Category: Technology

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Self-Inflicted Decadence

Here’s a rhetorical hypothetical. If you needed to buy a product, would you choose between:

  1. A more powerful and easier to use appliance that requires minimal maintenance and doesn’t leak fluids, stink, or require constant repurchasing of other fluids to keep it running, or…
  2. A less powerful and less easy to use appliance that requires constant maintenance and leaks fluids, stinks, and requires constant repurchasing of fluids to keep it running.

I phrase the question this way because it removes all emotion from the decision. Of course you would choose the first option. But if we add emotion to the equation, well then things get a little more complicated.

The scenario in question of course, which I did not intend to camouflage, is whether or not to buy an electric appliance or one that is gas-powered. See, now emotion is involved. Because, would I rather have a Tesla Model S or a Ford Mustang Mach 1? Yeah, the Tesla would certainly suit my lifestyle better, but they’re driven by colossal douchbags, and the Mach 1 is super badass.

So it was that I stupidly bought a 2-cycle Craftsman chainsaw. This POS:

The need arose from the Helene disaster in my backyard. But really – fuck this thing. It got maybe 2 hours of combined use and then refused to start. Premixed expensive fuel be damned. I even wasted money on a chain upgrade.

So why did I buy this? Because, even despite my growing collection of electric yard work appliances, I still maintained an inaccurate mental prejudice against battery power. I didn’t think anything but gas power could offer the performance I needed, or the length operational time. In my defense, however, batteries have come a long way since I started using lawn equipment in the 90s.

Lesson learned, I returned it and bought this instead:

Granted, it was 3x the price, but it has not disappointed. In fact, it has more power than the gas, and while top-end professional lumberjack models still probably run on gas and out-perform electric, for my less intense residential needs, electric is the way to go. And as outlined in my hypothetical, it maintains all the perks therein.

There are really only two logical reasons to buy gas equipment anymore: if you need the highest-power of applications (gas still seems to hold the advantage, even in cars, but we’re talking cars that need speeds I’ll never drive myself), and total power per price point (gas is cheaper for now in terms of upfront cost).

And there are two emotional reasons to buy gas equipment: some mental hangup on their coolness or traditional value, and political brainwashing (the people who still believe EVs are more harmful to the environment than ICEs).

My final thoughts here are to consider electric first. Chances are the upfront cost premium will more than make up for the frustrations and maintenance costs down the road for gas-powered alternatives. And if you’re at the age where you can afford these appliances, you should be past worrying about the coolness factor. And if you buy in to anti-electric political agendas, that’s only forestalling the inevitable technology shift anyway.

These are lessons that I had to learn again for some reason.

Gas is antiquated technology. You’re almost always better off buying electric.

–Simon

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Lights Out

I heard a joke once about why hurricanes are given women’s names. I won’t repeat it here, as it’s too lowbrow for even my blog, but I’m chuckling to myself nonetheless. Fortunately, she only took my silver maple when she left, and cut the power for 4 days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Helene

I’m no stranger to these weather events, but Ohio is not prepared for hurricanes. Tornadoes, we all collectively know it’s a gamble and if you get hit directly it’s game over, but hurricanes always seem to sneak in and do more damage than expected.

I am not a Prepper, but I am a Something Will Go Wrong-er, so I had some contingencies in place. Still, it’s interesting how quickly things go downhill without power. So, following the cataclysm, I took the opportunity to document a timeline of failure events for future reference. Here’s what I can expect for the next event that cuts off our electricity:

After…

  • 2 hours, the UPS will fail and the network equipment will go offline (the internet was out anyway since the cable had been severed).
  • 6 hours, the upright refrigerator/freezer will exceed 40 and 32 degrees, respectively.
  • 20 hours, the emergency hall lights will fail.
  • 48 hours, the cooler (if packed with ice), will exceed 40 degrees.
  • 48 hours, the emergency basement light will dim to the point of being unusable.
  • 72 hours, the chest freezer will almost reach 32 degrees.

More condensed, these are the priorities:

  • Day 1: wired communications will fail and short-term food storage will reach unsafe temperatures. Backup lights will begin to fail.
  • Day 2: More backup lights will continue to fail and the cooler will need to be restocked with ice if being used for backup food storage.
  • Day 3: Long-term frozen food storage will begin to thaw.

Overall, we made it out with minimal losses, but the area that needs addressing is a backup power supply for the chest freezer. Provided we can source ice, refrigerator food can remain safe in the cooler, but substantial losses would have occurred had we not borrowed a generator. Lesson learned.

I also bought a chain saw.

–Simon

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Modern Car Feedback and Reckless Driving

The standard human driver is just…bad. There’s unintentional bad (not a day goes by that the local news doesn’t report that some old fuck drove into a building!) There’s negligent bad (always cellphone-related.) And of course there’s always been asshole bad (the college kids are starting to show up for the summer.)

I fully admit, too, that my driving edges into the unsafe, but only when I’m driving my wife’s vehicle. It’s easy to drive, but I think it’s too easy, and this presents a problem. In it, I speed much more and give less thought to smooth velocity changes. It’s not intentional.

So recently, as I was driving my 2003 Honda Accord home, stopped at a stop sign, then turned left towards an oncoming and very new-looking KIA Pinchoff or whatever, whose driver communicated their objection to my maneuver with a long series of horn blasts, I had a moment of self-reflection and pondered the state of modern driving.

This isn’t you

Well, first I yelled “Fuck you!” and flashed the birdie, as is the only proper response. Then I admit that I felt a little sheepish…at first. I’ll take blame for an honest mistake, but then I considered that the KIA had been moving so fast that it wasn’t there when I first checked. In the time between when I looked in that direction (for a second time after looking to the right), and then shifted my gaze back towards my front, it had cleared the bend in the road and closed the 50 yard distance to the intersection I had since creeped into – a feat not possible at 25mph, which is why speed limits exist. (They’re not just there to be annoying. It’s a calculated velocity which, when followed, is the fastest one should be driving in order to avoid losing control of the vehicle or hitting someone else on the road who wouldn’t have been able to react in time. Going faster increases the risk. Of course we all push the boundaries, but a residential street that winds around probably isn’t the best place to play Dominic Toretto. (Also not when you bought a lame-ass KIA Pinchoff).)

Anyway, between this encounter and my own self-reflection on my different driving styles between the two vehicles I drive, I’ve come to a conclusion: Modern vehicles encourage bad driving by making driving too easy and seemingly less dangerous. And it comes down to vehicular feedback. Modern vehicles overly disconnect the driver from the act of driving. Here’s some examples:

  • My car uses older hydraulic-assisted power steering. It requires more effort to turn the wheel than the Ascent, and so feels like a heavier machine in comparison. This nudges me to treat it as bigger, more dangerous, and unwieldy when it’s objectively less so compared to the Ascent. The Ascent uses drive-by-wire electric motors to transfer user input to the steering system, and takes very little effort. Consequently, I’m tricked into believing the Ascent is lighter and more sporty than it really is, and it doesn’t transfer the feel of the road conditions to my hands, and so my steering becomes more aggressive. (It also necessitates a much smaller steering wheel, so in further mockery of Mr. Pinchoff above, you can’t possible feel saturated with testosterone when also maneuvering your Pinchoff with a bagel.)
  • My car uses an antilock breaking system. When I lose traction, this kicks in and provides me tactile and audible feedback, which is somewhat unnerving especially when at high speed. This prompts me to drive slower and more cautiously in adverse weather conditions. The Ascent uses all-wheel-drive electronic breaking stabilization. If I lose traction, this system automatically adjusts breaking and torque for each wheel. There’s very little chance of spinning out. In fact, I don’t know if I ever really have lost traction when driving it. And so, the complete lack of feedback gives me no prompt to drive more cautiously. (I think the dashboard makes a small ding, maybe?)
  • My car uses a classic automatic transmission. When I tax the engine, the shift points and their timing in my acceleration give me a clear indication of how much torque, and therefore how much tire grip, I’m experiencing. The Ascent uses a constant variable transmission which lacks definitive gears, so apart from the tachometer, I don’t feel the engine strain. Ergo, I’ll less inclined to let off the gas with the Ascent since I don’t know that I might be compromising the engine and vehicle control.

In short, my Accord gives me a very visceral driving experience, and through this greater connectedness, I have a greater respect for its power and, more importantly, a heightened fear of what might go wrong if I get too aggressive.

The Ascent gives me very little of this feedback. Much of the time, I only really feel the size and weight of the vehicle when trying to stop it from a high speed.

THIS is you

My conclusion is that maybe people aren’t intentionally driving worse, but instead it just seems that way because they’ve lost a material connection to the danger associated with piloting a motor vehicle, as a result of vehicle design seeking to enhance comfort and ease of use. Modern vehicles disconnect us from the potential consequences of driving.

But ultimately, no amount of safety feature enhancements will prevent all forms of the ultimate tactile driving experience: when your driving brings you to a sudden and complete standstill–violently. If there’s any PSA I’ll preach here at the end of my post, it’s just to remember that however disconnected you become from your driving experience, your body is still traveling at velocities that far exceed anything that evolution ever designed you for.

…And Toretto isn’t actually real. You can’t drive down the side of a dam, out-racing its collapse and ensuing tidal wave. Especially not in a KIA Pinchoff. (Also you’re a douche.)

–Simon

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Aire de Vita

Carbon monoxide is a fun little chemical. I think we’ve all been given the primer by our local fire departments when we were kids, or at the very least were taught that smoke is the main killer in a house fire. Stay low and GTFO. I like that. New motto, kids!

And as a basement-dweller with a 40-year old furnace, I was forward-thinking enough to install a CO detector. However, it turns out that symptoms can appear before air concentrations reach the alarm point. In my case, 24ppm (alarms are calibrated to sound at 30ppm). So the kid and I had a fun evening of nausea, fatigue, and headaches; but no alarm clued us in to the problem.

The mystery was solved with a visit from our preferred HVAC technicians, because at this time the furnace wasn’t running consistently and the fan wouldn’t shut off. The diagnosis was that the heat exchanger-that steel compartment that separates combustion gases from the breathable air-was cracked. Ergo, exhaust was leaking into living space, which triggered a failsafe that kept shutting off the gas and overriding the thermostat to continually circulate air to avoid toxic gas buildup. Win for ancient furnace engineering, I guess. I mean, I didn’t chemically asphyxiate. Huzzah!

So we needed a new furnace. But why stop there? The A/C was just as old, and a major energy sink. What we needed was a massive technological improvement!…within budget. The answer, of course, as with most things in life, was a spreadsheet.

Three companies may not have been the largest sample size, but it gave me a pretty good idea of what was out there. Here are my conclusions:

  1. Every company will offer you a system based on your usage of the property. Similar to how my own home’s former owner ripped everything of slight value from it before listing, so too do HVAC companies offer the most basic, inefficient, and cheap of systems which are shamelessly labeled as “for rental properties” or “if you need to install a new system to sell the house”. Because, fuck the next guy or the broke-ass renter. These base models aren’t offered by the sales folks once they know you’re not selling or renting, which, in their defense, the homeowner wouldn’t likely purchase for himself anyway.
  2. The quality of the components is not a linear price function. Every step up in price nets something much better. There’s a formula here somewhere. It certainly makes getting the high-end equipment easy to justify.
  3. Some of the companies will put more emphasis on the equipment, and others more on the guarantees and warranties. This is why I looked up all the model numbers after I got quotes. The manufacturers all include a standard 10 year warranty anyway, so the additional peace of mind comes from the installer’s warranty. And like getting an extended warranty on anything, this locks you in with the 2nd party and costs a lot, for a problem that probably won’t happen and could be fixed for less by someone else.

So what did I get? Why, the best equipment for the best price from the most reputable company for the standard manufacturer and installer warranties! I now have a variable speed A/C with a dual-stage furnace, with a 97% efficiency rating.

Granted it cost a few thousand more than a base model, and it’s uncertain how long it’ll take to recover that with reduced energy costs, but I sure am glad I did the research and avoided getting taken for an inflated price on inferior equipment with an unnecessary warranty.

Also, they threw in a UV sanitizer and electrostatic air purifier!

And while I won’t likely hook up my thermostat to the internet, or use its scheduling function anytime soon since we work from home, it’s pretty cool to have preset modes of temp ranges.

And no more CO poisoning, hopefully.

The future!

–Simon

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Vanity Search and a Dying Medium

February 23rd marked the 7 year anniversary of this blog, and while I admit that I don’t play the SEO game, I’ll note that it’s remained remarkably hidden for all that time. In fact, without some very pointed key words, I can’t locate it in a search engine. The quickest I was able to find acknowledgment that I exist on the internet was my LinkedIn profile, which was 14th in the search results list for my name (there’s a British banker and a film director who always take the spotlight).

Part of the reason for this shadowed existence I believe is due to me migrating to paid hosting. Ephemerality.net previously redirected to moorheadfamily.net, which is my own hosted domain. And if I search along those avenues, I can find a hit for my personal server there. #20 in the search engine in fact. The landing page is a simple menu I coded, intended to make an easy directory to my site’s main functions.

But there’s more to it than that. I used to always appear on page one, and that was when I had a lot less content.

The real reason I exist in obscurity? Indifference and obsolescence. The world simply just doesn’t care about most of what’s out there, especially if it’s not curated and fed into a standardized format. Gone are the days of old school blogging, superseded by social media. As a holdout (I started my first self-hosted blog on a repurposed G3 Powermac running SUSE Linux in 2007: intellectualnexus.net (prior to that I ran a blog on my iMac via Apache and gave out my IP address)), I can personally vouch for how difficult it is to discover other non-monetized personal blogs. They just don’t appear high up in search results. I can’t even get my parents and siblings to visit my blog. I’ve even sent people links to my site where I’ve posted a recipe – my own recipe – that they asked me for, but analytics never show that the post was ever accessed externally. People just won’t visit blogs, even for the content they want.

The upside is that I don’t have coworkers compiling dossiers of my content that they find offensive in order to get me fired (no really – I’ve been summoned to Human Resources for the most benign of complaints (something that mysteriously ceased once I became permanently remote)). The downside is that blogging seems pointless without an audience. (Hence this site’s mission statement.)

But blogs fill the niche between professional journalism and tweets. And when the tweets die a day later, never to be read again, what is left to chronicle our moment in time, honestly and devoid of bias (financial incentives)?

And so I lament.

–Simon