the good old days

According to the site the Della can change a woman’s life. “Once you get beyond how cute they are, you’ll find that netbooks can do a lot more than check your e-mail.” Yes you can “find recipes online” and you can use them “to track calories, carbs and protein with ease, watch online fitness videos, map your running routes and more.” — Fudzilla

Wow. I totally can’t do that with my high-powered built-from-scratch non-Dell(a) computer. I better go alert my friend who’s head of tech support, because I bet her laptop totally doesn’t constantly stream online fitness videos and map her running routes for her. And wow they have a featured artist! Just what a girl needs.

Let me know when it babysits.

Dear GameStop,

I buy computer and video games for myself. I buy them for my spouse. Over the next twenty years, I expect to buy quite a lot of them (and new gaming consoles) for my two children.

I used to shop at your store a lot. I’ve always been treated politely by the staff, whether I was simply purchasing an item or whether I needed help.

Then today, I saw this.

WOW.

Your corporation doesn’t seem to have the basic sense that the staff at your local store manages to display, and I don’t plan to continue subsidizing outdated nonsense about women not understanding gaming or being attracted to your store only because of a free Oprah or Cosmopolitan subscription. You’ve lost my business for life.

Regards,
Me

One out of every 10 people in America is employed in a service that is related to the U.S. auto industry.

That’s a statistic from the Center for Automotive Research, via GM Facts and Fiction. It’s actually plausible; there are factories around the nation, not just in Detroit, that are somehow related to putting a car together. (I will note, though, it’s not clear how many of those sub-suppliers also work for Honda, Toyota, BMW, or “foreign” companies with US operations.)

The “Big Three” will never simply vanish — they (and the extended support structure of dealerships, suppliers, mechanics, etc.) are simply too large and too integral to the country’s manufacturing landscape. The job loss, health care loss, and tax income loss would be spread over the course of a few years. And it’s also worth noting that, to a large extent, the American Auto Maker crisis is largely of its own making; the recession is simply pinching them harder and sooner than expected.

I’m not against bailing out the auto industry, because the ripple effect around the country would be incredibly bad. At the same time, I haven’t decided if I’m in favor enough to write to my elected officials about it. (Yes, Visteon, when you fire loyal employees, they’ll hold a grudge and not help YOU out when the time comes. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it.) But I am in favor, just enough, to mention it here. The issue is worth awareness and discussion and thought. And perhaps a large dose of nervous worrying as well.

If it is decided that they deserve a second chance, then the automakers need to be held to a much higher standard than they currently are. It would be inspiring to see them remade into an industry that is a leader in sustainable design and manufacturing, rather than grudgingly hoping global warming is a passing fad. But given the firmly entrenched old-style industry and infrastructure they have, I’m not holding out much hope.

I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces. — Henry Ford

The simplified, awe-filled view of Ford is that he invented assembly line manufacturing and the automobile. The truth is a bit more prosaic — cars had been around for years, as had assembly lines. But by combining the two, Ford was able to make cars at an inconceivable rate, which reduced the price from “hand-crafted luxury item for the ridiculously rich” to “affordable useful item for the masses.” The modern automotive age is largely due to that innovation and shift in manufacturing technique.

When first released in 1908, the Model T cost an equivalent of approximately $18000, although the price would fall by half by 1915. It allegedly got 21 mpg (although modern drivers of Model T’s quote 14 mpg), was durable, could go almost thirty miles per hour (!), and even a Ford factory worker could reasonably afford it. Amazingly, aside from an increased top speed and luxuries like seat belts and windshield washer fluid, nothing revolutionary has happened in the automotive world in the last 100 years.

Happy anniversary, Model T

Dear Visteon,

Oh, I was getting over that. I was ready to mooch off my spouse for a few months. And so I moved to where we would have at least one income. I made sure to change my address so important documents would reach me. I made very sure. I have a copy of this confirmation. You’ve seen it, you know you have. You fucking sent it to me.

Most sincerely,
Your former engineer

If politicians bail out the auto industry, I will just curl up and die. I logically know that letting them collapse in a puddle of their own viscous incompetence is bad for the nation. But oh dear god they don’t know how to do anything right. I am surprised each and every time I start my car that it doesn’t blow up in my face. Even out of the automotive industry, they keep finding new and creative ways to fuck with my head.

Now I’ll go find something old, quaint, and amusing for tomorrow’s post. Or cook something retro for dinner. Anything to avoid reading more tax law.

I am the angry, disappointed owner of a Lexmark P6250 “All In One” printer. It scans, copies, and prints. (One thing that MOST printers of the all-in-one variety manage is to fax, as well; it’s my own fault for not thoroughly researching the specs before buying, but this one does not. However, Lexmark still loses points for making an all-in-one that’s really a most-in-one.)

It’s worked decently for two years. Then, suddenly, it starts having an intermittent problem… a big blank smear down the left side of any scan I try to make. Since I have an almost-paperless home office system, not being able to scan in and digitally store bills is a huge hassle. And since I got a big pile of family genealogy information that I need to scan in and share with cousins, it’s an even bigger hassle. I can usually only get about three pages scanned before the Big White Smear shows up, and then it’s done for the day.

Troubleshooting suggested cleaning the printer heads (?), making sure the printer is connected to the computer (?!?), and similarly pointless baloney. A tech support ticket was the only resort available. After suggesting that the “factory default settings” should be restored (and leaving me to wonder what possible setting could have been modified to have the scanner ignore 40% of the desired image) with no success, they revealed… that the printer is broken.

I know, shocking, right?

I asked about spare parts…

The issue appears to be with the scanner hardware, probably the scanner bulb.

Regarding the replacement part, I regret inform you that we do not carry a stock of spare parts for this printer model. Technology has allowed us to reduce the price of printers drastically; therefore, the cost of spare parts would exceed the cost of a new printer.

Anyone familiar with basic math should laugh in disbelief at this point. Printers are made of parts. Therefore, the cost of a printer can not be less than the cumulative cost of its parts. Therefore, each part has to cost less than a new printer; otherwise, Lexmark is selling printers at a drastic loss. Bullshit. They’re a business, not a charity.

So what’s really behind their disinterest in selling spare parts? They want you to buy the (probably more expensive) new printer when your old one dies. This is a peripheral, for pete’s sake, I don’t want to buy a new one every two years.

It’s not terribly likely that most (all?) other scanner/printer suppliers will provide better support for their products, but trying to spin me bullshit about “the end item costs less than its components” is one of the best ways to get me to never, ever buy from you again. The petty little bullshit, like making it difficult to convince the printer to use black ink only (it really prefers to print “black” using the more-expensive CMYK cartridge) and not having any fax functionality and a half-assed “troubleshooting” section of the manual, those were just petty annoyances. But making it unrepairable? Fuck you.

I am going to be buying a (probably more expensive) new peripheral, but it sure won’t be from Lexmark. Ever again.

That’s something my employer has been promising for years. “We are committed to the idea of a paperless office, and will strive to continually improve and reduce our paper usage and requirements.”

Now that the factory is closing (in 28 days… the countdown begins!), my primary responsibility is sorting through paperwork compiled by me and previous engineers over the 30 years the plant has been open. You may be thinking, “Gosh, that’s a lot of paper,” and you’d be right. I am throwing about 3,000 sheets an hour into the recycling bin (maybe 100/hour into the “to be shredded” pile, for confidential documents). There is a satisfying KAWHUMP sound as you drop a stack that big, driving home the point that this place was never even close to paperless.

On top of the vast quantity of discarded paperwork, there’s a smaller subset that we’re required to retain for ten years in case somebody wants to sue or there’s a massive Ford recall due to something we built. This is all lawyer-related. They want to be able to cover their asses and see whether or not we accounted for as-yet-unknown problems while manufacturing car parts. So, fine, we’re sorting some of the paper into tidy stacks in boxes, and labeling them, so in ten years they can be pulled out of a warehouse and shredded THEN. Again, helps us clearly see that our office environment is not paperless, and indeed it’s so un-paperless that our paper stays around longer than we do. You can’t get less paperless than that, right?

Wrong!

This just in from our local records retention coordinator:

Only electronic files that CANNOT BE RETAINED AS A HARD COPY will be saved by our IT department. All files currently on the server or in other data bases should be retained as a hard copy and stored in Record Retention boxes according to corporate guidelines.

Corporate has declared that we need to print out every single file we have stored on the server. We’re so un-paperless we’re using more paper while we get rid of all the paper!