Lost and Found: Revisiting the Dismal Final Season to an Otherwise Brilliant Show

It's hard to believe it's been almost twenty years since Lost made its debut on television, and some 13 years since it came to its, in my opinion, highly dissatisfying conclusion. When I watched the final season on TV, I felt like it was the worst conglomeration of disconnected ideas I'd ever encountered. It seemed as if the writers had run out of anything innovative and stitched together previously rejected script ideas to come up with enough material to call it a season. And when the eagerly awaited series finale finally arrived, the only phrase I could utter was "out with a whimper," as one of the most innovative shows on television concluded with what, to me and others, felt like a sea of missed opportunities. The brilliance of Lost was, indeed, truly lost. 

So deep was my disappointment in the show's sixth and final season that I vowed never to own it on DVD or Blu-Ray, preferring instead to see the finale episode of season five, in which Juliette, stuck in the Dharma compound in the late '70s, detonates a hydrogen bomb, as a far more appropriate and enigmatic place to end the series. By comparison, the sixteen episodes of season six added little of interest or narrative value to the show's overall story arc.  

What was especially disappointing to me then as now was that for most of its run, the show had lived up to its potential as a tightly crafted, if somewhat convoluted, narrative of a group of plane crash survivors on a (not so) deserted island in the south Pacific, and their myriad connections with each other prior to the crash, told via extensive flashbacks to the past, as well as flashes 'sideways' into alternate realities. 

To be fair, the show's descent into chaos was not limited to season six. The beginning of the end came with the finale of season four, where Ben Linus moved the island. To me, this took to a whole new dimension the concept of jumping the shark, which originated with an episode of Happy Days, where Fonzie won a skiing contest in Hawaii by jumping over a shark, after which the show began a slow descent into irrelevance. 

As a result of the moving of the island, the narrative for season five was more than a little disjointed and stretched credibility to the breaking point, such that the only real—and fairly elegant—solution was to set off an H-bomb. I say that it was an elegant solution because setting off the bomb in the past meant the island was already destroyed in the present, thus annihilating the events of the whole show. I maintain to this day that it would have been the best possible conclusion to the show, leaving viewers eternally wondering what the hell just happened. Honestly, everything that transpired in season six was superfluous.

So, why am I choosing to write about this now? Despite having stood firm on my decision not to acquire season six on DVD, I finally broke down and got it. I found a copy on eBay, the purchase of which benefited charity, for half the price I normally see them at my local second-hand music, movie, and book store. There is apparently sufficient demand for the final season, lackluster though it may be, that it still commands a premium price, when the earlier five seasons routinely show up in the bargain bin for two dollars each. I'm guessing the previous owner of the season six set I bought didn't like it much, either, because it's in absolutely pristine shape and they donated it to charity.

The five-disc set arrived today, and I intend to watch them in the near future to see if I can make anything remotely resembling coherent sense out of it. I'm just wondering whether or how many of the earlier seasons I'll need to watch first. I'll amend this post with my final impressions once watch it.

Are Costco's Interstate Car Batteries Really a Good Deal?

 From five-dollar rotisserie chickens to flat-screen TVs, Costco is known for offering a variety of good deals. Many Costco customers count car batteries among them. Costco sells Interstate co-branded car batteries at prices so low, one would be forgiven for questioning their validity, especially since they carry a premium brand at a little over half the price one would expect to pay elsewhere. 

For comparison, I bought an Interstate battery from my local Interstate store last December and paid about $220 for it. Today, I bought a Costco Interstate battery for my other car and paid $119. Wait, what? Did I really pay $100 less for the same battery from Costco? That's a tough question to answer and it hinges upon whether they are, indeed, the same battery. 

First, we need to understand that while car batteries are available in under a plethora of brands, all American-made car batteries come from just three contract manufacturers—Exide, Johnson Controls, and East Penn. In many cases, the only differences between two battery brands could be the logo on the label and the distribution channel through which it reaches the consumer. 

Interstate batteries and their Costco co-branded counterparts may well originate at the same factories, but they take very different routes to find their way under the hoods of customers' cars. The Costco co-branded  Interstate batteries may bear the Interstate logo under license, but they are distributed and warrantied exclusively by Costco. Interstate has no relationship or responsibility for them, beyond putting their logo on them.

So, does this mean the Costco Interstate batteries aren't genuine Interstate batteries? They are 'genuine' in the sense that Interstate authorizes the use of their logo, and thus they ride on Interstate's positive reputation, but that appears to be the extent of the relationship. Interstate neither distributes nor stands behind the Costco batteries that carry their brand.

Does this mean Costco Interstate batteries are a ripoff? Not necessarily. They're of reasonably good quality and the price is right for what they are, especially if you're handy enough to install it yourself, since Costco merely sells them over the counter. Consumers are responsible for installation, whether they do it themselves or take it to a third party. This is one way Costco keeps their costs down. Think of it this way, you're getting the battery for only the cost of the part and not labor.

So, how do the two Interstate batteries compare in terms of performance? My own experience is hardly a statistically significant sampling, but I've owned two Interstate batteries in the same car and three Costco Interstate batteries in two different cars, including the battery I bought today. The battery I bought directly from Interstate in December replaced another Interstate battery that was in that same car when I acquired it in 2018. I have no idea how old it was when I got the car, but it lasted more than four years while I owned it. 

The first of the Costco Interstate batteries was only a few months old when I replaced the car it was in, so I have no idea how long it ultimately lasted. The one I replaced today outlasted the 36-month warranty by a little more than two months. That's not exceptional, but not bad either. Speaking of warranties, the Costco batteries carry a 36-month full replacement warranty, which is longer than that of some Interstate batteries, but it is honored only at Costco. Many battery brands have short replacement period, followed by prorated replacement for the remainder of the warranty period. 

From a standpoint of price, performance, and warranty, Costco's Interstate batteries are an exceptional value with a lot to offer for a modest price. The trick here be an informed consumer, know what you're getting into, maintain realistic expectations. Approaching it this way will allow one to see the batteries as for what they are and value them accordingly. One can safely say that if you buy a Costco Interstate battery, you will at least get what you pay for, and likely more.

 

LibreOffice: Version Numbers Gone Wild!

Now that LibreOffice 7.6 has been out for a few weeks and has seen its first maintenance update to 7.6.1, word is filtering out that its parent organization, the Document Foundation, is making a big change in version numbering for the free office productivity suite. Since beginning with version 3.3 back in 2010 (it started with the then-current version number of OpenOffice, from which it was forked), LibreOffice has been on a fixed release schedule with major version releases in February and August, and maintenance releases every five or six weeks see the release plan for details. But the next major version release, scheduled for February 2024, will be version 24.2! Wait! What? They're jumping ahead 17 version numbers and skipping the first two maintenance releases? No, not exactly.

The semi-annual version bumps, like the most recent one from 7.5x to 7.6x, are where new features are introduced. The smaller point releases, say from 7.6.0 to 7.6.1, include bug fixes and minor improvements, but not new features. Under the old numbering scheme, the February release would have been 7.7, with version 8.0 coming out in August, but the new numbering system changes all that. If you haven't guessed it yet, 24.2 refers to the year and month of the version's release. A final digit would sequential, indicating maintenance release versions, (e.g. 24.2.0, 24.2.1, 24.2.2, etc.); thus, next August's version release would be 24.8.0.

So, why do this? The Document Foundation apparently decided a date-based numbering system would be more in keeping with their scheduled release scheme than the traditional two-digit numbering system, especially since the February and August version releases are usually fairly subtle upgrades, rather than radical redesigns. Perhaps this also marks a further shift away from its parent software Apache OpenOffice, which only sees an occasional maintenance update and is presently at version 4.1.x for several years.

I am not expecting anything spectacular when the new version numbering makes its debut next February, but if you're curious about what it will include, check out the release notes at release notes for more information. They're very preliminary at this time, but will be fleshed out further as the release date draws nearer.

A tale of two grocery stores

 As of a few months ago, we now have two German-based discount grocery stores in our city. Aldi, based domestically in the Chicago suburb of Batavia, Ill., has had a presence in town for almost 20 years, while Lidl, with U.S. headquarters in Arlington, Va., has been open locally for about three months. The two chains offer lower prices than most other grocery chains and a largely no-frills shopping experience with more than a nod to the ideal of German efficiency, but there are differences that could sway a shopper from one to the other.

Both stores are physically smaller than competing American supermarkets and don't offer the same upscale shopping amenities. Simplicity is the watch word as they both lean heavily on limited SKUs (stock keeping units), house brands, and relying on customers to perform simple tasks, such as bagging their own groceries to help keep overhead costs down.

Aldi takes this a step further, charging a 25-cent deposit to use one of their shopping carts, which one gets back when the carts are returned and chained up, releasing the quarter. Shoppers often pay kindness forward by leaving their cart unchained, or simply handing it off to another customer and declining their quarter. The net positive effect of this is there are few, if any, stray carts in the parking lot. Lidl does not chain up their carts; in fact, they offer them in two sizes, a full-sized version and a smaller double-decker cart. 

Amenities at both stores are relatively spartan, although Lidl does have a small bakery section, albeit with somewhat limited selections. Neither store has a deli or cut-to-order meats; in fact, most of their meats are prepackaged by the processor.

Another area of contrast is at the checkout. Aldi has no self-checkout, but their cashiers are amazingly fast and are taught to use the quantity key on the register to ring out multiples of the same item with a single scan. To be honest, I have never had the cashier experience at Lidl, since they offer self-checkout. Having worked as a cashier in the past, I can manage self-checkout very efficiently, so that is my preferred method at just about any store that offers it.

Neither store uses plastic bags. Customers must either purchase paper reusable bags at the checkout, or else bring their own. Another alternative at both stores is to keep one's eyes peeled for usable boxes. Produce flats are a great choice, as they are extremely sturdy. Employees at both stores are constantly removing empty and nearly empty boxes from the shelves, and they are dropped into a large, wheeled basket, from which one can grab what one needs. Just don't dump the contents from a nearly full produce flat, just to get the box. Just as an aside, his same strategy also works at Costco or Sam's Club. 

So, how do Aldi and Lidl stack up against each other in the areas of price and selection? Aldi has far fewer nationally advertised brands, relying almost exclusively on house brands, usually with a single choice of package size. The quality of offerings at both stores is quite comparable. Prices are comparable or slightly lower than those at Lidl, which offers more in the way of national brands, but still nowhere near the variety of more conventional stores. While neither store has a loyalty card program, Lidl does offer special deals through its My Lidl smartphone app. 

So, does one store offer a more compelling value proposition than the other? It's hard to tell. Today, I did not have a quarter in my pocket to unlock a cart at Aldi, so I shopped at Lidl. But there may be other days where I find a better reason to shop at Aldi. There are things I particularly like at Aldi that will make the visit worthwhile, but I'm also finding favorites at Lidl. Either way, I feel like I can save a bit, compared to shopping at more mainstream and upscale stores, which is a win, whichever I pick.