Commentary – Page 6 – Dishers.com

January 7, 2013December 1, 2015

Kudos to Raven Concealment Systems

Last fall at the Steel Challenge Indy State meet, we won a couple of gift certificates for Raven Concealment holsters.

At first I thought, yeah, uhm, well OK. Just what I need another holster. I need that like I need another hole in my head. Years ago when we took our CCW class the instructor said, “There are 8 million holster possibilities, and you’ll probably go through, on average 8 per gun, until you find one you like.”. Yeah, sure what ever. Turns out that’s not all that far from the truth.

Let’s see for the Glock that I normally carry, I have:

A custom leather inside the waist band holster from a local firm.
Multiple paddle holsters from various manufacturers for IDPA and what not.
Even the Cheapie Glock $14 Duty holster, which for on the belt use is the best value out there hands down.
And of course a Cross Breed super-tuck, which I initially hated, but it grew on me and I now find it very comfortable.
Plus various other IWB holsters of ebay. You do get what you pay for.

So when we got these gift certificates I thought great, just what I need. Then I looked at their website. $80 for a kydex holster, are you kidding me? That thing is HUGE and ugly.

And it is:

On top of that there’s an 18 week wait? You can’t be serious with this real lenders here.

So we looked at how we’d best spend our award. Ordered a holster for the G19/G26. One for the P238 and one for the LCP.

We received them Saturday and I’ve worn it for two days. Wow. It hugs close, and is super comfortable. Easy to draw and re-holster. I hate to say it, but it’s worth the money and worth the wait.

Well done Raven, well done.

October 15, 2012October 24, 2012

Apple, your support is lacking.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone on a RANT about poor customer service but here goes.

Last Thursday, the Cincinnati Reds were in a Do-Or-Die Playoff game, at 1pm. We recently moved into a new building, and don’t have any Cable TV installed yet. (TimeWarner, your RANT will be forthcoming).

Obviously we wanted to get this game which was on National TV on some of the TV’s in the building for folks who love the Reds could watch and keep up with the game.

We have a couple conference rooms equipped with AppleTV’s. So we thought, “Oh, this will be easy, we just need someone with an AppleTV/MLB subscription to log in.

LJ was already watching the game live on MLB.com using his MLB account. We tried his account with AppleTV but it wouldn’t work. So we did the next best thing. I purchased an MLB subscription, in an attempt to bring happiness to our beloved fans.

AppleTV/iTunes, did everything right. Showed me that the game was available then prompted me to buy the subscription. So I did. After the subscription was processed it let us know that “Oops, Sorry, this game is blacked out in your area”. Huh? It was on broadcast national television.

Thanks for that.

So today my iTunes statement comes in and looks like this:

See that link right there ‘Report a Problem”.

I decided I’d click it, cause, yeah, I have a problem. I don’t want a recurring MLB.TV subscription that I’ll never ever use again.

So I click it. What does it do? Opens itunes:

See that “Report a Problem’ text, that’s a link in iTunes.

So I click that.

What does that do?

Opens a browser, which is what my email invoice should have done in the first place.

Except, I’ll be damned if you can actually dispute an individual charge. It’s just the generic iTunes Support Page:

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

This is not helpful.

Apple is so good at so many things, but this is one area that’s been horrible forever. No wonder they are as profitable as they are. If we could force our customers through a maze that doesn’t ever let them fix their issue and we got to keep their money… We’ve all be millionaires.

After all it’s just a $0.99 app or in this case a $3.99 subscription. I’ve already wasted more than that is worth to me. No wonder. I bet most people just give up.

Now I get to make a phone call, which I can assure you will be super special.

Update: After jumping through the 87 hoops on apple.com and expresslane.apple.com, I was finally able to talk to Heather, who took care of this for me. But it just shouldn’t be this hard.

Update #2: I purchased a retina iPad as an update to the original iPad that I got pretty much on day one. I do love my iPad, I use it every day. Since IOS6 left iPad(1) in the dust, I was compelled to upgrade. Less than 3 weeks later they announce a new 4th generation iPad. Same retina display only 2x faster and better.

I read on the web where Apple usually allows people to swap if their purchase was made within 30 days. It appears this isn’t policy but it’s a good customer move. I mean my iPad looks like new and if someone bought it at ‘refurb’ pricing, they’d be happy. Anyway a few phone calls to my local Apple Store pretty much discouraged me. Apple Genius ‘DeAndre’ pretty much blew me off. Spouting out the 14 day return policy, though he admitted they do often stretch that to 30 days in some cases. At the end of the day, I was left without a confident feeling they’ll make it happen. I asked for a Genius appointment for launch day (Nov 2nd) and was denied. I’ll be damned if I’ll stand in line.

June 15, 2012June 15, 2012

Sena BlueTooth vs. StarCom 1

OK, since 2007 I’ve had an intercom system in the bike. StarCom1 Advanced to be exact.

It allows me and a wired passenger to talk. The intercom part of the StarCom has always been a bit of an issue for me. Mostly tuning it. To get the VOX just right, so that we can talk clearly w/o wind noise holding the conversation open when not necessary.

Fortunately or unfortunately I haven’t had to use the intercom portion all that often since Claudine just doesn’t ride with me that much. When she does they are normally short trips and not worth messing with the intercom.

That being said, I use the StarCom every day on every ride.

It is my audio interface to my GPS (Zumo 550, then 665) and it’s my entertainment center (mp3’s from the Zumo and formerly XM via the Zumo) and when appropriate Radar detector audio.

At one point it also served as my interface to the phone. Both times, phones connected to the Zumo via Bluetooth and the Zumos hard-wired into the StarCom.

Previous to the StarCom I simply used a MixIT, to be a portable amplifier for iPod/XM and to Mix in the radar detector.

The Mix-IT worked well, but created a mess of wires going into the tank bag where I kept it. When I decided I wanted an intercom I passed it on to a friend and he still uses it today. My dad still uses one as far as I know. (Great product).

The Starcom has a number of advantages for me:

Central mounting location, on the bike. No longer in my tank bag.
One nice cable to my helmet, no mess.
Intercom capability
Above average volume and sound quality.

The disadvantages are:

It’s not cheap, it’s not super expensive but it’s not cheap.
Starcom cables don’t seem to last a long time. The Shielded cables for Radar and phone seem to break down. When you’re talking a $82.95 microphone/audio cable. This is a problem to have to replace it every year or so. (Two cables actually MIC-02 and MUS-04) if you want Stereo sound, which I do. And, no, you can’t use cheapo Radioshack cables. You can, but you won’t be happy.
Tuning the Intercom can be a pain.
Headsets aren’t cheap, now about $75 per helmet. Figure two helmets for me, one for the wife, one for the kids that equals 4 helmets/headsets. That is cheap compare to say a J&M system.
The headsets aren’t easy to shuffle around so you need to mount it in your helmet and leave it there.
Along with the cables I’ve found headsets if worn year-round tend to break down as well, usually the microphone is the first to go.

So what brings me to this review? Well about two years ago I lost the phone/microphone capability with my StarCom again. It actually works if the bike isn’t running, but if it is, well the noise or interference is so bad nobody can hear you.

I replaced the headset, and the cables (again), and re-routed them to get them away from as much stuff as I could to avoid the interference. It worked for a while but now it’s back to being fubar again.

All other audio functions work just fine. It’s the cable from the Zumo to the StarCom that is the issue.

So I decided to look at what else is out there.

Back in the day before I had the Mix-IT, I did play with one of the first CARDO BT systems for motorcycles and it was pretty good. At the time it was mono only and phone only.

After searching, the Sena Bluetooth SMH10 seems to be the most recommended at this time. Also the idea of my riding buddy having one and being able to talk to him was attractive. So I ordered up a pair.

I unboxed them, charged them, upgraded them to the new 4.0 firmware.

Paired up my Zumo and iPhone and went out of a test ride.

First thoughts:

1) Sound quality from this is HORRIBLE. Streaming MP3’s from the Zumo 665 is about AM quality at best. It’s certainly loud enough. I ride with earplugs so it needed to be loud enough to overcome. But even at lower volumes w/o earplugs, on a scale of 1-10 it was a 3 maybe a 4 at best. (Versus the StarCom which I would rate an 8.5-9)

(And yes, I am painfully aware of the need to make sure the speakers are centered in the ear).

2) Phone call testing.

For the first test I used what Sena calls Case 3:

I called my wife who was happy to play along, and she said no. This is unacceptable. I was barely legible if at all.

Now knowing that with my windshield down, it can be quite turbulent, I stopped an put the plastic microphone mask on the front side of the mic as suggested and included in the box.

No real change in quality.

I stopped again an switched up to what Sena calls Case 2:

For this the phone call quality was better. Wife said she’d call me and talk to me in an emergency, or take a call from me in an emergency, but no, she would not talk to me like this for 30 minutes to keep me awake.

It was not as good as the StarCom when the Starcom works.

In this configuration, MP3 streaming form the Zumo was still bad, though GPS prompts sounded pretty good.

At the end of the day I decided I listen to music 98% of the time and talk on the phone 2%. I’m not willing to give up the music audio quality in favor of what turns out also to be a lesser phone call quality.

The wireless features and Bike-To-Bike capabilities *could* have possibly swayed me. But even those scenarios are less than 10% of my total ride time and aren’t likely too.

So with some frustration, the Sena gets shipped back today.

I have ordered the StarCom1 BT-02 module. If that rectifies my cable issue, then I’ll be a happy camper. If not then we’ll figure out what to do next.

If you have a sure-fire bike to bike system that provides great audio (with ear plug) and uses or doesn’t use the StarCom system. Please let me know about it or how you have it set up.

January 17, 2011January 17, 2016

Cruising 2011

It had been a long time since Claudine and I had a good long vacation to just ourselves. Sure we’ve taken a weekend here and there but not a real vacation. We’ve been keeping an eye out for a deal and saving our vacation pennies since September. We’ve been looking at all inclusive resorts and other destinations, but after doing the math we decided that we might as well take a cruise.

So, the stars lined up and we booked a Western Caribbean cruise with Royal Caribbean aboard the Freedom of the Seas just two weeks from departure.

Now, keeping things in perspective, the last time we took a cruise was 21 years ago. A 5 day cruise on the Bermuda Star Lines SS Veracruz. Now it was a ‘smaller’ ship back then, Carnival and other cruise lines had it beat, but we had a budget and it was still highly rated at the time. It was an awesome experience. Sailing to Playa Del Carmen and Cozumel Mexico. Weighing in at a killer 10,000 Gross Tons. The newer Freedom of the Seas weighing in at 160,000 gross tons, was going to be a completely different adventure (yeah 16 times larger).

If you read this blog, you know how I tend to write my reviews of things. I call things how I see them. At the end of the week we had a fabulous time, and we’ll do it again I’m sure. If you’re looking for a cruise, thinking about a cruise, there are things you should know and avoid.

First and foremost, Royal Caribbean is first class. I suggest you book directly with them. We used a travel agent, and while she didn’t cost much, the value provided was basically non-existent. The flights she booked were horrible choices, in both timing and accommodations. Our flight into Orlando landed at 12:36, and the cut-off for the last Royal Caribbean shuttle was 12:30, which meant we had to make alternate accommodations. Again, not the end of the world, we were originally told we’d have a limo/town car waiting to pick us up. That turned into; call them when you get there, you shouldn’t have to wait for more than an hour for them to pick you up. Well, we didn’t have an hour to wait so we found an alternate shuttle. Not the end of the world but an inconvenience we should have not had to deal with using a travel agent. After looking at the transfer debacle we did some flight searching and found much better options. It was too late to change but they were there.

So bypass the agent, you don’t need one to book a cruise.

Pre-buying off ship excursions. Don’t do it unless you really, really feel the need. We were told from day one that certain things were ‘sold out’ and other things were ‘filling up so you better book them now’. In Labadee Haiti, we were told the Zip line was almost 100% booked two weeks before and that the jet boats were already full. Turns out we could have participated in either the day of had we chosen too.

The one thing we really didn’t like was the over-hyping of activities and the push to get you to sign up for things. While I realize that some of these things do actually fill up, we honestly had our pick of just about anything we wanted to do. Also, unless you have a compelling need to be hand-held and given deadlines or step by step instructions for your excursions, you can almost certainly do better doing it yourself. Example: the excursion to the Duns River falls in Ocho Rios Jamaica was $80 per person, plus your $15 entrance into the falls ($95.00 each) and you’d be there with 60 or more other strangers being ushered up the falls. We got a cab to the falls for $14 each, that included taking us there, picking us up, dropping us off in the shopping district, picking us up again and taking us to the pier. Our cost for the same thing on our time was $29 per person.

Our story starts with an very early flight out of Dayton International Airport. One of the best places to fly out of and into because it’s so small. The security check point has one of the body scanners. When they say take ‘everything’ out of your pockets, they mean everything. I left cash in my front pocket, the scanner picked that up and earned me a shake down and a talking too. Other than that it was a pretty plain airport security experience.

From Dayton we flew into Atlanta, with a 1 and a half hour lay over. (Note to travel agents, there is no reason NOT to fly people from Cincy to Orlando ‘direct’. No need to take a 2 hour flight and make it a 6-8 hour experience).

From Atlanta to Orlando, pretty routine. We grabbed our Luggage, called our shuttle, had to wait about 20 minute, but got to the pier with an hour to spare. We were on-board by 3pm.

Our first impression of the ship, or at least mine was “Holy Cow, this thing is big”. We were parked in Port Canaveral, next to two Carnival cruise ships which were quite small in comparison.

I didn’t get a shot that showed them both together, but the size difference was significant.

Our room was in the bottom of the boat (Deck 2), which initially I wasn’t excited about. We’d hoped for an upgrade, but the ship was full, and no such upgrade presented itself. We had a rather large portal window and the close proximity to the elevators made it work out well.

All ship rooms are somewhat small, but we found ours to be very comfortable. The online photo showed a couch in the room, but that turned out to be a chair. With only two people it was very comfortable. Four would have been too crowded.

After getting settled, we waited for our luggage and took a tour of the ship. Not a guided tour, just a walk around and get your bearings. Where are the stairs, elevators, bathrooms, bars, and most importantly where is the Casino?

We also wandered up to the Spa to book our first massage. We got roped into a Spa tour, which sucked. It was each station, hocking their wares, from massages to facials and even Botox, if you wanted it. Of course everyone claimed they filled up quickly so book your appointment NOW. We really didn’t like the hard sell every time we turned around. We did take advantage of a first day special that let us book our couples massage early and save a little money. We booked our massage for Monday morning and then got out of the Spa as quickly as possible.

With all of that out of the way we waited for the mandatory lifeboat drill. My cruise tip for you: Don’t be early to the drill, we stood around on deck for nearly an hour waiting for it to get started. Once you’re in your designated spot you aren’t permitted to leave until the drill is over and the Captain is happy.

Continue reading “Cruising 2011”

May 18, 2010January 26, 2016

My recent trip to the UK & Germany.

My employer has offices internationally, and as fate would have it, we’re moving them. We started with the UK office via some uk affordable movers back in January. I took a rather condensed trip over to the UK to look at office space. I was in the air, or in airports almost as long as I was in the UK so I didn’t get to see much other than the offices we looked at.

This trip was very similar.

The first part of the trip was to move the office and get the internet connectivity and telecommunications setup as well as wrap up some loose ends.

We left Cincinnati (CVG) Saturday May 8th, connecting in Chicago, then straight into Heathrow, in the UK. I was fortunate to be traveling with our VP of sales, who makes this trip once a month. As such he’s earned his rewards and status with the airlines and the benefits that come with that. As his traveling partner I was able to better enjoy the road warrior lifestyle for a week. Being able to visit the international clubs in the airport and getting ‘upgraded’ has it’s advantages.

This time however we did rent a car. Figuring we’d be driving back and forth between offices and making the occasional run to the store for something we figured this would be easier than cabs.

We picked up our car at the airport and headed to the hotel. As things usually go, they didn’t have the car we reserved so we settled on a VW Passat, and a free GPS as compensation.

Driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road is interesting. But not nearly as difficult as I was led to believe it would be. We arrived without incident.

While in the UK we tend to stay at the Twickenham Marriott which wraps the Twickenham rugby statdium. It’s new so it’s still very nice. Twickenham is on the west side of London, and honestly there isn’t a whole lot around that area in terms of quick and dirty tourist attractions. You can hop the tube into downtown London if you have time, but we didn’t.

The room (at least the one I stayed in) is pretty straight forward:

The View

We didn’t do much Sunday, other than recuperate from the flight(s). We did venture out in search of another US/UK power adapter and ended up a Bentalls, a shopping center and mall about 20 minutes away. We at lunch/dinner there, and I picked up a Tea Pot for my lovely wife.

Monday morning we met Ashley at the office, got our bearings and went to the old office to retrieve our communications gear. Loaded it up and headed back to our new office in Kew.

Where by we commenced to assembling furniture and getting our phones system and internet connectivity up and running. A good part of the afternoon was spent getting our phone service re-tooled from the interfaces we had at our horrible Regus office to lines we now had control over. To this end we use eVelocity, for Cisco voice configuration we’re not comfortable messing with. While things never go as planned, things actually went quite well.

With day 1 complete nearly everything was working as planned.

On Tuesday, we did more of the same, mostly clean-up and tweaks. For lunch we wandered out to the Kew Greenhouse Cafe. Ashley claimed it was simply a tourist spot and no, UK people rarely eat at places like this.

Lunch was a Tuna Bake and a Becks Beer.

Then back to the office for more office move related stuff. Our landlord occupies the 1st and 2nd floor of this building (2nd and 3rd floor to US folks). I took some time with Paul and discussed their business, the building and other stuff. When they renovated the building, they added the 3rd floor. It has somewhat of a nautical theme, seeing as how they are in the shipping business it all made sense. The windows are like port-holes on a ship. The 3rd floor is an all-purpose conference room and space for entertaining. Complete with a temporary bed, shower and other luxuries.

The whole office reminded me of Apple in Cupertino. They are Apple users and the whole place was quite sanitary looking.

We showed off our iPad’s knowing they’d be interested and couldn’t actually get their hands on them for another couple weeks.

Later in the afternoon I took about an hour to run over to the Chiswick Honda dealership. At this dealership they have everything Honda. From lawnmowers and generators, to motorcycles and cars. My goal was to sit on a new Honda VFR 1200 and check out a couple of bikes that aren’t available in the states. Mission accomplished, but I have to say, the folks at the dealership were less than friendly.

That evening, we stopped at Tesco’s, the UK version of Walmart to get a few snacks and drinks for the room so we didn’t have to spend 5 GBP (or about $7.50) for a pepsi at the hotel.

Just like Walmart you can get everything at Tesco, including your home loan, and car insurance right at the check out.

Kevin had to get his Walker Potato chips, “Prawn Cocktail” flavor to be exact. I’m pretty sure these are just lays potato chips. But they had a number of really interesting flavors. I opted for a combo pack that had ‘Steak and Onion’, ‘Smokey Bacon’ which I though was extremely ironic since these folks don’t have a clue what bacon really is. A slice of honey baked ham, without the honey or the baking is not bacon, it’s simply a slice of poorly grilled ham, and ‘Roast Chicken’. Much to my surprise all of these flavors were accurate, and quite delicious.

Wednesday was wrap up day. I didn’t have a lot to do, but was hoping I’d get to get out and see some stuff.

We took a quick road trip to IKEA of all places, in an effort to find a conference room table. Kevin was fairly certain the conference room table we had in Austria came from IKEA. On the way we stopped for lunch at the world famous ACE cafe. Which was really an American diner/motorcycle hang out.

Cool place, lots of history. The Ace Cafe – London, was bombed in World War II. History can be found here. Ashley’s dad used to frequent the place in his younger years.

Out trip to IKEA was uneventful. No real office furniture to speak of, thought they did have the little lantern that Matthew was playing with at home on our front porch before I left. Which I believe was a gift we received at Christmas. It tickled me to see them in London.

We returned around 3pm. It was a little late in the day for me to make a run to Stonehenge, which was on my short list of things to go see. It’s about 80 miles from the office but knowing that I’d run into traffic and that we had to leave for the airport at 5am I wasn’t much in the mood to risk it.

I took a little walk around the Kew train stop area, around our office and took some photos.

Everything here is old, including the bridge over the train tracks that I walked over and took the above photo from. Built in 1912.

Given the amount of pure ugly people, most of whom are only ugly because they need some dental care, I was shocked to find a dentist on the other side of the tracks. (That’s sarcasm and humor in case you didn’t notice.)

That evening we had dinner at the Inn in Kew Gardens, a standard pub/hotel. Very much like the Golden Lamb here in Lebanon, OH. The food was good and on a vacation visit I would probably stay there, though I didn’t get to check out any of the rooms.

The night was uneventful, I slept well, but didn’t get my 4:15am wake up call. Grrrrr… (yes 4:15am, necessary to get up and out by 5am, to get to the airport, return our car, clear security and all that entails to make a 7am flight to Munich, Germany).

Still we got out of the hotel in time to return the rental car, and make our flight without too much trouble.

The flight into Germany was uneventful. We flew Lufthansa and of all the flights so far this was the worst. The dirtiest aircraft, and the loudest. It had a horrible buzzing/vibration. But hey, it’s all good if you don’t crash right?

We landed in Munich and took a cab to the Munich Marriott, which is really in Freising. We pretty much had the day to kill since it was a Holiday. No real estate agents were working. I had in mind to visit either the BMW museum in Munich, or Dachau, the 1st concentration camp. But as fate would have it, we didn’t have a car, and being a holiday we feared things may not be open. We walked down to the hofbrauhaus with the intention of eating well and having a few beers.

But it too was closed. To be honest the whole town was very quiet. We walked back to the hotel and had a good meal and beer at the restaurant then just relaxed in our rooms. I watched “The Hurt Locker”, and promptly fell a sleep.

In the morning Rob picked us up and we went office shopping.

I won’t bore you with the details of that.

The bottom line though is that you could probably take someone from West Chester, blind fold them, drop them off near the Munich airport and they wouldn’t know the difference. The drive on the right side of the road, and it’s wide open. Plenty of farmland. Very Cincinnati like.

Our trip was successful, at least at this point I think it was. We viewed 8 different offices, had lunch at a little Italian bistro, then spent a couple hours at the airport office park where our current office is.

We flew back to Heathrow at 7pm, less than 48 hours after we arrived. We spent the night at the Heathrow Marriott, then headed back to the US at 7:30 in the morning the next day.

The flight home was equally uneventful, until we needed to board our flight from Chicago to Cincy. The plane needed some maintenance attention but they gut us underway in less than 40 minutes of our original departure time so we were only 30 minutes late.

I can’t wait to go back, but I can certainly wait to do those flights again.

12 + hours in airports and planes just kinds sucks like that.