CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

I was never able to find the spaghetti sauce that I wanted, so I decided to figure out making it for myself.  You see, I wanted a combination of a meat sauce and a vegetable sauce, and could not find a restaurant or a recipe that fit the bill.  Note that this is ‘homemade’ only in part, as it includes marinara from a jar.  I have made it completely from scratch, and it’s good, but it’s wayyyy too much work and it takes wayyyy too much time, and it’s only slightly better/different, so the marinara from a jar is simply a nod to the realities of a hectic lifestyle.

This recipe makes enough for four people, plus a healthy helping of leftovers – as with all spaghetti sauces, it’s better reheated the next day.  Ingredients as follows:

3 jars Newman’s Own Marinara sauce
2 lbs. lean hamburger
1 sweet onion
8 cloves garlic
1 bunch asparagus
2 green squash
2 yellow squash
2 cups mushrooms
8 tbsp olive oil
salt
pepper

Heat a large skillet on medium, add 2 tbsp olive oil, and saute half the garlic and onions (both diced) for 4-5 minutes, then add the ground beef, and salt and pepper to your tastes.  Let the meat continue to brown while chopping the rest of the vegetables.

Finely dice the rest of the garlic and the other half of the onion, and keep them separate from the rest of the vegetables as they will be cooked separately.  Cut the asparagus into .5″ to .75″ lengths, making sure not to include the woody base of the stalks, which can be tough.  Slice each squash in half lenghtwise, and then slice each half in half again lenghtwise, so it is in long quarters, then thinly slice making little pie-shaped chunks.  Slice the mushrooms thinly.

Heat a large pot on medium, add the remaining 6 tbsp of olive oil, then add the onion and garlic and saute for 4-5 minutes, then add the rest of the vegetables.  Continue cooking the vegetables for another 10 minutes, until they begin to get soft.  At this point the meat should be close to done browning – when it’s browned, drain any fat, then add to the vegetable pot.  Add the three jars of marinara, and stir.

Reduce head to medium-low, so that it cooks at a slow simmer, cover, and cook for 2-3 hours, stirring occasionally.  That’s it.  I occasionally juke it up with fresh basil or oregano, but it’s not strictly necessary.  I also sometimes add broccoli, but only some of the time since it turns it into a much chunkier, more vegetable-ier sauce.  We have taken to eating over Barilla Pasta Plus spaghetti, which has protein, omega-3s, and fiber, but tastes like regular old empty-calorie pasta.  And don’t forget some freshly-grated parmesan!

There’s nothing magical here, but I can say that this sauce is universally popular, and we always end up eating all the leftovers as well.  It is also a unique combination, in my experience, of a meat sauce and a vegetable sauce, and it’s something I had to figure out myself since I’d known for years that I wanted something like this.

If you end up giving this recipe a try, please post back your results here, as well as any jukes/variations of your own.  Buon appetito!

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Disclaimer: the article below represents the noodlings of a dumbass who is talking about things way over his head, but which he nonetheless found interesting as a mental exercise.

James Buchanan was the first bachelor US President.  JFK was the first Roman Catholic President.  Richard Nixon was the first to resign from office.  Barack Obama was the first African American President.  That leaves some interesting milestones still ahead of us, such as first female, first (openly) gay, and first (openly) atheist/agnostic.

I think there’s a good chance that we’ll hit all of those milestones, at some point, and that it’s just a matter of ‘when’.  I also think we’ll hit them in that order (female, gay, secular).  And I also think that as we hit each milestone, it will create a greatly increasing disturbance among conservative US voters.

The first milestone, female, will not have any overtly negative reaction at home or abroad.  There have been plenty of female heads of state, and anybody who publicly takes issue with that will be nearly universally condemned as a backwards nincompoop.

However, the next one (first gay) would set up the beginnings of a political holy war, as the groups who are anti-gay are really committed to being anti-gay.  These are people who put the behavior of same-sex consenting adults in the same category as child molestation or bestiality.  They will see a gay US President as the beginning of the end of the world, and will fight against it appropriately.

But the last one (first secular) would potentially set up an actual Holy War (notice the caps).  There was a recent survey that showed that people of faith trust atheists to the same level that they trust rapists.  Yes, really.  And a group with that outlook is going to work diligently (to say the least) to prevent it from happening.

Just as an exercise (not a prediction), I could see the future of Presidential politics progressing thusly (major party candidates, unless otherwise specified):

2012 – Obama re-elected, possible female VP (Clinton)
2016 – female President
2020 – gay VP nominee
2024 – gay Presidential nominee
2028 – secular serious 3rd party Presidential candidate
2032 – gay President, secular VP nominee
2036 – secular President

Yes, that goes 24 years into the future, and that seems like forever.  But consider if we were to look backwards, 24 years ago was the election of George H.W. Bush.  Not that long ago, for some of us.  Again, that is not a prediction as much as one possible future outcome, the likelihood of which is open to debate.

However, regardless of the actual dates and progression, I think we’ll eventually see female, gay, and secular presidents in the US, and that that progression of events will stir ever increasing ire among conservative Christian US voters.

Interestingly enough, there is another group whose reactions would, in my estimation, parallel those of conservative Christian US voters – namely, Muslims.  I am not Muslim, nor am I a student of Islam, but my lay-person’s understanding of Islam is that they generally hold that women should be subservient to men, that homosexuality is unacceptable, and that the faithless can be subject to persecution and even death.

Also, I’ve seen estimates that project the Muslim population will double or triple over the next 20 years in the US.  One thing that has been consistent throughout US history is that while immigrant populations may retain a lot of their cultural heritage, they all usually end up ‘going native’ and seeing themselves as Americans, not as displaced immigrants in a strange land.

So, let’s project to a point 24 years in the future.  There’s a larger, fairly well assimilated Muslim population in the US, and an increasing presence of openly gay and secular candidates on the national election stage.  Both the conservative Christian base and the growing Muslim-American community would have significant opposition to these types of candidates.

And there’s nothing, and I mean *nothing*, that unites groups like having a common enemy.  Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and although in today’s terror-focused, post 9-11 world it seems unlikely that Christians and Muslims would form a political alliance, time heals a lot of wounds.  Arguably, Muslims and Christians believe in the same God, and there are a lot of overlaps in their faiths, as well as a lot of differences.  However, in the face of a common enemy, and a heretical enemy at that, historical differences tend to be de-emphasized, and commonalities highlighted.

So, am I sitting here as a Nostradomus-like seer laying out prophecies?  No, it’s more of a mental exercise, and quite frankly started as a lark, but the more I considered a potential Christian-Muslim coalition, the harder it became to rule it out completely, and the easier it became to consider it as a realistic potential outcome.

How likely is this outcome?  I don’t know – as stated in the disclaimer at the top of this article, I’m just a dumbass with a blog who is noodling on things far outside my area of expertise.  America’s Jewish population and/or our alliance with Israel could be a wildcard.  The non-dogmatic US population could refuse to accept gay and/or secular candidates for a lot longer than is being speculated here.  And it could also be the case that both conservative Christian and Muslim US voters would have an equally vehement opposition to gay and secular candidates, but without forming any sort of alliance.

Dumbassery aside, however, I think it is at least plausible that, if faced with the prospect of an atheist/agnostic US President, the US Christian and Muslim communities could form an alliance to fight against such a candidate.  I’m not hoping this happens, I’m not saying I know it’s going to happen, and I’m not saying it should (or shouldn’t) happen.  However, what I am saying is that as implausible as a Muslim-Christian coalition seems today, I would not be surprised to see it happen in the future.

And just how unlikely is a Christian-Muslim coalition?  Well, consider that, today, the United States’ closest ally is Great Britain, and in the decade after the Revolutionary War I’m sure that would have seemed like an outlandish prospect.  The US also counts Germany and Japan among our closest allies, and that would have seemed unlikely in the decade after WWII and Pearl Harbor.  Think Russia after the Cold War, or China after Korea.  All are now our allies, or at least our economic partners, and such alliances and partnerships would have seemed ludicrous to contemplate in the time period just after the hottest hostilities.

And that’s part of the historical context here.  I can look back over my lifetime and see the birth, growth, and death of many conflicts.  For example, my grandfather was a WWII vet.  In the 60’s, he gave us our first color television, and we couldn’t have been more excited the day it was delivered and set up.  However, my grandfather checked the labels on the back of the set, saw it had been made in Japan, and angrily returned it because he had clearly indicated he would not purchase a TV from our WWII enemies.  However, my father’s and my generation defined material success, in part, as having a Walkman, a Betamax, and an Accord, meaning that my grandfather’s grudge didn’t even last a full generation.

As I continued to grow up in the 60’s and 70’s, I experienced the tail end of the civil rights movement.  I did civil defense drills in school, hiding under my desk in preparation for the nuclear holocaust that was surely coming as we faced down the godless communists during the Cold War.

Then there were the weekly, sometimes daily, reports of violence and terrorism in Northern Ireland.  There was the rise of Japan in the 80’s, when they were an economic powerhouse that was going to take over the US, both economically and culturally.  Today it’s the terroristic threat of ‘radical Islam’ and the economic rise of China that are threatening our way of life.

But, these, too, shall pass.  Old conflicts and enemies fade away, sometimes to be forgotten, sometimes to become friends and allies, always leading to a new reality in the future.  It’s the way of the world.  Does that mean that a Muslim-Christian coalition will definitely come to pass in the US?  Of course not, but it means that, to me, it is a distinct possibility, and I’ll be interested to see how events progress.

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I’m a data person, and any time I have conceptions, preconceptions, prejudices, opinions, or assumptions, and there are relevant data available, I like to challenge my own opinions with facts.  One opinion I hold is that the United States is losing ground on being the ‘Land of Opportunity’ from an economic perspective.

I’ll stop here to state that I understand I’m talking about ‘first world problems’, and that the average American has it pretty good compared to the average world citizen.  Also, I’m not an economist, sociologist, futurist, or any other kind of credentialed -ist (other than ‘technologist’), so these are just the noodlings of an interested observer.

That being said, the people that put together the CIA World Fact Book seem to know a lot of things about a lot of things, and they share a portion of what they know via their public site.  The charts you see on this page are direct translations of their data into graphical form, and all credit/blame for that data goes to them.

One of the things they gather and post information about is relative income equality for countries around the world.  They share that information on this page:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2172.html

The chart on the top right shows the Income Equality of the largest 100 countries (by population) from the CIA table, where a larger number is less income equality, and a lower number is more income equality (I know that’s counter-intuitive, but I didn’t develop the GINI scale).  So, the countries to the left-hand side of the chart are the most unequal from an income distribution perspective, and those on the right are the most equal.  The thumbnail view of the chart is pretty small (click chart for larger view), but the red line is the United States, and the green lines are the rest of the G8 countries.  You can see that the US is the left-most G8 member, meaning the one with the least equitable income distribution.

That sucks.  What it means is that the gap between rich and poor is pretty wide.  I think we can all look back over the last few years or decades and see that this has been happening, so although our place in the bottom third of countries isn’t a complete surprise, being the worst of the G8 nations is a bit disheartening.

I think that an impartial observer would agree that things are not good from an economic perspective in America today.  However, we have a legacy of bouncing back from adversity and overcoming obstacles.  Are we doing that here?

As you can see in the chart to the right (click chart for larger view), we are not only not improving, but are continuing to get worse.  In fact, only two G8 nations (Italy, Japan) have income equality gaps that are getting larger faster than ours.  Once again, the US is the red bar, and the rest of the G8 are the green bars.

So far all I’ve done is said we’re drowning, and then described the water.  What are the causes and solutions to this problem?  Although I have definite opinions about how we ended up where we are, I am not qualified to make any definitive statements about the economic and political forces that have put us where we are.  Note that I love to share my opinions, and I think that most of them are de facto facts just by virtue of being my opinions, but in this instance I don’t want to have this discussion degrade into partisan politics and bickering.

Also, I’m even less qualified to offer solutions.  I find it challenging to contribute to managing the finances of our household, and my wife does almost all of that work in the first place, with a competency that I can only stand back and admire with awe.  However, I do have opinions about what world economic and political leaders should be doing, but once again I don’t want the point of this discussion to be lost in partisanship and dogma.

And the point of this discussion is simply to point out, as factually and unemotionally as possible, where we are today.  The income gap in the US is one of the widest in the developed world, and it’s getting worse.  Income inequality is not the only factor that plays into quality of life, but consider, for a moment, the two extremes of income equality.

In the most unequal distribution, one single person would control all of the wealth of a country.  In the most equal distribution, everyone would have the exact same economic prospects.  I wouldn’t want to live in either of those countries.  In the most unequal one, there would be no chance to make a living or demonstrate economic worth, and any sustenance or shelter would be based on the largesse of the Grand Poobah.  In the perfectly equal one, the same would be true about economic worth – excellence and hard work would not be rewarded, because everybody would have the exact same standard of living regardless of ability, drive, ambition, or effectiveness.

Unfortunately, the United States is moving closer towards the situation where more and more of the country’s wealth is being held by fewer and fewer citizens.  In fact, according to a recent study: “Even the Roman Empire, a society built on conquest and slave labor, had a more equitable income distribution.”  The article also goes on to explain why the CIA publishes income inequality figures in the first place:  “Since too much inequality can foment revolt and instability, the CIA regularly updates statistics on income distribution for countries around the world, including the U.S.”

Does that match your vision of the United States?  That we are as decadent as Rome before the fall?  That China, the land of a billion socialist peasants, has a more equitable distribution of income?  That our immediate neighbors on the chart of income inequality are Uganda, Cambodia, Camaroon, Bulgaria, Jamaica, and Mozambique?  Is that really the economic neighborhood for a nation that considers itself the leader of the free world?  And not only that, it’s only getting worse, instead of better?

I don’t know about you, but none of that matches my expectation of the United States.  We are the land of opportunity.  We are a classless society, where anybody from any background can succeed through sheer force of will.  However, as wealth accumulates with a small group of the super-rich, so does economic and political power.

On a level playing field, I applaud anyone who is able to create wealth for themselves and their family.  However, I think it is clear from the simple charts on this page that the playing field is not level in the US.

And from here on out I will be interjecting opinion – as the rich have gotten richer, they have used their economic and political power to rig the game in their favor.  To protect what they have, and to have the opportunity to accumulate more.  I can understand that impulse, because who doesn’t want to protect and grow what is theirs?

However, every flexing of political muscle by the rich to keep and grow their wealth also has the equal and opposite reaction of denying someone less rich the opportunity for increased economic success.  I don’t know how to solve it, but the first step is admitting there is a problem.  I’m not sure how anyone could look at these figures still not be convinced that something is wrong and needs to be done to restore balance to the economic prospects of all Americans.

That’s where We the People and the government come in.  It should not be the job of the government to redistribute wealth by fiat.  However, it should be the job of government to make sure the playing field is level and that everyone has an equal opportunity.  Given the amount of money it takes to mount a campaign for federal office, the candidates are increasingly either personally rich, backed by the rich, or a combination of both.  What that means to me is that those that have the gold are making the rules.

That has always been the case, to a certain extent, and people with money will always be able to have an outsized impact by buying the cooperation of those willing to sell their influence.  However, it seems that this has become the rule rather than the exception in American politics today.  And although I can’t offer concrete solutions, I think the first step is for We the People to use the polling booth to reject candidates who, by their actions (not words), have shown their support for fostering and increasing the current economic imbalance.

 

 

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Today was the day we took Weagle to the vet for the last time, after her battle with lymphoma.  The photo here is of her last visit to Galveston, which was yesterday.  She loved the beach, it was her favorite place, so we took her for one last visit.  As you can see, we had the beach to ourselves, down by San Luis Pass, and Weagle strolled in the surf and chuffed at some birds, and had her own Sausage McMuffin as a treat.

Weagle was an extraordinary being.  She came into our lives as a tiny puppy, adopted from the Houston SPCA after Houston was devastated by storm damage and flooding from Tropical Storm Allison.  We knew there would be a lot of dogs hitting the shelters after the storm, and we knew we had to help save at least one.

When we got to the shelter, there were two of cutest little black-and-brown puppies in a crate together, litter-mates.  The sign said they were six weeks old, and that they were Rottweiler/Labrador crosses.  We picked one to bring home, and she fit in my cupped palms, and was the calmest, sweetest dog we had ever met.  That changed dramatically once we got her de-wormed and her true nature as a smart, protective, complex, loving, vigilant, fiercely loyal family member was revealed.

We gave her the name of Princess Buttercup (from the film The Princess Bride), and as she grew her face (and howl) began to look very much like a beagle, so we started referring to her by the nickname of Rottweagle (combination of Rottweiler and Beagle), which was quickly shortened to Weagle, and became her permanent name.  We never did figure out her ancestry.

I wrote more about her protective and loving nature two years ago, which you can read here:  https://www.cleverdonkey.com/1385-wonderful-weagle/.

Was she perfect?  No, but who is?  She barked too much, although it was with the best intentions, as she always wanted us to be aware of any real-or-perceived dangers, and we never could convince her the postman wasn’t dangerous (as far as we knew).  She did not enjoy rambunctious puppies, although she tolerated them with extraordinary displays of benign disdain.  She never fully accepted that she was not part of the committee of humans that ran the household, and although she was never actively mutinous, she did sometimes comply to requests with melodramatic resignation and doggy eye-rolling.

But she was a great soul, and highly intelligent.  We recently watched an episode of Nova ScienceNow, where they asked the question, ‘How Smart Are Animals?‘, and they showed some of the astonishing levels of intelligence demonstrated by dogs (and dolphins and octopuses and parrots).  And while it was a very interesting program, it wasn’t all that surprising to us, because Weagle was damn smart.  Smartness is not always convenient in a pet, because intelligence means that the dog will take your commands more like requests, and they will assess those requests for validity, and then act only when they have thought it through.

That could be frustrating at times, when we just wanted her to do what we said, but it also meant that we knew that no stranger or ne’er-do-well would ever be able to order her around into blind obedience, just because they spoke authoritatively.  Unlike a gun or other weapon for home protection, we knew Weagle could never be disarmed (or taken away and turned against us).  There’s no sleep as relaxing as when you’re being watched over by a benevolent canine Terminator.

But now she’s gone.  We still have her two brothers: Biscuit, our blonde white-shepherd cross of unknown ancestry, and Ruckus, our probably-a-runt-Rottweiler-but-maybe-some-kind-of-hound-mixed-in-there-too.

Biscuit has become David’s self-appointed protector, which was surprising to us, as he’d always seemed like a pretty laid-back surfer-dude type before this.  He’s older than Weagle, but appears to be going strong.

Ruckus is four now, and while he’s not nearly as smart as Weagle or Biscuit, he has a huge heart full of nothing but love for the family, and he’s happiest when he knows he’s doing the right thing.

We love them both, and we’re glad that Weagle was around long enough to show Ruckus the ropes, and pass down the responsibility for guarding the family to him, so that now she can rest, peacefully.  We’ll miss you, Weags.

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I love home-made iced tea, and have gone so far as to post my recipe for it.  As you can see in the picture to the right, I use translucent Tupperware 1-gallon pitchers for the tea, and after over a year of use the pitchers were getting tea-stained.

I did a lot of things to try to remove the stains – scrubbing the hell out of them, letting them soak overnight with dish soap, filling them with boiling water hoping to cook the stains out, etc, etc, etc.  Nothing worked and the stains just kept getting more stainier.

I eventually turned to the web, and many (many) people recommended soaking overnight filled with warm water and a little bleach (yuck!) or OxiClean (double-yuck!!), but using any kind of chemical like that seemed, well, yucky.

Then I found someone who said they also had a problem with tea staining their plastic pitchers, and they solved it by alternating iced tea with lemonade, and the acidity of the lemonade helped keep the pitchers clean.

I like lemonade, but not enough to put it into my homemade drink-making routine, but it got me thinking.  Specifically, it got me thinking about citric acid, which is the part of the lemonade that is, well, acidic, and I started wondering if I could just buy some citric acid somewhere.

And, as in almost all cases where I’m looking to see if something is available on the web, I turned to Amazon.com, and lo and behold, they had some – quite a few options, in fact.  I ended up ordering the liquid citric acid in a glass jar, pictured to the right.

I took my most stained pitcher, put about 2 ounces of the citric acid in it, and filled it to the brim with hot tap water and let it soak overnight.  The next day I poured out the water, scrubbed and rinsed the inside, and saw a tremendous improvement, although it was still a bit stained.

But, after treating it a few more times in rotation as the pitcher became empty again, it is now very, very clean.  If you inspect it very closely you can still see some slight discoloration, but it isn’t noticeable in normal use, and seems to be lessening over time with regular treatments.

My plan is now to use this treatment every once in a while on my pitchers, to keep them clean.  And, unlike with bleach or detergents, the worst case scenario is that the treatments might impart a slight citrus taste to the tea, which I don’t think I’d mind if and when it ever happens – and I certainly won’t be worried about any side-effects from ingesting a toxic chemical, because it’s just citric acid, which is edible.

So, if you have stained plastic food containers and are wondering how to safely get them clean, you may want to try soaking them in citric acid (or lemonade, if you are so inclined) and let a natural, edible acid do the work for you.

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We love breakfast taquitos, usually from Whataburger or a local Mexican restaurant, but also wanted to make them at home from time to time, and have developed this recipe over a few iterations:

Ingredients:

• 2 potatoes
• 6 eggs
• 6 scallions, chopped
• 3 oversized flour tortillas
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 2 tbsp butter
• Salt
• Pepper
• Optional: shredded cheese, salsa, Tabasco sauce, or whatever else you might want to try putting on a breakfast taco

Start a heavy, large skillet heating (we use cast iron) on medium-high heat (set to 7 on our electric that goes to 10).  Wash the potatoes and shred them with a grater, leaving the skins on.  Spread the shredded potatoes in an even layer on a microwave-safe plate, and microwave them on high for 5 minutes, uncovered.  Remove from the microwave and set aside.  This step is important because to get crispy hash browns requires that excess moisture be removed from the potatoes before frying.

Put the oil in the hot pan and swirl it around to coat evenly, then add the chopped scallions.  Cook the scallions until tender and slightly browned, then add the potatoes in an even layer.  While the potatoes fry undisturbed, start another large skillet heating on medium-low (3 on our stove that goes up to 10).

Crack the eggs into a bowl, add salt and pepper to taste, and stir them up lightly, as if making scrambled eggs.  Meanwhile, let the potatoes fry without stirring until the bottom layer starts to get brown and crispy, then attempt to flip the whole mess over as a whole potato cake, as seen in the accompanying picture.  Expect some breakage of the potato cake, but try to keep it in largish pieces.

Let the potatoes continue to fry until the bottom starts to brown again, and once it looks like the potatoes are close to finishing, put some butter into the other preheating skillet to melt.  The skillet should be hot enough to melt the butter quickly and with a little bit of sizzle, but not brown the butter.

Once the butter has melted, add the eggs and salt and pepper to taste.  Cook the eggs with intermittent stirring to make scrambled eggs.  While the eggs are finishing up, put the three tortillas in the microwave covered by a moistened paper towel and heat for 30-60 seconds on high (depends on your microwave, but you want them piping hot!).  The moistened paper towel keeps them from drying out and helps prevent cracking or tearing when you put together your taquito.

Tip:  It’s a good idea to pull the tortillas apart from one another before heating, so that there aren’t places where they are stuck together from being packaged together.  If you don’t do this, then after you heat them and try to pull them apart you could create holes and tears in the tortilla where they are stuck together, and now much more delicate because they are heated, so it’s good to separate them while they are still unheated.

Now we’re ready to assemble!  Lay one of the tortillas on a plate, scoop some eggs and potatoes into it, put some shredded cheese (and/or salsa and/or Tabasco sauce and/or whatever you prefer!) on top, roll it up, and you’re ready to go!

This isn’t a health food, so we rarely indulge in it, but some Sunday mornings you just need a nice, big, tasty breakfast, and this really fits the bill for us when that happens.

Enjoy!

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Dear TiVo,

I read two articles recently that spurred me to write you this letter.  The first article described how at the end of July 2009 you had 3.05 million subscribers, but at the end of July 2010 you were down to 2.38 million.  Five years ago this would have surprised me, but not any more.

The second article was from your site, describing the spiffy new QWERTY TiVo remote with a sliding face and a full keyboard.  I was overjoyed by the news, as I’ve been waiting for a remote like this since I bought and activated my first TiVo back in 2002.  I read the article in great anticipation, wondering how pricey the remote would be.  Hm, $90.  Not unreachable, but seemingly a little steep, which would make it in keeping with everything else you sell.

But then I got to the last paragraph, where the last sentence read:

“The new remote will work with TiVo Premiere, Premiere XL, TiVo Series3, TiVo HD, and TiVo HD XL boxes.”

No Series 1?  No Series 2 or Dual-Tuner?  Leaving us faithful early adopters behind again, are we?

Typical.  This is typical of everything I have come to expect from you over the years.  I still love TiVo-the-technical-solution, but with TiVo-the-company I have gone from love to like to not caring to being annoyed and, finally, to loathing, where I am today.

I now own and use 5 (count ’em) TiVos, but they are all Series 2.  My disillusionment began in earnest when you released the Series3 boxes, and included things like YouTube browsing that were not made available to Series2 owners.  Now, you had a story for why this was so, which was something about Flash, I think, but I didn’t (and still don’t) buy it.  If you had wanted to make it work, you could have.   But, you chose to have those features and functions be differentiators to try and get Series2 owners to upgrade.

And it’s continued to be that way over the years, up through the latest insult of not letting us have the new remote (pictured at left).  You continue to add new and improved features and functions, very few of which are made available to your existing base of owners, unless they have the latest and greatest.  Now, I understand this from a business perspective, as I work in technology, so I know that it’s hard to keep the installed base happy.  It’s very easy to add new features and functions to totally new and redesigned devices, and your bean-counters are happy to see the R&D and other expenses that go into anything that will grab new customers and dollars.

I can visualize the meetings where you discussed the strategy of what to do with the installed base.  Spending money on something that will make the installed base happier is not a strategy that reaps short-term benefits, so it’s difficult for people to get behind it and make those investments.  Conversely, it’s much easier to talk about investing in the new model with the new features that will open up new markets and bring in new customers and new revenues.  *Everybody* can get behind that, and nobody gets fired for trying to grow the business.

But people do get fired for spending money on things that are difficult to quantify, like the care and feeding of existing customers.  However, the sign of a truly successful company is that they do exactly that.  It’s like flossing your teeth.  If I don’t floss today, nothing bad really happens.  If I don’t floss this month, or even this year, there may be no noticeable negative impact from my perspective. 

But if I never floss?  Eventually I’ll start losing my teeth.  And teeth, like customers, are things that, once you’ve neglected them to the point that you lose them, you never get them back.  Well TiVo, you haven’t been flossing, and you have decayed my loyalty as a customer to the point where now I hope that some viable alternative presents itself, so that I can leave you behind.

The good news, for you, is that the technology of the TiVo is awesome.  Usability is great, and you have features and functions that far outstrip anything that the cable companies offer.  However, from my cable company I can get an HD DVR for $5/month with no other out-of-pocket expense.  With you I’d have to spend $300-$500 to get the new TiVo Premiere, and then cough up another $300 for lifetime service, or $11/month for the monthly services.  Your DVR is far better than the one my cable company offers, but the three year cost for a TiVo Premiere for me would be $800, while the three year cost for my cable company’s DVR would be $180.

Not only are you more than four times more expensive, but you only have a one-year warranty, so if my TiVo has a problem in year 2 or 3 it falls to me to fix it out of my own pocket.  My cable company will send me a replacement box at no cost if their DVR has problems.

So, with TiVo I get a slicker product but at over 4 times the cost, and I also have to assume the risk of repair costs after the first year.  You’re good, but you’re not that good.  So, for the first time in eight years I am open to an alternative.  I don’t think it’s out there, yet, but if I’m ready and willing to move away from TiVo that means there are others like me who are, too.

I do hope that you figure out how to survive, and how to offer your products at a far more reasonable cost.  I know that cable companies are licensing your software to put on their set-top boxes, and I can see this being a way for you to survive.  My hope is that you are able to maintain the full feature set when provided by a cable company, because I can see them wanting you to disable or degrade certain functions so that they maintain control of their user base.  Don’t do that, please?

And I think one thing that has become clear over time is that your subscription fees are poisoning your business model.  Either make me buy the device with a huge up-front cash outlay *or* charge me a monthly fee, but don’t do both.  For a $500 up-front purchase price you should be able to provide the programming information at no additional charge.  If you don’t want to do that, then let me get the box for $10-$15/month and no up-front fee, and back it with an ongoing warranty just like my cable company does.  I’d do that in a heartbeat – get a TiVo Premiere for nothing up front and $15/month?  Sweet.  How about doing that?

But, after 8 years I feel that I know you well enough to know that you won’t do either of those things, because it appears that your corporate culture is too hide-bound to consider those alternatives.  Somebody, somewhere has decided that a monthly subscription fee needs to apply, and the huge up-front purchase price needs to apply, and that’s that.  If you have to have a monthly fee, how about making it something reasonable, like $5/month/household, and it doesn’t matter how many TiVo’s I have?

I’m rooting for you, but only a little bit.  I used to care about you, but now I don’t, because you’ve spent 8 years not caring about me.  I wish you good luck, and I hope you figure out a way to survive.  But, if you don’t, I will no longer be among those who mourn your passing, because while you had great engineering, your business side sucks.  How about listening to your engineers, who I’m sure have been trying to tell your business folks all of this all along?

But, no, conventional wisdom says that engineers don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to business.  Er, except for Google, that is.  And Microsoft.  Oh, and HP, too. 

But, what do they know?

Sincerely,

EngineerBoy

 

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I loathe and despise coach business air travel.  When I travel personally, it’s usually with Marie, and we usually plan to make sure we can travel in comfort.  You see, I’m 6’5″ and not svelte, and coach seating is not designed for me to fit in comfortably, and when we travel for pleasure we either wait until we can splurge on first class, buy a third seat so we have room, or make the best of sitting side-by-side.

However, when one’s company is footing the bill and you don’t have the flexibility that you do with personal travel, you get the seat you get and you have to make the best of it.  You can try for exit row or bulkhead, but those seats are in demand and sometimes hard to get.

Lucky for me, on my most recent business flight I was able to get the exit row aisle seat both outbound and inbound.  The flight out progressed without incident (thankfully), but as I boarded my flight home and approached my row, I noticed that the two inside seats were occupied by a couple, with the man by the window and the woman in the middle seat, meaning that my aisle seat would place me next to the wife.

Now, although I am a big guy, I can sit in such a way that I stay completely in my own air/leg/shoulder/butt space, particularly in an exit row where I can fully extend my legs.  So, I resolved myself to spend 3.5 hours in my polite, curled up, as-motionless-as-possible seating pose, so that the lady next to me would not feel infringed upon.

As I sat down I could sense the woman was not happy about the situation…I mean, who would be?  Even three normal-sized humans sitting side-by-side-by-side in a coach cabin is oppressively claustrophobic, and when one of the three is a big guy like me it just makes it worse.  So, I understood her pained look at her husband as I sat down, and also understood his reassuring patting of her leg as if to say, “It’s okay, honey, I won’t let the traveling ogre squash you!”

So, I sat down, belted up, stuck my legs up under the seat in front of me, crossed at the ankles to keep my knees clearly in my own airspace and not in any way crossing over into her leg space.  I folded my arms tightly, with the arm closest to the woman specifically tucked up as far as possible, so that I was clearly not infringing on her shoulder room, either.

I had also brought a couple of magazines to read, and when I pulled them out I held them with my arms almost fully extended in my lap, and when I turned the pages I did it with my arms fully extended so that my elbows didn’t bend and momentarily reduce her personal airspace.  I also fully ceded the armrest to the wife so that she wasn’t too squeezed-feeling.  Note that this is what I always do when I travel seated next to anybody but Marie, as I know that my large-tallness could be a burden to other fliers.

So, there I am, a big guy squeezed into a seat that isn’t designed for me, but contorted in such a way that I did not in any way cross over into the seating space of the woman next to me.  On most flights similar to this, that would be the story – me contorted and uncomfortable, but otherwise flying without incident.

Well, not this flight.  At first, everything was fine, or as fine as it can be in a coach sardine can.  However, I then noticed that the woman, who was 5’5″ at best (and slender), had not only taken to sitting with her legs crossed, but crossed in such a way that they were crossed *towards* me, and not only that, crossed at an angle so that her foot was clearly extending over into *my* airspace.  Really?!

I mean, she could have either a) easily not crossed her legs in such a manner that they floated into the legroom of the person next to her, or b) if she had to cross her legs in such a manner, at least do it in the direction of her husband.  He, presumably, would mind a lot less than me, and he was maybe 5’8″ himself, so had plenty of leg room.

So her border aggression was pretty irritating, but I again took the stance that although she was being rude, I was still partially to blame for the uncomfortableness of the situation, given my height/size.  In fact, I realized there might be a chance that she didn’t even realize what she was doing, and might have been subconsciously making sure to command her space, or something.  So, I tried to let go of the irritation.

Then she picked up her book to read.  And with almost every page flip, she elbowed me in the ribs.  Only a little but clearly enough that she knew she was doing it.  I’ll again state that I was very clearly completely on my side of the seat divider, and had ceded the armrest.  But, this wasn’t enough for her, so she had to come past the armrest with each page turn and elbow me, even though she could easily have turned the page in a much less elbowic manner.

So, that’s how the flight progressed.  Me sitting in such a way that I was contorted and remaining 100% on my side of the leg/air space of the seats, and her dangling her foot into my space and elbowing me when she turned her book pages.

W…T…F?

I resolved to just accept that I was flying next to a selfish, thoughtless human being, and although I found her behavior to be quite rude I still realized that me being a big guy contributed to the situation.  I’m already stressed out enough when I travel for business, so I didn’t need to also marinate in a stew of bilious resentment towards the high-riding b*tch sitting next to me.

So, to the extent possible, I let it go and tried to relax…relax…relax…(rib poke)……relax…let it go…deep breaths…(leg kick)……………relax, dammit!!

And I did, I kept my cool and tried to get along as part of a society.  Eventually I fell asleep.  Note that this was done by fully extending my legs under the set in front of me, tightly crossing my arms in front of me, and lolling my head to the side away from Ms. Prissy Pants.  And so I dozed off a couple of times like that, as comfortably as possible, but I’d nod off for a few minutes, wake back up (still fully balled up and not infringing her in any way), read some more, then go back to sleep.

During one of my bouts of sleeping, I was startled awake by the husband, let’s call him Mr. Prissy Pants, full-on kicking me in the legs as he tripped over me trying to climb over me to get out and go to the restroom.  He not only kicked me, he kicked his wife, and half-fell into the aisle, clumsily grabbing the back of somebody else’s seat across the aisle and startling them awake, too.  Now, through this flight I hadn’t slept for more than 10 minutes at a stretch, so it’s not like he had been blocked in by my long sleep cycle or anything.  I’m also not deaf so they could have easily asked me to move, and the wife obviously had no social compunctions about elbowing me already, so she could have elbowed me awake and asked me to move.

But no, he decided to try to climb over me, a sleeping, 6’5″ guy wedged into his seat as tightly as possible, and then clumsily tripping and kicking me, and waking me up and also waking up the guy across the aisle.

His polite response to this?  “Goddam it…fucking…shit…”

That’s it.  Then he stomped off down the aisle to the restroom.  No apology for a) kicking me and waking me up, b) waking up the guy across the aisle, or c) being stupid/rude enough to try to climb over me in the first place.  I assume there was no apology for kicking the wife because she was already used to his rudeness, or something.

At this point I did get sort of a pained smile from the wife, which I took to be contrite, but nothing more than that.  Also, she then immediately started shifting and squirming in her seat, like a 2 year old that has to go potty but doesn’t say so.  I finally asked her, very politely, “Would you also like to get out?”.  She said no, but she *clearly* needed to get up and go to the bathroom, too.  So I said, “Well, I was going to stretch my legs anyway, so feel free…”, and with that I got up and moved forward in the aisle to clear a path.  She immediately shot out of there and down the aisle.

I stood stretching my legs until they were both back in their seats.  I got nothing from the husband, no ‘thank you’, no ‘sorry’, not even eye contact.  Punk.

When the wife came back, she at least said a quiet little “thanks” with a pained smile.  But that was it, and sullen silence the rest of the flight.  The only good news was no more rib poking or leg kicking occurred.

I also noticed that, other than a logistical conversation as we were leaving (something like “where are the headphones?”, or something), the couple barely spoke a word to each other, although both were awake the whole flight, as far as I could tell.

So, maybe this couple was having some other problems, unrelated to air travel, that exacerbated the situation and/or their behaviors.  Maybe.  However, my gut feeling is that they were just a couple of rude, self-centered assholes who saw me as nothing more than an inconvenient lump that was further harshing their stonily silent travel.

At this point, I’d also like to make sure that the airlines get their fair share of the blame here.  You see, they already know what size seats are comfortable for the cross-section of normal travelers – just look at the chairs in the gate area.  The seats at the gate are by no means over-sized, but they are pretty much normal-sized, meaning that all of us waiting around for our flights can do so in relative comfort.

Now, I understand that I’m way over on the right-hand side of the bell curve when it comes to human sizing, and I don’t expect that airlines are going to make every seat large enough for me to be comfortable in.  But, what I would like, and what they could do with minimal effort in my opinion, is to offer slightly larger seats for slightly more money.  I, and I assume many, many, many other travelers, would happily pay an extra 25% for a seat that was 25% larger.

However, today the only option is to pay anywhere from 4 to 10 times the ticket price to get a First Class seat, which by my reckoning is about 25% larger than Coach.  That’s ludicrous.  The airlines have scrunched and scrunched coach seating until it’s finally at the point where even normal-sized humans can barely travel without extraordinary discomfort.

Another option is to retrofit airplanes with offset seating.  Today, seats are configured side by side in a line, so that the part of most humans that is widest (shoulders) are lined up, creating the least amount of room between passengers.  However, it’s possible to slightly change the arrangement of seats so that each seat is slightly offset from the other, meaning that each passengers shoulder goes behind (or in front of) the shoulder of the person sitting next to them.

Although it would be hard to prove, and I doubt there is such a thing as a retroactive patent, I have conjured this seating arrangement up on my own in my head over the years as I have spent countless hours contemplating the horror of US coach air travel (whilst traveling, of course).  When I started writing this rant, I did some web research and found that this type of seating arrangement is already commercially available.  The picture to the left is from the website of Thompson Solutions, for example.

First, I have to say that I love Thompson Solutions for creating these seat prototypes.  Second, why the hell isn’t this type of seating being immediately adopted?!?  Yes, I know there is an expense to retrofitting planes, but how about on new planes that are added to the fleets?  How about starting to add offset seating to those?

The truth is that I really don’t need more room.  I can be happy in a cramped space, as long as it’s not inhumane and doesn’t involve ongoing incidental contact with strangers.  Offset seating provides exactly that.  In fact, I’d rather slide into a human-sized tube, get it sealed up, and be stacked like logs when I take a flight, rather than have to deal with the current cattle-car arrangement.

One might respond that, in a free market, the customers decide what happens, and that if airplane travel were so horrible the airlines would be out of business.  Or, a competing airline would spring up and use smart new ideas to steal market share.  The problem is that, even though the airline industry has been ‘deregulated’, it’s not really a bunch of independent companies vying for market share on a level playing field.

Have you ever priced airline tickets?  Isn’t it an amazing coincidence how so many independent airline companies manage to offer the exact same fares on the same routes?  I mean, down to the penny – exactly the same.  This means, of course, that the airlines communicate in some way on fare structure.  Some might call that collusion, but I don’t want to get sued so I won’t.

Also, the major airlines have enormous control of gates at major airports.  Just ask Southwest Airlines.  They are probably the only real maverick airline, and they have been locked out of many major airports for a long time, because it’s impossible (or prohibitively expensive) to break the stranglehold that the larger airlines have on gates and flight times.  However, slowly but surely Southwest expands their routes over time.

They are actually my one hope for the return of sanity to air travel.  They’ve always gone their own way, and I could see them stepping up and doing something (like offset seating) to differentiate themselves further from the cattle-car airlines.

And to the prissy couple from above, and to all other fellow travelers, let’s please try to get along.  Air travel is a necessary evil in today’s world, and we are all just trying to get from Point A to Point B with our luggage and sanity intact.  I know there are rude people of all sizes, but let’s let them remain the minority.  Let’s all keep our wits about us and remember that we’re all human beings, and that if we could afford First Class we would, and if we could avoid cramped coach travel, we would do that, too.

But the reality is that most of us end up traveling from time to time.  As a requirement of our professions.  To visit family.  To seek medical help.  To unwind on a vacation.  To attend a funeral.  And, as hard as it is to believe, very few people travel for the sole purpose of annoying their fellow passengers.  We’re all on board for a reason, and if we have any anger or ire let’s direct it at the airlines for not offering us any realistic options, rather than sniping at each other.

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We recently replaced two of our old, crappy window unit air-conditioners with newer models.  The new units were from Home Depot and the installation was do-it-yourself, and when I was done I realized that I had two undisposable hunks of junk to deal with.  You can’t just throw away a system loaded with refrigerant, so I figured all I had to do was figure out how everybody else did it, then do that.

My first strategy was to ask at the local recycling center here in Brenham.  They said I could probably take them to the collection station (dump), so the next time I went to the dump I asked at the office if they would take window unit air-conditioners.  They said they would, as long as all the coolant had been recovered by an authorized contractor, and the units were officially tagged as being empty.

That sounded good, so I started calling the local AC contractors around town, and found that 90% of them responded with “we don’t work on window units”, 5% took a message and called me back looking to schedule a coolant recharge, and 5% had no idea what I was talking about (and/or feigned ignorance because they didn’t want to do it).

At this point I’ll clarify that I clearly expressed that I was willing to pay a fee for this service, I wasn’t looking for it to be done for free, or anything, and still no takers.  I finally started doing some serious web searching and found this site:

http://www.texaspowerfulsmart.org/rebate/recycling_partners.php

Which bills itself as “Official Texas Trade Up Appliance Rebate Program”, and that link goes to their list of recycling partners.  That list looked very promising, especially when I saw that all Best Buy locations were drop-off locations that take room air-conditioners, as shown here:

With a song in my heart and a ‘green’ aura, I figured my problems were solved, so I loaded up the air conditioners (one of which was a 25,000 BTU model weighing 200+ pounds) and prepared to get rid of my albatrosses…albatrossi?…albatri?  Before heading out I figured I’d make a quick call to my local Best Best buy to confirm, and that’s when I got the bad news – they didn’t take air conditioners.  They didn’t really care too much about the fact that they were listed on the Texas site as being an authorized recycling center that took window units, it was no dice.

I figured I’d double-check on the Best Buy website, where I found this:

I figured, oh well, just some miscommunication and/or old information, no worries, and I’ll just work my way down the list of nearby listed recycling centers.  Unfortunately, each one I contacted had variations of the same story, they either didn’t deal in window units, or they only recycled old units when they were selling you a new unit.

My strike-outs continued and my frustration mounted, until I got to ‘Barker’s Heating & Cooling Inc’ in College Station.  They knew what I was talking about, told me the fee ($75), said I could drop them off, and that they were open until 5pm.  I headed out as fast as I could, overjoyed at finally being able to finally get rid of these units in an ethical way.  Dealing with Barker’s could not have been any easier, they knew what they were doing, offloaded the units quickly, I paid the invoice, and I was on my way within 15 minutes.  Whew.  Here’s their website:

http://www.barkerservices.com/company.shtml

We’re planning on eventually installing central AC, and when we’re ready Barker’s will be getting the first shot at it due to their efficiency and friendliness in dealing with the recycling/disposal of these two window units.

I’m posting this in case it might prove helpful to somebody else in the same dilemma.  Those of you Texans in bigger  cities and/or in towns that already have a straightforward way to recycle air conditioners, be thankful.  For the rest of you, I hope this saga includes information that may prove helpful to you if you happen to be finding it frustrating to figure out how to get rid of your old window units ethically and legally.

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I started visiting the IMDb site way back in the day, even before they were bought by Amazon.com.  Back then, IMDb was a site for film lovers and film scholars, an encyclopedic collection of information and opinions about film (and, later, television).

However, once Amazon.com purchased IMDb they have slowly but inexorably worked to “monetize” the traffic on the site.  They added a fee-service called IMDb Pro, which provides deeper and newer information, and they have also blithely accepted saturation advertising for any and every piece of crap excreted by Hollywood, as long as the budgets were big enough.

For example, the screen shot to the right is of the home page today, and as you can see it is *plastered* with advertising for and editorial references to Disney’s “Prince of Persia”.  By all accounts, this film sucks mightily, and will quickly take its place in the pantheon of mass-produced, mass-marketed, money-grubbing, mediocre, mainstream, meaningless films, and no self-respecting site for film fans would feature it so prominently.

Seriously, what would you think if you visited the Architectural Digest site, and found the front page emblazoned with a half-dozen ads for mobile homes, or if you visited the Bon Appétit site and found they were garishly sponsored by McDonald’s, touting the return of the McRib, for a limited time?

You’d think that they had sold out, wouldn’t you?  But that doesn’t stop IMDb from whoring itself out to the highest advertising bidder.  You see, IMDb is no longer run by or for film buffs.  It’s run by Amazon.com as a vehicle to sell you entertainment, or to sell advertising to companies that want to sell you entertainment.  IMDb has dropped all pretense of being an arbiter of or commenter on the quality of the films on its site and/or in general.  Oh, it still lets members post reviews and ratings, and links to external reviews, but there are apparently no quality barriers to the films they allow to be advertised and prominently featured on their site.

In the interest of fairness, I will stipulate that IMDb is still a great source of information, and if you can block or ignore the advertising, it can still be a valuable resource.  But it’s become like WalMart – a soul-less emporium that has a vast selection but has no sense of quality or discrimination about their offerings, other than low-prices.  I sometimes go to WalMart, when I have to, but it is a joyless, draining chore.

And that’s exactly what IMDb has become to me – the WalMart of film information.  I go to IMDb for specific reasons – to look up an actor or actress, to find the details of a particular TV show episode, etc, and then leave immediately.  But what I don’t do is browse IMDb as entertainment, like I used to.  Back in the day I could wander the virtual halls of IMDb, coming across tidbits, discovering new films I might like, getting information about a particular film’s history or production, etc.  It was an enjoyable place to mingle digitally with like-minded film buffs.

Sadly, this is no longer the case, at least not for me.  The incessant pop-ups and blinking+pulsing advertisements on every page, the editorial highlighting of films whose only “quality” is a big advertising budget, and the distinct lack of discriminating, discerning editorial slant when it comes to the world of film.  So IMDb still gets some clicks from me, but now that I have no respect for the site, I have even less respect for anything they allow to be advertised, so those clicks are not “monetized” in any way.

I doubt I’m the only person who has gone through this disillusionment with IMDb, and they have to be feeling it.  Or am I misjudging the number of non-discriminating, non-discerning filmgoers who will visit the site, become enthralled by the flashing and pulsing advertisements for a piece of crap, and then go spend money on a ticket for it?

Sadly, I think I am, and I think that IMDb represents a crystal-clear microcosm of what is wrong with film today – the soulless pursuit of money by bean-counters, who see sheep as their customers of choice.

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