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Dig This
Note to self: reserve time at Dig This next time you’re in Las Vegas.
The 10-employee park has five pieces of machinery, including a pair of Caterpillar D5 track-type bulldozers and three Caterpillar 315CL hydraulic excavators. Dig This sells three-hour packages that consist of a 30-minute safety and operation orientation followed by two hours of maneuvering either a bulldozer or excavator.
Hat tip to Tyler Cohen
Better Off Not Knowing
The internet is going to spoil my appreciation of reality based movies.
Chariots of Fire is a favorite of mine. Many were surprised when it won the Best Picture Oscar, but it was the best movie I saw that year (yes, better than Raiders of the Lost Ark).
I love the opening words:
Let us praise famous men and our fathers that begat us. All these men were honoured in their generations and were a glory in their days. We are here today to give thanks for the life of Harold Abrahams. To honour the legend. Now there are just two of us – young Aubrey Montague and myself – who can close our eyes and remember those few young men with hope in our hearts and wings on our heels.
And the transition to the score of Vangelis.
I can grudgingly accept the transfer of Aubrey Montague from Oxford to Cambridge (and thus from college rival to teammate) to support the use of Montague’s historical letters to his mother to bridge between scenes.
But it gave me pause to read on Wikipedia that Abrahams converted to Catholicism (since removed). It might be true. Or it might be false. But the doubt in my mind is not going away anytime soon.
I was better off not knowing doubting.
Don't Buy a Used Tivo
Let’s get this out of the way first:
I love my TiVo. We have a Toshiba Series 2 TiVo/DVD, a Tivo HD with a TiVo extender, and now a TiVo Series 3. But that doesn’t change the fact that adding the Series 3 was a serious pain.
It is a unfortunate sign of the times that companies optimize the common paths of customer service while leaving no flexibility for leaving the scripted interaction. If you want to activate a new TiVo, then activation is as smooth a process as you could imagine. Activating a pre-owned TiVo, not so smooth.
- If the previous owner has a contract, then TiVo is going to ask you to assume the remainder of the contract.
- In order to assume the remainder of the contract, you need to call customer service and:
- Agree to the TiVo Terms and Conditions
- Provide your credit card number to be billed for the TiVo service.
- Make sure you agree to the Terms and Conditions. I discovered the hard way that if TiVo customer service neglects to get your agreement, then TiVo will
- Reject the transfer of ownership.
- Keep your credit card number on the previous owner’s account.
- Not bother to notify you that they’ve rejected the transfer.
- When you call back to see why the transfer isn’t completed, you will:
- Need to listen to and agree to the verbal Terms and Conditions read by the customer support rep.
- If you actually pay attention to this sort of thing (which I do), then you’re going to hear that early cancellation may cost you:
- Up to $155.40 (early in the T’s and C’s).
- Up to $200.00 (midway in the T’s and C’s).
- Up to $155.40 (towards the end of the T’s and C’s).
- If you ask when the $155.40 applies and when the $200 applies, then your customer service rep is probably not going to have a satisfactory answer.
- If you ask to see a written copy of the Terms and Conditions, then you’ll be directed to the TiVo web site – where you’re not going to find T’s and C’s matching the verbal ones.
- At this point you’re going to need to decide whether to:
- Just accept the Terms and Conditions even though they appear to be internally inconsistent and you’re not able to see a written copy.
- Assume that the online Terms and Conditions are the ones that really count.
- Write off:
- The cumulative hour spent with TiVo customer service over two calls.
- Shipping costs.
- And hope that:
- You get back the purchase price from the previous seller.
- You don’t get billed for TiVo service now that TiVo has associated your card with the previous owner’s account.
All in all, the money saved with the used TiVo wasn’t worth the aggravation it came with. I didn’t find that out until I was already committed. Now, you know better.
PS: Yes, I know this would have been easier if I was less AR about terms and conditions. But TiVo made a big deal out of me listening to the terms and conditions. Is it too much for me to expect that confusing points be clarified before I agree?
Bad Songs Helped Finance the Good
In previous forms, you had to take the bad with the good … So in a sense, these bad songs help finance the good ones.
– Charles M. Blow, Swan Songs?
The music industry may wish that we would sate our music needs with albums rather than singles, but that ship has sailed. Now that listening to singles is both easier and better than listening to albums, we’re not going back.
Music Sales of CD’s peaked at $16.4B in 1999. In 2008, music downloads were about 10% of that. Some of that difference was due to piracy and some was due to streaming. And some of those CD sales in 1999 were for replacement of vinyl. But a big piece of the difference was that CD’s forced us to buy the dross with the gold.
Now, we’re only buying the gold.
iTunes Genius is Brilliant
Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
– Thomas Edison
I’m not sure about the ingredients, but I’m sure iTunes Genius is brilliant.
– Me
My need for music is closely tied to length of my commute. And the soundtrack of my current 10 minute commute is sports talk radio combined with obsessive repeats of my favorite track of whatever CD is loaded in the player.
Make that past-tense. The soundtrack of my commute was sport talk radio combined with obsessive repeats. Because I’ve discovered how easy it is to make and burn a Genius playlist to CD. And now the soundtrack of my commute comes courtesy of iTunes Genius.
- Select a song in iTunes.
- Click on the Genius button in the lower right.
- Modify tracks as needed (delete for an audio CD, or increase for a MP3 CD).
- Click on the “Save Playlist” button on the upper right.
- Find the Playlist (named for the original song), right-click and “Burn Playlist to Disc”
- Enjoy
Decisions, Decisions
Thanks to Tivo, I’ve started watching Classic Albums. And after watching the show on Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, I felt the urge to pick up some classic Elton John.
Back in the day, I had allowed myself to be deluded into thinking that songs should be kept in the context of their original albums. That delusion faded about the time it became trivially easy to cherry pick the best tracks off a CD.
Unfortunately, that leaves me the problem of selecting a version. The iTunes music store has about 10 versions of Rocket Man, 10 versions of Daniel, and 5 versions of Levon. It’s pretty safe to rule out any non plus versions, but that doesn’t really make a dent in numbers.
The last, lingering traces of my old delusions bias me towards songs off the original album. The technologist in me wants to look into remastered versions. And the procrastinator in me says maybe next week.
Star Trek
Best movie I’ve seen this year. Abrams has revitalized Star Trek by deconstructing it.
But I can’t help but feel that this was an action movie with Star Trek characters rather than a Star Trek movie. Not that I’m complaining.