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.

The Easiest Way to Check your Blood Glucose

 I was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic more than two decades ago, and at the time, the most exciting breakthrough in glucometer technology was one with which you could draw blood from less sensitive areas, such as a forearm or the heel of a hand, instead of one's fingertips. Still it was a pain—both literally and figuratively—to have to do this several times a day, and it was a major aggravation to have to carry a glucometer, lancets, test strips, and a lancing device around with me. As a result, I didn't test my sugar nearly as often as I should have.

It took many years for a solution to this problem arrive, but in about 2018, my doctor suggested I try the new Freestyle Libre2 14-day blood glucose monitoring system. This was a game-changer. Wear a sensor on my arm (I like to refer to it as a Borg implant) and check my sugar by touching a monitoring device or smart phone to it. When I first started using the sensors, my smart phone was one generation too old to be compatible with the sensors, so I used a dedicated monitoring device, which looked like a conventional glucometer, and even accepted test strips as a backup, but eventually, I upgraded my smart phone to one capable of reading the sensors, where I could use it instead. Less hardware to carry around meant more frequent checks. Just open the Freestyle Libre app and touch my phone to the sensor. What could be easier than that?

The answer to that question came to me last December when I went to visit my doctor for my four-month checkup and he handed me a 'gift bag' containing a new sensor, the Freestyle Libre3. This sensor used Bluetooth technology to continually communicate with my phone, providing updates every minute and triggering alarms when my glucose levels go out of range, either too high or too low. All I have to do is open the app to see how I'm doing. As if that wasn't an improvement enough, the Libre3 sensor is considerably smaller than its predecessor, presenting less of a target to bump and get knocked off my arm. 

The only real issue I've had with the Libre3 sensors is getting hold of them. When my doctor first wrote me a prescription for them, the pharmacy I used didn't have them and didn't know when they'd get them in stock, so I temporarily went back to the Libre2 sensors. Eventually, they became available, but either the way the prescription was written or the way my insurance company has specified that it be filled, I had to get a large quantity at once. The first pharmacy I tried wanted more than $500 for an order of nine sensors. I later found them at another pharmacy, where I get six for what I'd previously paid for two Libre2 sensors. Better functionality for a third the price, I'll take it!

The net result of all this is I'm checking my blood sugar more frequently than ever, and using that information to make better food choices, which is a win all the way around. 

The last time I saw my doctor, we found ourselves speculating what innovations a Freestyle Libre4 sensor might bring. Thirty-day service life? Smart watch integration? We'll just have to wait and see.

UPDATE: A few weeks ago, I went to refill my prescription for Libre3 sensors and received the most unwelcome news that my health insurance no longer covered them. They wanted me to switch to a different brand, the Dexcom G7, but they wanted prior authorization before making the switch. This process has dragged out for more than a month; meanwhile, my doctor has kept me supplied with free "samples" of Libre3 sensors. 

Based on my reading, the Dexcom G7 operates essentially the same as the Libre3, except that it lasts only ten days, instead of 14, and it transmits data to the user's phone once every five minutes, instead of every 60 seconds. I think I can live with the less frequent data uploads, especially if that extends my phone's battery life, which has been significantly shorter since I started using the Libre3. The ten-day operational life is a little more of a wild card, as I have no idea how much the Dexcom sensors will cost me. If my copay is significantly less expensive than the Libre3 sensors were, then it will okay; otherwise, it will be a less cost effective solution. I'll make a full assessment, if and when the prescription ever gets filled.

The Night They Drove Ol' Robbie Down

With the recent passing of Robbie Robertson on August 9, I'm finding myself revisiting the music of The Band, most of which he wrote. Today, The Band is widely acknowledged as one of the progenitors of the musical sub-genre known as Americana, which blends aspects of country, rock, folk, blues, jazz, etc., into a uniquely American art form.

The Band's story is also unique. Instead of bursting onto the scene with their debut album, they quietly paid their dues, first backing rockabilly artist Ronnie Hawkins as The Hawks, then backing Bob Dylan as he controversially electrified the folk scene in the mid-'60s, eventually collaborating with him on the Basement Tapes project, while he recuperated from a near-fatal motorcycle accident.  

As a result, their first studio album, Music From Big Pink (1968) conveys a maturity, achieved through almost a decade of playing together live. It, and its 1970 follow-up, the eponymously titled The Band, make a good introduction to their music, and together contain many of their best known songs. 

While jumping on at the beginning with those two albums has its virtues, another option for a broader view is the two-disc compilation from 1988 called To Kingdom Come. Released during the heyday of CD reissues, To Kingdom Come has one noticeable shortcoming shared by many digital remixes from that era, which consists mainly of bumping up the bass and drums in an attempt to give the music a bit more 'punch'. Nonetheless, the collection presents a concise but comprehensive overview of The Band's entire catalog, plus a handful of unreleased rarities. The three-disc box set, Across the Great Divide, is also excellent in its own right, presenting The Band in context with their earlier incarnation as the Hawks, along with a larger helping of rarities, but I tend to prefer To Kingdom Come because it is more focused and presents a solid collection of must-have tunes.

Also worth considering for anyone new to The Band is their live album Rock of Ages. Originally issued on two LP's, and later in several different CD configurations, this album captures The Band at the peak of their powers in a four-night run at New York's Academy of Music, culminating on New Year's Eve 1971. Performances on this set are generally more energetic than their studio counterparts, as would be expected from a band that cut its teeth on stage. A particular highlight is keyboardist Garth Hudson's Bach-inspired organ workout, called "The Genetic Method". CD versions of this album are many and varied. Its first CD version was a single disc that was missing a couple of tracks to fit it onto one disc, as was common practice in the early days of CD reissues. It later came out as an expanded two-disc collection that included most of guest artist Bob Dylan's performance with them, as they welcomed in 1972. The entire four-night run was also issued as a limited edition box set, and at the other end of the spectrum is a severely truncated 11-track CD titled The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Honorable mention goes to The Last Waltz, the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's concert film of the same name, which documented The Band's farewell performance on Thanksgiving 1976 that included a virtual who's who of popular music at the time, including Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Neil Diamond, and the Staples Singers, among others. Originally issued on three LP's, which later fit comfortably on two CD's, it also came out as an expanded four-CD box set titled The Complete Last Waltz. While it is excellent in its own right, it isn't as good of an introduction to The Band as some of the other albums mentioned, as the arrangements are often quite different from the originals and it represents a culmination of an era, and the final time Robertson would perform with The Band, although the other members would re-convene, tour and record, with Robertson's blessing but without his participation, on into the 1980s and '90s. 

The music world lost one of its brightest luminaries last week, but we can be thankful that Robbie Robertson's recorded output, both with the Band and as a solo artist, has granted him a certain measure of immortality.

The Next Phase of Chrome OS

One of the unique aspects of Chromebooks is the tight integration of the Chrome Web browser into the ChromeOS operating system. This architecture has both been lauded as elegant in its simplicity and derided as reducing those computers to a 'browser in a box'. I have to admit I fall into the latter category, and have always regarded Chromebooks as lesser computers with severely limited functionality. 

Fortunately, Google has been steadily moving toward expanding Chromebooks' functionality, first by making it possible to run Android apps on them, and more recently by allowing Linux apps to run in a virtual machine environment, code named 'Crostini', but also referred to as the Linux Developer Environment. It's a little clunky and requires at least rudimentary knowledge of the Linux command line interface, but once you get everything set up, you can run almost any Debian Linux application, including LibreOffice, Thunderbird email client, GIMP photo editing software, and Firefox Web browser, on your Chromebook. Officially Google says it's just for developers, but in reality, it marks a huge leap forward in functionality for those who prefer desktop apps to their Web-based counterparts.

Google is now poised to take the next step in the maturing of ChromeOS by separating the Chrome browser from the operating system. The project, known by its code name Lacros (Linux and ChromeOS) is intended, according to Google, to extend the useful lives of older Chromebooks by allowing them to receive browser updates even after they pass their official 'expiration date', after which ChromeOS updates will cease. This project has been under way for a couple of years, and has been available under an experimental flag that gave users the choice of running the integrated Chrome browser or the separate Lacros browser, which is actually a natively running Linux application that does not require Crostini for life support. 

The separation process will begin with ChromeOS 116, out next week, where Lacros will be turned on by default, no flag required, but it may be a little while before the integrated Chrome browser goes completely away. At that point, the Lacros browser will be renamed as Chrome and will sport the multicolored Chrome icon, instead of its present yellow Lacros icon. Once the process is complete, average users will hardly notice the difference.

That is all well and good, but I see an even larger possibility that I hope Google decides to leverage. If they can make a Linux version of Chrome run natively without Crostini, how hard could it be to allow other Linux applications to run natively as well? ChromeOS is based on Gentoo Linux, after all. To my mind, this would truly turn Chrome OS into a 'grown-up' operating system, in which the user can choose to run full-featured Linux applications with ease, just as one can with any desktop Linux distribution. 

I realize this move is not without some controversy among the Chromebook faithful, many of whom regard ChromeOS' Web-based approach as the future of computing, and see the separation of the browser from the OS as a step backward, potentially eviscerating what makes ChromeOS unique, but thin clients aren't for everyone, myself included. In fact, I avoided Chromebooks for almost a decade after they came out, because I felt I wasn't missing anything. I could do everything on a Mac, Windows or Linux machine that I could on a Chromebook, plus a whole lot more. And although I am now a Chromebook owner, I still feel that way, and only use it for specific tasks.

I don't have any special knowledge about the future of ChromeOS, but I am hopeful that the implemention of Lacros in ChromeOS 116 will be a decisive step in the evolution of the ChromeOS platform. 

UPDATE: I wrote the above shortly before ChromeOS 116 landed on my two Chromebooks, and the most amazing thing is how little of a difference it has made, day-to-day. Chrome behaves just the same, and because I had opted to use Lacros exclusively when I activated it in the previous version of Chrome OS, it implemented itself as the default, and the only way to know the difference is to check the version of the Chrome browser I'm running. So far, I'm pleased.