For the past year or so, I've been using a Sonicare electric toothbrush. It's an amazing bit of technological kit that blasts plaque away with a brush head that vibrates at ultrasonic frequencies. I had used inexpensive battery toothbrushes for several years prior to acquiring the Sonicare, and I was fascinated to note several significant differences between it and its less expensive counterparts.
The first major difference is the lack of a motor. The other battery toothbrushes I have used have all had a small electric motor, which drives the the head with a simple mechanism that either causes the bristles to oscillate back and forth or spin around.
The Sonicare also oscillates, but there is no motor. The only physical connection between head and handle is the threaded collar that keeps the head in place. Instead of driving the head with the spinning shaft of a motor, this toothbrush uses an electromagnet that reverses polarity several thousand times a second, causing the head to vibrate several thousand times a second. Unlike traditional battery toothbrushes, which will run without a head attached, the Sonicare will not. Its head completes the mechanism.
A secondary advantage to this design is it allows the handle to be a completely sealed unit, ideal for operating in a wet environment like a bathroom--or a mouth. This sealed design continues at the bottom of the handle, where there are no electrical contacts despite the fact that the handle contains rechargeable batteries. Here again, magnetism comes into play as the batteries are charged by a process called magnetic induction. It's not the most efficient design, as it takes almost 24 hours to give the batteries a full charge, but it does facilitate a design where there are no metal contacts to allow leakage or oxidation.
As amazing as this design is, the batteries, two non-replaceable AA size nickle-cadmium (Ni-Cad) cells, are definitely its weak point. I was genuinely surprised the manufacturer, Phillips, opted for lower quality Ni-Cad cells when superior nickel metal hydride (NiMH) cells would have added, at most, a few pennies to the cost of the toothbrush.
The problem with Ni-Cad cells is twofold: They generally have a faster discharge rate than NiMH cells and they develop a 'memory' pattern in which they have a very short operational life between charges if they are charged at frequent intervals without being fully discharged first. To get the best life out of Ni-Cad batteries, they need to have deep cycle charges, which can be achieved by charging the batteries only when they are fully depleted. Fortunately, the Sonicare toothbrush is engineered to maximize battery life by alerting the user when when the batteries need charging by giving a beep and flashing an LED under the power button. While the instructions mention the low battery indicator feature, they don't state specifically that the battery should only be charged when this feature calls for a charge. On average, I have to charge my toothbrush about twice a month.
This is somewhat problematic given that many users will doubtless keep the toothbrush in its charging stand between uses. Over time, this can lead to premature battery failure, which spells the end of the toothbrush's operational life since the sealed handle can't be opened without destroying it.
I believe that NiMH batteries would be more suitable for this application because they hold a charge longer and have much less of a memory effect. I proved the superiority of NiMH batteries to myself a few years ago when the Ni-Cad batteries in my Remington electric razor died on me. Because the outer casing was held together with screws, I took it apart to find conventional AA-sized Ni-Cad batteries with solder tabs inside.
After searching around the Internet, I found a source for the batteries and saw they had both Ni-Cad and NiMH batteries available at virtually the same cost. I opted for the NiMH batteries, soldering them with a minimum of fuss. In the process, I extended the life of the device at about a tenth the cost of replacing it. My replacement batteries outperformed the originals in every way. Not only do they hold a charge longer, but six years later, they are still going strong, whereas the originals only lasted about five years.
Given what I know about these batteries, it boggles my mind that Phillips would choose an inferior battery for an otherwise highly advanced toothbrush. The only rationale that comes to my mind is one of built-in obsolescence in that it's not always in the manufacturer's best interest to let the consumer have too much of a good thing.
Update: 10 December 2011
I was in Target yesterday and saw a new entry level Sonicare model. This one uses conventional AA batteries and sells for the relative bargain price of $20, less than half the price of my Sonicare Essence. Because the batteries are replaceable, you can use either alkalines or rechargeables and you don't have to throw the handle away when the batteries wear out. If I were in the market for a Sonicare today, this model would be on the top of my list, along with some rechargeable NiMH batteries. The brush heads are still frightfully expensive, but at least one would potentially get a longer service life out of the handle.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Is TV's Earl working the Twelve Steps?
I've been re-watching one of my favorite sitcoms, My Name is Earl, lately and I've made an interesting observation. It appears the show's protagonist. Earl J. Hickey, a reformed petty thief, drunkard and general ne'er do well, is working his own version of the Twelve Steps, popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and a host of other recovery groups.
The premise of the series is that Earl is trying to improve his lot in life by making a list of all his past transgressions and making amends for them with the help his not-so-bright brother Randy and a healthy dose of redneck humor.
The first clue that the Twelve Steps might be at the heart of this show's premise can be found in the title. It is customary in Twelve Step recovery groups for members to introduce themselves by first name (e.g., My name is ______ and I'm an alcoholic/addict/gambler/codependent/etc.) but the parallels run much deeper than that. Let's see how Earl's (mis)adventures with his list mesh with the Twelve Steps:
1. Came to the realization we were powerless over alcohol (or some other addiction), that our lives had become unmanageable.
In the pilot episode, Earl comes to a similar conclusion while laying in a hospital bed after being hit by a car only seconds after scratching off a $100,000 lottery ticket, paid for with funds acquired by picking someone's pocket in the men's room. He begins to put the pieces together and realizes his problems just might be his fault
2. Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Earl has a similar epiphany while watching an interview show on TV. The host of the show, Carson Daly, mentions his belief in Karma--that if you do good things, good things will happen to you and if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. Earl buys into this philosophy on the spot and decides if he doesn't change his life, Karma will eventually kill him.
3. Gave our will and our lives over to God as we understood him.
Earl indeed hands his will and his life over to his higher power, which he calls Karma, and dedicates himself full time to righting his past wrongs.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to have God remove these shortcomings
7. Humbly asked God to remove these defects of character.
Earl appears to work steps 4, 5, 6, and 7 in rapid succession during the first episode.
8. Made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them
Earl's list is the very crux of the show's premise.
9. Made amends to such persons, except when to do so would injure them or others.
In each episode, Earl makes amends for one or more of his past transgressions, learning an important life lesson in the process.
10. Continued to take inventory and when were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Like most people in recovery, Earl has the occasional slip, but when this happens, he makes a concerted effort to avoid adding to his karmic debt by making immediate additions to his list and addressing them before the ink is completely dry.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to achieve a closer contact with our higher power, asking only for a better understanding of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
Earl invests significant time and energy trying to determine what Karma wants him to do next. He is open to all manner of signs and portents and when the appropriate path becomes apparent, he proceeds without hesitation.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we sought to bring the message of Alcoholics Anonymous (or some other 12-step recovery fellowship) to those who still suffer and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Hilarious as this show is, it quickly becomes obvious to the viewer that Earl's experience is transformative on a spiritual level. He becomes aware of and in tune with his higher power--Karma. While Earl is not shy about explaining his list and his mission to others, he isn't evangelical in his approach. To his credit, he lets others draw their own conclusions about whether it will work for them. In this respect, Earl is clearly following the 11th Tradition of AA, which espouses attraction over promotion. As for the last part, Earl consistently uses his belief in Karma to guide his daily actions. He frequently checks his baser impulses and then acts based on what he believes Karma would have him do.
I have no idea whether the show's creator, Greg Garica, is a member of a Twelve-Step fellowship or whether he consciously modeled Earl's quirky life journey on Twelve Step recovery, but the parallels are too obvious to ignore. Although Earl doesn't attend weekly meetings, pick up chips to mark milestones in his recovery, or sponsor new members, he arguably is working his own, unique, quirky, and hilariously entertaining version of the Twelve Steps. In the process, he is achieving his goal of living a better life. The moral to this story is that the Twelve Steps are for all of us, regardless of the nature of our character defects. Their wisdom is simple, and if applied honestly, they simply work.
The premise of the series is that Earl is trying to improve his lot in life by making a list of all his past transgressions and making amends for them with the help his not-so-bright brother Randy and a healthy dose of redneck humor.
The first clue that the Twelve Steps might be at the heart of this show's premise can be found in the title. It is customary in Twelve Step recovery groups for members to introduce themselves by first name (e.g., My name is ______ and I'm an alcoholic/addict/gambler/codependent/etc.) but the parallels run much deeper than that. Let's see how Earl's (mis)adventures with his list mesh with the Twelve Steps:
1. Came to the realization we were powerless over alcohol (or some other addiction), that our lives had become unmanageable.
In the pilot episode, Earl comes to a similar conclusion while laying in a hospital bed after being hit by a car only seconds after scratching off a $100,000 lottery ticket, paid for with funds acquired by picking someone's pocket in the men's room. He begins to put the pieces together and realizes his problems just might be his fault
2. Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Earl has a similar epiphany while watching an interview show on TV. The host of the show, Carson Daly, mentions his belief in Karma--that if you do good things, good things will happen to you and if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. Earl buys into this philosophy on the spot and decides if he doesn't change his life, Karma will eventually kill him.
3. Gave our will and our lives over to God as we understood him.
Earl indeed hands his will and his life over to his higher power, which he calls Karma, and dedicates himself full time to righting his past wrongs.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to ourselves, to God, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to have God remove these shortcomings
7. Humbly asked God to remove these defects of character.
Earl appears to work steps 4, 5, 6, and 7 in rapid succession during the first episode.
8. Made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them
Earl's list is the very crux of the show's premise.
9. Made amends to such persons, except when to do so would injure them or others.
In each episode, Earl makes amends for one or more of his past transgressions, learning an important life lesson in the process.
10. Continued to take inventory and when were wrong, promptly admitted it.
Like most people in recovery, Earl has the occasional slip, but when this happens, he makes a concerted effort to avoid adding to his karmic debt by making immediate additions to his list and addressing them before the ink is completely dry.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to achieve a closer contact with our higher power, asking only for a better understanding of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
Earl invests significant time and energy trying to determine what Karma wants him to do next. He is open to all manner of signs and portents and when the appropriate path becomes apparent, he proceeds without hesitation.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we sought to bring the message of Alcoholics Anonymous (or some other 12-step recovery fellowship) to those who still suffer and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Hilarious as this show is, it quickly becomes obvious to the viewer that Earl's experience is transformative on a spiritual level. He becomes aware of and in tune with his higher power--Karma. While Earl is not shy about explaining his list and his mission to others, he isn't evangelical in his approach. To his credit, he lets others draw their own conclusions about whether it will work for them. In this respect, Earl is clearly following the 11th Tradition of AA, which espouses attraction over promotion. As for the last part, Earl consistently uses his belief in Karma to guide his daily actions. He frequently checks his baser impulses and then acts based on what he believes Karma would have him do.
I have no idea whether the show's creator, Greg Garica, is a member of a Twelve-Step fellowship or whether he consciously modeled Earl's quirky life journey on Twelve Step recovery, but the parallels are too obvious to ignore. Although Earl doesn't attend weekly meetings, pick up chips to mark milestones in his recovery, or sponsor new members, he arguably is working his own, unique, quirky, and hilariously entertaining version of the Twelve Steps. In the process, he is achieving his goal of living a better life. The moral to this story is that the Twelve Steps are for all of us, regardless of the nature of our character defects. Their wisdom is simple, and if applied honestly, they simply work.
Friday, February 25, 2011
LibreOffice--Meet the New Office, Same as the Old Office?
I've recently made the jump from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice. Okay, it's not much of a jump. At this point, it's essentially the same software with a different name. What's important is what's to come in the future.
For those who don't know, LibreOffice was launched last fall when a group of leading OpenOffice.org developers, dissatisfied with Oracle's management of the open source productivity package, decided to jump ship and form their own fork of the software under the banner of The Document Foundation (TDF). Almost immediately, they released a "beta" of LibreOffice, which was little more than a re-branded version of OpenOffice. Likewise, they released a stable version (3.3) at almost the same time OOo 3.3 came out. The beta and initial 3.3 version of LibreOffice even used the same icons as OOo. Version 3.3.1, which came out a week after 3.3.0, had a few stability enhancements and a new set of icons.
So what's the difference? Why would one want to switch from OOo to LibreOffice? To the end user, the differences are indeed subtle and some of them will likely become more apparent as time goes on. LibreOffice developers claim to be cleaning up the source code to remove bits that are no longer needed and are incorporating other third party enhancements, including those found in Novell's Go.oo fork.
The main difference, however, is political. LibreOffice touts its independence from corporate interests as a formula for greater flexibility in determining the priorities and direction for development of the software. This promise has led several key players, including Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu Linux, to replace OpenOffice with LibreOffice in upcoming versions of its distribution. The degree to which LibreOffice has been embraced can be seen in a recent campaign to raise 50,000 Euros to allow TDF to incorporate as a legal entity in Germany. The campaign was expected to take a month to reach its goal, but they surpassed it in eight days and contributions, many from end users, are still coming in.
As time goes on, it will be interesting to see where TDF takes LibreOffice. It is entirely possible that it will completely break off from OOo as IBM did when it forked OOo 1.x to create Lotus Symphony, which now develops independently of OOo.
They say competition can be good for innovation, and hopefully this is the case with OOo and LibreOffice.
For those who don't know, LibreOffice was launched last fall when a group of leading OpenOffice.org developers, dissatisfied with Oracle's management of the open source productivity package, decided to jump ship and form their own fork of the software under the banner of The Document Foundation (TDF). Almost immediately, they released a "beta" of LibreOffice, which was little more than a re-branded version of OpenOffice. Likewise, they released a stable version (3.3) at almost the same time OOo 3.3 came out. The beta and initial 3.3 version of LibreOffice even used the same icons as OOo. Version 3.3.1, which came out a week after 3.3.0, had a few stability enhancements and a new set of icons.
So what's the difference? Why would one want to switch from OOo to LibreOffice? To the end user, the differences are indeed subtle and some of them will likely become more apparent as time goes on. LibreOffice developers claim to be cleaning up the source code to remove bits that are no longer needed and are incorporating other third party enhancements, including those found in Novell's Go.oo fork.
The main difference, however, is political. LibreOffice touts its independence from corporate interests as a formula for greater flexibility in determining the priorities and direction for development of the software. This promise has led several key players, including Canonical, the parent company of Ubuntu Linux, to replace OpenOffice with LibreOffice in upcoming versions of its distribution. The degree to which LibreOffice has been embraced can be seen in a recent campaign to raise 50,000 Euros to allow TDF to incorporate as a legal entity in Germany. The campaign was expected to take a month to reach its goal, but they surpassed it in eight days and contributions, many from end users, are still coming in.
As time goes on, it will be interesting to see where TDF takes LibreOffice. It is entirely possible that it will completely break off from OOo as IBM did when it forked OOo 1.x to create Lotus Symphony, which now develops independently of OOo.
They say competition can be good for innovation, and hopefully this is the case with OOo and LibreOffice.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
iPod in an older car?
When it comes to technology, I'm a bit of a late adopter. But once I adopt, I jump in with both feet. I just acquired an iPod last summer, a used one at that. Now that I have it, I want to get the most and best possible use out of it, including in the car.
While auxiliary inputs for devices such as iPods are a common feature of today's OEM and aftermarket car radios, my car and its OEM radio were manufactured several years before iPods even existed. In fact, it has a cassette player. My first thought was to dig out a cassette adapter I used to use with a portable CD player, but the noise from the cassette mechanism was almost loud enough to drown out the abysmal sound quality.
Fortunately, there is a better way. I have now installed a wired FM modulator that feeds the iPod audio directly from the headphone jack to the FM antenna. The sound quality is great and the installation was a snap, as long as you're comfortable removing and re-installing your radio to get to the antenna lead. It's not as bad as it sounds--really.
In addition to the modulator itself, you will need a few other parts. If your car uses a standard plug for the antenna, you will need an antenna patch cable to run between the modulator and the radio. If not, you will need a pair of adapter cables. I needed the latter with my car. I connected the male antenna plug into the female end of one adapter, then plugged that into the modulator. The other adapter went between the modulator and the radio. Don't worry, you can't mess this up, since the adapters will only work one way.
Once you've made made the antenna connection, you need to connect to some power. Splice the red wire into the power lead for the radio. You may need to find a wiring diagram online to know which wire to use. Note: some radios have two power leads, one of which is switched through the ignition while the other is constant to maintain the time on the clock. In my car, the switched wire is red and the constant one is yellow. Others may or may not be the same. I'd recommend using the switched one so the device will shut off when you shut the car off, and thus not drain the battery.
I also added a manual shutoff switch so the modulator would not interfere with FM radio reception when I'm not listening to the iPod. I connected the red power wire from the modulator to the switch, then ran another wire from the switch to the power source. The most challenging part was choosing a switch that blended in with the dashboard and deciding where to mount the switch. I finally went with a small, round push-button switch. Once I drilled a hole and installed it, the switch looked like it had always been there.
The black wire is the ground. It just needs to be connected to something metal to complete the circuit. When I re-installed my radio, I just secured the ground wire under one of the mounting screws.
The final wire to connect is an audio cable with a male headphone plug on one end and two male RCA plugs on the other. The RCA plugs connect to the modulator, then you must decide how to route the wire for easy access before you button things up.
The modulator I chose, an Eiger Audio EV-F120, has a digital tuner with which to choose the frequency on which the device transmits. Two buttons allow the user to adjust the frequency up or down. Some other devices use dip switches to select a frequency. Interference from broadcast stations isn't a problem because the device overrides broadcast radio reception when active, thus the need for a manual power switch.
To play the iPod through the radio, connect the iPod to the audio cable, turn the modulator on, and tune the radio to the same frequency as the FM modulator. Now you're ready to go rockin' down the highway!
So what did all this cost? The answer is, surprising little. Modulators cost between $10 and $30. I got mine on the lower end of that spectrum. At the upper end of the price spectrum, Scoche offers a nice unit that includes a power switch and an audio cable that terminate on a surface mount panel that attaches with double-faced tape. The antenna adapters cost around $10 or $15. A power switch can be had for $2 or $3.
While auxiliary inputs for devices such as iPods are a common feature of today's OEM and aftermarket car radios, my car and its OEM radio were manufactured several years before iPods even existed. In fact, it has a cassette player. My first thought was to dig out a cassette adapter I used to use with a portable CD player, but the noise from the cassette mechanism was almost loud enough to drown out the abysmal sound quality.
Fortunately, there is a better way. I have now installed a wired FM modulator that feeds the iPod audio directly from the headphone jack to the FM antenna. The sound quality is great and the installation was a snap, as long as you're comfortable removing and re-installing your radio to get to the antenna lead. It's not as bad as it sounds--really.
In addition to the modulator itself, you will need a few other parts. If your car uses a standard plug for the antenna, you will need an antenna patch cable to run between the modulator and the radio. If not, you will need a pair of adapter cables. I needed the latter with my car. I connected the male antenna plug into the female end of one adapter, then plugged that into the modulator. The other adapter went between the modulator and the radio. Don't worry, you can't mess this up, since the adapters will only work one way.
Once you've made made the antenna connection, you need to connect to some power. Splice the red wire into the power lead for the radio. You may need to find a wiring diagram online to know which wire to use. Note: some radios have two power leads, one of which is switched through the ignition while the other is constant to maintain the time on the clock. In my car, the switched wire is red and the constant one is yellow. Others may or may not be the same. I'd recommend using the switched one so the device will shut off when you shut the car off, and thus not drain the battery.
I also added a manual shutoff switch so the modulator would not interfere with FM radio reception when I'm not listening to the iPod. I connected the red power wire from the modulator to the switch, then ran another wire from the switch to the power source. The most challenging part was choosing a switch that blended in with the dashboard and deciding where to mount the switch. I finally went with a small, round push-button switch. Once I drilled a hole and installed it, the switch looked like it had always been there.
The black wire is the ground. It just needs to be connected to something metal to complete the circuit. When I re-installed my radio, I just secured the ground wire under one of the mounting screws.
The final wire to connect is an audio cable with a male headphone plug on one end and two male RCA plugs on the other. The RCA plugs connect to the modulator, then you must decide how to route the wire for easy access before you button things up.
The modulator I chose, an Eiger Audio EV-F120, has a digital tuner with which to choose the frequency on which the device transmits. Two buttons allow the user to adjust the frequency up or down. Some other devices use dip switches to select a frequency. Interference from broadcast stations isn't a problem because the device overrides broadcast radio reception when active, thus the need for a manual power switch.
To play the iPod through the radio, connect the iPod to the audio cable, turn the modulator on, and tune the radio to the same frequency as the FM modulator. Now you're ready to go rockin' down the highway!
So what did all this cost? The answer is, surprising little. Modulators cost between $10 and $30. I got mine on the lower end of that spectrum. At the upper end of the price spectrum, Scoche offers a nice unit that includes a power switch and an audio cable that terminate on a surface mount panel that attaches with double-faced tape. The antenna adapters cost around $10 or $15. A power switch can be had for $2 or $3.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Welcome back to '80s
Anyone who was alive and in front of a TV set between the later half of 1986 and the end of the Reagan era, could not possibly have avoided seeing this apparently computer-generated talking head. The funny thing is it wasn't computer generated at all. It was actor Matt Frewer under several pounds of latex. And anybody who saw Max Headroom back in the day knows he was bigger than just a 14-episode TV show. He was a pop culture phenomenon, sticking his head in everywhere from MTV music videos to commercials for that most hated of '80s icons, New Coke. He even inspired Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau to give President Reagan the Headroom treatment in the form of a video generated character called "Ron Headrest". Oddly enough, life eventually imitated art when then-former President Reagan gave videotaped testimony before Congress on the Iran-Contra scandal. By the beginning of the '90s, both Reagan and Max Headroom had largely faded away as the digital and political landscapes continued to evolve in odd and unexpected ways, some of which mirrored the TV show.
Viewing the series in its entirety over the course of a week was at once nostalgic and chilling. Its razor-sharp social commentary hasn't lost one bit of its bite. If anything, some aspects are even more relevant today. That said, it's kind of odd to see just how analog everything was back then. Set "20 Minutes into the Future," It's post-industrial, look, evoking equal parts Blade Runner, Brazil, and early MTV, is a product of its time. The production values are very '80s, and to Warner Home Video's credit, they opted to keep the original 4:3 screen aspect ratio, rather than re-cut things to fit our newer "landscape" TV screens. At the same time, it's uncanny how predictive the show could be.
During Max's heyday, I remember being annoyed by his frequent trademark stutters, ostensibly caused by his image sucking up more computer resources than were available at the time. Who could have predicted that broadcast digital TV would look just like that 23 years later! Actually, broadcast digital looks a hell of a lot worse. After watching several episodes on DVD, I was surprised by how little I even noticed his stutters.
After watching all fourteen episodes, including one that ABC failed to air in its initial network run, but later made its debut on the Sci-Fi Channel, I was left with only one question: was it low ratings that killed Max Headroom, or did he step on too many toes as he exposed network television for what it was?
All I can say is Max, I'm glad to have you back, even if it is just for a 14-episode nostalgia trip.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Sweet Deal on a Glucometer
It's been almost 10 years since I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and in that time, I've been through a handful of glucometers. Until now, they've all been from the One Touch Ultra family. I started out with a One Touch Ultra then got a One Touch Ultra Smart, and I've also had a couple of One Touch Ultra 2's. I have no complaints about those meters. I came to them by happenstance and have stuck with them out of convenience. as all of those meters have used the same One Touch Ultra test strips.
The happenstance came when I was first diagnosed, and my doctor sent me to the pharmacy with prescriptions for a couple of different medications and a glucometer to test my blood sugar. The pharmacist had recently been visited by a manufacturer's representative and was very enthusiastic about the One Touch Ultra that had just come out. There were heavy rebates on the meter, which brought the $70 device down to almost nothing and I walked out of the store feeling like I'd just gotten one heck of a deal.
What I didn't understand at the time was that glucometer manufacturers, like razor manufacturers and ink jet printer manufacturers before them, operate on a very simple--yet insidiously profitable--business model in which they lock the consumer into continuing to purchase their very expensive consumables, be they razor blades, ink jet cartridges, or test strips, by giving away the durable part of the product--the razor handle, the printer, or the glucometer. Over the years, I blithely went along with this ploy, feeling I had no real choice except to cut costs by not testing as often and thus conserving test strips This is what I did after I lost my COBRA health coverage and had to buy my own cut rate plan with scant coverage to match.
Ironically, that all changed when my doctor gave me yet another "free" glucometer, a One Touch Ultra 2 at a recent office visit, along with a prescription for test strips. When I picked up the strips at Sam's Club, I remarked to the pharmacist about how much they cost. After all, it had been a while since I had bought strips. Trying to be helpful, the pharmacist suggested a cost effective alternative. It turns out that Wal-Mart and Sam's carry their own line of glucometers under their in-house ReliOn brand. The meter was affordably priced at just under $12.00 and the strips were about $22 for a package of 50, which was less than half the retail price of the One Touch Ultra strips I was purchasing. Even with my insurance--such as it is--the strips cost me almost $34. By comparison, the ReliOn meter and the strips together cost about the same as the strips alone for my One Touch Ultra! Needless to say, the pharmacist got my attention.
I went ahead and purchased my One Touch Ultra test strips, but my curiosity was piqued, so I went online and researched the ReliOn meters. At Sams, I had been shown two models, the ReliOn Confirm and its slightly smaller sibling, the ReliOn Micro, the latter being an obvious knockoff of the One Touch Ultra Mini. These are manufactured by an American company called ArkRay. The The user reviews I read of both the devices and the company were uniformly favorable. By the time I went to bed that night, I had decided to go with the Confirm as soon as my present supply of One Touch Ultra strips runs out. I decided on the Confirm over the Micro because it stores more test results than the Micro, and beside, it's not that much bigger. I ended up making the purchase ahead of schedule when I saw the meter on sale for $9.00 at Wal-Mart about a week later.
Initially, I was a bit concerned about locking myself into Wal-Mart as a sole supplier of test strips. Why would I want to do that when I can get the One Touch Ultra strips anywhere? I reassured myself with two realizations--The first was that Wal-Mart is everywhere. The second is that ArkRay also sells these meters under their own name, so the strips can be found elsewhere--and at a comparable price.
So how does the Reli-On confirm stack up to my One Touch Ultra 2? Very favorably, actually. Here's a breakdown of the major differences I have seen:
And that raises the final question of what I've bee paying for all these years I've been a One Touch user. The only answer I can come up with is their big ad campaigns, that and a couple of "free" meters. I still have quite a few One Touch Ultra test strips left to use up, but I'm seeing that my days as a One Touch user are definitely numbered.
The happenstance came when I was first diagnosed, and my doctor sent me to the pharmacy with prescriptions for a couple of different medications and a glucometer to test my blood sugar. The pharmacist had recently been visited by a manufacturer's representative and was very enthusiastic about the One Touch Ultra that had just come out. There were heavy rebates on the meter, which brought the $70 device down to almost nothing and I walked out of the store feeling like I'd just gotten one heck of a deal.
What I didn't understand at the time was that glucometer manufacturers, like razor manufacturers and ink jet printer manufacturers before them, operate on a very simple--yet insidiously profitable--business model in which they lock the consumer into continuing to purchase their very expensive consumables, be they razor blades, ink jet cartridges, or test strips, by giving away the durable part of the product--the razor handle, the printer, or the glucometer. Over the years, I blithely went along with this ploy, feeling I had no real choice except to cut costs by not testing as often and thus conserving test strips This is what I did after I lost my COBRA health coverage and had to buy my own cut rate plan with scant coverage to match.
Ironically, that all changed when my doctor gave me yet another "free" glucometer, a One Touch Ultra 2 at a recent office visit, along with a prescription for test strips. When I picked up the strips at Sam's Club, I remarked to the pharmacist about how much they cost. After all, it had been a while since I had bought strips. Trying to be helpful, the pharmacist suggested a cost effective alternative. It turns out that Wal-Mart and Sam's carry their own line of glucometers under their in-house ReliOn brand. The meter was affordably priced at just under $12.00 and the strips were about $22 for a package of 50, which was less than half the retail price of the One Touch Ultra strips I was purchasing. Even with my insurance--such as it is--the strips cost me almost $34. By comparison, the ReliOn meter and the strips together cost about the same as the strips alone for my One Touch Ultra! Needless to say, the pharmacist got my attention.
I went ahead and purchased my One Touch Ultra test strips, but my curiosity was piqued, so I went online and researched the ReliOn meters. At Sams, I had been shown two models, the ReliOn Confirm and its slightly smaller sibling, the ReliOn Micro, the latter being an obvious knockoff of the One Touch Ultra Mini. These are manufactured by an American company called ArkRay. The The user reviews I read of both the devices and the company were uniformly favorable. By the time I went to bed that night, I had decided to go with the Confirm as soon as my present supply of One Touch Ultra strips runs out. I decided on the Confirm over the Micro because it stores more test results than the Micro, and beside, it's not that much bigger. I ended up making the purchase ahead of schedule when I saw the meter on sale for $9.00 at Wal-Mart about a week later.
Initially, I was a bit concerned about locking myself into Wal-Mart as a sole supplier of test strips. Why would I want to do that when I can get the One Touch Ultra strips anywhere? I reassured myself with two realizations--The first was that Wal-Mart is everywhere. The second is that ArkRay also sells these meters under their own name, so the strips can be found elsewhere--and at a comparable price.
So how does the Reli-On confirm stack up to my One Touch Ultra 2? Very favorably, actually. Here's a breakdown of the major differences I have seen:
- The Confirm is longer, but slimmer than the One Touch. The entire package, in its zipper pouch is smaller and lighter than that of the One Touch. Winner: ReliOn
- The Confirm's display is not as sophisticated as that of the One Touch, but it's perfectly readable. The Confirm's display also lacks a back light, which the original One Touch Ultra also lacks but the One Touch Ultra Smart and Ultra 2 both have. It's hard to really count this as an advantage, since I have almost never used the back lights on the meters I have that are so equipped. Let's face it. If you have enough ambient light to see the blood sample you're taking, you have enough light to read the display. Winner: It's really a draw, but we'll give it to One Touch.
- The only minor shortcoming I've seen is the Confirm shows a blinking icon as it makes its seven-second countdown, whereas the One Touch gives a numerical five-second countdown. The Winner: Technically, it's One Touch; but frankly, that's not a big deal.
- The Confirm requires a smaller blood sample (three microliters as opposed to five for the One Touch). A couple of microliters doesn't sound like a whole lot, but a smaller sample means it's easier--and less painful--to get a successful test. It is not uncommon to waste two or three test strips to get a successful reading. We're talkin' real money here. The Winner: ReliOn
- The Confirm's test strips are self-coding, whereas the One Touch Ultra 2 must be coded manually. Admittedly, the One Touch people have addressed this by now issuing all strips with a code of 25, but I've still got a few older ones with a different code. The winner: ReliOn because the meter actually reads the code from the test strip.
- In side-by-side tests, the Confirm is usually within five points of the reading given by the One Touch. No real winner here, but it's nice to see ReliOn keeping up with the big guys.
- The big difference is in customer service. I called the number on the back of the meter to ask about the lancing device, which seemed to be defective and was answered on the second ring by a live human being!!! No automated answering system, no endless labyrinth of menus, just a person with a pleasant disposition, who listened to my complaint, and agreed without arguing to send me a new lancing device at no charge. By comparison, the last time I was on the phone with the people at LifeScan, which manufactures the One Touch Ultra meters, I spent more time on hold than I did actually talking to anyone, and they had the usual morass of menus that we've come to expect from corporate phone centers these days. The winner: ReliOn--by a long shot!
And that raises the final question of what I've bee paying for all these years I've been a One Touch user. The only answer I can come up with is their big ad campaigns, that and a couple of "free" meters. I still have quite a few One Touch Ultra test strips left to use up, but I'm seeing that my days as a One Touch user are definitely numbered.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Something Old is New Again...
They say the 'Golden Age of Radio' died around 1962 when Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar went off the air, effectively bringing to a close a 30-year era of great drama, comedy, and variety programming as it all began migrating to the new medium of television. Sure, there were some great shows after that time, most notably CBS Radio Mystery Theatre (1974-1982), National Public Radio's efforts like the adaptations of the first three Star Wars films between 1981 and 1994, and Bradbury 13 (1984), as well as British contributions like The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (1979), but those were niche productions at best.
For those who loved old time radio (OTR), shows were hard to come by, except as nostalgia programs and fairly expensive cassette and CD collections published by the likes of Radio Spirits. Today, thanks to the Internet, OTR programs are enjoying a resurgence in popularity as collectors are digitizing their old tapes and rare transcription discs into more accessible formats like mp3. A volunteer organization called the Old Time Radio Researchers' Group has made it their mission to catalog classic radio shows and assemble what they consider to be definitive collections of the best recordings all episodes known to exist of selected programs. Their goal is nothing less than to preserve the as much of OTR programming as possible. The best part is these 'OTRR Certified' collections are available free for the downloading. More about that later.
That any of these classic shows survived at all is truly amazing. The producers of these shows generally saw them as being of little or no value, other than as a vehicle for advertising. The only recordings that were made were transcription discs that allowed shows produced on the East Coast to be re-broadcast a few hours later on the West Coast. Copies of these discs would also sometimes be sent to advertisers along with an invoice as proof that their spots had aired as agreed upon. By far, the largest publisher and distributor of recorded radio shows was the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, which aired them on its stations at overseas bases and sent them out in morale packages to be played over loudspeakers at more remote bases and on ships at sea. Thankfully, many of those discs have survived.
The producers themselves valued the programs themselves so little that in some instances, tapes of shows were erased immediately after broadcast because the recording tape was deemed to be of more value than the content it contained. The 1950s BBC sci-fi series Journey Into Space was thought to be lost for several decades until a set of misfiled transcription discs was discovered in the late 1980s. And the few episodes that still remain of The Avengers, a South African radio adaptation of the classic BBC TV series, exist only because fans of the show recorded them off the air and later shared the the tapes. It was not even standard practice to copyright the productions, which puts them in public domain today, making it legal to copy and trade them freely.
So where can you download these great shows? Here are a few sites that offer them at little or no cost:
Old Time Radio Mystery Theater www.mysteryshows.com offers some 2,000 shows for free and another 40,000 or so episodes in the members' section for a one-time minimum donation of $10. Memberships are free for the visually impaired or those who simply can't afford it. Members are also encouraged to contribute to the collection by uploading shows from their own libraries. And don't let the site name fool you; it contains far more than just mystery shows.
Archive.org, the Web's equivalent of the great library at Alexandria, has an extensive collection of vintage radio shows at http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio. Content is organized alphabetically and is available for download and streaming. Of course, old radio shows are just the tip of this site's iceberg. It also contains music, movies, and much more, all for free under Creative Commons license.
The Monster Club http://www.themonsterclub.com/ offers a collection of some 500 macabre and mysterious shows, organized thematically. It's a great place to graze if you're into that genre but aren't interested in acquiring entire collections. You must sign up for a free membership in order to download shows.
The Radio Archive http://radioarchive.cc offers a vast library of old and new BBC radio shows via peer-to-peer download. You must create a free account and have a bit torrent client installed to access the shows.
Happy listening!
For those who loved old time radio (OTR), shows were hard to come by, except as nostalgia programs and fairly expensive cassette and CD collections published by the likes of Radio Spirits. Today, thanks to the Internet, OTR programs are enjoying a resurgence in popularity as collectors are digitizing their old tapes and rare transcription discs into more accessible formats like mp3. A volunteer organization called the Old Time Radio Researchers' Group has made it their mission to catalog classic radio shows and assemble what they consider to be definitive collections of the best recordings all episodes known to exist of selected programs. Their goal is nothing less than to preserve the as much of OTR programming as possible. The best part is these 'OTRR Certified' collections are available free for the downloading. More about that later.
That any of these classic shows survived at all is truly amazing. The producers of these shows generally saw them as being of little or no value, other than as a vehicle for advertising. The only recordings that were made were transcription discs that allowed shows produced on the East Coast to be re-broadcast a few hours later on the West Coast. Copies of these discs would also sometimes be sent to advertisers along with an invoice as proof that their spots had aired as agreed upon. By far, the largest publisher and distributor of recorded radio shows was the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, which aired them on its stations at overseas bases and sent them out in morale packages to be played over loudspeakers at more remote bases and on ships at sea. Thankfully, many of those discs have survived.
The producers themselves valued the programs themselves so little that in some instances, tapes of shows were erased immediately after broadcast because the recording tape was deemed to be of more value than the content it contained. The 1950s BBC sci-fi series Journey Into Space was thought to be lost for several decades until a set of misfiled transcription discs was discovered in the late 1980s. And the few episodes that still remain of The Avengers, a South African radio adaptation of the classic BBC TV series, exist only because fans of the show recorded them off the air and later shared the the tapes. It was not even standard practice to copyright the productions, which puts them in public domain today, making it legal to copy and trade them freely.
So where can you download these great shows? Here are a few sites that offer them at little or no cost:
Old Time Radio Mystery Theater www.mysteryshows.com offers some 2,000 shows for free and another 40,000 or so episodes in the members' section for a one-time minimum donation of $10. Memberships are free for the visually impaired or those who simply can't afford it. Members are also encouraged to contribute to the collection by uploading shows from their own libraries. And don't let the site name fool you; it contains far more than just mystery shows.
Archive.org, the Web's equivalent of the great library at Alexandria, has an extensive collection of vintage radio shows at http://www.archive.org/details/oldtimeradio. Content is organized alphabetically and is available for download and streaming. Of course, old radio shows are just the tip of this site's iceberg. It also contains music, movies, and much more, all for free under Creative Commons license.
The Monster Club http://www.themonsterclub.com/ offers a collection of some 500 macabre and mysterious shows, organized thematically. It's a great place to graze if you're into that genre but aren't interested in acquiring entire collections. You must sign up for a free membership in order to download shows.
The Radio Archive http://radioarchive.cc offers a vast library of old and new BBC radio shows via peer-to-peer download. You must create a free account and have a bit torrent client installed to access the shows.
Happy listening!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)