that area.

When I arrived at the meeting area at the mall Friday afternoon Michelle and Robert were scrambling to get stuff ready for people to go get the information about the final households.  Other people were arriving, as the call had gone out to have each district call in their best people to handle these last questionnaires.   Then it was sit and wait a long time as the bosses scrambled around in preparation.

Michelle had to leave so I stepped in for her and by the end of the night Robert and I were running the show, with Jim, another crew leader, helping us as people went out and came back with information.  We did not leave until 11:30 pm.   Robert got a hotel room and crashed instead of making the 2 plus hour drive home.  Jim went home.  I also went home but I then organized and got my head around the remaining items we had to complete.  I went to bed just before 3 am.

Before 7 am one of my enumerators came by my house to give me a completed questionnaire.  Her arrival woke me out a  dream.  On the way to the 9 am meeting with the others I stopped and completed a questionnaire with a household.

Robert had returned to Missoula, and even though Michelle had arrived, she had been out of the loop so she deferred to me and I ran the show Saturday to completion.  I stepped on a few toes and one guy was publicly embarrassed as when he presented his results to us I wouldn't accept his excuses and poor quality work.  I took his work away and gave it to another census worker to complete.

We didn't finish our work until 3 pm.  Coming home after I finished work, I ate a late lunch and then checked the pocket gopher traps out in the hayfield and pastures.  I had caught two more gophers.  I noticed more dirt mounds.  I think the pocket gopher couples are breaking up and one member of the pairs are moving out to new locations, hence the new dirt mounds.

James, the neighbor across the road, was out working on corner fence posts.  He and a friend are fencing his property and James will let the friend keep cattle and/or horses on the property to eat the grass down.

Interesting road names

In my census district I had a few interesting roads.  The locals were able to choose these road names.

Anti-Government Lane

Elvis Presley Blvd
Apparently one woman who lives on this road is a big Elvis fan.

I visited this road and you can see how the county did extra work in bolting the sign onto the post.

This is what Elvis Presley Blvd looks like...

The view from Elvis Presley Blvd.

From census to primary election

My census work is winding down.  All the households in my district have been visited and their information has been sent into the Missoula census office.  Because my girlfriend Tammy was here the last two plus weeks and I wanted to spend time with her, my boss tried to offload two pieces of my remaining census work to two fellow crew leaders who were close to being done with their districts.

In theory that was a good idea.  One of the crew leaders did a good job with her piece of the work.  The other crew leader - although he had promised me I would be happy with the work he'd do for me - well... I wasn't pleased with it.  I spent a few days with him, my boss, and a few other crew leaders getting the work he did up to my standards.  Even then I spent over 8 hours the final day fixing the final product.  My effort seems to have paid off as it appears Missoula accepted the almost 300 forms.

While my census area was the largest in both in size and in the number of households it appears I have finished close to when my fellow crew leaders did.  And it appears I finished before a number of other crew leaders in other parts of western Montana.

*** just patting myself on my back ***

Of course the word "census" became a dirty word to my girlfriend as my census work took too much of my time away from her.

Then there was the matter of Tuesday's primary election.   Yesterday was Montana's primary election and I was the chief election judge at one of the precincts.  This was my first time as chief judge so that meant extra work before and after the election.

A big problem was that the election was held the day Tammy left to return to Minnesota. I didn't realize the day of the election was the day she left until she arrived here.  Oppss. The election's hours were from 7 am to 8 pm and I had to be at the election site an hour prior to 7 am to do last minute setup before the polls opened.  So I arranged for Jan to take Tammy to the train station. Not what I wanted, but I had no choice.

The election went well.  On Monday Tammy had helped me do much of the set up at my precinct.  As our election site was held at a church, and some people get offended by religious materials, we had to use a large sheet of paper, and a cloth covering a table, to cover two bulletin boards with cards and posters with religious themes.  We also took down a painting of Jesus.

Monday evening I picked up from election headquarters the ballots and other last minute stuff for the election.

I had five election judges (Ted, Terry, Donna Jo, Peggy and Fred) to help me and they were all waiting when I arrived at the election site at 6 am with the keys to the church the pastor had lent me.  Since Tammy and I had done the preliminary set up we were able to easily complete the set up and preparation before the polls opened at 7 am.

Three of my election judges were new and one other person hadn't worked an election in four years, so it was up to Ted and I and help them with their jobs.  It is not that the judge's jobs are difficult it is that one must be aware of the correct procedures.

As this was a primary election with few high profile offices being contested the turnout was lower than in other elections.  At times it was slow but still a decent turnout.  At one slow point I reviewed one of the election judge manuals and briefly fell asleep.  One of the dangers of being able to sleep sitting upright.

Since Montana allows for voter ballot initiatives we had representatives from two of the eight initiatives that are currently in the signature gathering phase.  Because the people were gathering signatures for initiatives not currently on the ballot they were allowed within 100 feet of the election site.  One group had arranged for a table in the entryway.  The other initiative was staffed by one woman who stood and used a tall stand to hold her materials as no tables were left. I brought her a chair but she rarely used it.

A series of women and one man staffed a table for Constitutional Initiative No. 102 (CI-102). This initiative will amend Montana's constitution to define a person as all human beings, irrespective of age, health, function, physical or mental dependency or method of reproduction, from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.  Or in short, this is a pro-life initiative as even a few of the signature gatherers called it before explaining the initiative's details.  They seemed to do well in getting people to sign their petition.

The other signature gatherer was for Initiative No. 160 (I-160). This initiative I-160 prohibits trapping of all wild mammals and birds by any means on public lands in Montana, subject to limited exceptions.  This initiative was a hard sell in this area.  At the end of the day she was discouraged by the low number of signatures she had gotten, but considering the area I thought she did better than I expected.  Several people strongly disagreed with her petition and voiced their objections especially as they were trappers but no one was overly rude and I didn't have to step in.

As chief election judge I remained neutral and did not sign, endorse or have any opinion pro or con on the initiatives.

The petition gatherers were respectful and polite.  Even though the two initiatives seemed to generally attract  people of opposing beliefs the two sets of gatherers were respectfully or one another and helped each one with the rules of signature gathering. I only stepped in once when a woman for I-102 discussed her petition with an elector before he voted.  The rules are that the signature gatherers are not to interfere with an elector's voting and therefore were not to talk with them until after they voted.

My judges and I all had a good time at the election.  Our personalities meshed well and they all had a good sense of humor which helped passed the time during the lulls in people voting.  We had a small 'bet' on the number of electors we would have and one of my judges lost and was suppose to stand up and do the chicken dance.  We never made her actually do the dance but we all had fun lightly teasing her about it.  Even the signature gatherers commented on what a fun group we were and how they enjoyed being there that day.

Since we can't leave the polling place until the election is over we remarked that for the fall election we should bring crock pots and have pot luck.  My girlfriend sells Homemade Gourmet and they make excellent meals for crock pot cooking so I will have to make one for my election team in November.

After the election was over we had to take down the voting booths, posters, etc., return the church to how it was before the election, print out the results from the machine, pack up what needed to be returned to the headquarters that night.  I, and two other election judges, took the print outs and the machines' cards back to the election headquarters and then we were done for the night.

I was back home at 9:30 pm after leaving home that morning at 5:30 am.  A long day, and after eating some of the homemade gourmet dip Tammy had made for me, I went to bed and slept long and hard.

Census stories

A few Census stories...

• when one of my male workers knocked on a house door he was told to come around back of the house.  When he did he found a woman sunbathing topless.  She was not shy at all at being topless. So he sat down and began to conduct the interview.  When she asked if he was flustered at her appearance he said no, but that he was distracted.  So she put a robe on so he could conduct the interview without distractions.  He commented to me later: "Man, I love this job!"

• I learned that the story about the mentally disabled young adult and the little person census worker in Bigfork is an urban myth.  He didn't lock the census worker in a closet and call his parents saying that he captured a 'troll'.

• Joyce saw more bears including a mama bear and two cubs.  Another one of my census workers in the North Fork also saw bears.

• I am almost done with my district.  Since Tammy arrived I have been trying to offload my census work to two co-worker crew leaders who claimed they were pretty much done with their smaller districts.  I discovered they weren't "as done" as they claimed.  While I finished the rest of my district on Saturday they are still working to finish the two pieces I gave them  The only stuff left for me is to "cross the i's and dot the t's" that I missed on the questionnaires I checked over and sent to Missoula and they return to me.  I have checked and signed over 2500 questionnaires so far.  I guess it is to be expected that I missed finding a few errors on some of them.

Vet Sign

Friday I learned of a few roads in my Census district I may not have gotten maps, etc. from the main census office for me to check on. Earlier a homeowner living in this area came to one of my workers asking to be counted. (See, not all people are cranky 'don't count me' types.)

This area is a rural area along the mountains so Tammy and I went out there to check on how many homes were there.  A few dozen or more it seems.

Here is one of the signs we encountered.

Flat tires, broken windows and bears

Poor Joyce.  Last week the border patrol checked her out twice while she was doing census work.  And she saw a large bear bear.

This week her luck wasn't so good:

• She saw a mother black bear with cubs wandering down her road,
  
  
• Heard stories about grizzly bears wandering around the people's houses recently,
  
  
• Monday got a flat tire from the rough North Fork road.  Fortunately a guy eventually drove by and helped her change her tire.  One would think that when the County bladed the road it would be better.  Not really true with this rough road.  "Blading" is half ripping the road up by the road grader in order to have some gravel/rock to blade.
  
  
• Tuesday she locked her car keys in her car.  She found someone with a working phone and called me in the afternoon.  From the quality of the call I thought she was calling from some remote area in the other part of the world.
  
  I had to drive to Bigfork to meet with the rest of my team so I couldn't drive up the North Fork to bring her spare car key.  She asked me if some trick with a tennis ball would pop her car lock open but I had never heard of that idea.
  
  Instead Joyce ended up breaking a small window in her car and reaching in to unlock the door. At least her car had a small window as many cars today do not.
  

Where Joyce is doing census work is over 40 miles from 'civilization' (Columbia Fall, MT).  I am not slighting Polebridge, as other than the Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon, nothing is there.  All while Joyce was working ten to twelve hours a day on the census.

At least Joyce didn't get into trouble that eventually involved the sheriff department like another census worker in the Valley did recently.  There is a crazy story in that, but one I'm not going to share as it didn't involve any members of my team, and I heard it second hand.

Census work near the border

Earlier this week one of my census workers was canvasing the part of my district up in the North Fork that borders Canada.  She parked her car near the long (since the early 1990s) closed border crossing in order to do census paper work.

She wasn't parked there very long when suddenly a border patrol agent appeared and asked her if she needed help.

She explained she was working on the census and asked if she should move her car.  The agent said no, she was fine, and then he left.

She said it wasn't 15 minutes later when another border patrol agent suddenly appeared and asked if she needed help.

"No.  Should I move my car?  You're the second agent to talk to me.  I am just working on my census forms."

No.  He told her she was fine.

"Then why the interest in me?"

He told her she was parking at a known smuggling drop point near the border.

She asked where the agents were located as they seemed to come out of nowhere and she couldn't tell where they were.  She was told, "We have our hiding places."

I do know the border patrol takes their job seriously.  Last year when I hiked to Mt Hefty I saw the hoof prints from a number of horses on and near the faint hiking trail to Mt Hefty.  Mt Hefty straddles the border with the U.S. and Canada.  This Spring I happened to deliver a census questionnaire to the Kalispell residence of one of the border patrol agents (he was in uniform when he answered the door).  We had an interesting conversation on the areas he patrols along the border, etc.  He was one of the people who patrol on horseback and we compared the time when I saw the hoof prints and when he was patrolling the area.

Also on Joyce's first day as a census worker she saw the largest black bear she had ever seen.  The bear was walking down the road she was driving on and in no hurry.

Census district

For the census, in case you are wondering what is my area of responsibility.

The area inside the red Xs is my area.  As you can see I am responsible for over half of Flathead County - at least in area (but not in population).  I also have part of Lake County (shown in blue).

So I have two counties, and my area borders seven other counties. The Continental Divide is my eastern boundary.   I also have much of Glacier Park and most - if not all - of the Bob Marshall Wilderness.  While the wilderness has no housing units (as far as I know as my team hasn't covered those maps yet), the Park has more private homes scattered about it than you would think as many houses were grandfathered in as private property inside the Park when it was created in 1910.

I imagine there aren't too many areas in the lower 48 states that are as large and complex as my area.  Several mountain ranges, wilderness, a number of very large lakes, the three forks of the Flathead River, national forests, a national park, a number of small towns, and people tucked up in the mountains to get away from civilization.

In my district, even though I don't have the major towns in my county, I have over three thousand households to visit. In western Montana my district is the largest by far in both size and households over all the other districts.  Many other districts appear to be a half to a third of my size.   Lucky me.

So, if you haven't sent in your census questionnaire yet, and a census worker comes to your door to get your household information from you, please be kind to my people.  They have a hard enough time without you making their day bad.  Some of my workers need this census job as they are barely living paycheck to paycheck.  A few of my workers have limits on how far they can travel as they are waiting for their first census paycheck so they can fill up their vehicle with gas.

Census boxes

I am tired.  Last week I worked 70+ hours on the census.  This week I am up to 48 hours with one day left to reach my maximum of 55 hours.

Tired.  Tired.  Tired.

I have 11 workers and tonight I got 6 more people who were just trained this week.  Three of them are doing their field observation tomorrow morning and tonight I got them a couple of binders with lists of address we need to contact to get the information the people did not send in to the census in April.

Just when I got the 11 people working smoothly at the job and had a chance to catch my breath I get more people.  Mind you, I need more people in order to get the work done, so I am not really complaining... but I could have used a few more days to get caught up with the paperwork.

Thursday I got the rest of my binders of census address and maps.   Initially I got 12 boxes (63 binders).  Thursday I got 15 more boxes with the rest of my binders.  One box is double sized and I haven't looked in it yet.  I'm kinda scared to.  Good thing I had my pickup else I would not have gotten all the boxes home.

My living room is full of boxes.  And these aren't all the boxes.

Crazy just trying to keep up.

This past morning I woke up from a dream about me and another person trying to get census information from a house and then filling the paperwork out correctly.  NOT what I rwant to dream about!!!

May means snow

Very busy working on the census as a crew leader.  Very busy!  Last week was a 70 hour week getting my team up and running.

Very high winds yesterday. 93 mph at Logan Pass and 40 to 50 mph in parts of the Valley.  I had to wait while a tractor moved a tree off the North Fork road so I could drive home from Polebridge. I was able to dodge the other fallen trees.  One of my team members working in the Swan saw a fallen tree start a fire.

The sleet yesterday was nothing in comparison to the few inches of snow today while I was in the Canyon area.  At least that was better than the 9 inches the southern end of my district (in the Swan) got today.

And some people think May means flowers.  Not here!

Here are a couple of photos I took while driving through Hungry Horse in the Canyon area.

I better get to bed now as I have another long day tomorrow.

Day 1 of training

I survived.

Barely.

A long day.  I was at the site at 7:20 am, 40 minutes before class started.  I had to wander around the outside of the building until I found someone inside who could let me in.  I got the room ready before anyone arrived.  I also stopped on the way at a grocery store and bought some snacks and goodies for people to munch on.  Also some healthy food.

I was suppose to have 15 people attend the class.  14 showed up.  The 15th (and missing) person was another person trained in taking fingerprints.  Darn!  That meant I had to do it.

Fingerprinting had me wishing my Uncle Larry was here. Uncle Larry I need you!!!!  Fingerprinting the old fashioned (pre-digital) way is hard.  Especially when people do not have the flexibility to roll their arm and fingers to get a full print.  I had a number of "re-dos".   The other experienced person who took fingerprints was confident going into the fingerprint session but had as much or more trouble than I.

It took well over two hours for us to fingerprint the nine new-hire people, and we finished the last person right at 4:30 pm when we had to leave the building.

Another challenge we had was our ink pads were pretty dry.  Almost always the problem in the past has been too much ink.  We had trouble getting enough ink.  I even called the Columbia Falls police department to see if I could borrow an extra fingerprint ink pad of theirs.  Nope.   One of my team found that the ranger station we were training at had an extra ink pad that we could use.  Imagine that!  I would have never guessed.

The fingerprints have been Fed Ex'd and it will be interesting to find out how good or bad of a job I did.

Another challenge was the ranger station mistakenly double booked the room all four days we had it.  I just fit all of my team into the room and now, a few hours into my class, the station manager was asking me to squeeze into half the room so they could close the divider and let the other group use half the room.

What?!

I looked at the room with the building manager and asked how I could do that?  I supposed I could put all the tables together and everyone would have to walk sideways when moving about the tables to reach a door as there was no space left.

She said she would think about it and when we took our lunch break in an hour we would rearrange the room.

*sigh*

But a short time later, as I was lecturing, she slid a sheet under the door telling me "never mind".  I could have all of the room all week.

*whew*  Another crisis averted.

After having an early breakfast I never ate until 7 pm after I got home.   I had to verify and sign all the documents the people filled out in the morning.  Pages and pages.  I also had to verify their id documents, either a passport or two other forms of id such as a driver's license and social security card.  It took me all lunch hour to do so between the questions people asked me.

One woman brought me back a Burger King cheeseburger but I had no time to eat it.  I microwaved it to warm it back up after I got home.

Due to the time it took to fingerprint people the other people waiting to be fingerprinted had to wait.  Some more patiently than others.

Organized chaos at time.  Manged insanity at others.  With boring paperwork and dull reading mixed in.

Showtime tomorrow

It starts tomorrow.  My census job. 8 am.  I have to be ready as I am teaching the four day class.

I have an incentive to teach the class well as the students will be working for me for about the next month gathering census information from the households who did not return their census questionnaire.

My team is suppose to be 18 people but I am already down to 14.  Two people changed their minds and didn't want the job, one person because she is now homeless.  One person accepted but then had to drop out a couple days later because their vehicle broke down and they didn't have money to fix the transmission.  One person was from way out of my area and should have been assigned closer to their home.  I got him transferred but that was a challenge due to the census bureaucracy.

But I'll get the job done in my large district even with only 14 people.

My one concern tomorrow is fingerprinting.  Everyone working for the census must be fingerprinted by two different people on the first day else they cannot work for the census.  I was trained on how to take a person's fingerprints but I don't think I am very good at it.  I wish I could have been able to practice on more people.  Who I need is my uncle Larry but he lives in a different state.  He is a retired police detective and I bet he is an expert at fingerprinting.

In addition to preparing to teach the class I have been still trapping pocket gophers and gophers.  Today I got the last pocket gopher I know of in my neighbor's property.  I must have trapped 45 or more pocket gophers from his land.  I imagine there are still just as many over there.

And today I finally caught the regular gopher in my middle pasture. I am positive this is the guy I have trying to trap since last Summer.  Once he opened up all those holes mid week when it got to 80 degrees, I have been trying to get him.  He had been avoiding the traps for the most part thought I did find two sprung traps and nothing in them a few days ago.  He would dig new holes to avoid the traps.  But he slipped up and I caught him.  Hopefully this is the last one, but I doubt I could be so lucky.

That makes 69 pocket gophers and 1 regular gopher so far this year.

Roll of maps

The other night I mentioned I had 65 maps to help me cover my area for the census.  Here are photos showing how large the roll of maps are.

Still here

Quick post to let you know I'm still around.  I haven't posted lately for several reasons:

1. I upgraded my internet connection from dial up to DSL and was out of commission for over a week in early April as I made the switch.
   
   
2. I was busy getting my hayfield and pasture (and my neighbor's pasture) harrowed. I also burnt my ditches and helped my neighbor burn the part of his field that couldn't be harrowed.
   
   
3. I had a full week of class for census work.  The Census hired and trained me to be a crew leader for the next phase of the census: Non-Response FollowUp.
   
   I will be in charge of a team of 18 people who in May will go to the addresses that did not return their census questionnaire and get the information about those addresses in order to complete the census accurately. Yup... easily the hardest task in the entire census procedure.
   
   I was assigned the largest and most difficult district in our county (and part of the next county).  My area starts at the Canadian border and goes south past the north end of Flathead Lake..  My area is at least three to four times physically larger than the remaining seven districts combined.
   
   I haven't determined its length but I expect my area is over 100 miles long. I have large maps to help me find the addresses. 65 maps in fact. If I tried to hang all the maps on all the walls in my house I wouldn't have enough walls.
   
   If you look at the data on the official census web site (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/take10map/)... right now Montana has a return rate of 65%.  Flathead County has a return rate of 58%.  My area has two sections and their return rates are 26% and 37%.  Like I said - and my bosses said - I have the most difficult areas in our district.
   
   But I am up for the challenge!

Census work and dogs

There are a few challenges in delivering census questionnaires.   In this post I will talk about one challenge: dogs.

I didn't have any real problems with dogs.  With that I mean dog bites.  In my training class I met a woman who worked for the census back in 2009 to map addresses was bitten by a dog.  Then earlier this week I met a woman who was recently bitten by a small dog as she delivered a census questionnaire.

I did encounter:

• friendly dogs who snuck up on me and greeted me when I opened my car door.  Surprise!

• dogs (and one cat) who got into my car when I left the door open while talking to the home owner.

• dogs who brought me sticks and wanted to play fetch.

• a dog who brought me a Frisbee and wanted to pay catch.  I did toss him the Frisbee for a few minutes and he was good in catching it.

• dogs that peed on my car tires.  I think three of the four wheels were marked.  I didn't wash them as dogs who approached me by the car suddenly shifted their attention from me to smelling my car tires.  Even with all my driving through water and snow the dog urine seemed to have stayed on my car wheels.

• dogs that had a loud or piercing bark.   They tended to be small dogs and constantly barked.  The owners seemed to be accustomed to the bark and only tried to shush their dogs after I started to wince from the sound or would ask them to repeat their answer as I couldn't hear it. I thought my ear drums would burst from one dog's barking. 

• one house had six to eight dogs in the yard to the main house entrance.  They were all Siberian Huskies and all were quite excited to see me, jumping around and barking constantly.  I went around to the other house door and found another six to eight dogs inside the house running around from window to window to sliding glass door to bark at me.  No surprise that the house looked to be a mess inside.

• two vicious looking and sounding dogs inside a house with a glass door.  My, why large teeth they had. 

• a brusque woman who said if I came back not to get out of my car if her dogs were in the yard.

• one dog I kept an eye on as it half slunk and occasionally bared its teeth as I walked to the front house door.

• and the two dogs in the following photos.  I left the census questionnaire on the gate.  It took them 6 seconds to get from the house to the gate.  I guess they took their time as I wasn't inside the gate.  The lighter colored dog has a chain trailing it.

Arrows fly

One of the sights on my census route Tuesday.  (Yup!  I drove slow on his driveway.)

Snow and census

After a long period of beautiful Spring-like weather, last night it rained and today it snowed.

I may have mentioned that I got a census job.  I deliver census forms out in the countryside.  The census doesn't mail the forms to post office boxes, and since a number of small towns in our part of the country only have P.O. Boxes and no home delivery, we have to hand deliver the forms everywhere except (I believe) the city of Kalispell.  My form was hand delivered last week.  

Today's snow made going up and down the steep narrow driveways "interesting". Sometimes I had to take a run at the driveway to make it up. One time I started slipping sideways towards the edge as my car struggled to get up a steep driveway only a car width wide. Yikes!! But I always made it. Some driveways are narrower than some forest service logging roads I have been on - and that's saying a lot. I guess some people don't have money left over after building their large log house mansion on top of their small mountain/hill to build a better driveway.  Else they only visit their house in the summer and don't mind a narrow, steep and winding driveway.

I guess a new hire went off the road on Monday down in the Swan Valley - and that was before today's snow.

When I get time I'll try to upload some icy road photos from when the weather was nice.  A few times I parked my car at what I thought was the top of an icy driveway in order to walk the rest of the way.  Two different times when I leaned against my car for a moment as I was getting ready for my walk, the car began to slide down the hill until I grabbed it and stopped it from sliding further.

The gloomier weather today appears to affected the mood of people I met. After some interesting and sane people the past few days, today a larger number of people were grumpier and anti-Census. Sometimes I think the Flathead valley has a larger number of 'idiots' (for a lack of a better word at this late hour) than other areas. Very short sighted people.

This morning I had a discussion with one guy who planned to only fill out the question about the number of people in his household and asked me what would happen if he only answered that question. It is not in my job description to "sell" or explain the census questionnaire as the form has a toll free number to call if the person has questions.  I didn't know the answer to his question other than I think the census will later send a person to talk with him in an effort to get the rest of the form answered.  I believe in the census and tried to save the government money from sending another person by explaining the census's importance.   I don't think I changed his mind unless he chews on what I said and later decides to fill out all of the form.

On sunnier days for other people in a similar mindset I might have have made more of a dent in changing their perceptions.  By the end of my talk I did have one guy apologize for being so rude to me when I first approached him. He even apologized twice.

I do find that the 'anti' women are less receptive to a discussion. I don't know why.  They probably don't like some man disagreeing with them. Out of the hundreds of forms I have delivered I've only had two people slam the door in my face when I tried to deliver the census form and they were both women. I barely got the words out that I was from the census when they slammed the doors. And one time when I held the envelope up and wouldn't go away the lady then yelled at me "This is a free country and I don't have to take the census!" before closing the curtains to her sliding glass door. So much for my ego and thoughts of charming the ladies.

Re-taking the census test

Since I had scored only a 97% on the census test the first time I took it a year ago, I decided to take it again in an effort to improve my score and try to get 100%.  If interested, the account of when I first took the test can be found here.

One would think 97% would be good enough for me to get hired as a census worker, but that has not happened so far.  I spoke to a person who was hired for the preliminary work in 2009 and she told me that everyone she worked with was a veteran, and that is the only reason she believed she was hired as she did not get a perfect score on the test.  Veterans get a 10 point bonus to their score.  So if they scored a 90% on the test, their total would be 100%.  If they scored 97% on the test their total would be 107%.

Flathead Valley has lots of veterans and right now the unemployment level is near 11% so competition for jobs is fierce.  A far cry from North Dakota where census officials in the western part of the state were on the local news pleading for people to be census workers.  North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate.  Western North Dakota is where the massive oil exploration and development is happening and the problem is not finding a job, but in finding a place to live.

I am not a veteran so the best I can do is 100%.  I agree with helping veterans, but getting a 10% bonus is a little too much.

The test is 28 questions.  I also learned that if you get only half (or 14) correct, this is not a score of 50%. but a score of 77%. Huh?!  Only the government can come up with a decision like this.   So it appears someone can test badly and still get a good score.  Add in a 10% bonus and my friend said that explained some of the 'doorknobs' she worked with on the 2009 census prep work.

You know.. as to how important the census is to the states for apportioning money and representation, and the claims of census under-counts etc., you'd think the states would try to ensure qualified census workers were hired - even if the federal government is the one doing the hiring.

The test was again held today at the local job service center.  There were two sessions and I took the noon session.  Last year there were 20 to 30 people taking the test; today there were eight of us.  Of the eight people, three of us were re-taking the test.

People re-taking the test did not have to fill out the forms again.  We only needed to show our passport or several other ids.  We still had to locate on their maps the grid with the location of our address.  Apparently the census bureau tries to have you work in this area or a nearby one.

Unlike the last time I took the test, the census worker conducting the test was experienced in running the testing session.  We started and ended on time.  He also graded the tests at the end and gave us our scores.  Apparently there are four tests as I had test D.  He had a template for each of the tests and he laid the appropriate template over our answer sheets to quickly check the answers.

I was halfway through the test when I realized I was taking the test I had taken last year.  The questions started to be more and more familiar.  Unfortunately I couldn't remember what I had answered last year.  Uh oh... the pressure is on now to get a higher score.  How could I live it down if I got a lower score on the same test?

I finished the 28 questions in a little over 20 minutes of the 30 minutes allotted to take the test.  I spent the rest of the time double checking my answers and was able to double check half of them.  This was good as I discovered I had one answer wrong.  For the question about matching names, my question had two names not found in both lists instead of the one I had initially thought.  Combinations of: Allan, Allen, Schmidt, Schmitt, Marie, Maria, and various versions of Roderiguez.  It is easy to confuse these names.

This time I scored 100%.  If I hadn't gotten 100% I could have taken the test again at 3 pm as there were seats available to do so.  Apparently you can take the test over and over with only your highest score counting even if you get a lower score on a later test.  So I imagine most people who take the test end up with high scores.

I was pleased with my test score especially as I had not practiced with the test quiz online at the census department's web site.

Now I have to wait for them to call me if they hire me. Apparently they are hiring people to work this Spring to follow up on the people who do not fill out their census form and mail it back.  Then in August or later they need people to tabulate and verify the census data collected.   Like I said before the Flathead Valley has lots of veterans so my odds of getting hired is lower than you'd expect for a person who got a perfect score on the test.  Then again, I wonder if one would want a job collecting census data from people who don't send their forms in?  Knowing the number of anti-government types in this Valley, this job may not be that pleasant.