Bracketology: The Madness of the Bracket!

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BracketologyGuess What?!  It’s that time of year again. The air is thick with polls and speculation on who will make the cut and enter the 2017 NCAA Basketball tournament.

This time of year is always a nail biting experience for the fans that are preparing to fill out their bracket(s). Everyone dreams of winning it all – being crowned Champion! That’s right – filling out the perfect bracket. Especially… the office bracket.

We all have our own way of filling out our brackets. For many of us, we choose our favorite team or Alma Mater to go all the way. Some of us like the method of choosing mascots, the meaner ones get the win or the cuter ones win. Some people choose based on the colors of the teams. Do you like Crimson and Blue or Black and Yellow? Many go with the higher seeds until you get to the 11/5 and 8/9 and then they flip them.

There are many ways to choose, but in every office bracket pool there is only one winner.

Here at Kenton Brothers Systems for Security, we have all types of brackets.

Many of us fill out multiple brackets to be sure we cover all our bases and methods. Each year, the brackets are hung on the service office door and dutifully checked every day for progress (or the dreaded bracket buster from the night before.) You will hear the excited cries each morning and a few grumbles of discontent. Once in a while, a huge sigh of acceptance that that this won’t be the year that they get to brag about being the champion. However, none of these compare to the zeal and volume of the champion letting everyone know that they’ve won the bracket and the year of bragging that ensues!

Carpe-Madness! If you fill out a bracket this year, good luck!

Hiring Challenges in 2017: Are They Crazy or Lazy?

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In my family, many stories were told of grandparents that suffered through the great depression. It was instilled in me at a very young age to give 110% of yourself in all that you do. Anything less is dishonest to yourself, employer, family, friends, etc. My challenge is that this mindset seems to be gone for the majority of people I encounter today, and I wanted to dig into the reasons for that.

Crazy or Lazy?I don’t think many people understand or have had that feeling of accomplishment or pride in a job well done. It has a lot to do with how we take so much for granted as a society.

At Kenton Brothers, we believe in a very in-depth interview process that includes a phone interview, multiple face-to-face interviews and often a cultural index profiler. After we’ve gone through all these steps, we find a small percentage of awesome candidates that we bring on board and the remainder we can often separate into two classes:

Crazy

These are the people that throw their trash on the floor when the trash can is full. They claim to have extreme emergencies and need to leave work without notice for a beauty appointment. They explain that they were fired from their previous position during the interview process for not being able to perform their job duties due to too many personal issues.

Lazy

These are the people that find every excuse under the sun to never come to work, surf the internet instead of doing their job, text messaging all day long or taking care of personal business and life at work while they are on the clock.

At Kenton Brothers, we have core values that are the foundation of our business. They include ethics, integrity and dependability. These ideals are what we expect from ourselves and our team members. It makes me wonder daily why the trend seems to be less about being a hardworking, dedicated employee and more about the “What can you do for me?” trend.

I would love to hear your feedback! I think that people need to remember what a privilege it is to have all that we have in today’s society. We should all work towards taking pride in what we do. I hope you’ll join me to encourage your friends, coworkers, family and future generations the importance of doing for others and the satisfaction that comes with a job well done!

Project Spotlight: Access Control Turnstiles at the Mizzou Rec Center.

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TurnstilesTurnstiles. You see them everywhere.

Do you ever think to yourself, “Come on with this line! If we didn’t have these silly turnstiles only allowing one person in at a time, we could get through this line quicker.” Well, there’s a reason for this. A very good reason, especially in your schools and on campus.

Turnstiles prevent potential incidents from happening to college students every day.

They’re considered the first line of defense against an unauthorized guest. The benefit of having turnstiles on campus is that they can be integrated with access control systems to regulate who or what can get into areas or use resources. Access control systems protect the entrances and exits with mag strips for card reading that will work with the student’s school badges to make sure that students are entering one person at a time.

TurnstilesTurnstiles protect the entrances and exits of the Mizzou Rec Center with mag strips for card reading that will work with the student’s school badges to make sure that students are entering one person at a time. There are built in LEDs in the glass of the turnstile that changes colors based on a successful or failed swipe of their access card.

We’ve been working with Chris James and the Mizzou Recreational Department for this project. They believe this will be a great asset to the  Recreational Center, and they find it very valuable for the safety of the students!

Do you need updated turnstiles to control access to areas in your building? Give us a call to talk about what’s possible!

The Coconut Cake Caper.

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I’m a huge coconut fan. I love it!

Sweet SiamOur retired CFO, Jan Shrewsbury knows how much I love coconut and was sweet enough to bring in a special, super-dreamy coconut cake to celebrate my birthday. The cake comes from a Thai restaurant in Westport called Sweet Siam.

It is the most incredible white cake I’ve ever tasted with fluffy whip cream, clouds of icing, and mounds of moist coconut all over.

Gina and the Coconut CakeThere was so much hype about this cake; everyone was super excited to taste it. Believe me, it lived up to its reputation. I was thrilled because there was a bunch of cake left over after we all had eaten our fill. The leftover cake was safely stored in a big metal bowl in our company refrigerator. I was anticipating enjoying another piece of cake the next morning for breakfast… chilled coconut delight!

Unfortunately, to my horror, when I went to the fridge to get my breakfast treat… IT WAS GONE! 

Not only was the cake gone, the entire bowl was gone! I looked everywhere thinking that if someone had eaten it, surely I’d find the bowl in the dishwasher. I asked around the office. No one had seen the missing cake. (Nobody fessed up to seeing it anyway.)

I mentioned this experience to our IT Director, Neal Bellamy. He immediately asked if I had checked the video footage from the cameras in our office. Excellent idea! After all, we ARE a security company and have demo surveillance cameras everywhere in and around our building.

Coconut CakeLo and behold, I found the culprit after a couple of clicks in our video management system. I watched the ENTIRE bowl with its precious contents leaving the building. I won’t name names to protect the guilty. :)

Oh well. The perp saved me a couple of pounds. I guess I should be thankful?

Need to know what’s going on in your office? Give us a call to talk about video surveillance or any of the commercial security products we offer!

Do You Have a Rats Nest in Your IT Closet? Get Wired!

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Author: David Strickland

Did you know that electrical and cable wiring is an art form? If not, let me explain. There’s a method to wiring that only a few have mastered. It’s like a tightly knit secret that no one wants to share.

In the security world, wiring is the foundation of every access control and IP video system –  it’s extremely important. Here at Kenton Brothers, we’re lucky to have several technicians that LOVE to do professional wiring. Ok, love is a strong word. Let me say they LOVE to wire correctly.

We’ve taken over hundreds of systems where no wiring protocol was followed – and it looks like the following “spaghetti wiring” pictures. We also call these “rat nests” because they are so difficult to service. Our service call triples in length because we have no idea which wire goes where.

Wiring Done Wrong Wiring Done Wrong

Because wiring is the foundation of every system we build, we look for an organized, labeled, and logical system. When we complete a project, we ask the question, “If my best friend had to come service this system, could they do it efficiently? Would they be happy with me after seeing my work?” You can see the difference that a professional wiring job makes in the following pictures.

Wiring Done Right Wiring Done Right

We wish more companies in our industry knew how to wire correctly. If your IT closet looks anything like the jumbled mess of wires in our example pictures, give us a call so we can help you sort it out!