VW Beetle Fifth Wheel

For most of my life I've been a small car guy. I've had somewhat larger vehicles - my first car was a '77 Chevy Camaro, and I've had a couple of Toyota Pickups - but I've generally run toward the smaller, more economical and flexible arrangement of the compact hatchback. 

Flexible: Need more room for stuff? Fold the seats down. Got something long to carry?  Leave the hatch open. Got something that won't fit inside?  Put a roof rack on it. 

And: got something you don't want in it or on it? Get a trailer. 

This latter idea is not one that I think is universally shared surrounding small cars. They generally don't have a lot of torque for pulling, and usually don't have tow ratings provided by the manufacturer. So where does the idea come from?

I was considering this the other day and, unbidden, a memory arose of a segment I had seen years ago on the PBS car show Motorweek. The Internet, being a (sometimes) wonderful thing, found it after just a couple minutes of looking:

The Turkey Bacon Problem

The Turkey Bacon Problem, or TBP, is the phenomenon that occurs when on makes the mistake of trying to use something to replace something that it is not.

The TBP comes into play when one tries to plug a new, distinctly different item into the same role that a different item once played:

Turkey Bacon in the place of real bacon aside your scrambled eggs; Fat-free sour cream on your baked potato; Boca burgers in place of a Quarter Pounder.

Anyone who has tried these things has had the experience of them paling as they attempt to fill the role of their predecessors - it's just not the same. Honestly - show me a man who says he enjoys fat-free sour cream, and I'll show you a person who is lying to you... And to himself.

The obvious references here are to food, but the TPB shows up in many different walks of life and, I am convinced, is responsible for much of the unhappiness people express on the internet when they try new things, but then evaluate those new things harshly, expecting they will work in exactly the same way as some older version. Common examples might include expecting an e-reader to feel the same as a paper book, expecting to use an iPad in the same way as you would use a laptop or desktop computer, or expecting your favorite band to be the same after they take on a new lead singer.

I've made reference to this multiple times over the years, and my previous iteration of this site had an entry that explained it. That seems to have disappeared, however, so I've added a page to the main navigation of Applied Life so the references continue to work.

Of course you, dear reader, don't need to do anything with that. Instead, I recommend you make yourself some breakfast on this fine Sunday morning. And be sure to put some real bacon beside those fluffy scrambled eggs.

Sammy Was Not The Problem...

In its "for you" section Apple Music offers curated playlists, reportedly assembled by actual human beings, and offered up based upon your personal music preference profile.

Within the past couple of weeks Apple Music served up to me first an Intro to Van Halen playlist, and then a week or so later Van Halen: Best of the Sammy Hagar Years.

As one of a certain age and musical predilection might expect, listening to these two playlists reawakened in me deep memories of the musical animosity that the presence of Sammy Hagar as the frontman for Van Halen seemed to engender among veteran fans of the band.

Now - to be clear - I am not one of those veteran fans. I came to Van Halen largely from the other direction: I was (and am) a Sammy Hagar fan. In fairness, I was aware of Van Halen before the vocalist changeover, but they didn't get much by way of radio play in the rural Midwest of my adolescent years before 1984 came out, and the primary single released off of that album - Jump - certainly wasn't representative of the band's overall catalog.

So: I started to listen to Van Halen in the mid-1980's because it was the only way to get new material from Sammy Hagar.

For this reason, the frustration with "Van Hagar" was always rather mystifying to me. And, for the record, I wasn't alone. By the time he joined VH Sammy Hagar was already well established as a solo act, and was coming off of three of the best albums of his career to date - Standing Hampton, Three Lock Box, and VOA - and had probably seen more national radio play than Van Halen at that point (I recall hearing I'll Fall in Love Again and Surrender both on the radio); All of which is likely part of the reason all four of the Van Halen albums with Hagar on vocals sold multiple-platinum. Clearly other people liked the combination as well.

Still, after listening to track after track on these playlists (the work I do for you, dear reader) I think I might just get it.

But its not what you think. It's not the vocals - Hagar is different than David Lee Roth, to be sure, but he's arguably got more range and flexibility than DLR; he's a capable rock vocalist.

It's not the lyrics. Yes, most of the songwriting produced by Hagar-era Van Halen is about love, sex, or partying. But then again, so is virtually everything produced by the pre-Hagar, DLR-era VH. Sammy's earlier work, as well as his solo work since, has always included a much wider range of topic areas, including cars and driving, space exploration, the quality of heroes, and snake cults, among others. This narrowness of topic seems to be a signature feature of Van Halen as a band, and certainly doesn't reflect the additional influence of Hagar.

It can't be the bona fides. Hagar had been around and active almost exactly as long as Van Halen, first with Montrose and then on his own. He's been churning out guitar-based hard rock for decades. And he's been doing much of the guitar churning on his own - he's not in Eddie Van Halen's league (and few are), but he's a capable hard rock lead guitarist.

No - I think I hear the problem as I compare these tracks, and that problem isn't Sammy Hagar.

The problem is Eddie Van Halen.

Now, before you begin screaming obscenities and chuck your phone or tablet out the window, allow me a moment to explain.

The departure of DLR and arrival of Hagar coincides with another, more pivotal change in the character of the band:

Eddie's decision to largely set aside his guitar in favor of playing keyboards.

This makes a profound difference in the sound of the band - all you have to do is compare tracks before and after. For example, comparing Hot for Teacher from 1984 with Dreams from 5150:

The second sounds nothing like Van Halen. If I were looking for guitar heavy music like Hot for Teacher, tracks like Dreams and Why Can't This Be Love would be disappointing at best.

But that doesn't really sound like Sammy Hagar either. This does:

Eddie Van Halen's flirtation with keyboards began prior to the addition of Sammy Hagar, with the appearance of Jump on 1984. It was just the one song there, just a hint - or perhaps a harbinger - of what was to come.

The following albums - particularly 5150 and OU812 - are thick with keyboards, and comparatively light on guitar work. This is true to such a degree that, as I mentioned before, they really sound like they are by different bands.

This doesn't have to be the case. Other hard rock bands have incorporated keyboards without losing their core character - Rush in the 1980's being a prime example.

But Rush added keyboards to their instrumentation. Eddie appears to have chosen largely to replace his guitar work with his keyboards. He occasionally sets aside the keys for an entire song, but on those two albums in particular, it's more likely that the keyboards stop briefly, in favor of a few EVH guitar licks.

There are songs that include both keyboards and guitar together of course, but one assumes this puts the guitar in Sammy Hagar's hands. And, for the most part, the guitar work in those songs is fairly basic. I can imagine the veteran VH fans saying, at this moment, that this is because Hagar isn't the phenomenal guitarist that Eddie is.

They'd be right about that. EVH is a far better guitarist that Sammy Hagar. But Hagar is much better than the work on 5150 or OU812 would suggest - Listen to Heavy Metal (above) again if you don't believe me. He's holding back on those albums.

Which brings us to the other part of the Eddie Van Halen problem:

He's just not that good on keyboards.

Eddie Van Halen setting aside his guitar is the rock and roll equivalent of Michael Jordan quitting basketball to play baseball.

For the veteran fan, listening to an album like 5150 is experiencing the Turkey Bacon Problem (TBP) - the album cover says Van Halen, but it just doesn't sound right.

But it could have sounded much closer. Frankly, I suspect Eddie and the other band members knew he wasn't that good on keys and, whether intentionally or not, kept Hagar's guitar work basic to keep it from overshadowing the keyboards. And it would have - EVH is a much better guitarist than Sammy, but Sammy is much better on guitar than EVH is on keyboards.

And, after all, Eddie Van Halen is the one who's name is on the album cover.

(And yes, Alex too - anyone think that Alex Van Halen's name sells albums?)

Eventually they all seem to have realized the error of their ways. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge and Balance seem to be much more guitar-focused albums. This, even though Hagar was still with the band.

None of which is to say that any of this is to suggest that the veteran fans should reconsider their opinion of the band during this time, and certainly not to suggest they give it another listen.

But I'd suggest trading "Van Hagar" - which implies Sammy's presence is the causative factor - with a more accurate designation. Something like:

Edward Van Halen's Keyboard Training Sessions.

Biking Wayne Fitzgerell State Park

Occasionally work sends me out and about and, if I can, I will try to find some way to enjoy the place I've been sent in my off time. Ideally, that will take the form of a bike ride.

Wayne Fitzgerell State Park - which I'd never heard of - is located on the northern end of Rend Lake, a relatively large body of water about a half-hour south of Mount Vernon, Illinois. It's a small park, one of several that sit at the shores of Rend Lake. At least three of the parks have bike trails so I essentially picked the one that seemed to be the quickest to get to, given that I was riding at the end of the day and running out of daylight was a bit of a concern.

Though the park is not big, maps and directions within it were rather challenging to find. I ended up, after several minutes and a couple of wrong turns, first seeing the trail, and then passing a sign that said "bike trail". There doesn't appear to be any real trail head, per se; the trail map (in the picture) is more or less in the middle of the trail.

The surface was mostly crushed stone, and it was mostly fine, even for the narrow wheels of my road bike. There were a couple of spots that were a little soft, but they were brief.

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Enjoying this post? Check out our Cycling page for links to other cycling articles on Applied Life

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As one might expect of a trail located on a lake in a prairie, it was relatively flat, and so not terribly challenging. Still, the trail offered some delightful features - occasional views of Rend Lake interspersed with views of wetlands. One portion of the trail cuts through the woods in a winding, twisting fashion that was delightful; and it was a true woods path, in that one had to be watchful for branches, pine cones, etc, along the path.

And then there were the deer.

I saw a total of 13 white-tailed deer during my trip down the path - several of them juveniles still with their spots. I wouldn't typically keep count, but after the fourth sighting or so I became curious as to just how many there would turn out to be. Signs in the park, as well as information on the website, indicate that this is a hunting site, and one can see why.

It was a short trail, all told. Riding from the middle to each end and back put me at 8.76 miles, according to Cyclemeter. Or I assume that's the length of the trail. It just sort of stops at each end, without a clear indication that you've reached a terminal point.

Biking these trails doesn't appear to be a popular activity. Granted, I was there on a Wednesday evening, but it was the last third of August - prime summer. I saw only two other riders, and they were on the park roadway, not the trail. On the trail I was entirely alone.

Which, for me, was perfectly fine.

Had the trail entirely to myself.  

A Tale of Two Songs

Apple Music offered up a Billy Joel playlist last week, and Andy Ihnatko (@Ihnatko) posted a link to a New Yorker article about the artist himself a few days later.

While I will admit that I may have recently presented my own critique of a certain Billy Joel song that might be a Thing That Actually Sucks, the reality is that I grew up listening to his work, and I enjoy much of it a great deal.

I was reading the New Yorker article while cooking burgers out on the grill, and found myself telling my daughter about the article. She's not terribly familiar with his work, so I found myself singing a few lines of She's Always A Woman To Me to give her some reference. After giving the lyrics a listen she indicated that she thought she might like to hear more.

She's not one to just say what she thinks I want to hear (not sure where she gets that from), so today in the car I took her at her word, and we listened to the song. And then we talked about it - she observed that it played as if it were a romantic love piece, but the lyrics suggested differently...

On the way home we listened to it again, and having a second go through made me think of another song. So I said "Hey Siri, play Unsalted Butter by The Long Winters:

They are different songs, to be sure, by different artists. But the themes are very similar. Unsalted Butter is the song Billy Joel might have written if he were a more assertive person. She's Always a Woman presents a theme of a guy who is mystified, perplexed, and perhaps a little afraid of his partner. He's trying to understand her, trying to make sense of the relationship, and he's ultimately unable to see his way clear.

With Unsalted Butter we see a man who is also in a relationship in turmoil. But he sees the way things could go, and he's having none of it:

If you think you're gonna be here long, I'll miss you so much... ...when you're gone.

Similar situation. Different perspectives. Neither a traditional "love" song.

Love them both.

Things I Have Learned Because of Apple Music

• REO Speedwagon was formed in the late 1960's. And they're from Champaign IL.
• There is actually a band called Atomic Rooster
• I still really, really don't like The Rolling Stones
• I believe Neil Peart is a person who can pat his head and rub his tummy at the same time.
• In related news, I've learned that I really, really like Rush.
• there are a lot of British Prog Rock bands from the late 60's and early 70's I'd never heard of. But I want to know more about them.
• The Eagles have a lot of good stuff that isn't on either volume of greatest hits. None of it is from Long Road Out of Eden.
• It doesn't matter if you select no country artists when you set it up, it will still suggest an "introduction to Keith Urban" playlist.
• There is a reason that the handful of hit songs you hear by The Police are the only songs you ever hear by them ("deep cuts" playlists are not always a kindness).
• Did I mention that I really like Rush?
• Even though Apple can see your entire music collection they may suggest a playlist that is an introduction to an artist you are already passingly familiar with.
• He may be vain, but the song really is about him.
• Neko Case has material I hadn't yet heard, and it, like all of her stuff, is fundamentally awesome.

Changing The Nature of Work

This is sometimes my office - and my office staff... 

I am fortunate in that, for at least part of my time, I can work from home. But the real story here is that home is a 150 year old house in a location that many people would uncharitably describe as being in the middle of nowhere.

I grew up out here - this was my grandmother's house, and was built by my great-great-great grandfather. I grew up across the field, and spent a large percentage of my childhood in this very place. In the 1970's and 1980's of my childhood choosing a rural life meant compromise. Entertainment was four TV stations - the big three major networks out of Rockford, and channel 32 out of Chicago (which had the good cartoons) - pulled in on an antenna that stood taller than the house it was mounted against; and radio - really only one channel there for most of us: WLS, the 50,000 watt AM powerhouse that introduced me to the Eagles, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, and was home of Larry Lujack. They had a couple of movie theaters in LaSalle-Peru, but most of my early movie experience was at the drive-in in Earlville.

It also meant - and still means - being victim to the weather. During the winter of '79 we were stuck at home for many days in a row, and it was this that ultimately led my father to move us into town.

While I objected at the time, moving to town resulted in a a series of revelations. We got cable TV, and (even in a small town) stores and restaurants within an easy walk or bike ride. It's not hard to understand why people appreciate the convenience of living in groups - in villages, towns, and cities - though ultimately those locations do require sacrifices of their own.

What is different now about being in the middle of nowhere is that, while I still get snowed in from time to time, the Internet and portable tech mediates the rest of the limitations to a significant degree. The iPads mean that I can work anywhere I want, with a battery that lasts the entire day and a form factor that adapts to any location (no separate keyboard dictating the position I have to be in when working). And wireless internet - through LTE or through the line-of-sight radio internet we are lucky enough to have here - supports it by providing access to cloud services - Dropbox, iCloud, what have you. I have everything I need to do my work, and I don't have to be chained to a desk or an office to do it. I have a friend that refers to this as living in the future, And that seems about right.

Things That Actually Kinda Suck: Facebook

This post will likely come as no surprise to people who regularly spend time with me. It’s well known that I have a barely-tolerate/hate relationship with Facebook.

Now, I don’t want to come off here as if I’m comparing a social network to the apocalypse. That wouldn’t be fair. To the apocalypse.

Of course, the natural reaction to any conversation that begins this way would be to ask why one doesn’t simply stop using Facebook. The reality, though, is that Facebook has become, in many ways, something like a utility.

Yup - that’s right. Commonwealth Edison, Comcast, Facebook - all essentially the same thing.

I don’t think this is an exaggeration[1]. If I want electricity, I have to use the services provided by ComEd. It’s not like I can go over to Bob’s Electric Service(TM) down the street and start using his electricity instead.

While there are other social networks[2], the overwhelming majority of my family members and close friends are on Facebook, and it has become the defacto way to share pictures, family announcements, birthday and holiday greetings, etc, for a great many of us.

But in exchange for those connections Facebook treats us like the most passive-aggressive friend you’ve ever had:

“Oh - you don’t want the iOS app to automatically play videos? I’m sorry, I guess I thought you’d want to fully experience all of the links your friends so thoughtfully posted for you. I would have thought it was worth a little cellular data to experience the cat video your niece posted as soon as possible. My mistake - please follow these 73 steps to turn off that feature.”

Or:

“Charlie Jones has invited you to play Wisconsin Dairy Saga[3]. Okay, no, he really hasn’t, but Charlie’s playing it, and a real friend would join him to keep him company.”

Of course, one can add to this the fact that it’s apparently an active, open forum for two of the three topics of conversation that the great philosopher Linus warned us against. It’s essentially become the place that email forwards went to die. You know, if by “to die” one means “live on in perpetuity”.

But while some of the posts can be irritating, unlike in a zombie apocalypse show, the problem isn’t the people. It’s the company.

It’s like Mark Zuckerberg used his Facebook millions to purchase every manual on customer care and service, distributed them to his staff saying “read these closely and carefully; study every detail until you have them memorized forward and back. You must know it perfectly, so that we can successfully implement the exact opposite of everything they say.”

My personal dislike of Facebook is not new; rather, is is well aged, much like a nice, stinky cheese[4]. As such, it now sits in the background, waiting to be paired with a nice cracker or piece of sausage… (It is possible this wasn’t an ideal metaphor…)

Quite some time ago Facebook elected to separate out their Messenger service, removing it from the iOS Facebook app into its own, separate application. I’m sure that the company has its own, very good technical reasons for making this change, though I suspect they are secretly planning on giving every feature of the service its own application with the goal of actually having an entire page of your iPhone or iPad screen filled with nothing but Facebook.

I have resolutely resisted downloading that separate app - one Facebook icon per device is more than enough for me, and I figured if I held out long enough old MZ would surely see the error of his ways.

That, um, hasn’t happened as of yet.

Facebook, of course, left the messenger notification in the Facebook app, so it still tells you every time you have a message. But if you haven’t downloaded the separate application, it takes you to a window that tells you how foolish you have been, and urges you to get with the program immediately, if not sooner, lest your friends think you don’t like them any more or, perhaps, have fallen off the edge of the earth.

Having come to the conclusion that it’s possible that MZ isn’t suffering from my absence quite as much as I thought, I finally opted to download the app on my iPhone today.

Now, the app mostly works as advertised - and I’m sure I’m not telling virtually anyone reading this anything they don’t know, as besides myself, I think the only other people who haven’t downloaded are hermits living in Nepal. It gives direct access to the messages one has received thru Facebook, along with an interface familiar to anyone who has used any text-messaging style app.

But: Remember that passive-aggressive friend?

Literally every time I’ve opened the app, it gives me this message:

“You know, nice people want to know when others are trying to communicate with them. Don’t you want to be nice people? It’s nice to be nice to the nice.”

And the two choices accurately reflect your options - “Ok” or “Not Now” is the reality. There is no “Not Ever” or “Go Take a Long Walk Off a Short Pier” option, and there appears to be no way to turn this off in settings.

Ugh.

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1. Well, maybe a slight exaggeration.  ↩

2. My daughter periodically delights in telling me that people her age are on Instaphoto or Immedigram or something like that.  ↩

3. To my knowledge this isn’t actually a game on Facebook. Yet.  ↩

4. Its possible this characterization is unfair to nice stinky cheeses.  ↩

Roderick on the Line

ROTL is one of my favorite things. This podcast has been around for 162 episodes - over three years worth of material. It's been magnificent.

This is something that I typically recommended only to a select group of people. There are a number of hurdles to clear - you have to know about podcasts, know how to access them... And you have to be prepared to experience it.

This show is essentially 160+ of the best conversations you have ever had with this friends with whom you and they agree: there is no point to small talk.

John Roderick is a musician - former member of Harvey Danger, and lead singer and songwriter for The Long Winters. In more recent years he's been part of the ongoing geek revolution, touring with Jonathan Coulton.

But that's the tip of the iceberg. Roderick has lived a fascinating life. He's been a rock star. He's walked across Europe. He's struggled with drugs and alcohol. He's amazingly, intensely open and honest about these experiences - the good and the bad - in his music and his conversation.

Merlin Mann is the guy at the other end of the conversation. Merlin is linguistically quick - often frighteningly so - and always delighted to be at his end of the conversation. A self-described former productivity guru, Merlin does multiple podcasts each week. He appears to do this show because he loves talking with Roderick, and wants the world to have that opportunity as well.

I came by John Roderick by way of Merlin Mann. Years ago now he did a video podcast, an interview show called The Merlin Show. This was an outgrowth of his productivity website 43 Folders. It featured interviews with media and tech folk with a focus on their approach to getting things done. One episode focused on Roderick - sitting in, one presumes, Merlin's back yard. Roderick was so delightful that I wanted to know more, and I ended up buying - and loving - every Long Winters album as a result.

So why am I writing about this now?

As I mentioned, generally I'm selective about those to whom I recommend this show. Roderick is an excellent story teller, opinionated, and sometimes painfully open and honest.

And now he's running for political office. Specifically, he's running for Seattle City Council.

He's been talking about the campaign on the podcast. Let me be clear here: he has not been campaigning on the podcast. Far from it. He's been providing his usual open and honest perspective on his experience. Sometimes painfully honest.

If you've ever wondered what it is actually like to run for office - ever wanted to do more than simply consign every politician to the corrupt jackass category - the past half-dozen or so episodes of ROTL paint a very clear picture. The stresses, the struggles with advisors, with deciding whether to go negative or maintain the high road, the impact on family and personal life - it's all here, better than an Aaron Sorkin show because it's crisply, sharply real.

If anything I've said here remotely sparks your interest this show deserves your attention.

Apple Music

I’ve always loved music, and over the years the overwhelming majority of my listening time has been, by necessity, done in the car. Still, over the past decade my listening has become far more heavily weighted towards audiobooks and podcasts, and away from music.

Part of the difficulty is in discovery of new material. Terrestrial radio, with its ratio of something like 12 ads per each song has truly sucked for a very long time. I’ve never gotten into satellite radio - it’s always seemed a bit of a gimmick oriented towards selling higher end features on cars - and while I’ve enjoyed Pandora quite a bit, one has to take care to “like” the right songs on a given station, or your Jethro Tull station will soon be full of hip hop (which I like, but it’s not what I’m looking for when I click on the one-legged flautist). So, often, I just ended up listening to my own collection of music. That represents a fair amount of variety, but like a lot of people my age I stopped collecting new material in earnest more than a decade ago.

But in the past week I’ve listened to more music - and more unfamiliar music than I have in month prior. The reason: the release of the new Apple Music service on June 30, 2015.

There are several new features to Apple Music, most of which are detailed in many, many other locations. Beats Radio, Apple’s live, DJ operated music feed, has gotten a great deal of attention, at least in my Twitter feed. I gave it a try, but that lasted a grand total of about three minutes for me.

The feature I am loving is the For You area. Here, based upon what you both initially indicate are your artist presences, and upon the songs you “favorite” (with a heart), you are given both album and playlist recommendations. And these, so far, have been delightful. Playlists are themed along multiple different lines - some are mix of familiar material with completely unfamiliar artists or songs blended in for discovery: Rock Hits 1977 includes much of what you would expect (Carry on my Wayward Son and Paradise by the Dashboard Light are featured), but also includes a song by UFO, a relatively obscure British heavy metal band. For a Prog Rock fan like myself it offers up playlists such as The Best of British Prog 1973–1975, which is full of bands I’ve never heard of, like the Strawbs, and Caravan, and Nektar. I don’t love them all, to be sure, but I like a lot of them and I’m hearing things that I would never have encountered before.

The other type of playlist that I’m truly enjoying are the introduction to and deep cut playlists. I’ve played the Intro to Rush playlist several times - it’s given me an opportunity to listen to a healthy cross section of music by a band I’ve always been curious about, but unwilling to take the dive to purchase any given album, being unsure whether I’d enjoy it. It’s looking like I’m pretty much gonna dig some Rush.

One of the other features of Apple Music is the fact that you can save things that you like into your own library - including these playlists.

It’s not that there aren’t clunkers in the mix - Apple has access to my music library, so it should know that I don’t really require an Intro to Jethro Tull Playlist; and a foray into a deep cuts playlist on The Police has only shown me that I don’t really love The Police (though isn’t that why we explore, what we want to know?). But overall, Apple Music has me listening to far more music - and discovering far more new music - than I have in years.

Directions

We live in a pretty rural area, and we've been in the process of (slowly) restoring and upgrading a family home. This said, we have never been terribly traditional people.

One of the traditions of living in rural Illinois is the owning of some sort or kind of pickup truck. This isn't a tradition we've kept, as it isn't really consistent with the very mobile lifestyle we keep. But we do still need to periodically haul things.

To achieve that, our little cars (second generation Honda Fits) are pretty well equipped from the factory, but sometimes they need a little help. Up to this point we've achieved that by either using things like aftermarket roof racks or by borrowing a truck and/or trailer on the rare occasion we need to haul a larger volume of stuff. Still, part of our goal is to be self-sufficient. So I bought a trailer hitch for my car from Amazon and a trailer from Harbor Freight.

I bought them about three years ago. They haven't yet been installed or assembled. It's possible that my ideas for projects may not entirely align with my actual free time.

But this Fourth of July weekend I decided to move forward on it by starting on the process of putting together the trailer.

Now, I've interacted with a lot of products over the years for which "some assembly" was required. Still, was, perhaps, a greater adventure than I'd anticipated.

Harbor Freight appears to specialize in relatively low cost tools and other items, which is why, in part, we purchased the trailer from them (the other reason was that it folds in half, making for easier storage). Sometimes, though, you get what you pay for.

Here I am referring to the directions. First, I downloaded them online, to make them available on my iPad for quick reference which, you know, is kind of awesome. But that's where the awesome ends.

There were many, many parts for this trailer. They consist of several lengths of steel, all similar in size and composition, all painted the same color. In the directions they are referred to by name - e.g. "2B" - which would be great except the parts themselves are not marked in any way, shape, or form.

Truly, I would like to ask what the point is of giving the different parts different labels if there is, in fact, no corresponding label on the part?

Fortunately the pictures were fairly decent, and I do have a fair amount of experience with putting things together from the aforelinked Nordic furniture company, so I've been able to muddle my way through.

But honestly... Well... Ugh!

Drawing with Paper and Pencil

A comment I recently made on FaceBook about the lack of value of preserving stacks and stacks of personal books caused someone to to infer that I did not like to read. This isn’t that uncommon an occurrence, frankly. I made the distinction between reading, which I truly enjoy, and feeling an allegiance to the book[1] in the form of processed dead trees bound together with glue.

I realize that most of the time, given an option, I tend to lean towards the digital solution. This is true of music, it’s true of books of all stripes - digital comics are a godsend to this former collector - and it’s true of writing (this format being a prime example).

But I realized today that I should probably come clean and admit that there is an activity that I still use old school technology to accomplish: Drawing

There are a plethora of drawing apps for the iPhone and iPad. I have a couple of them myself[2], and I’ve used each of them several times. Still, as is often the case, when I sat down today to do a new drawing project, I considered them briefly, and then went to a pencil and paper (specifically graph paper, as you can see).

This isn’t because of any particular love for the materials involved. Just as I have no particular infatuation with the bound book, I don’t love the pencil, the paper, the eraser. What I love is the process of making the picture. The difference here is that the technical skills of digital drawing are significantly different than those involved in putting graphite down on paper. I learned to draw long ago, and those skills are a little like riding a bike - they stick with you. When I am wanting to produce a drawing I end up going with those existing skills rather than choosing to climb the hill of learning something new.

What I’m gaining with this decision is the ability to start quickly and produce quickly. But I’m losing the flexibility that digital drawing offers. With what I was working on today I realized partway through - probably 45 minutes into drawing - that I was drawing in too small a space. That meant I had to start over, with a larger drawing, to accomplish what I wanted. If I’d been working in one of the apps I’d have been able to make what I was working on already larger, and wouldn’t have had to start over. It would be going to far to say that I regretted the decision at that point, but I periodically considered whether I should switch over to the iPad (which is in the picture because I was using it to reference other materials).

At some point in the not-too-distant future it is likely that iOS devices[3] are going to reach the point where it will simply work better to draw directly on them. For me, at the moment, I haven’t yet built the new skill-set needed to go that direction.

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1. Our perspective of that form being the thing we call a “book” isn’t a universal. Collections of scrolls were once referred to as books, and as we move forward into the digital age, a book once again takes on a different meaning.  ↩

2. Sketchbook Pro and [Drawing Pad](Drawing Pad by Murtha Design Inc. https://appsto.re/us/K9Cwv.i). Sketchbook Pro is a high-end app with lots of tools and features. Drawing Pad is simpler and more oriented towards novice users. I use each of them according to what I need to accomplish with respect to the task I’m doing.  ↩

3. Yes, I’m being very specific here. I have no confidence that Android devices will reach that capability any time soon, and I see little joy in the Microsoft camp either. I am unabashedly pro-Apple here, but this isn’t a bias. In my experience the Apple option usually just works better.  ↩

Things that Actually Kinda Suck: Just the Way You Are

One of the things that one discovers when one has been trained to look at the world with an objective, skeptical eye is that there are things out there in that world that just aren't as wonderful as they might have originally seemed. Things that we believed were great that, once placed under skeptical scrutiny, actually kind of suck.

Billy Joel is a an immensely successful musician and recording artist. Among his top hits is the song Just the Way You Are

This song was a top ten hit, and got Grammy Awards for best record and best song, according to Wikipedia. I was about six years old when the song was first released and, as such, it has stood as a paragon of the romantic pop ballad for essentially my entire life. It is beloved by millions - if you ever go to a Billy Joel concert, you can hear the entire audience singing along with it. Lovers swoon when one sings it to the other, as happened on many a dance floor in my 1980's adolescence, and in many a karaoke bar.

This is because they've never examined the lyrics of the song they are singing. Just for fun, let's do that now (fair warning here - if you love this song and want to continue to do so, unexamined, stop here. I won't think any less of you. Really[^1]).

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Don't go changing, to try and please me You never let me down before

We seem to start out good here - a message of unconditional acceptance and regard that would make Carl Rogers proud.

Or is it? "You never let me down before"... Is this in response to some slight?

Or is the word "before" meant to imply that it hasn't happened yet? Am I reading too much into this too soon? Let's explore a little further.

Don't imagine you're too familiar And I don't see you anymore

Why would she be imagining this? Is she imagining it? Clearly this has come up as a point of discussion, at least, if not one of argument.

I wouldn't leave you in times of trouble We never could have come this far

We've had some pretty shitty times, haven't we Baby? But we are still here even though it's been awful...

I took the good times, I'll take the bad times I'll take you just the way you are

And there's the key to the song - I'll take you just the way you are. But the line that precedes it clearly suggests that all the happiness is a thing of the past: "I took the good times" - past tense - remember those good times we had, back when?; followed by "I'll take the bad times" - future tense - cuz that's what seems to be coming along.

Which means that taking you "just the way you are" is taking you in the bad times. Which is all we are going to have going forward, apparently.

Don't go trying some new fashion Don't change the color of your hair You always have my unspoken passion Although I might not seem to care

Even though I ignore you most of the time, you should just assume that I love you deeply and passionately. The reality here is that, aside from writing this song - which he clearly hopes will stand in for all of the relationship heavy lifting that he isn't prepared to do - he would really prefer it if any and all affection or attention could just be taken as a given.

And going back to the beginning - she's clearly not imagining that he doesn't see her any more. He's admitting it here outright, though he'd clearly like her to think otherwise.

Clearly this verse is in the running for the douchiest part of the song, in neck and neck with the next:

I don't want clever conversation I never want to work that hard I just want someone that I can talk to I want you just the way you are.

Here we have the direct implication that his sweetie really isn't very smart. But, you know, that's okay, because talking to smart people is a more challenging undertaking than he wants to manage.

Implicit in that is the suggestion that he could manage it, but he'd rather not. So, you know, that's why he keeps her around.

I need to know that you will always be The same old someone that I knew What will it take till you believe in me The way that I believe in you.

Here one wants to suggest that Billy go back and read the first two-thirds of his own f*%king lyrics if he is really having trouble understanding why it is that she's having trouble believing in him. And, given his descriptions of her here, one wonders what "believing in" him in the same way as he "believes in" her would look like.

I said I love you and that's forever

No, no it wasn't. This was written for his first wife, whom he later divorced. Now, if it were not for the massive douchebaggery presented in the prior lines, I'd be tempted to give this one a pass. After all, the world of love songs is filled with declarations of "forever" and "always", so why shouldn't this song be forgiven as well?

But he's such a dick prior to this point I just can't see letting it go.

And this I promise from the heart I could not love you any better

I think the common - and perhaps intended - interpretation of this line is that he is so filled with love for her that there's simply no more that he could generate. Still, everything prior to this point is such a melange of passive-aggressive spite that it seems impossible this isn't meant that way as well. "I could not love you any better" is to say "I have exactly this much love for you, and given that you are kind of a dummy that I really just prefer to ignore most of the time, that's all you are gonna get".

It also implies that he has absolutely no intention of putting any additional effort into this relationship - what she's getting now is what she's gonna get.

I love you just the way you are.

Really?

In the end, this song is essentially a passive-aggressive finger in the eye of a person for whom it's written. One wonders if that was intentional, or if Billy Joel was unable to see the reality of the lyrics that he composed. Both possibilities are fascinating in their own right. It's also interesting that this song was written for and about the same person as the song She's Always a Woman, which is also, shall we say, a less than flattering depiction.

If we're going to dig into history, one might also note that despite the declaration that he loved her just the way she was, he later dated Elle Macpherson and then married Christie Brinkley, whom he later still left and then married a woman 32 years his junior. All of which suggests that he will love you just the way you as long as you are young and incredibly attractive.

But perhaps all of that is unfair - the art is not the artist, after all. Once it's released to the world it becomes what it is for each person who experiences it. And besides, the lyrics are still a passive-aggressive feast of awful on their own.

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[^1]: Okay, I might.

I Don't Watch Sports

As a rule, this is true: I don't watch sports.

This has, as you might imagine, come up many times across the course of my life. Usually in a form something like this:

Them: "Did you see what happened in the game last night?”

Me: "No"

T: "You know, where [so and so] did [something]

M: "No"

T: "But surely you..."

M: "No"

It becomes awkward - well, more awkward - after that.

There is an assumption, across a large percentage of our society, that I (and everyone else) will have been interested in, and involved in, whatever the current game is - football, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc.

I'm not.

I have had the opportunity to be exposed to sports as a spectator on multiple opportunities over the years. I have attended professional baseball games (been to Wrigley multiple times), hockey games (Blackhawks games as well as a couple of Rockford Ice Hogs games). I've sat in the stands for multiple other sporting events - high school football, youth wrestling, competitive gymnastics...

I don't revel in watching other people engage in sports.

In trying to understand this about myself - it being a somewhat atypical perspective - I've learned that there are others who have a similar perspective. Among them the eminently delightful John Hodgman:

And watching millionaires who have no loyalty to you or the city you live in hit balls with sticks for millions of dollars. What could be more comforting? Why isn’t there a ticker-tape parade for the freelance magazine writers? Where’s the ticker-tape parade for the guy whose movie review you read in the alt-weekly every week, and who lives down the block from you, and who gets drunk in the same bar as you, and, like you, will never go anywhere in his life? That guy gives you comfort as much as the millionaire who hits the ball with a stick or kicks it.

So as I say, I’m not against it, it’s just the pervasiveness and the absolute unquestioned sense of its importance that it has about itself that drives me into a kind of nerd rage, as you can tell. It emulates the kind of annoying self-confidence of the jock in general. Like, “Well, of course you love me. I am briefly the most popular person in high school because I am strong, and I was born later in the year than you, so I’m bigger than you and better at the sport than you. Of course I am a good human being. You’re the one who has to justify yourself, nerd. Yes, in four years I will be graduated from high school and the likelihood that I will become a professional athlete is close to nil, and I will go through a huge crisis of identity as I try to define who I am in a world that no longer cares about my sagging body, which is how I’ve defined myself for my whole life. But you, nerd, who’s studying something that you’re passionate about and care about, and that you’re going to do for the rest of your life, you’re the one who has to explain why the fuck you’re at this party.”

When Hodgman uttered these words - back in 2009 - there were others - notably "Suss" - who tried to make an effort to understand this perspective, observing:

The teen years seems to be the period in one's life during which individuals conclude whether or not they are sports fans. The same goes for people who realize they're gay. They stay isolated for quite some time, spout some masculine epithets at the right moments, and when they feel comfortable, suddenly they shout from the heavens: "I am … not a sports fan!"

This all seems a reasonable effort, except for the fact that it does not work as a one-size-fits-all solution.

I bike - a lot. I hike. I participate in martial arts. I am more than happy to engage, in fact, in a variety of sporting activities. What I have no interest in is watching other people do it.

There are exceptions to this rule. They primarily center around sports that I have personally engaged in. For example, I enjoy watching others engage in various martial activities - taekwondo, wrestling, boxing, or mixed martial arts. But in these events I don't identify with any abstract team - I'm just interested in watching individuals do something I enjoy exceptionally well. And I've always enjoyed rooting for people I know personally to succeed - my daughter, my teammates, my friends.

But I could not possibly care less about the actions and events of professional athletes whom I do not know, and to whom I owe absolutely no allegiance. And this, ultimately, is why I don't watch sports.

Different Medium, Different Storylines

So I was getting my locks shorn yesterday, and Paula, my hairdresser, asks if I've seen Avengers: Age of Ultron yet.

Now, first, let me just say how irretrievably cool it is to have a hairdresser who is interested in stuff like The Avengers. It's a good time to be a geek.

As she snipped and we talked, the conversation got off on how the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies vary from the original comics on which they are based. The storylines are similar, of course, but there are key differences between both the characters and the events that occur.

This isn't true just of the MCU, though. Fans of The Walking Dead who watch both the TV Show and read the comic series know that the show has strayed significantly from the books. Game of Thrones on HBO has not only varied the storyline, but they are rapidly moving into a position in the story that is past the end of the last completed book in the series. Often these changes are for reasons of economy of storytelling - the GOT books have a staggering array of characters to keep track of, for example, and the TV series is arguably better (and certainly easier to track) for the decisions made in condensing some characters together.

The comics and fantasy fan-world being what it is, I'm quite sure there are those out there who find the variations from the "original" source material well nigh offensive. There was probably a time in my life when I would have been among them.

I feel very differently about it now. In general, I find that I appreciate and prefer it when the new version varies from the old. This introduces, into what is otherwise familiar material, an important factor: surprise.

I love that I don't know, despite my reading and re-reading The Walking Dead comics series, what is going to happen to Rick and the rest of the crew over the next season, or even the next episode. What's more, I find that I enjoy thinking about the decisions the TV writers have made - parsing through why this character lived longer, that one died sooner, and the other wasn't ever introduced. In many ways it's like the television version is the story as it occurs in an alternate universe.

These variations also mean that, in these cases where I've really enjoyed the original story, really gotten into the lives and the world that was created, I now get more of that without simply having to tread over the exact same material. It's a real bonus - watching the show or movie isn't simply an exercise in finding fault with how the new version screwed up.

I'm sure there are still true-believers out there who will disagree with me, and that's fine. They can stick to their sacred texts. I'm going to enjoy my new editions.

The Wright Brothers

This past week I finished listening to the biography on the Wright Brothers by David McCullough. To be honest, I entered this book with no special interest in the Wright Brothers or their story. I bought the book because it was by David McCullough[1], and because I needed to spend some credits on Audible before I lost them.

My personal mental image of the Wright Brothers has always been that of simple bicycle merchants who took up a hobby and ended up inventing a very basic and rudimentary - albeit the first - flying machine.

I had no idea.

Obviously and understandably the overwhelming majority of what the book focused on was their development of powered flight - and the story it told in this regard was excellent. I learned a great deal about how that happened, the innovations in engineering and understanding required to achieve it, and the struggles along the way. But as a bike guy, the book also left me interested in learning more about the bikes.

They were not simple bicycle merchants, they were bicycle builders. Builders in an era in which the bicycle was really coming of age - moving away from the ridiculous penny farthing designs into something very much like what we ride today.

I wanted to find pictures of their bicycles and learn more about their construction. The book mentions two models designed and built by the Wrights - the Van Cleve and the St. Clair. A very few examples of their bikes are still known to exist - one of them is at The Smithsonian National Air and Space museum, and can be seen in pictures here at Bikerumors.com, and the site Wright-Brothers.org maintains a page specifically about the bicycles, including photographs and old ads for both bicycles, and providing information on their construction.

What is striking about both models is how utterly modern these 100 year-old-plus bicycles appear. The Wright’s innovated in bike design ahead of their work in aviation. They invented a self-oiling hub - a vital item give the mostly unpaved and hence dusty streets and roads of the day. They also developed the notion of threading pedals to their posts with threads going to the right on one side (which was standard) and to the left on the other so that side wouldn’t unscrew and fall off. This was, apparently, a common problem with bikes at the time - you’d just be riding along, and the act of pedaling would cause one of your pedals to loosen, and ultimately just fall off.

What I love about this solution - threading it backwards - is that it seems so very much of a piece with what I learned from the biography about their approach to flight. It is the type of thing that, in retrospect, seems a very simple solution. But it clearly took an elegant perspective to be able to step back from what everyone was already doing, and find a different way of thinking about it in order to solve the problem.

I can heartily and happily recommend The Wright Brothers biography - it was an excellent listen from Audible, and I’m sure it would be an excellent read on your iPad or Kindle (as well as printed on pieces of the processed corpses of trees, if one wants to live that way) as well.

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1. everything I’ve read (or listened to) by David McCullough - The John Adams Biography, The Truman Biography, 1776 - has frankly been so excellent that even if it’s not about a subject I thought I was interested in (Truman was not high on my list) I will go ahead and give it a try anyway. I’ve yet to be disappointed.  ↩

Digital Life and Hard Drives

Lots of dead soldiers in house at the moment, preparing for their metaphorical trip to Arlington Cemetary... 

There is a saying:

There are two types of hard drives: Those that have failed, and those that will fail.

I'm not sure where I first heard that, but it is, in my experience, undeniably true.

We live a digital life - in my work we try to get as close as we can to having a paperless office, and in personal life we long ago moved towards having our entertainment options - books, movies, etc - in an electronic format. And for the most part this is wonderful. Anything you want to watch or read right at hand at any time.

It's wonderful, except when it's not.

The Achilles' Heel in the digital system is the hard drive. These devices hold tons of information, and when they are working properly it's great. But when they fail it can be a major pain in the posterior.

I write this now because I am acutely feeling that sharp, stabbing pain in my buttocks.

To be clear, the pain I am feeling is largely of my own making. When you have your media in a digital format it's incumbent upon you to have backups. And backups I do have. My system uses an old Mac Mini (my first Mac computer, in fact) running iTunes as a server for music, movies, and TV shows. This is, by modern standards, rather an old-fashioned setup. Now that there are a multitude of streaming media services in many cases all one needs is a reliable internet connection and one can forego the fiddling with drives and devices that is involved in approach. However, we have chosen to live in the middle of nowhere, which makes it far more important to have a local version of the media available. And backed up. And did I mention that I do have backups?

What I am struggling with this fine Sunday morning is what happens when the backup also fails. Hours of video is showing itself available - tantalizingly available - on a hard drive that is about to fail. But it's all a lie. Each attempt to copy one item or the next meets with an error message, the hard drive equivalent of that kid who would offer you a lick of his ice cream and then jerk it away giggling and shouting "psych".

I hate that kid.

This happens when one ignores the awful sound that the hard drive has been making for the past few days (or maybe weeks) because one knows the process of replacing it will be a tedious one. So, instead I've traded tedium for new and interesting problems.

In a way it's a bit of a blessing. I've been using this setup for nearly a decade now, and as a result am left with some legacy items that made sense at one time, but no longer really do[^1].

Fortunately I had ordered new hard drives when the primary drive had failed, so we do have a platform upon which to rebuild. I was delighted to find that Other World Computing still sells the NewerTech Mini Classic - a combination Hard Drive and USB Hub purposely designed to stack under and visually match the original Mac Mini. I've always thought these were cool items and, at this point, they are price-competitive with other external hard drives.

So now begins a process of listing and vetting all of the video that used to be readily available to determine which items are worth seeking out and downloading to have readily available. It makes one think about what makes a movie or show something you always want to have available. No Country for Old Men is undeniably an excellent film, but like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List it reflects a world and time that you (or, at least we) don't want to revisit regularly. We'd much rather spend our time with John McLane or Doctor Jones. And LB has already indicated that she no longer feels any need to have any iteration of the High School Musical franchise at her beck and call.

In the end this likely sounds like a lot of work, and it is. On the rare occasion that people ask I don't recommend setting up a media server in the home - it definitely requires that someone lives in the house that is willing and able to provide tech support. Still, this is the first I've needed to do this type of intervention in over five years - not a bad trade off against the enjoyment and convenience we've had in-between.

[^1]: Mostly this involves music - at one point in time the media server was the central storage hub for all of the music everyone in our little family listened to. Now, between iTunes Match and Pandora virtually everything we want to listen to is readily available somewhere, and as a result we just had old music hanging there, occupying space.

Upgrading to Worse

I'm no fan of doing my taxes, but I've long found that process to be made significantly less painful using Turbo Tax. I've used the software most of the years I've done taxes probably since the late 1990's, originally on whatever desktop or laptop I had at the time; since 2011 I've been using Turbo Tax on my iPad. 

While I've always found the software to be pretty decent (something that can't always be said about Intuit's products), there was something special about doing it on the iPad. It was clear that they'd thought thru the interface and optimized it for touch - it was no half-assed desktop port. In addition, anyone who does their own taxes knows that it involves shuffling a lot of documents back and forth. This is easier, somehow, when the device you are interacting with isn't chained to a desk. Plus it made it easier to use the desktop computer for reference (for scanned receipts, spreadsheets, and the like).

So - while I don't love doing my taxes, I do enjoy interacting with well designed software, and this took the sting out of having to sit down and interact with my W-2's. I opened up the App Store on my iPad, did a search for the Turbo Tax app, and downloaded so I could get started. 

It was immediately clear that things were different. 

First, it was locked in portrait orientation. I had hoped that this was just for initially opening the program up, after which it would move to allowing landscape, but alas, no; Portrait until the cows came home (which they never did  - I don't have any cows). Data entry on the iPad's portrait keyboard is something significantly less than stellar. 

The first thing it asked for - in portrait orientation - was a login. Prior versions of this app have always asked for the password from the previous year, after which it then imports information from the prior year's app. This significantly streamlines data entry for information that doesn't often change - home address, names and identifying information for family members, etc. 

This year it asked for my username and password. This was somewhat confusing, as my records don't show a username, and when I looked at last year's app, there's not even a place to enter such a thing. So I made a couple of educated guesses - which failed - before shamefully clicking the link admitting that I'd forgotten my username and/or password. 

Except that I hadn't. 

Instead of using the information from the prior year, it took me to Intuit's website to make an account - a new account. 

The splash screen that the app shows when it opens up talks about doing your taxes on any of your devices, with generic pictures of a tablet, a laptop, etc, standing side by side in supposed harmony. This was the harbinger of the craptastic experience that followed. It quickly became clear that what Intuit had done this year was to ditch their entire prior software model and essentially make the iPad app (and, one assumes, all of the other versions of the app as well) a front end for their website. This would be fine, I suppose, if it worked well. 

It does not. 

With this new approach, one first learns that the app will not be accessing data from prior years. All of your demographic information and vital statistics have to be re-entered. In portrait orientation. This significantly extends the time that one spends doing the lovely activity of preparing one's taxes, and the suck did not end there. 

Because it is now just a front end for the website, the app apparently keeps very little information actually on the device. This means that, when one's internet connection gets hinky, or if Intuit's website is having problems, the app simply stops working. No more data entry, no more tax advice, no more nothing. For me this happened a few times through the process, most notably at the end when I was about ready to submit, at which point it told me Intuit's website was unavailable (but their engineers were aware and "hard at work" solving the problem). Heaven help you if you are doing your taxes on April 15 using this app and Comcast experiences an outage. 

And then we get to this:

No - I most certainly do not want to leave the app and go to your crappy browser, but since I need to file my taxes you've got me by the short hairs.  

Here's a hint to Intuit, and to all other app developers:  the moment your app requires me to leave the software and go to a web browser to do *anything* it has failed. This is a clear indication that you've half-assed your product.

As a bonus, I also use Mint.Com to keep track of my accounts. I actually moved to Mint to get away from the suck that Quicken had become several years ago, only to have Intuit then buy Mint. What I soon discovered was that Intuit had decided I also wanted to change my password for Mint when I created the account to do my taxes (umm - no, I did not). 

None of this would be so painful if the prior versions of the software had not been so very much better. Using this god-awful product this year was like having years of mornings where scrambled eggs and bacon are there for breakfast, and then suddenly walking in and being handed a single piece of dry white toast. 

Not that I'm bitter. 

 

I wrote this post. What you read next will astonish you. Or not.

The Internet, and especially FaceBook, has become overrun with a plague of titles for videos and articles that are significantly more dramatic than the material to which they lead. 

The most recent version of this I've encountered:

Video:  She pours out a gallon of vinegar into her toilet. When she shows why? I ran to try it myself

(Notice - no link to this)

First:  No. No you did not watch this video, drop everything, gather up a gallon of vinegar, and immediately pour it down your toilet. I simply do not believe that happened. 

Nor did your jaw drop when you watched that other video about that thing. And yes, despite how astonishing your title tried to tell me it was, I *did* believe what happened next when I watched it. 

*If* I watched it. Which I probably did not. 

Titles like this almost invariably make me not only *not* want to watch the video or read the article, but they also make me want to delete the FaceBook app from my devices and start a petition to have Mark Zuckerburg arrested and tried for crimes against humanity (see - there's my own little bit of overblown drama there). 

Incidentally, I asked MLW to check out the video in question (it would be against my principles to follow the link myself, but it's okay, apparently, if I have someone else do it for me). I learned the following things:

- There is no "she" in the video.  The person in the video is a dude. 

- *He* doesn't use anything close to a gallon of vinegar. Maybe a cup. 

- At no point did I feel the urge to run and try it myself. 

So - you know - not only is the title irritating, it's factually inaccurate and, essentially a tease followed by a significant letdown.  

It is so frustrating when the Internet is wrong. 

Jumbl Bluetooth Audio Receiver

The Jumbl with a pair of non-fancy big-box store headphones.  

It's no secret that I love biking, and one of the things I invariably do when I am riding my bike is listen to either audiobooks or podcasts. I made my way through huge swaths of Game of Thrones while riding my bike, and other shows like The Incomparable and Roderick on the Line have been my frequent companions as well.

I also enjoy music, but the upside to audiobooks and podcasts is that they are, generally speaking, not in stereo. I can listen to them in one ear. Since I'm often riding on public roads, with traffic, I prefer to keep at least one ear open to better detect happenings in my surroundings.

To accomplish this I have mostly been using the Jawbone bluetooth earpiece that I also have for hands-free use in the car. This setup works, but it has a couple of downsides. The first is that I have to wear the Jawbone over my left ear. The earpiece is shaped so that it sits inside the cavity of the ear, with a rubber spring that presses to hold it on the ear's surface. My right ear was cauliflowered during my senior year of high school wrestling, and there is simply no way to get it to fit. It's my left ear that faces the road when I ride, so I'd really rather have that one free.

The second is that the Jawbone is a rather expensive item and, while it does a reasonable job of staying in the ear while driving and walking, it does not appear to be up to the task when riding over rough roads on an unsuspended road bike. I've dropped it out of my ear at least once when riding down a twisting river drive in a park, and I expected never to see it again (I got lucky).

There are other options, of course. There are a variety of bluetooth headphones geared towards athletic activities. However, most of these seem to be oriented, still, towards having both ears filled. In addition, many of them are in the same price range as the Jawbone, and I struggle with the idea of dropping that kind of coin on something that it just seems I'm likely to break (I'm good at breaking things). I could also keep my phone, which is the device from which I'm listening, on my person and use standard earbuds, but I prefer to have the phone mounted on the handlebars so I can use Cyclemeter to see how fast and far I'm going.

Yes, I'm fussy and I want to have it all.

Enter Jumbl.

I've been looking for this type of device for a long time. I've had trouble explaining it to my immediate family members in any fashion that results in any kind of response other than "huh", but let me try again here:

This device is a Bluetooth receiver. It pairs with your phone (or other device) just like an earpiece or set of Bluetooth headphones. This allows you to plug your own standard, wired headphones - any standard headphones, including the $5 specials you picked up at the big-box department store - into the device to receive the audio from your phone.

These have existed for a while in larger and/or different forms - Logitech makes a version that can be used to plug into older stereo systems and radios that have either a headphone jack or an auxiliary input, for example. This is an awesome way to take your older, nice audio equipment that you invested in back in the day and ensure that it is not obsoleted by your new electronica - with these the music on your phone can be quickly and easily picked up by the stereo system you painstakingly assembled in the 1990's (or is that just me? I suspect it is not).

The Jumbl is a much smaller version of the same thing, with a battery. It clips to your clothing and lets you work hands-free but with your own cheapie headphones (or your incredibly expensive Beats, if that's what you prefer). With it being directly attached to your clothing its a lot more secure than most Bluetooth headphones and earpieces would be. Besides that, it's much less expensive than most Bluetooth headphones and earpieces, so I'll feel a lot less upset if (when) I lose it on a ride. And, since it's just using standard headphones, I can use in-ear earbuds with just one in my Jawbone-unfriendly right ear, leaving my left open to road sounds.

I actually bought the Jumbl back in January, and I've used it several times when working around the house, for example, and in the car to try it out. This past week, however, was my first opportunity to give it a good try out on the bike, riding on that same river drive upon which I'd lost the Jawbone.

It worked exceptionally well. It pairs easily, and provides good, clear sound quality. I was able to clip it to the band on my pants and run the cord up inside my shirt to keep everything secured. In essence, it functioned exactly like I wanted it to.

The device itself has controls on it - fast forward, rewind, volume, and a nice big button in the center for play/pause - and these all work well. If your headphones have audio controls on them - like the standard Apple headphones, as well as a lot of aftermarket items - they won't work with this. You'll have to use the controls on the device instead.

The Jumbl also has its own microphone, and can be used to take phone calls, operate Siri (or OkGoogle, I suppose - it is platform agnostic). The trick is that it appears to only use its own microphone, not the microphone in your headphones, so to use it this way the Jumbl has to be clipped somewhere up near your face. I've tried this out just a bit to see how it works, and it seems to be fine - a bit more by way of requests for repetition by the people on the other end of the call than with my Jawbone, but then it cost considerably less as well.

I final note here - this device is not limited to headphones - it will plug into anything using a standard 1/8” audio jack. This means that, using a patch cord it can do the same thing as the Logitech Bluetooth receiver above, or even plug into the auxiliary jack in your car stereo. With the latter approach it can take the standard stereo in any car with an aux port and give it Bluetooth capability (for audio - music, audiobooks and podcasts, GPS Directions - at least).

So - for the moment, it seems pretty cool. Now I'll just need to see how well it holds up to regular use. And, of course, how long it takes me to either break it or lose it.

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An additional note here - since I purchased this device it appears that a new version has come out with two notable improvements: Bluetooth 4.0 (mine is 2.1) which allows for multiple device connections at once; and a micro usb charger. The charger the older version comes with is a proprietary design that looks like something that came with an old Nokia phone. With the new charging port, which is a standard design, you can pick up a replacement charging cable pretty much anywhere. If you are anything like me, you already have a couple of extras in your drawer-O'-technology.

It appears Amazon may be getting more of my money (though I'm pretty sure they have most of it already)...

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An additional, additional note here: The items I write about here are things I have purchased myself, not promotional items I've received from the companies. This is not because of my high journalistic standards, mind you - it's just that no one sends me anything to review.