Tag: miscellaneous

And Now for Something Completely Different

KevinLeave a comment

Haven’t posted in a week, and now I’m going to rant about a crappy product.

I bought a Logitech Harmony One universal remote control back in March from Amazon.  Somehow, one of my grandkids broke it earlier this week.  Not a mark on the casing, but the LCD screen is broken.  I contacted Logitech’s Customer abuse Service department via email, and followed their instructions to the letter, going so far as to take a picture of the display and attaching it to an email for their study:

Here’s their response:

Dear Kevin,

Thank you for contacting Logitech Customer Care.

I understand that it can be frustrating when the screen on your Harmony remote is damaged. I am glad to have something to offer you.

Thank you for providing the photo of your remote. Unfortunately, this does appear to be physical damage to the screen, which is not covered by the hardware warranty. Also, Logitech do not provide repairs.

However, as an existing Logitech Harmony customer whose remote is experiencing a hardware issue that is not covered, you are eligible for a 50% discount** on a brand new Harmony remote from our online store.

If you are interested in this offer, please let me know and I will issue you a promo code that can be used on Logitech.com.

** Valid only for a new Harmony remote. The code is not valid for refurbished units, sale prices, bundles or any other Logitech products, and will not apply to taxes or shipping costs. Valid for 30 days, for a single use. It will not work if you add anything else to your shopping cart, and it will become invalid if you choose one remote, apply the code, then change your mind and go back to choose a different remote.

Thank you once again for contacting Logitech Customer Care.

Here’s my response:

Let me see if I understand this offer.

My LCD display is, obviously, broken.  However, there is no damage to the touchscreen nor to the opaque portion of the remote housing indicating how the LCD screen was broken.  This however, is NOT covered under warranty, nor does Logitech offer repair of this remote at any price. 

The price I paid for this remote through Amazon.com back in March was $167.52 –  no small amount for a remote control.  You offer me 50% off a NEW unit, but only if I purchase through your online support center – where the list price is $199.99 (plus freight).

So you want me to pay an additional $100+ for another apparently over-delicate, irrepairable piece of crap with a useless warranty?  This one lasted just over three months.  I don’t think I want to drop $100 four times a year, thank you very much. 

Perusing the one-star reviews at Amazon I discover that mine is by far not the only unit to suffer a similar fate.  I think you need to look at redesigning the mounting of the LCD panel so that it can take some shock.  My review of your product will be going up at Amazon shortly, and also at my blog.

Which I’ve just done.

Strongly recommend against the Logitech Harmony One.

Anybody got a suggestion for a replacement?

Unpaid Promotional

KevinLeave a comment

Well, it came with a holster, so perhaps unpaid is a bit of a stretch, but . . .

A bit over a month ago, Dennis of Dragon Leatherworks offered to send me a sample of his wares; in my case, a Talon holster for the 1911.  All he wanted from me in return was a review.  To quote:

I am offering the holster with the full understanding that if you find it to be junk, you’ll say so. I’m not offering a product in return for a good review….I’m offering it for an *honest* review.

Having heard good things from other bloggers such as Weerd, Robb, Jay and Breda, I agreed, and my example showed up on June 2.

First impressions: It’s very well made, with thick, stiff leather, uniform stitching, and a beautiful finish. Mine is burgundy with the “black burst”.  My first-gen Kimber Classic Stainless fit it tightly, and the trigger is completely covered by the holster.  In fact, my Kimber fit it a bit too tightly.  Some time back I gave it a two-tone finish by having the slide Gunkoted black.  The combination of the unfinished interior of the outer panel of leather, tight fit, and Gunkote made for very positive retention.  Even after following Dennis’ break-in instructions, two weeks later the holster still wanted to hold with a death-grip.

Dennis says that his holsters need to absorb some moisture to loosen up a bit, but this is Arizona where the relative humidity is in the ‘teens unless there’s been a recent storm.  I didn’t go so far as to actually wet the holster, but it did take a good three weeks for it to finally be willing to give me back my gun without a (major) fight.  Had the gun been in its original bare-stainless finish, I’m certain retention would have been good, but not that good.

Needless to say, the pistol isn’t going to fall out of this holster should you take a short jog.  Or a long fall.

Now, Arizona has always been an open carry state, but I haven’t practiced it much.  I have a CCW, but again, Arizona in the summer limits your choices in concealment garments.  Normally I carry a Kel-Tec PF9 in a pocket holster in the summer.  In cooler weather I carry my Kimber Ultra CDP II in a Comp-Tac Minotaur IWB holster, with a shirt over it to conceal.  Toting a Government-sized 1911 on my hip in public was a new experience, and not a negative one.

My belt is a Beltman 1.5″ with velcro loop strips on the inside.  The loop strips lock to the Minotaur’s hook strips on the belt loops, positively securing the holster in place.  They also add stiffness to the belt.  The combination of my belt and Dennis’ Talon holster was every bit as solid and fixed, though I’ve come to the conclusion that I really ought to go to a 1.75″ belt.  The weight of a Government-sized all steel pistol is, well, noticeable after awhile.  The inner panel of the holster does an excellent job of isolating the hammer, grip safety and thumb safety from rubbing against my body.

So my honest opinion is, Dennis makes a damned nice holster!  Now I want one with the Vicious Circle logo stamped into it!

Now THIS is Interesting

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Breda posted recently about Luckygunner.com‘s use of “gunbunnies” at the recent Bullet Fest event, linking to an interview with Brian Crane.  Completely unrelated to her topic, here’s something I found very interesting:

Brian: I have an arrangement with them which was essentially tied to how the marketing of the business did. That’s going to be off the record what that actual arrangement is. Needless to say, I became one of the co-founders and they said, “Brian, go do our online marketing. Figure this stuff out.”


Andrew: So what’s the first thing that you do, Brian? You come in there, they put all this on your shoulders. What do you do?


Brian: Immediately start reaching out to the bloggers. So in our particular space, you had just a ton of sites that all had really solid back link profiles. I’d say there’s probably at least 100 active bloggers that have page rank five sites where they’re talking about guns. You start reaching out to them and working with them to promote Lucky Gunner through their sites. Holistically from a marketing standpoint, you want to get that community of influencers pushing us to their . . . twofold, to their actual readers but then also linking to us because it was building our back link profile very quickly as well.


I think the tipping point was essentially there was an event called the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous and not to go into a lot of details, but the Gun Bloggers Rendezvous does a raffle where they give away a bunch of stuff as part of this raffle and they were selling tickets online. And they were using PayPal as the channel for selling these tickets. And PayPal came in and said, “This has to do with guns. We’re going to shut you down.” They cut the raffle off in the middle of it. They essentially removed the component of being able to sell the tickets in the middle of this push to do the raffle, and so we stepped in and we were the back end for those raffle ticket sales. And that introduced us also to a much bigger community of these gun bloggers because people were like, “Awesome. You guys are helping out. Screw PayPal. We hate PayPal.” It’s an interesting space just because people are like . . . it’s a very combative stance because the tech companies don’t really get or like firearms.


Andrew: I saw some blog posts about you and with you on that issue. So apparently it was really heated, and you got a lot of attention and as you say a lot of props for coming in and helping out.

According to the interview, Luckygunner.com was in business for two months before he was brought on board. During that two months they were moving merchandise at a rate of about $250k per year. At the end of the year they’d done $3.2 million in sales.

Brilliant marketing move! And I was quite happy about it, myself.  Thanks again, Brian!  I’m glad we were able to help out a new company.

More on my Houston Trip

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After the meetings on Friday, the other people in my group had a flight home at 3:00PM (one, in retrospect, I probably should have been on) so after I dropped them off at the airport, my time was my own.

I had dinner that evening at Taste of Texas with Uncle Kenny and El Capitan, a couple of local Houston bloggers. Uncle Kenny co-blogs at Jaded Haven and Washington Rebel. El Capitan blogs at Baboon Pirates. El Capitan wrote about the meetup here.

It was a pleasant evening of interesting conversation and excellent food. One of the very enjoyable fringe benefits of blogging is the ability to meet good people who know you at least well enough to meet for dinner almost anywhere you go. Thank you, gentlemen.

Home

KevinLeave a comment

Finally.

Remember when I said I’d gotten some travel vouchers from United?  My parents are planning a trip, and I asked my dad if he could use them.  “What airline?” was his question.  “United,” I replied.  “I’d rather walk,” he said.

United has merged with Continental.

Now, flying to Houston was painless.  Getting back, not so much.  I arrived at the airport at 07:15 for my 09:20 flight – and discovered that said flight had been Cancelled.  Oh.  Joy.  So off to the ticket counter goes I to find out what my options were.

Continental had rebooked my flight.  For TUESDAY.  BZZZZT!  Sorry, wrong answer!  Well, they could book me on the 6:00PM flight.  That was all they could do.

OK, how about Phoenix?  I can get a rental car and drive down to Tucson.  Sure, they can do that.  There’s a flight leaving at 09:10, or they can put me on standby for the 11:50 flight.  The earlier the better, so I have a boarding pass for the 09:10 flight to Phoenix, boarding to begin at 08:35, and to compensate me for my inconvenience, they give me a $6 voucher for food from any vendor in the airport.  By the time I leave the ticket counter it’s 08:15.

By the time I make it through security theater (don’t even ask about that) and get to the gate, it’s 08:50.

And boarding has not started yet.

We finally start boarding at 09:00.  We push back from the gate at about 09:25.  And sit on the tarmac for thirty minutes.  Seems there’s a hydraulic problem.  We’re going back to the gate.  We get back to the gate about 10:00.  And sit.  Oh, wait!  They’re going to let us off the plane while it’s being repaired – no, they have another plane for us!

At a different terminal.

It’s the 11:50 flight they offered to put me on standby for.  I don’t know what they did, but they had one completely full flight when we pushed back from the gate.

At 12:20.

An hour into the flight, we have a “medical emergency” – a passenger is ill.  However, they decided to continue on to Phoenix rather than divert.  We land in Phoenix at 12:50 local time.  We wait while EMT’s check out the ill passenger and take her off the plane first.  I’m in the back of the aircraft.  Debarkation takes twenty minutes.  I head for the car rentals.

Do you know how much it costs to rent a car one-way from Sky Harbor to Tucson International?  Don’t ask.  Somehow I doubt it will be a reimbursable expense.

I call my wife once I’m in the car on the way home.  I’m going to be home in time for the birthday dinner at The Cheesecake Factory for my stepdaughter and my neice’s husband.

No I’m not.  My mother is in the hospital.  Dad took her in at 03:00 this morning with shortness of breath.  She has atrial fibrillation and fluid buildup around her heart, and isn’t getting enough oxygen.  This is the second trip in a month for this condition.  Apparently they didn’t adjust her meds properly.  So instead of going home and then out to dinner, I went straight to the hospital.

Now I’m home.

Houston is a 17-hour shot down I-10 from my house.  Next time I think I’ll drive.

But Knoxville is next weekend.  I hope American Airlines is better.

This Blog R 8

KevinLeave a comment

Eight years ago today I hit “Publish” on the first post to this blog.  Short and sweet, it went like this:

Testing, testing, testing….

Is this thing on?

Apparently so. Too bad I managed to lose the opening essay it took me an HOUR to compose. Oh well. I’ll reconstruct it and put it back up later.

Welcome to The Smallest Minority, so named because most of the really good names, Eject! Eject! Eject!, USS Clueless, Instapundit, Acidman, and so on were already taken. And while not a Randian, I accept a lot of Ayn Rand’s observations as accurate, and it was she who wrote: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

This blog is about the rights of individuals, that smallest of minorities, so it seemed apt.

More (hopefully MUCH more) to follow.

And much more has followed. According to Blogger I’ve published over 5,000 posts, an average of 1.7 per day.  (Haven’t kept that pace recently.) According to Sitemeter, the site has drawn over 2.2 million hits, an average well over 700 per day (and trust me, it didn’t start out anywhere near that high).

I lost the 40,000+ comments collected by Echo (and before that, HaloScan) over the previous seven years when Echo decided that increasing their fees by a factor of ten was a smart business decision. Oh, I still have the comment archives, but I was never able to successfully import them to Disqus. Dammit. Surprisingly, the old comment threads are still working (like to the Überthread – it’s 574 comments long, so give it a chance to load) but I don’t have links to each and every comment thread for every post – nor do I know how much longer those links will be working.  I’m still seriously bummed by that.

Eight years in the blogiverse is a long time, and I’ve enjoyed most of it, but as I noted in This I Believe, this blog has been an exploration of the core beliefs that guide my daily life.  Some of those beliefs are unpleasant.  But then, reality can be a stone-cold bitch.  While I still believe that the courts will not save us, (further evidence given just recently) I will admit that I was far too pessimistic about what could be accomplished via that path but not at all pessimistic enough about what can still be done to us via that same vector.  I’m even more amazed at what we’ve been able to accomplish legislatively.

I do wish I was less pessimistic about our political “leaders.” Hell, I wish I was less pessimistic about the electorate.

Still, on the whole I’m glad I chose to start this blog and stick with it.  I hope in addition to giving me that place to explore my core beliefs and rant to my heart’s content, it has also provided a service to those of you who visit, read and comment here on a regular basis.  I do this to entertain me, but I probably wouldn’t have done it nearly as long without that feedback.

So, thanks.  Thanks for making all those hours worthwhile.  Thanks for giving me things to think about and things to laugh about.  I think I’ll keep at it, at least for the next couple of years.  The Mayan calendar notwithstanding, 2012 looks like it’s going to be one helluva year.

Busy

KevinLeave a comment

Sorry about the lack of content.  I’ve been busy.  Got stuff lined up I want to write about, but don’t have the time.

I do, however, have a bleg:  what happened to Doc Russia and Bloodletting?  The blog has disappeared.  I didn’t visit often, but whenever I did, I tried to catch up.  (Doc posted infrequently as it was.)  That Kim du Toit quote at the top of the page went to a Bloodletting post.

Sad But True

KevinLeave a comment

XKCD.  The rollover for this one reads:

The universe is probably littered with one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space–each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones that made the irrational decision.