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Month: January 2009

Kirkland (Costco) Toilet Paper Repackaging

Published January 23, 2009

Kirkland (Costco) Bath Tissue (toilet paper / bog roll) now come individually wrapped in plastic. This bothers me.

In today’s episode of tilting at windmills I’m going to complain about Costco‘s changes to their Kirkland-branded bath tissue / toilet paper / bog roll. I’ve been buying this toilet paper ever since first getting a Costco membership in 2001. It is a nice, basic, soft two-ply which is reasonably priced and which feels nice on my behind.

Unfortunately, when I went to purchase a new pack a few weeks ago (it comes in such quantities that I only have to buy some a couple times a year), I found that each individual roll is now wrapped in plastic. Additionally, the texture of the paper itself seems to have changed. The surface area of each roll is still listed as the same (53.1 sq ft / 49.2 m²), but the new roll seems to have a different texture and feel softer. A non-representative sampling of one roll each (the two above, unwrapped) showed that the new roll has a mass of 171g compared to the old roll’s 161g.

The texture of the paper is not a concern as it’s still sufficiently (and comfortably) capable of removing filth from my nether regions and capturing my nose blowings, but I really don’t like the move towards plastic packaging. While the large pack of rolls has been wrapped in plastic for as long as I’ve been purchasing it, the previous paper wrapping seemed considerably more environmentally conscious.

Personally, I would like it if both the outer and per-roll wrapper were made from non-plasticized paper, with the inner core (the tube) degradable and thus flushable. Or, maybe the core could simply be removed†. It would be nice if the outer wrappings were also degradable, but simply making them from a compostable material is would be sufficient.

† I have seen, and used, tubeless toilet paper dispensers in public restrooms, but they use a dual-peg system to holding the paper instead of a through-axel like design. In these the paper is wound from the center all the way out, with a very tight winding in the center which is indented on the sides for the pegs. This would make these new rolls incompatible with the defacto world wide standard holder.

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Comcastic Billing Failure

Published January 22, 2009

After cancelling Comcast service on 29-Dec-2008 (and returning the equipment on 30-Dec-2008) I was sent a bill asking me to pay for service for February, 2009.

As mentioned before, back on 29-Jan-2008 I had Wide Open West cable service installed at home, cancelling Comcast service the same day. The following day I waited in this long line at the Comcast office in Troy to return the cable modem, obtaining this receipt showing that the hardware was received. Save for the refund I am owed for January service, this should have completed my business with Comcast.

Today when I arrived home from work I found this bill from Comcast, requesting payment for service for 30-Jan-2009 through 29-Feb-2009. After two phone calls which resulted in the IVR system telling me that there were extended hold times, no available automated callback times, and that I should call back later before hanging up on me, 9pm rolled around and Comcast’s billing department closed.

Going against my better judgment I tried the Comcast Live Chat Support. After being passed off from Jennifer.25657 to Charlon.35491 I had a difficult, convoluted chat resulting in my being told that “Yuo can dis regard the bill you received.” (Here [PDF] is a transcript of the chat, if you’d like to read it. It does a great job illustrating Charlon.35491‘s outstanding reading comprehension skills.)

Tomorrow I will be attempting to call Comcast again (possibly recording the call) to double-confirm that there is no expectation of payment and that I am owed a refund for overpayment in January. What baffles me is how a company which supposedly has an integrated, electronic billing system can list a service as canceled but still issue invoices for it. I guess this is the Comcastic service that one should expect.

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Night Riding and Moblog Image Uploading

Published January 21, 2009

Crossing back over the bridge from Clinton River Park to Dodge Park after a winter evening ride with Bob.

Today at lunch I made a quick trip home and plugged in the batteries for my bike lights so that I’d be able to see tonight when Bob and I met up for a bike ride through Dodge Park and the Clinton River Park. (For reference, the two are connected by the bridge above, which crosses the Clinton River.) I rode the Bianchi D.I.S.S., which was really great everywhere except for the 3″ thick glare ice in one of the flooded parts of the trail. (Bob had no problem riding over it with his Nokian Extreme 294 studded tires, though.)

That photo above was taken with the new-to-me Android / T-Mobile G1 and is at the heart of my biggest problem with it: getting content (namely pictures) off of it. The device works great, but it does not support Bluetooth OBEX, has no IR, and the SD card does not mount as USB Mass Storage when the handset is connected via USB. I’ve also had no luck with the now four FTP, SFTP, and/or direct-to-Gallery apps which I’ve tried.

The only current solution seems to be emailing the photos or copying them over USB using adb (Android Debug Bridge). Emails difficulties are obvious, and adb is just tedious, requiring full paths to the images (eg: c0nsumer@reason:~/Desktop> adb pull /sdcard/dcim/Camera/20090121185850.jpg 20090121185850.jpg).

I’d love a direct-to-Gallery uploader, but judging by the current state of the other apps in Android Market it looks like I’ll have to write one myself.

There is something called Bucket Upload which seemed promising as it could do custom HTTP multipart uploads, but as the Gallery Remote Protocol requires two requests for authenticated uploads (login then add-item) it wouldn’t work. It’s only designed to do single-request uploads.

UPDATE: It’s been shown to me that selecting the USB connectivity notification in Android after plugging the phone in allows one to dismount the microSD card from the phone and present it to the OS. This will be a good stopgap.

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12:00:44 EST on 20-Jan-2009

Published January 20, 2009

Driving north on M-24 listening to the inaugeration of Barack Obama. Fourty four seconds before this photo was taken Obama legally became president.

Wanting to listen to the swearing in and inauguration speech of the 44th President of the United States I decided to do something which used to be quite typical for me: go for a long drive while listening to the radio and eating fast food.

After picking up a veggie burger meal from Burger King I headed north on M-24 driving through suburban / rural southeast Michigan, looking at the sparking snow, listening to the radio, and eating my unhealthy meal. I don’t have much to say about the speeches, invocations, poems, compositions, and benedictions, except that I felt that it all had an overall message of difficulty ahead, a need for hard work, and a general belief that if people truly are willing to fix problems they can. Overall, I thought this was good.

Oh, and that photo? I took it just to show the sort of area I was driving through, but it just so happened to be at exactly 44 seconds after Barack Obama legally became president. Funny, that.

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Ordering Parts is Complicated

Published January 19, 2009

When working on electronics projects I tend to order parts from Mouser or Digi-Key, with a preference given to Mouser because of their lower costs and my familiarity with their site. However, the experience I’m having right now with selecting parts for building the AMB γ1 illustrates the complications one often runs into when ordering a large BOM.

Here’s the assumptions I must work under:

· Mouser is usually cheaper than Digi-Key.
· Mouser often has particular parts available in smaller quantities than Digi-Key does.
· Digi-Key has a wider variety of less common parts, like (in this case) a TOSLINK receiver.
· Digi-Key has what amounts to a $25 minimum order. Mouser has none.
· Almost every part I need is available from Mouser, making it difficult to reach the Digi-Key minimum.

This, combined with a 74-line BOM, makes for quite a bit of work just selecting parts for a hobbiest device.

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Selling More Salad Dressing

Published January 18, 2009

Spinach, watercress, carrot, and roma tomato salad I made for easter.

I have an idea for selling more salad dressing: suggesting that people combine dressings at home for new, exciting, experimental flavors. The key here is to cross-promote flavors so that people will buy both their normal dressing and a flavor which they wouldn’t otherwise purchase.

The marketing would be easy, as the salad dressing company simply has to supply a recipe book (such as the one which introduced us to the Fiberccino) which suggests multi-flavor dressing combinations. These combinations can be chosen by looking at data detailing who buys what flavors, then ensuring that only one of the two dressings for those chosen recipes are regularly purchased by a particular demographic.

Flavors such as Crete (Greek & Thousand Island), Morricone (Tuscan Italian & Ranch), and Absolute Power (Russian & Caeser) are sure to win people over and, of course, sell more dressing!

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Jacket Potato

Published January 17, 2009

My attempt at a jacket potato. It was baked for 1.5 hours, the topped with shredded cheddar and mushrooms and garlic and black pepper that were fried in butter and olive oil.

Danielle and I had some excellent jacket potatos at a pub we visited with Dominic on the same day we took a tour of Fuller’s Griffin Brewery. Wanting the same sort of thing for dinner tonight, I put together this, from a baked (Idaho) potato and shredded cheddar cheese, topped with mushrooms, garlic, and black pepper that were fried in copious amounts of butter and olive oil. The oil was poured over everything to lubricate the potato a bit more and give it that unhealthy pub food feeling.

To keep the experience as pub-like as possible I’m eating it (as I type this) with a glass of lager. Rochester Mills’ Lazy Daze Lager, to be precise.

The verdict? Outstanding. Absolutely excellent.

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