LitterMaid Elite 9000 - both lights flashing (error code) with pictures

Well, Happy New Year 2013.

This year has started off with a 'sick' automated Litter box, a LitterMaid Elite 9000.

The automated litter box that LitterMaid sold years ago was considered by many to be a solid workhorse of a product and often recommended.  The more recent 'improved' versions of them -- well, not so much.

Ours had both lights flashing in some sort of error mode.  Searching for Google with the terms of 'littermaid elite both lights flashing' (no quotes), we found the online manual ... and that this particular error code was not in the manual.  Nice going there, LitterMaid corporation!

Fortunately, there were some more useful pages on the web from individual customers.  One of these pointed out the limit switches being the likely culprit and yes, some of the fine dust from the litter had apparently motivated our box to bind up in this fashion.

One of the things that I didn't find were any photographs of the switches in question, so I've made some up with notations to help others.  They're below.

One final thing - - I'd recommend NOT trying to put any WD-40 or other types of lubrication on the plastic cylinders that work with the limit switches - they'll only attract and retain litter dust and make it more likely to bind up.


-hh

Fiscal Cliff ...

Hey Congress!   Searching for places to cut the Federal Budget?

Here's $13B/year:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/03/1273061/analysis-countries-spend-five-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-climate-aid/?mobile=nc

Yes, that link is to an analysis for Climate Change, but what it reveals is that there's a bag of Taxpayer's money - - $13B each year - - being spent on various subsidies to private industry for fossil fuels.
And this is in addition to avoiding revenue collection, sincer the fossil fuel energy sector also has quite low (cheap) tax structures and low mineral rights fees.

All told, it is a give-away to the fossil fuel industry, and these three factors all work in concert together to minimize consumer demand for products which are more energy-efficient.


-hh

Steve Jobs & the Digital Era

An interesting juxtaposition this week.

On Wednesday, we lost Steve Jobs after his long fight with pancreatic cancer. Steve was of course a tremendous force in innovation in Personal Computers including the Macintosh.

One of the first digital cameras available to the public was the Apple Quicktake 100 back in 1994. While it wasn't a commercial success for Apple, the entire consumer market for photography underwent a profound earthquake of change from this disruptive technology. Today, film is virtually gone, as are also many small local camera stores. We still have cameras, of course, but they're now digitally based and our methods of making photo albums have also changed, with custom self-published books.

What also happened this week was the culmination of an overly long photo album project. Back in 2004, we went to Peru and with primarily an SLR, came back home with roughly 2000 images ... 75% of which were on 35mm film. A lot of digitizing and organization (no EXIF data) followed in intermittent spurts, but has now finally been concluded: an analog/digital hybrid.

This wasn't our first digital photo album, but it was quite a tedious one to work through, because of it being transitional from its analog component. It reminds us how years of innovation and improvements by people like Steve Jobs have resulted in greater productivity and ease of creating finished products - - hopefully, we won't become jaded and complacent when we realize not only how recent these innovations have been, but also how much more flexibility & freedom they have given us in making great works too.

Our parents grew up in in age where automobiles were young, airplanes were infants, telephones were new ... and then as they raised us, the solid state transistor was invented, which enabled Man's landing on the moon, as well as many other innovations. And in the closet, there's probably some classical old photo albums. Take some time this weekend to see your parents and pull out a few of those preserved memories ... and if you're smart, you'll take a digital photo of each of its pages, and if the images contain familymembers, you'll also record the names & relationships for future generations.

-hh

NJ's $400m 'Race to the Top' - adults misbehaving

Over the past two weeks, there's been much to do about how locally here in New Jersey, an (ahem) 'error' resulted in losing $400M worth of Federal Aid.

Naturally, the gears of Political Spin turned, to try to avoid responsibility and deflect blame on others: it is the classical "If its good, I get credit, but if its bad, it must be someone else's fault" - - with exactly the underlying message on ethics that that entails. As usual, our 'Leaders' actions in misbehavior sends the worst possible message to our children (and students), which is that its okay to lie and cheat.

And specifically for NJ Governor Chris Christie, we can see that he has conspicuously failed to issue a clear (and equally loud) public apology to those in the Federal Government that he had previously blamed for his own administration's error. Too late to do this now - the train has left the station and his credible opportunity window has passed, and Christie thus gets a failing grade in Ethics Class.

- - -

However, there is another interesting point that has been missed within all of the politically-generated spin-doctoring in regards to the Race to the Top. People have forgotten the very basics: this was a competition, and not all entries were going to win (receive funding).

As such, let's apply one more "What If", centered on Ohio (who just beat NJ out for the last winning spot):


WHAT IF ... Ohio's entry had done a few points better on their entry?

Answer: all of this teeth gnashing and caterwauling on NJ's 4 point mistake would be utterly moot.


In life, there are winners and losers...and it doesn't take long to learn that we won't always win. As such, we need to be honest with ourselves and accept losing graciously ... which includes accepting responsibility for our actions, win or lose. It doesn't matter how lofty one's life position is, or becomes: the buck always stops.


-hh

A quick word on 'snowfall' photographs

(Alternate Title: "A foot of snow later...")

Thanks to it being an El Nino winter, there's been quite a bit of wintery mix precipitation that's been hitting the Northeastern USA this past month.

As such, there's the temptation to go take a digital photo that you're going to email to family & friends (probably to get some sympathy for snow shoveling).

So you go out and take a photo during the storm ... and all that nice white snow turns out a yucky dark grey in the photo - - that's probably not what you wanted, so why did this happen?

The short answer is "technology", specifically, your camera's automatic exposure system.

Yes, we've become quite accustomed to auto-everything cameras, but a downside of this is that the camera never knows what you're photographing, so it guesses.

Simplistically, this "guess" is known as 18% grey, and while it works great 90% of the time for us, where it doesn't work so well is when we have a low contrast scene - - and during a heavy snowfall is a low contrast scene.

With a low contrast scene, the camara's educated guesses often goes wrong: it is looking for "dark AND grey AND bright" contrasts, but it can't find what's not there.

So while a white cow in a snowstorm (light on light) or a black cat in a coal mine (dark on dark) are both intuitively obvious to us, for the camera, it sees both as low contrast and hard to figure out. Subsequently, it can get the overall exposure settings wrong.

Typically, the camera's bad guess is that the cow/snow is "too bright" of an overall scene (it can't find true black), so it sets for a short exposure, which turns white into grey (underexposed). Similarly, the cat/coal is interpreted as "too dark" (can't find bright white), so it calls for a long exposure...and this turns black into grey (overexposed).

Here's an example of an image that's was a low contrast light scene, so it was auto-exposed to be a bad "grey" shot (underexposed), which was corrected later in post-processing:


The trick to avoid this problem is pretty simple: be aware of how your 'automatic' camera settings work, and anticipate what it will do based upon what you know is in the picture. The simple rule of thumb to remember is that the camera will want to turn everything grey if the scene lacks a good cue (bright sunny sky for contrast) to help it out.

With digital, its pretty easy to take a test shot and then adjust your settings. And if you forget (or not bother), you can fix the incorrect exposures later in post-processing. Its up to you to decide how much its worth a little bit more effort upfront when taking the picture, both to get better overall results, as well as to save time later from less post-processing.


And of course, if you do choose to override the default exposure while taking the photo to get what you want, do also make sure to remember to set your override settings back to normal afterwords.


-hh

Hen Wallow Falls

Saturday:

The Cosby campground & picnic area is around 60 miles from Maryville, TN. A 1.5 hour drive, which is well removed from the first time here, in the Summer of 1973.

Those many years ago, we were camping in the Smokies, with my parents and my brother Mark. Based on this trail, I assume we stayed in Cosby, for those many years ago, Dad took the two of us boys for a hike in the woods.

To this day, an austere 3"x5" photograph of Mark & I, sitting on a large rock at the base of the falls is still a part of my parents' "on display" collection of household photos. And to this day, I recall the sights of that walk, mostly being the huge logs and standing deadwood of the American Chestnut, which had been wiped out decades earlier by a blight.

Thirty six years later, I'm the same age as my father was when he took us on this hike. And along the trail, there's still some slowly composting logs - not quite as huge as I remember them, but still 3-4ft diameter and arrow-straight for 50 to 75 feet (or perhaps even more). T

A unique recollection, since what I've enjoyed in the hikes in the Smokey Mountains have been sights such as the waterfalls themselves, and here's a long discussion of times past and of the "boring" fauna of a quiet walk in the woods that lack a spectacular view of mountains or water or wildlife.

As the trail undulated for its 2+ miles back, a sight again seen was more scat from black bear. Fresh. Approaching the falls itself, a convergence of groups resulted in easily a score of human visitors to the base of the falls, and the predictable chatter and bustle that often accompanies groups of youths (a soccer team, we understand). A reminder of the population who visits this National Park and a strong contrast to the day that the three of us were here, all by ourselves. Of course, this day happened to be a Saturday, which clearly can be an influence on attendance.

After a break, we returned, and reflected on our visit, including my prior visit so many years earlier. There wasn't any huge standing deadwood with the Chestnut's distinctive spiral in its grain like I recall so vividly, but I did see a fallen icon that looked incrementally less ancient than the others that seemed to be in the appropriate region and size.


-hh

4 x 5DII in Freezing cold, snow and wet

There was a recent report of a photo-journey to Antarctica, where several Canon 5Dmk2 dSLRs failed, while essentially "none" of the other cameras onboard did.

The above link is to DPreview.com, where a gentleman posted a "mine didn't fail" report. A long conversation resulted, with one poster pointing out (correctly) that there were a lot of issues and that the report of a non-failure wasn't particularly insightful, particularly when it was in attempted response to a field report of failures.

Unfortunately, while some of the exchange did get a bit heated, the moderators at DPreview have decided to slash-n-burn their way through the thread, and in doing so, resulted in collateral damage of posts that did not have any possible violations or controversies. Which included both of mine. As such, I see that I can no longer trust dpreview to retain professionally based objective works.

I'm not going to ask DPreview to consider undoing their moderation - that's their prerogative, and their actions reflect on their reputation only. Instead, I'll reiterate where it can't be removed:


Philip Harle wrote:
> Spent last week on the Light & Land photo trip to Glencoe. I was
> amongst 4 5DII users who managed to get their camera soaking wet and
> cold shooting for a whole day whilst it was constantly snowing. None
> of the cameras had the slightest problem.

I'm not about to re-write my long objective statistical analysis that has apparently been removed by the Moderators for whatever reason. My editorial comment on this matter is that I have noted that it has been removed.

To reiterate in much shorter form - - my apologies, but I'm not about to go into the same level of detail:

Part I:

- The above 'zero failures' report is a sample size of (n=4 x 1 day)
- The controversial Antarctica trip was a sample size of (n=26 x YY days)

That's at least a 60:1 ratio in the "power" of the respective statistical samples. As such, even if the suggested 20-25% failure rate is true, this report's sample size lacks sufficient sampling"power" to have a reliably high confidence to be able to detect the failure(s) in the first place.


Part II:

- most people don't really understand Statistics.
- most people don't really understand Test & Evaluation (methods & standards)
- most people don't really understand "self selected" sampling bias

Nor do most people understand how these interact and make the analysis of a complicated device used in uncontrolled settings and then subject to anecdotal reporting, variable judging and self-selection bias ... simply results in a mess to try to professionally analyze.

As such, all that can really be concluded is that the LL trip reported an 'alarmingly high' failure rate in 50% of their sample, which under a null hypothesis of 'All dSLRs are about the same' then may have been coupled with an 'alarmingly low' failure rate on the other 50%.

Part III:

It should be noted that even if the failures are eventually determined to have been caused by 'human error', there remains the niggling issue that said human errors were not randomly distributed, but clustered. To cut to the chase, something that significantly alters the probability of human-contributed errors ... infers a system design flaw.

Part IV:

How to rig a 'waterproof' test so that even an exposed Kleenex can pass?
I previously only said that it could be done. Here's some concrete suggestions as to how it can be done:


Method A: low flow rate + atomized to mist + extremely dry chamber + high temperature + air make-up + good separation distance = weak humidifier

Method B: medium flow rate + spread + very dry chamber + extreme cold + good separation distance = dry snow machine, or possibly even just verga

Method C: high flow rate + no spread + aimed horizontally at target + distance + gravity + splash control = water misses the test coupon

Method D: "before/after" weigh scale not sensitive enough to measure weight change from water, or use of a method that doesn't measure relevant change (eg, dimensions).

Method E: handling of sample after test (eg, time delay, allowing it to dry).



-hh

Photography Retrospective

The above link refers to the top 100 photography blogs, as per Sarah Scraffod. Its an interesting ...and useful... mix.

It served as a reminder to me that my images are getting backlogged. There's still 1000+ images to review & import from Tanzania last month. Plus there's tons of old stuff that should probably be revisited and either scanned or rescanned, such as this 1994 image from Yellowstone Canyon:


Approx 10 year old flatbed scan of 120 film (Mamiya 645)

I don't even know if 'sharpen' filters existed back when this one was done. By today's standards, its resolution is downright fuzzy.


-hh

Winter Traction: Snow tires versus 4WD - which is better?

Many years ago (turns out to be 1999), Car and Driver magazine did a comparison test for winter driving, where they asked the question of if you could only have one or the other ... snow tires -OR- four wheel drive ... which would be more beneficial?

Obviously, having both 4WD and snow tires is the best combination, but the intent here was to ask which provided more of the benefits, since neither one is free.

By supreme providence, I happened to rediscovered this 1999 article. It is linked above (and again here).


Its a nice read, but I know that we all want a shorter summary.

Here's Car&Driver's tests summary:

Hill-Climbing Traction: 4WD
Straight-Line Acceleration Performance: 4WD
Braking: Snow Tires
Handling/Lateral Acceleration: Snow Tires
Handling/Slalom: Snow Tires

And C&D's conclusion:

Four-wheel drive helps get cars going. When it comes time to brake or change direction on low-traction surfaces, the extra mass of the driveline becomes more of a detriment. Folks who live in hilly places that get snow may need the climbing capability of four-wheel drive...Almost everyone else will most likely be better served by using winter tires. Acceleration takes longer, but in an emergency, the handling behavior and improved lateral grip of two-wheel drive and winter tires -- in the slippery stuff -- are the safer bets.


In other words, snows before 4WD.

If you need a catchy sound-byte, try:

With 4WD, you may have 4 wheel 'go', but everyone has 4 wheel 'stop'.

The general reprocussions are that 4WD without snows will get you moving...but into trouble from which your tires aren't adequate to save you from. Snows without 4WD might not let you get moving as easily, but you'll have better roadhandling and shorter stops, which means more likely to get home safely.

Its winter again in the Northeast USA, so let's all be careful out there.


-hh

Taylor Ham Nation

This one is for those friends and family members that live outside of 'Taylor Ham Nation'. Of course, some are also probably missing out on RAPA Brand Scrapple too:

Ledger Live - 12-18-08

To mail order from the company mentioned, click here


-hh

So much for that last minute gift idea

For the photographer in your life, if they had any serious interest in a telephoto lens, the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6 USM was the stuff of fantasies ... until they realize that someone's got to carry it!


As the B&H Newsletter of this past summer stated,
"...calling this lens a 'tele' is like calling King Kong a monkey."

Despite the asking price of $99,000 (for a used lens!), this toy was sold.

So much for that very very generous last minute shopping gift.
You'll just have to make due with an EF 400mm DO IS USM instead :-)


-hh

Cayman Brac after Hurricane Paloma

In November 2008, the 71st anniversary of the great Storm of 1932 was noted to nearly the same exact day with Hurricane Palmoa hitting the island as a Category 4 storm.

With modern technology, there's photos online that document the damage this time. Here's three such slide shows:

http://www.blueoceanart.com/hurricanepaloma/index2.php

http://www.caymannetnews.com/palomabrac/index.html

http://www.caymannetnews.com/palomabrac/part2.html


Amongst others, the Rotary Clubs of Grand Cayman is accepting donations to help those in need. Their website is:

http://caymanrotary.wordpress.com/


We also understand that Robert Walton is working to help conserve the endangered Cayman Brac Parrot, as its habitat and food sources have obviously also been severely impacted by this storm.


-hh

Making a left turn in Albuqurque

It seems that the end-of-year travel isn't quite over yet. A short notice meeting, but it did the afford the opportunity to catch up with a familymember.

With a few hours on Sunday to see the region, we travelled on the Sandia Peak tram ("World's Longest passenger aerial tramway") to the top of Sandia Peak. At an elevation of 10,378 feet, this sea level flatlander was sucking wind. At least I remembered from Cuzco, Peru to go slow and not over-exert.

After attending business, the return home wasn't quite smooth, due to delays caused by heavy rain in the NYC metro area, but it could have been a lot worse than an extra ~2 hours.

And my thoughts were "At least I've now flown on American Airlines in 2008 so as to keep that Frequent Flier account still technically active", but FFM accounts vary in their rules and AAdvantage has expired another 34,625 miles on me this year.

And in this age of computers, my most recent flights on AA from two days ago still haven't posted their mileage credits.

...and the airlines wonder why I have clear preferences as to where I take my business when I have a reasonable choice in the matter.

-hh

A busy fall...

The last few months have been quite busy, with a bit of globe-hopping. Within the past three months, I think there were 3 weeks in Europe, 2 weeks in the Caribbean, 2 weeks in Africa and a quick trip from the East to the West Coast to present a paper and vamoose back home.

Thus, there's the latest batch of travel photographs organized and sorted while getting ready for winter to hit us locally. In taking a break from that project (1000 down, 2000 to go), the subject of travel while exploring found an interesting website utility, namely the ability to make up personal "Been There" travel maps from Phillips 66.

Domestically:



Internationally:



If you're looking for changes since 2007, well, there's just Denmark.
In the meantime, there's still plenty of things on the "1000 Places before you Die" list that remain to be worked on.

And since it is that time of year for one's annual holiday contribution to Capitalism, it is quite obviously way behind schedule as a result of not really being at home for half of the time over the past few months. Plus there's more important things. Just last night, we spent a solid hour on an expensive long distance phone call to a friend who survived having half of their house fall on top of them from a Category 4 Hurricane a few weeks ago. The gift wasn't really our offers to send Care packages, but simply the opportunity for a listening ear for them to be able to give that big emotional 'dump'. Nevertheless, we'll be putting together a package for them over the next week or so with some surprises, since they have months of clean-up and recovery to do.


-hh

Evacuation Day ... and local history

(backdated)

The obscure US Holiday of Evacuation Day dates from November 25, 1783, to commemorate when the British left the USA on that date in 1781, marking a final end to the Revolutionary War.

The 225th Anniversary of Evacuation Day was in the news locally in New Jersey this month, since NJ was a crossroads of the American Revolution, and to this day, there's several "George Washington Slept Here" historical homes in the area, as well as his HQ for Jockey Hollow, the 1779-90 Winter Bivouac for the Continental Army.

Upon reading of this local history of how the local hilltops were used to light fires to serve as communication (warning) beacons for an impending British attack, we were debating if on the night of the 25th we could find a few hours venture out a dozen miles down the road to Fort Nonsense in Morristown, where the newspapers were reporting that there would be a modern beacon lit to commemorate.

Naturally, we didn't make a more proximate connection. The name of the housing development that we live in is ... Beacon Hill.

Yes, there was another one of the 23 known hilltop signals located at the top of the hilltop ridge that we live on. It was restored last year by Denville Boy Scout Troop 118.

Its yet another surprise discovery of local history ...


-hh

It done burned down

(backdated)

Dateline: Tanzania

Some of our time this month was spent on Safari in southern & western Tanzania.

While at Ruaha National Park, we spent some time chatting with the camp manager, who had previously been working at Mikumi.

We found that a controlled fire ... done poorly ... last season had burned out of control and up over the hilltop where a camp that we had previously stayed at, destroying all of the facilities.

Thus, this Banda - it done burned down:


Great views, great memories ...

Fortunately, word is that the Foxes do intend to rebuild the camp; it will just take some time.


-hh

Iranian photoshop manipulation? An illustration

There's been media reports (eg, NY Times) this week about Iran's missile test ... and how the images distributed very well likely might have been faked - - a Photoshop manipulation.

I'm sure others have already done this, but I didn't notice any examples, so I've put one together quickly for anyone else looking for the same: here's a very simple Photoshop overlay of the two ("4 missiles" and "3 missiles") photographs, so that people can decide for themselves how suspicious they are of if this is (or isn't) a manipulation.




In other words, 'decide for yourself'.
(you can click on the image for a larger version)


-hh

Green Snake Oil?

In the news today: Toyota is planning on putting a solar panel on their Prius.

Sounds good, doesn't it? An electric hybrid that's able to be partially powered by the sun.

Well...

How are we sure that its not essentially just a clever sales gimmick?

Here's one take on the "Reality Check" of physics.

A conventional solar panel (Mitsubishi; Sharp) provides 185W of output, and is 65" long x 33" wide: call it roughly 5ft x 3ft. Let's assume no sunroof, so you can install two of them on the roof of a car like a Prius.

Those two panels result in roughly 370W of power under ideal conditions. Let's assume that there's another 10% of roof real estate available and round up the number to a conveniently easy to work with 400W of output.

The article (see link) reports that the A/C system needs up to 5kW of power. Standardizing units, that's 5,000W.

Thus, the panel can provide (400W/5,000W) = 8% of the A/C system's peak demand.

Thus, you can run your A/C "totally on solar" if you only run it at ~8% of its capacity. That doesn't sound like all that much cooling capacity to me.

Okay, let's look at things differently: let's assume that the solar panels can charge the battery pack, even though this isn't mentioned in the article. While we're also at it, let's be an irrational optimist and assume that this storage will be 100% efficient and has no other trade-off factors (such as needing a bigger battery).

So how much power can we store? Classically, solar systems are discussed and designed around the time of day which results in roughly 80% of the total daily collection. This is commonly defined as 10AM-3PM, which is a period of 5 hours. True, there is solar gain before 10AM and after 3PM, but generally it isn't planned for too much, as the sun angle, strength and shading factors are some of the factors for why the panels run at below their ratings and all of these other hours of daylight only collect around ~20%. This is classical Pareto Principle.

So in those 5 hours of good gain, the panels will run at their rating, so this sytem will generate 5hr * 400W =2,000W-Hrs.

Continuing to assume that idealized 100% efficient storage battery, this means that the system can provide 0.4 hours (24 minutes) worth of full A/C per day. For a to/from work commute, that's 12 minutes each way...assuming that you park your car in the sun at work and don't go out to lunch.

Okay, it is better than nothing, but do keep in mind that those panels aren't free. Their retail price is around $2,000.

And more importantly, they aren't weighless. In standard trim, they're just over 35lbs each. Figure that with packaging economies, they can be reduced from 70lbs down to around a 50lb increase in vehicle curb weights. Now ask yourself: an increase of 50lbs in the vehicle's weight hurt the car's fuel economy by how much?

And ditto for that idealized 100% efficient battery. To do 2000 W-hr worth of power storage, you're roughly going to need a battery roughly the size/capacity of a standard automotive Lead-Acid battery. In NiMH, I'd SWAG it at another $500 and 25-30lbs increase in curb weight.

This is just a quick "back of envelope" system analysis, but it looks like at least a 50% salesmanship snake oil for a 'Green' product to me at this point. I'd personally like to see a more comprehensive one done with real values, to specifically include how much the vehicle's cost goes up, weight goes up and MPG goes down (because of that higher weight).

Don't hold your breath.


-hh

Customer Service in the Internet Age

The above links to an MSNBC article of the title:
"Complaining Couple Banned from Cruise Line".


Briefly, the article discusses how a cruise line (Royal Caribbean) chose to permanently decline the business from a particular customer (that sounds nicer than "ban"). Apparently, they had found reason to complain ... and apparently ask for meaningful financial compensation ... over 80% of the time (5 out of 6 cruises).


There's a few interesting points in this topic.

First, there are most definitely consumers (such as the Morans) who will frequently exploit any excuse to forcibly leverage a cost concession. In this regards, Royal Caribbean is better off without them and does have the right to decline their business.

However, there is the issue with 'freedom of opinion' on discussion groups. It is safe to say that literally no discussion group has been free of pressure from special interests to delete or amend existing comments, which frequently leads to censorship issues.

There is an old saying that the Internet interprets censorship as network damage and routes around it

In general, this potential problem rapidly becomes a slippery slope when the Message Board is being hosted by the company...a case of where Marketing trumps ethics and fear of "Brand Damage" is more important than hearing real consumer feedback (in order to improve the Brand): it is a manifestation where the corporation reveals a lack of confidence in the strength of their Brand.

A few years ago, I was a reader of just such a group that was hosted to benefit Divi Resorts (a Timeshare company) and there rapidly became a zero tolerance ... enforced through censorship ... for any and all possible criticism from their customers. As such, the group was a sham: nothing more than a marketing mouthpiece, not a source of honest, balanced information, or for frank consumer/supplier dialog... something that would be more expected when one has spent $10K+ for a timeshare. And what was the fate of property that Divi had rejected years worth of customer 'feedback' about? Its death spiral continued until it was shut down in 2006. Glad I'm not a big investor in Divi Resorts, as any company who clearly chooses to ignore repeated warnings about their product's shortcomings is not going to be particularly successful in the long run.

Thus, the general conclusion that I have come to is that the only discussion groups that can be functionally trusted are those upon which censorship is impossible, which is USENET, or a Message Board whose official published policy is that all discord will be discussed fully in the open for the public to witness firsthand (good luck finding one of these).

But there is good news for this for consumers in that the Internet - - despite its shortcomings - - has been a resource that has restored some power back to the consumer, for previously isolated individuals can now communicate, and it is common to compare the company's response. It used to be that a company could merely tell 50 customers, "Gosh, you're the first one that this has ever happened to!" to try to smooth things over and to minimize financial recompense, but today, that claim is far more likely to get caught and thus revealed as a lie.

Since its only a fairly small percentages of consumer who have caught on to this information sharing, and that information is still dispersed across the 'Net, a businesses' tactics to use 20th Century spin-doctoring will still work 80% of the time. However, the downside risk is that when it doesn't fly, that business gets hit hard because their claims get destroyed by these collaborative power of 21st Century communications, and then they get nailed a second time ...even harder... for having flat-out lied to multiple customers.

This is not the case here with Royal Caribbean, but the amazing part is that a surprising number of companies still "Don't Get It". Here, RC was in a pattern of responding to individual complaints - - they didn't see the pattern until it was pointed out to them by other consumers.

And for the Morans? The Internet revealed their pattern of behavior, which in this case is now helping a business to avoid future complaints from them. Yes, its a two-way street: they made their bed, so now they have to lie in it.


-hh

Election Politics for the "bad-at-math" taxpayer (and Journalists)

In the news today is that our esteemed political leaders want to suspend the current Administration's practice of adding to the USA's Strategic Oil Reserve.

The argument being promoted is that those 70,000 barrels/day are part of the reason why gasoline is approaching $4/gallon.

Well, let's apply some classical "Supply & Demand" examination of this claim:

As per the US DOT (URL above), the amount of crude oil imported in 2006 (the 2007 numbers will be updated in June 2008) was...

10,118,000 barrels/day

And US Net Petroleum Imports were:
12,390,000 barrels/day

Plus there was also U.S. Crude Oil Production:
5,102,000 barrels/day

So we're asking about the significance of 70,000 barrels/day in the contect of (12.39 million + 5.1 million) used per day:

70,000 / (12,390,000 + 5,109,000) = 0.004 = 0.4%

Assuming that the difference results in a linear cost savings,
0.4% of $4 is a whopping 1.6 cents per gallon.

Why gosh! I'll only need to buy ~200 gallons of gas in order to save all of $3.

If $3 is going to make/break your life in 2008, drop me an email explaining how: I'll consider sending you $5 and you can name your children after me and make me your write-in candidate in November. At least McCain's and Hillery's "18 cent Fed Tax" moratorium was willing to spend all of $30 in their attempt to buy your vote.

So the conclusion is here that the math shows that the crude oil deposits into the Strategic Oil Reserve is a non-issue in the marketplace: the total change potential is for less than one half of one percent. Thus, this is simple election year wrangling in the form of a "Strategic Political Topic Reserve", which the Lawmakers will use to make themselves look like they're busy working hard for you, the common taxpayer.

But unfortunately, as the saying goes, don't confuse Activity with Progress.


And let's not forget our Journalists out there: how many of them are bad at math and won't think to run the numbers?

-hh