Just buy the stuff and stop complaining

I wonder if vendors really care what the service life of equipment is any more (assuming they ever did)? I read in the computer press that the useful life of a computer is purported to be three years. I am sure that the hardware vendors would be delighted if we would just discard our stuff at that interval — especially if they had a side interest in selling the discards to some 3rd world country for salvage. But sometimes I think they deliberately make shortcuts to get equipment to fail early and hopefully get me to buy more.

Case in point — I have three LaCie storage units in my environment (or more to the point setting next to my environment). Two external disk drives — a 500gb and 1,000gb 1394/USB2 devices. And a 500gb NAS disk. All three are flaky — the two external drives are moody about mounting (the large one wont mount at all). The network attached storage disk seemed like such a good idea but kept logging disk errors (almost since day one) and the software update that was supposed to fix it just locked me out of seeing what the disk errors were — untill the entire web-based interface stopped working. Disk corruption, the vendor said, have to wipe the drive and start over again (3rd time).

My point is that I had not bought any of this gear as a throwaway. There are always a bunch of bulky downloads that one must keep around, and hundreds of downloaded documents and so forth. And quite frankly the only cost-effective way to do backups is disk to disk over the network.

But apparently, LaCie thinks that spending a few hundred or few thousand dollars is a throwaway and it is unreasonable to expect service lives of years. Too bad. Nice package and function at an attractive pricepoint — untill the short life is factored in. I am not buying any more of their storage devices. And what is more, recommending to anyone I talk to that their gear is not reliable.

 

The Coming Crisis of Immigration

It has been with great sadness that I have followed the news over the last months about the immigration issue in a number of countries and the rising cost of food and fuel. Seems we are gearing up for a great crisis of (probably) Biblical proportions as the perfect storm of climate change, economics and population collide.

Climate change has been making some places wetter than they have been for many years, but more places are getting drier. Think of California and Arizona that have been desirable places to live — seems we encountered them at an unusually wet period and they are now returning to the more normal dryness. But the millions of people who moved there and are now dependent upon a diminishing water supply, what will happen to them?

On a more serious note, think of the large areas of India, China, sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and the US Great Plains that are drying out — and the populations that depend upon these areas for food. Or on the other hand, the populations that live in areas just above sea level that are gradually losing their land to rising sea levels and increasingly fierce storms.

A technical solution to these problems would be to use energy to move water great distances to provide irrigation. But with the demise of interest in nuclear power and lagging research in solar, the only real power source is to burn things. This of course adds to the problem of climate change.

In the past, when climate change made an area inhospitable, the populations would move on to someplace else. I suspect that is why mankind spread from its cradle in Africa to cover the globe. I think that historically, changing conditions has been the driver for huge migrations from one place to another — not just seeking something better but fleeing something worse. Remember, at one point the Sahara desert was a place of water and green where our ancestors lived and left their marks. I am sure those people went someplace else — though it would have taken a while.

So here we are — conditions building in a number of places around the globe where people will be starving in large numbers. But the globe has been Balkanized into numerous areas that jealously guard their particular turf and try to protect it from all comers. The barricades are up, so to speak. And woe to anyone who is caught inside without the right papers. (See recent news items about US Immigration raids and the involvement of local police in deportations.) And let us not forget that ‘terrorists’ are likely to be people unhappy about their situation, angry and willing to do something to express their anger.

So just try to imagine this — pressure building around the world for another huge wave of human migration. And the guys on the border armed and ready with hardened attitudes and hostile intent. I do not think it takes much imagination to see how these will collide. And I do not think that there is anything that can be done to keep the affected populations where they are — except to kill them all (most likely by neglect).

It would be much more hopeful if there were any signs that our ‘leaders’, anywhere, could see this coming and work to prepare for it — what may be the greatest migration in human history. And such huge areas that were once inhospitable, like Siberia or Northern Canada, that are sparsely populated now. But such vision seems non-existent. Seems like they are far too concerned about their golf buddies getting a chunk of the public purse ‘reconstructing’ a country those same leaders destroyed or … (the list seems endless and penetrates into almost every corner).

I fear for the world that my children will be raising their families in. The rich growing more rich and arrogant, the rest pushed into poverty. The growing forces for people to move elsewhere and the treasury squandered to make sure they don’t. How many will die before the barricades come down? How much will be lost — besides our humanity?

 

Robot Vacuum Cleaners — What were they thinking?

Today I hit a point of total disgust with my Roomba 560 robot vacuum cleaner. It replaced an older Discovery model that had been in use for several years before it started to fail (that did not seem unreasonable). The 560 has been in service for roughly six months — but it seems like longer.

When we first got it the thing seemed wonderful — quiet and effective, it pulled dirt out of places that seemed clean after being recently hand vacuumed. We put it on automatic with three cleaning cycles per month. The honeymoon lasted for a few weeks. Then it started… (or more precisely, stopped.). We would find it on a scheduled work day stalled someplace — usually under a bed or other easy to locate place. When we pushed the go button it would give two plaintive beeps and demand that the brushes be cleaned before it would do anything more. We did this for a while but got tired and complained to the vendor — iRobot, Inc. The first answer was that there were technical issues with the brush module, so they sent us a replacement. Then it was — we know there are problems and we are working on fixing them, please be patient.

Today I was on their site and saw that the new recommendation is that the user must strip and clean the machine after EVERY cleaning cycle. It is no longer a problem — just a documented user maintenance shortcoming. Now, let me be clear as to what is involved: There is a spinning side brush held on with a screw — this must be removed and the dirt and pet hair that accumulates removed and the area wiped clean. Then the main brush assembly must be opened and the two rotating brushes removed, disassembled, cleaned meticulously of all dirt and hair (mostly hair) and then reassembled. The front wheel also needs to be pulled off, the cavity wiped out. And of course, the dirt catcher and filter (where the crud ends up) should be cleaned. This is roughly a 30 minute job with a screwdriver — save that the side brush mount point is not designed for repeated unscrewing so will likely be another major module replacement. Not bad for six months of use.

What really upsets me is that it is actually easier to vacuum our house by hand then to use the robot and then painstakingly maintain it. At least a vacuum cleaner can be used multiple times before requiring the messy job of changing/emptying the bad and cleaning the brushes. But not this new and improved robot. The maintenance time mounts up real fast and in truth I cannot disagree with my wife when she makes fun of this ‘labor saving’ contraption. Maybe the design objective was not to reduce the labor requirements for cleaning the house, but just clean me of $500 for this object. Its predecessor the Discovery model was not this neurotic.

So clearly, the question of ‘what were they thinking’ needs to be answered by someone. We have other robots at work and none of them are as neurotic and demanding as this thing. I am certainly hopeful that some Korean manufacturer will release a competitive model. I am certainly annoyed enough that I will no longer suggest to my friends that iRobot cleaning robots are assets. (Unlike the dilligent and undemanding italian robot that cuts our grass…)

 

New Kind of Energy Crisis — Indeed

reportonbusiness.com: A new kind of ‘energy crisis’

The Globe & Mail this morning had a commentary about the new energy crisis — not a crisis of supply as back in 1973 (does anyone remember gas lineups?) but one of rapidly rising prices. So of course the comments on this article range from government conspiracy through corporate waste. And there are side mentions of the change to public transportation where it is available.

What fascinates me is that during my lifetime both business and government has been hard at work systematically dismantling public transportation networks all across North America. When I was living in Toronto the main street closest to me used to have an inter-urban train on it that ran from Toronto out to Guelph. Now you can get there by driving on the expressway — if you have a car. Toronto, like most cities, is surrounded by a wide expanse of suburbs that are almost exclusively glued together by cars. The other night there was an analyst talking about the shift to public transportation — in the US (and most likely in Canada as well) less than 5% of the population has access to public transportation.

But wait, there’s more. In eastern Ontario where we live there are the ghosts of an old agricultural past — abandoned processing plants that used to take the products of the region and brew beer or make cheese or 100’s of other items. These plants provided local employment and kept the transportation costs down on the raw materials. But as part of the great scale-up these were all closed down in favor of shipping all the materials to big plants in distant locations. And even more, buying the materials themselves from distant parts so the local agricultural producers died a slow death. The 12,000 mile salad, unfortunately, is far more the rule than the exception.

So here we are — our civilization has been restructured around long distance transportation that is no longer cheap and looks to be getting even less so. We have dismantled the widespread networks of public transportation in favor of private vehicals, then encouraged people to buy the least efficient kinds. Local agriculture, that once sustained the cities and provided for a vibrant rural life has been largely shutdown. And of course those huge processing plants were sometimes staffed with the cheapest labor available — who sometimes have issues with the government.

My question is very simple — can this clock be rolled back? Will the politicians have the vision to undo the destructive changes to transportation and re-vitalize the rail networks? Can local agriculture be rediscovered? Or will these events happen as a consequence of a general economic collapse as distance-spanning economies fail from their own costs and people are forced to find other ways? Not everyone was this stupid — look at Europa.

 

Coffee Pots and the Decline of the West

This morning our coffee pot packed it in. It was a Black&Decker Spacemaker under cabinet coffee pot with the thermal reservoir. We liked it, willingly put up with the drips that seem endemic to the design (and so many complained about). The thermal pot kept coffee hot for hours — a great thing on one of those damp, cold mornings we are having so many of lately. And as with all its predecessors, it just simply refused to switch on. I suppose we should count ourselves lucky — it did not catch fire like some of the units I have read about in the consumer opinion sites. It just stopped working after almost exactly two years of use — a record.

Since my faithful Mr. Coffee quit on me 10 years ago, my kitchen counter has had a succession of coffee makers that just died one after another. The average life span was 1 year — we were lucky one time and had it die just before the warranty ran out and got a new one shipped to us. But we were sans fresh coffee while the wheels of justice ground along…

It used to be that one had small kitchen appliances that just ran and ran. Eventually we grew tired of them or passed them on to the kids. They were usually stainless steel and hard bakelite — with nothing more complicated that an on-off switch. But no more — a trip to the local store will reveal a dazzling display of similar products. All plastic with the minimum amount of glass — and a host of buttons for every conceivable function — even off and on. I think they are all made is some back alley in Shanghai.

The problem with all of this is that these pots are all cheaply made and built to be thrown away. I suppose the manufacturer would be happy if we did not even bother to unwrap the thing, just take it from the store and pitch it in the trash. They certainly seem to wear well enough for that purpose. Seems a pity that the intent of the energy that was used to form the glass and plastic and make all those computer chips was really, almost intentionally, wasted. To say nothing about the plastic that was made from that same oil and will most likely not be recycled.

Makes me think that these pitiful products are a metaphor for our civilization — it all comes down to matters of form, going through the motions of being a productive society but just wasting what we do. Raw materials go in, energy is expended, people employed, distribution chains exercised and so forth — but nothing of value results. Shoddy goods that are garbage the moment they are bought are a net drain on the world — we are taking value in the form of raw materials and combining them in ways that make them useless.

It makes me wonder just how much longer our civilization is going to last, if we can no longer make goods for the population that have reasonable service lives? Have we become so obsessed with making ever cheaper goods that we have forgotten why we are making them? I would hope that it is not just to move materials from one hole in the ground to another. But somehow I fear that the concept of waste for the sake of waste has taken hold and we have lost our way.

 

Wind Power and Reliable Power

I am troubled by the aggressive deployment of industrial scale wind turbines around me. And after reading the numerous papers and presentations from IESO and related groups I get the feeling that the folks responsible for the integrity of our electric grid are too. But since there is a political mandate to shove this stuff out there they can only keep their heads down and manage as best they can.

I am not opposed to green energy — far from it. I am depressed that there is so little being done to encourage its deployment here, except at the industrial scale. Seems we just cannot get away from big institutions (and private profits). Guess that is what capitalism is all about anyhow. Unlike many parts of the world (and just a few miles from here across the Canada-US border) Ontario does not encourage deployment of private power solutions — quite the reverse. Not only will the increased ‘value’ of the property be taxed but distributors seem to charge a ’stupid tax’ making the costs of equipment far higher that they are just a short distance away (the project studies in ‘HomePower’ have been most interesting). It does not take a genius to work out that the marginal cost of providing a kilowatt at point of use is much less than from a great distance away.

If I were to install a wind turbine for electric power one of the points of concern would be how to isolate the sensitive equipment in the house from the fluctuations in power output due to variations in wind. The usual approach is to buffer the output with a battery bank to smooth things out and sustain my power needs when the wind drops. The wind and our power needs are rarely matched so I would expect the batteries to get a pretty good workout.

Or I suppose I could take the industrial approach and run the turbine unbuffered and pull any mismatch from the grid. I am sure someone makes a controller that can switch fast enough for our modest needs (a few kw). The cable from the power pole is big enough (it supports all our needs now) so this would probably work.

What I am curious about is how well it will work on a province-wide scale? The power output from the wind farms is published — and one can see (as did Energy Probe) that there are times when the wind dies all across the province simultaneously. While the power contribution of unbuffered wind is small this is probably just an annoyance. But what happens when the contribution is large? I am aware that even gas turbines take time to spin up and if overstressed tend to be not too graceful. And though not a power engineer I am not unaware of the delicate balance of supply and consumption that keeps our grid from collapsing (as it did a few years ago). So what happens when a big chunk of the electrical supply just goes away abruptly? Is the dirty secret of the green power rollout that the combustion processes have to keep running quietly in the background? (So no real savings in green house gases.) Or are we just playing craps with our economy, hoping that when the wind fails there will not be much going on so no one will notice? Even more to the point, can we afford to take that risk?

 

Dead Ducks and Wind Turbine Noise

Interesting article in todays Globe and Mail about the birds being killed by oil sands development:

globeandmail.com: Dead ducks a boon for oil-sands opponents

Reading about the frustration environmentalists have with the hazards poised by the open settling ponds and tailings brought to mind the disagreements in Ontario about wind turbines. One has the recently released MOE noise report being pushed in the press as having disproved the wind turbine opponents claims of noise harm. I skimmed the report — all 100+ pages of very scientific graphs and text. The complaint is made over and over that all one has is anecdotal reports of noise injury — that the opponents have not PROVED there is harm. And of course, anecdotal evidence is never good enough — there must be a scientific study. And yet it is ok for the proponents to wave their hands and claim that there is no harm.

Seems we all come down to the same place — an objective definition of what conditions will reliably cause harm (and even better a definition of the sensitivity gradient of normal human variability to this hazard). Then the politicians can decree by setting the limits as to what percentage of the population will be sacrificed.

At least with the birds it is pretty clear — they land in this stuff they will die. And no one knows what the birds think about this — the living ones, that is.

I am also puzzled about how standards have changed in medicine and public health. At one time I thought that it was for the proponents to prove (there is that word again) that there were no harmful side effects. (See also genetically modified foods) But now it is good enough for the folks who profit from it to claim that there is no harm — but the opponents have to scientifically prove that there is. Meanwhile the deployments continue.

No, I think we and the birds have a lot in common — we are all collateral damage in the insatiable thirst for energy that has infected our society.

 

Trench Warfare US Democrats Style

The BBC had a nice summary about Hillary and Obama today. As I was reading this I was struck by how dissonant the campaign is from what I perceive as the ideal qualities for the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

North American political campaigns have gotten increasingly nasty and personal over the years (Canada is not as bad as the US but is sliding in that direction, it seems). Candidates sling mud at each other and dig for bits of nastyness. Think ‘Survivor — Washington’ or ‘Trailer Park Boys…’. And the current primary season just goes on and on and on…

My problem with all this political entertainment is that the result of the selection process would seem to pick the person least qualified to lead. Oh, sure, US politics can be pretty messy and I am sure the back room continues as the primary decision-making forum (sorry about that, public interest.). But the world is a very complicated place and there are a lot of folks out there who selfishly take care of their own interests and not those of the US. If there is a problem with the Saudis or even (gasp) Iran, do we want someone who’se approach to problem solving is a smear campaign in the press? I don’t think so. We need someone who can work with people over whom he has no real control — like a neighborhood organizer, perhaps.

The other aspect is this thing about refusing to talk to the folks that don’t agree with you. Seriously, this is not a sign of strength but of weakness — if your ego is so fragile and your principles so shaky that they cannot withstand disagreement. Read — Cuba, Iran, Hamas, etc. Not a pretty picture. And a guarantee that the problems will continue, whatever they are.

So here we are. Two candidates too busy tearing each other apart — and the apparent winner to be the one who successfully slung the most mud and made the most unsustainable promises. And a national committee for the party that has trouble holding to its own rules — and refusing to exercise leadership on their own side to limit the damages to the party and ultimately the country. If, having skewed the primary by disallowing Florida and Michigan, they then let the results in to bolster some backroom deal with one of the candidates, it is not hard to predict that they will have pulled defeat from the jaws of victory. Pity is, the country will suffer.. and so will we all.

 

Energy Outlook — It’s Ostrich Time

The Future of Oil - New York Times

This article has the cheerful prospect of the number of airplanes and cars doubling in the next 30 years — no doubt the buyers in China and India eager to catch up with the West in waste and consumption. Then the article asks — where is the oil going to come from to fuel all this demand?

This reminded me of my continuing frustration to use energy-efficient transportation in North America. At one time North America was criss-crossed with a network of rails that provided comfortable transportation for passengers at relatively low energy cost. The skeletons of this service litter the landscape — the great urban train stations, the tiny rural stations, the network of rails. This has all been pretty much abandoned — or if still in place forced to play second fiddle to freight. To visit my son in Thunder Bay we had to drive — just not possible to get from here to there by train anymore. Oh, the tracks are still there but the service is not. In fact, Via did not even want to talk about the issue at all — even though there were intermediate stops still in service that could have helped us (thanks to talking to some folks at his school).

So we could take an airplane from Toronto — a three hour drive to the west or just drive from here. We did the later. The idea of accepting the indignities of flying plus fuel consumption at a level similar to every passenger driving their SUV the same distance was just too depressing.

Passenger travel services have always been heavily subsidized by the governments. They have never paid their own way either here or in Europe — where there are still marvelous inter-urban trains that are a genuine pleasure to use. But in North America where the distances are huge, the subsidies that built and maintained the system have been stripped away and given to the airlines and road services. And passenger service is expected to pay its own way — when it runs at all.

Seems to me that governments have their head in the sand when it comes to providing the leadership and direction for the future. We can see that energy costs are going to continue to soar and yet all the work on transportation goes to subsidizing the least efficient means. How long will it take before it is recognized that what North America needs most is to resurrect passenger service? Heck — a train could probably pull its own nuclear reactor to make electricity rather than burning fossil fuel. Or we could deploy larger scale overhead wires to do the same. The point is that all this will take time and we should not wait untill the airlines are collapsing from fuel costs to start working. Airplanes will still be needed to bridge large distances over water or to remote locations. But for inter-urban travel, I’ll take the train.

 

Natural Resources — Enjoy them While They Last

Prairie Birds Flirt, and a Town Livens Up - New York Times

This article in todays’ New York Times is about an area in Missouri that has recognized the wonder of their rapidly declining bird populations. There are bird watcher tours with waiting lists. The locals have built blinds so the visitors can get a good view. A few weeks ago a long time friend of mine gave a presentation to the local mens’ group about Sauk City Wisconsin that has done a similar thing with their bald eagle populations. I am sure that both groups are pleased at the inflow of revenue.

Here on the island we have a similar situation — we are known as an IBA (Important Bird Area) in international surveys. There is an area at the end of the island called the Owl Woods due to its large population of wintering owls. We have seen eagles hunting over our backyard and had a heron walk up through the grass to inspect our life-size african heron sculpture.

But the difference is that the island resident and transient bird populations are condemned to death because the area has been targetted for redevelopment as a wind farm. So the natural wonders we have been blessed with will be destroyed over time and the place we love turned into a empty space eventually populated by rusting, abandoned towers that no one will be able to afford to remove.

I am reminded of the story of the goose that laid the golden eggs. Not content to get a stream of wealth over a long time, a plan was laid to cut open the goose and get all the eggs at once. Neither the goose nor the egg supply survived. The story here and around is much the same — they can get a quick influx of cash by sacrificing the area now. The work and patience over time to develop the natural resources is just not as appealing. I would speculate that had development been the path rather than the quick grab the benefits would be long lasting and perhaps even greater — certainly everyones’ lives would be richer. But then, who cares about the future? I am glad that some people do — the rest are condemned to suffer the loss from their lust for instant gratification. Too bad.