David Ernst Chats with the World

As I prepare to leave on vacation tomorrow (more on that soon) I realize that over 90% of the spam I get in my inbox comes from my old HoosierNet email address, which is still forwarding to my new email account. In an effort to have fewer than 10,000 emails in my inbox (not an exaggeration) when I return, I’m retiring that old address. I suspect that I’ll wish I’d done it sooner.

If you want my new email address, please submit a comment to this post. I’ll reply to you, and then you’ll have it. Thanks!

Pri and I are getting ready for our vacation (very exciting). Yesterday we went to Campmor.com to do see if there was any camping equipment we should get before we go. There was. But one thing I thought of was a new filter for my water filtration system. (The language is confusing… both the high-tech piece of paper and the thing you insert it into are commonly called “filter”. I’ll call the paper “the filter” and the rest of it “the system”.)

Well, from everything I can tell, they no longer manufacture filters that go into my system. Rendering it essentially useless. This is distressing, since I guess I’ll now just throw away this perfectly functional product. At first, though, I thought that it was also unfortunate that I’d need to buy a new system, rather than just the inexpensive filters.

Well, apparently they also no longer make inexpensive filters. Looking at water filters and systems at REI and at Campmor it seems that the systems now cost only slightly more than their filters. For instance, I ended up ordering the Katadyn Hiker for $50. It’s filter is apparently good for about 200 gallons. If I’m worried that that won’t be enough, I can buy a replacement “cartridge” for it for about $40.

It seems, then, that the same thing has happened to these backwoods products as what happened to InkJet printers: the price of the systems has come down, with the manufacturers hoping to make their money on selling the filters. My joke about printers is: “Don’t think of it as buying a printer, think of it as buying an inkjet cartidge subscription”. For me, in the case of the filters, I can’t imagine paying $40 for the filter when I could pay $50 for a whole new unit. But, whatever the case, it seems lame to me. Maybe I don’t understand the economics of it… it’s perfectly possible that the 0.2 micron filters are more expensive to manufacture than the totally macro plastic casing pumps. So, maybe it makes sense. But, I’m more inclined to go with the other idea. If so, they might be pushing it too far. My brand loyalty is not going to be very strong if I can switch to another system for only $10 more than staying with the one I’m buying.

Would love to hear more about this if anyone out there knows anything…

When my folks visited a few weeks ago, my mom said that she hadn’t seen Episode Three of the Car: The Mini-Series. I was surprised, she’s usually one of my most loyal readers (Hi, mom!). But, just a timing thing, I figured.

Last night the same episode came up in a conversation with Priscilla, and she said she hadn’t seen it. We were both surprised, I think she was a bit embarrassed.

But today, she told me that she went specifically looking for it, and didn’t see it. This was really weird for me because it was right on my screen when I looked at my own blog. I was terribly confused, wondering if it was some Internet Explorer thing, but I didn’t see how that could be.

Well, no, it’s a WordPress thing. I had “Saved” but not “Published” the post, which is obviously my fault. But WordPress has the questionable feature of showing that post on my computer as if it were published! So… Ugh. Now a month old, the conclusion to the story is down below. Sorry for the technical difficulty, and thanks, Pri, for unearthing the problem!

Well, it was about 5pm, I was wrapping up work for the day, and the 5pm local news on the radio said “it’s been a slow day at the polls”. Polls?!? It’s voting day? Yup, primary day in Indiana, in my area, the only races are for city government. “OH, but the polls are open until 6pm! I can still make it!” So, off I went.

Wow, this was a new low, I’d say. No worry about a last minute rush, I was the only one there. And this wasn’t that upsetting to me once I saw that the ballot for the Democratic primary in my district had 0 (zero) contested races on it. I gather that some other districts had contested races but… yeah, nothing. The only decision to be made was whether or not to vote for the person who was going to win no matter what.

The most interesting thing about the day, actually, was that we’ve switched voting machines. Still with the same company, but much to my surprise, we’ve moved AWAY from paper-trail voting! It used to be that when we pressed the final button you could hear the printer printing the actual paper recountable ballot. This was on a nice, easy to use, electronic voting machine. Why did we change? I don’t like it.

Whatever the case, I’m still glad I voted. I’m pretty sure I haven’t missed an opportunity to vote since I became eligible. I certainly haven’t missed an opportunity to vote since I was registered to vote here in Bloomington. So, I’m glad I didn’t break the streak. Although, if I had to miss one, this would have been a good one to miss. *yawn*