Month: February 2010

Just bought a new printer

Exciting headline, eh?

I just bought a new printer. Here’s the thought process.

I rejected Canon, Epson, and Brother out of hand:

  • Canon: Saw too many problems with Bubblejet printers back in my tech support days. My current printer, a Canon Pixma MP-970, is junk. Ink’s too pricey, and Canon rigged it to drink ink in duplex mode. Driver feel like they were rushed out before usability testing. After just 2 years old, prints shift so that vertical lines aren’t straight anymore.
  • Epson: That company’s ’80s and ’90s dot matrix printers were horrible. Never found one that fed paper consistently. Quality was so inconsistent that I trusted my 9 pin Panasonic KX-P1191 over any Epson 24-pin.
  • Brother: Another hard-to-trust brand after owning a fax machine in the late ’90s with intentionally costly print consumables.

OK, I really didn’t reject totally, but they started out with huge demerits. Consumer Reports didn’t consistently rate either brand well, so they’re done.

So I was down to a few HP models and a Lexmark.

An hour of “analysis by paralysis” narrowed me to the HP OfficeJet 8500 and the Lexmark Platinum Pro905. Mathematically, either’s lower print costs were worth the premium over otherwise good HP Photosmart models. The 8500 would pay for itself after only 7 reams of paper.

I finally rejected the Lexmark. It had too many mediocre reviews and customer gripes. Sounds like Lexmark would have been good if not for incompetent R&D and software architects.

So now I have a HP OfficeJet 8500 waiting at some Amazon.com facility for my shipping label. Better yet, HP is paying me $75 for my old Canon! Can’t wait to get rid of it!

Allen Vaught copies constituient’s email

I sent an email about the primary election to my neighborhood association. 16 days later, my Democrat state legislator Allen Vaught sent an email about primaries to his constituents.

Guess where some of his email came from? Compare snippets:

Aren Cambre’s Jan. 31 email Allen Vaught’s Feb. 16 email
What is the primary? It’s where YOU choose who represents your party at the fall election. The primary is the election in which you choose who represents your party in each race during the November general election.
You don’t register with a party. … You just show up and vote in either party’s primary. In Texas, you do not “register” with a party; therefore, you may vote in either party’s primary election.
You must vote in the primary to participate in the party’s convention process. You must vote in the primary to participate in that party’s convention process…

Imitation is sincerest form of flattery?

Both the emails are below in full. You’ll notice my email clearly inspired the highlighted part of his email.

Aren Cambre’s Jan. 31 email Allen Vaught’s Feb. 16 email
Neighbors,Feb. 1 is the last day to register to vote in the March 2 primary. Verify your registration at http://dalcoelections.org/voters.asp

What is the primary? It’s where YOU choose who represents your party at the fall election.

These should clarify some misconceptions:

  • You don’t register with a party. Texas has no concept of “registered Republican” or “registered Democrat.” You just show up and vote in either party’s primary.
  • This doesn’t bind your fall vote. For example, if you vote in the Democrat primary, you can still vote for Republicans in the fall election.
  • You can vote in either party’s primary. Here’s where it can make a difference: If you believe that one party will win a particular office, then that party’s primary is when the race is effectively decided.
  • You don’t have to make a selection in every race. You can vote on all races, zero races (blank ballot), or anywhere in between.
  • You must vote in the primary to participate in the party’s convention process. In our precinct (2230), the Republican and Democrat precinct conventions generally start at 7:30 PM at the polling location.

Register to vote, and hope to see you at our polling location on March 2!

Aren Cambre, President
Lake Park Estates Neighborhood Association, Inc.
A 501(c)(4) nonprofit

 Dear Friends:Election time is upon us again and I would like to encourage you to vote. I have included some information in this email which I hope will help you cast an informed vote.

March 2nd is the Primary Election for both the Democratic and Republican Parties. The primary is the election in which you choose who represents your party in each race during the November general election. There are many candidates on the ballot all the way from precinct chairs to the Governor.

In Texas, you do not “register” with a party; therefore, you may vote in either party’s primary election. Regardless of which party’s primary you vote in, you may vote however you would like in November. You must vote in the primary to participate in that party’s convention process, which usually takes place around 7:30 pm directly after the close of voting on March 2nd at your precinct’s polling location.

Sample ballots for each party’s primary are located here: http://www.dalcoelections.org/march22010/index.asp.

For more detailed information on the candidates that you may be voting on please see the following websites:

Dallas County Republican Party         http://www.dallasgop.org/candidates

Dallas County Democratic Party        http://www.dallasdemocrats.org/election/2010/candidates

Dallas Morning News Voters Guide http://www.thevoterguide.org/v/dallas/race-index.do

You may vote early during the following dates and times:

Tu-F   Feb 16-19        8:00 A.M. – 5:00 P.M.

Sat       Feb 20             7:00 A.M. – 7:00 P.M.

Sun      Feb 21             1:00 P.M.  – 6:00 P.M.

M-F     Feb 22-26        7:00 A.M. – 7:00 P.M.

Early voting locations may be found on the Dallas County Elections website, located here:  http://www.dalcoelections.org/march22010/EVLocations.htm

Election Day is Tuesday, March 2nd from 7am – 7pm. You must vote in your voting precinct on election day. If you are not sure where to vote, more information may be obtained by contacting the Dallas County Elections Department (214) 819-6300 or by visiting their website at www.dalcoelections.org.

I encourage you to cast an informed vote because as you know, our democracy rests upon the act of voting.

Respectfully,

State Representative Allen Vaught

House District 107

USPS quadruple fail

USPS screwed up part of my son’s birthday. My mother sent him an overnight package, but USPS failed four times:

  1. Took 3 days to deliver the overnight package.
  2. Demanded a signature even though my mother marked the “WAIVER OF SIGNATURE” box and signed appropriately.
  3. Claimed to have left a notice (that I needed to pick up the package personally), but in fact declined to do so.
  4. Never re-notified me that the package was waiting. I finally found out because my mother asked me about it. I was able to call the local post office 2 hours before they would have returned it as undeliverable.

Go to http://usps.gov and check on package EH45 2451 528U S if you want to see this incompetence for yourself.

I say privatize and de-unionize the USPS and let it sink under its own massive debt. And deregulate first class mail delivery. Of course, Democrats will oppose this because government largesse and union intransigence are their job security.

In case you think I’m being vindictive, de-unionization would be the biggest gift we could give the USPS as it would create a competitive advantage over heavily unionized UPS and FedEx.

The Lancet, research, future of journals, and global warming

I am listening to a podcast of A Shot of Reality on NPR’s On The Media’s Feb. 5, 2010 show.

The host is interviewing Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, a British medical journal recently made (in)famous for feeding the vaccine/autism hoax.

The editor says The Lancet must be more careful in the future.

Translation: more of The Lancet‘s future articles will support the status quo. This will reduce hoaxes, but it crowds out legitimate alternative theories.

Are academic journals even relevant? Whatever relevancy they have is mainly because the research community is clinging to an outdated model. And let’s don’t forget these wickedly expensive journals have their own fiscal incentive to perpetuate themselves.

Research is living and constantly evolving. Why then rely on a content delivery method that can only create frozen, dead documents? Where corrections require new, frozen documents? This is silly.

Some say if we don’t have journals, we effectively lose the peer review process because respected academics aren’t the gatekeepers. Hardly. Wikipedia’s not perfect, but it shows that a completely open model, that even allows anonymous editing, can produce highly reliable information. Services like the Educause-sponsored academia.edu show it shouldn’t be hard to limit involvement just to the research community–not to the “select few” researchers but the entire community. This increases veracity by at least an order of magnitude.

Richard Horton said that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the originator of the fraudulent research, was respected politically and academically for years, and his words were taken as “gospel truth.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar? Doesn’t this sound like James Hansen, Al Gore, IPCC, etc.? All of whom deliver polemic research so political, agenda-driven, and error-full that people are stating to question the scientific basis of global warming?