Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

Yesterday I installed my Sirius Starmate Reply in the TL, and it was relatively quick and easy. I just had to pop off some panels, drill one hole in the bottom center console tray and route the antenna wire up under the dash (the antenna sits inside the car on the dash, which works quite nicely).

But while the convenience of the Starmate”s built-in FM transmitter is nice, I decided (after putting the car back together) that I”d rather go with the Sirius FM Direct Adapter to reduce static and generally improve the experience. And with a long weekend at hand, I wanted to go ahead and git er done. So, then, I made a rare trip to a physical electronics store. Best Buy at Edgewood in this case, since I have heard they carry the FM thingy. They didn”t have any in stock, though, and the sales girl said something that was very quaint for the last day of 2006:

“We”re sold out right now, but we should get more in soon. Check back in about a week or so.”

Check back? Yeah, I don”t think so. The only reason I went to Best Buy for this thing was so I could get my hands on it immediately. That”s the only advantage a physical electronics retailer has today - instant gratification.

I don”t expect that somebody working at Best Buy would necessarily realize this, but “check back” is simply not a viable business model anymore. She didn”t do a good job of trying to keep my business. It wouldn”t have worked, but she could have offered to check the inventory of other Best Buys in Atlanta or even help me find it on bestbuy.com and buy in online through them. A place like Best Buy needs to understand that pretty much everything they sell can be found online - and probably at a lower price. Their one advantage - immediacy - has to be the cornerstone of the shopping experience.

I did end up swinging by a different Best Buy (they also do not carry iSkins, so I hit the Apple Store for one of those to go with the wife”s new 30GB Video), which also did not have the FM thing in stock. Funny thing is - that guy did look up inventories and the system said the Edgewood store had 8 in stock. He did the smart thing and called Edgewood to get them to check their stock. Of course, he got put on terminal hold the first time and couldn”t get anybody to help him out the second time, so I thanked him for the effort, told him not to worry about it, came home and ordered the thing from sirius.com (for $10 less than Best Buy sells them for).

As we put a cap on 2006, a quick update on progress Inman Park Properties is making on their holdings in East Atlanta. Jeff Notrica has farmed out clean-up and maintenance to Jason Howard, who bought East Atlanta Ace Hardware earlier this year (Notrica owns the Ace property and apparently also owns part of the Ace business). To Jason”s credit, he”s done considerable work in cleaning up the area behind Notrica”s Glenwood Avenue properties. This was the most obvious example of Inman Park Properties” neglect of their East Atlanta properties and a real blight on the neighborhood.

Inman Park has also closed the B&W convenience store across from Crave on Glenwood. Kudos for that - word on the street is that they bought out the lease, but that”s difficult to confirm. But other than closing the place down to create yet another vacant building in their portfolio, there”s been no obvious action to demolish that building or the East Atlanta Lock & Key space. That needs to happen.

The Tucker Automotive space on Flat Shoals is apparently leased to a guy who plans to open a restaurant there, and last week there was some work - maybe just clean-out - being done at the space there. But nothing I”ve noticed since.

On the Glenwood strip (between Graveyard Tavern and the Good News Cafe space) some action seems to be happening on the two restaurants that are supposed to be opening there. No big, obvious build-outs, but small signs.

But one of Inman Park”s biggest problems in East Atlanta - the boarded up house on Flat Shoals north of the antiques place - remains a graffiti-covered homeless hostel and dumping ground. Notrica is supposed to be demolishing the building - a months-old promise - but so far no permit has been issued and no apparent progress has been made. That”s inexcusable.

And there”s no point in even mentioning the John B. Gordon School. 2007 will mark the ninth year (I believe) that Inman Park Properties has done nothing with the building except let it rot.

So what we”re seeing is Notrica addressing some obvious but basic maintenance issues, and there could be some action on getting businesses open in some of Inman Park”s spaces. But Notrica and his companies have yet to demonstrate that they are serious about addressing the significant issues with their vacant and neglected properties in East Atlanta.

I”m not going to say much about the ambulance-chasing talking hairdo exploiting New Orleans today for his own political gain - except this: you want a photo op of you “helping” New Orleans? There are bigger things to tackle than spreading dirt for a patio, shithead. Put on some coveralls and a mask and get inside one of the hundreds (thousands?) of houses still sitting ruined and molding 16 months after Katrina. But that would be hard to get pictures of, wouldn”t it? No, I”m ticked this morning about something Sen. Hairdo”s online adviser (or whatever he”s doing) wrote upon arriving in New Orleans last night.

Robert Scoble was - not surprisingly - shocked at what he saw when he got to town last night. He”s right - something is indeed very different in New Orleans.

But here”s the line that really disturbed me:

this is our favorite city

Your favorite city? And apparently you haven”t been back since Katrina? But still you say it”s your favorite city? Interesting.

I don”t want to pick on Scoble. It could very well be that he”s been to the city several times since Katrina (but just doesn”t write about it), has donated considerable money to relief efforts and orders a case of Hubig”s Pies every Monday morning to get a little cash flowing in the city.

I”d just like that quote and apparent disconnect between feelings toward New Orleans and actions to help the city survive to serve as a reminder. If you love New Orleans; if New Orleans is your “favorite city”; if you give a damn about New Orleans surviving, then take some action. Visit the city and help your favorite restaurant stay in business.

I was cruising around this morning checking out some potential after-Christmas deals on digital cameras and ended up over at wolfcamera.com (more on why below). And on the product page”s rundown of the cost they included a big “No Sales Tax” reference.

Of course, I prefer to not pay sales tax directly on my online purchases, but rather report such purchases on my state income tax forms and pay the applicable use tax all at once. So it struck me as interesting that a real-world retailer - which must collect sales tax for purchases by people in states (such as Georgia for Wolf) where they have a physical presence - would promise No Sales Tax Checking out their sales tax policy, this is what they say:

You never pay sales tax! We are not required to collect sales and use tax on deliveries throughout the US, except where we have business locations and in those states we pay ALL sales taxes (California, Georgia, Kansas and Maryland). For customers in these states, our price includes all applicable taxes. To satisfy Maryland consumer reporting rules, we will show sales tax and an amount equal to the sales tax will be discounted from our regular low price. The order total will be the same as our regular low prices without tax.

Smart. Rather than dealing with “do you have to pay sales tax?” screens and downplaying (ala Dell.com) the fact that you may, indeed, have to pay sales tax, Wolf just absorbs the tax when applicable and gets to promote the whole No Sales Tax thing prominently.

Of course, their price was $50 higher for the same camera I was looking at on Amazon, which never collects sales tax. So thanks, but no thanks.

I ended up at Wolf, though, because of a new shopping habit I have. For a long time I”ve taken the model number of an item I”m looking at and run it through Froogle to get a price comparison. But now I go right to the “Google Checkout Stores” link to narrow my search. The promise of an extra $10 off (right now) is a strong draw to Checkout, which of course is part of Google”s strategy for taking payment share from PayPal, VeriSign and everybody else in the payment space. They”re also giving the service away to merchants for now, which may do wonders for their market share over the next year.

The last time I bought something through PayPal? Couldn”t tell you. They do fabulous things like not allowing two people (such as the wife and myself) to use the same credit card number. Sites that feature PayPal come off as amateurish and I avoid them. I don”t get that feeling with Checkout. It”s a breeze to use and feels like a regular shopping cart service. I don”t have to set up accounts at a bunch of different merchants (or give them my credit card number), and Google is better at getting receipts out and tracking purchase and delivery than a lot of online stores.

So keep an eye on Checkout. Google needs another revenue winner (I remember a time when Wall Street really didn”t like companies that relied on one source for 98% of their revenue), and payment processing is a big space. PayPal is a billion-dollar product and is a key part of eBay”s model now. Done right, Checkout could be a strong No. 2 product for Google.

Since Smoove asked …

I”ve had my TL for a month and a day now and have put about 2,500 miles on it (road trips), so some initial impressions: - Interior feel: Excellent. Acura does a great job of making the TL feel a lot more expensive than it is. Great leather seats, great fit and finish, overall just really nice. The cockpit feel is pretty much perfect for me (6″4″). It feels roomy but not big. As I mentioned before, the TL had an advantage for me over the Infiniti G35 because the G cockpit is just slightly tighter; feeling more like a BMW 3 Series, while the TL feels more like a 5.

- On the road: Fantastic. Quiet and calm on the highway, a quick slap of the manual shift pulls out the fury. It”s not the 286 horses of the 2007 Type-S, but 258 does just fine. Makes my little game of losing cars that want to draft on my speed much, much more fun.

- Navigation system: A topic of constant thought and discussion for me. The POI data, as I mentioned, is not great. And I”ve come to realize that the route calculations are pretty slow in comparison to the TomTom / Bluetooth system I have for my Treo. I”m not sure how that happens (it could be because the Treo system only has sections of the US loaded in at any one time), but it”s only slightly annoying. The experience of always having a large map sitting in front of you is a real plus, though. I”d only pull out the Treo system when I specifically needed a route, but having always-on navigation comes in real handy. If I”m stuck in a line of unusual traffic, for example, I can do a quick “what if I turned right here” check on the map instantly. Despite some flaws and room for improvement, the benefit of always-there navigation is huge and makes built-in navigation a big win.

- Audio system: I haven”t really tested it out much, but it seems quite capable. For me, sound quality ranks second to source availability, so I”m just waiting for some free time to install my Sirius kit. There”s no deep iPod integration (deep would be having iPod data show on the radio display and being able to control the iPod through standard audio controls), and the 2006 lacks the auxiliary input jack that comes with the 2007, but that”s not a big deal in my mind. I”ll probably start off the Sirius with its built-in FM transmitter and maybe move it to a hard-wired modulator. And I really don”t care too much about iPod in the car (when I get my Sirius in, that is. Right now I”d kill for some decent music - which XM doesn”t give me). A Griffin FM transmitter will do me just fine there.

- XM: Still sucks. On our trip to Louisiana last weekend, we tried to listen to their music stations, and they simply suck. The “Fred” channel (deeper classic alternative, I think) is about the best we found. But there”s no viable alternative when The Cure comes on there. XM”s “decades” channels blow big-time - especially the 80s channel. The only saving grace there is that they play Casey Kasem”s American Top 40s from the 80s on the weekend. That was amusing. Then there”s the issue of the artist/song display. I”m starting to get the sense that XM actually limits the characters (16, I think) that it broadcasts. The XM display on the navigation screen has room for probably 10 more characters, but there”s nothing there. And in what may be one of XM”s worst offenses against music, they tend to remove “The” from the name of bands in order to cut off fewer band names with their short display. Displaying “Beatles” or “Cure” or “Replacements” as a band name is downright wrong. And what happens when “The The” comes on (props to the wife for that one)? So not only is the programming much worse than Sirius, but the user experience on a built-in, large-screen display is far inferior to what I get on my Sirius aftermarket device. XM blows.

- Nice touches: I love having the ability to define behavior of some of the car systems. I have the TL set to lock the doors when I hit 10 mph, unlock them when the car goes into park, unlock all doors on the first press of the fob, chirp when I lock from the fob, etc. There”s about 10 or so settings I”m able to define that are tied to my Driver 1 fob. The wife has her own settings (ladies might not want doors to unlock automatically and such) tied to her Driver 2 fob. Along with Driver 1 and 2 memory settings for seats, mirrors, etc., that”s great functionality. Gets rid of having to adjust to the behaviors the car manufacturer decided to build in. Interior storage is also well thought-out, with two separate trays under the navigation display and separated shallow and deep compartments in the center console - with a DC outlet in the center console for chargers. The storage bins in the door hinge out for easy access to things (like sunglasses in the built-in glasses sleeve there - nice).

- Issues: I have no idea why Acura included totally superfluous door-lock sticks in the driver and passenger doors. Maybe it”s for visual confirmation that doors are locked/unlocked? If so, there are much better ways to do that. And as a guy who rides with the seat way back, I kept hitting my elbow on it … so the driver”s stick is now gone. And along those lines, the arm rest in the door sits way too low for me (OK for average-height people?), so the top of the door is my armrest. That would be fine except Acura didn”t build the padding there for that, so I”m already creating a dimple in the pad up there. An adjustable armrest in the door would be nice. Otherwise, there are really tiny things I”ve noticed like no audible notification when you”re low on gas (seems obvious - freaking beep or something), but overall I dig the ride quite a bit.

Next up in my TL”s evolution is getting my Sirius unit in there. I want a clean install, which will require some disassembly of interior parts and the like. More on that later.

Mike Rowe didn”t have a hard time finding some really vile work in this week”s episode of Dirty Jobs, because he spent the whole show in New Orleans. He rode with the rodent and mosquito abatement crews, highlighting the issue of non-human life that”s thriving in a very disturbing way. Most interesting was how they combat the problem of swimming pools at destroyed houses that are now huge mosquito breeding grounds - they capture mosquito-larvae-eating fish in canals and transfer them to the swimming pools.

But half of the show was spent with a demolition crew at a house in St. Bernard Parish that apparently hadn”t been touched since Katrina (the show was shot in October of this year). Mike did a decent - but not great - job of driving home the magnitude of the situation down there and generally kept a respectful tone as he helped throw all of this family”s ruined possessions out on the curb before gutting the house.

And since the house hadn”t been touched since the flood, the kitchen was full of rotting, molding food, high-living mice and hundreds of the biggest roaches I”ve ever seen. They had to throw out everything in the kitchen - apparently the refrigerator rot gets less foul over time - before ripping out the cabinets and walls, so Mike rooted through the roach-filled cabinets to toss out the dry goods.

In a great moment, he paused while chucking one particular item:

If you don”t know what that is, I”m not going to tell you. A real shame. I like to think that Mike paused in appreciation for the little guy”s service and in recognition of the loss.

Thanks to Dirty Jobs for giving a little attention to the fading tale of New Orleans” struggle.