coffeetime

Since we are 150 miles north of Manhattan, we are not getting impacted by the current blizzard to the same extent as the city. Nonetheless, we're seeing a fair amount of snow and blustery wind, and this time at least my institution decided to cancel all classes up through noon. They issued the cancellation message last night at 9 pm, which made for a pretty quick pivot for me. In turn, I canceled my plans to try and go to rowing practice this morning, and instead got up early to start making Even More Lecture Videos for Animal Physiology.

The problems are, videos are large files, and my home upload speed is pretty throttled, so it has taken almost an hour to upload the first, shorter video (~1 Gb file; 15 minute recording). I have downsampled the video quality for the second, longer video accordingly (30 minute recording), but I am barely going to have it uploaded ahead of the scheduled start time for the class. In many respects that doesn't matter, because when classes are canceled technically we cannot hold a scheduled class session. But on a more practical level, that means I really can't go anywhere until the video finishes uploading.



So far it looks like the plows have hit the primary roads (emergency vehicle access for fire fighting and hospitals), but not yet the secondary or tertiary roads; I can see one of each road type from my windows at home.

...and as the morning progresses, I'm also noticing that unmistakable throat lymph node sensation suggesting I'm fighting off illness. Quick, to the medicine cabinet! That also means it's probably most prudent to just plan on staying home and recording and uploading yet another lecture video to replace my afternoon bicycling class meeting.

...and now there's another long wait for that one to upload, too.

Here's hoping that people actually watch them and find them useful. It's not an ideal method but still far better than nothing!

There are a lot of things these days reiterating the points that doing things like reading real books and going to class in person work better and have more benefits than over-reliance on digital learning tools. To many of us, this is not a surprise. I treat the digital learning tools as accessory to learning, and that seems to be a reasonable approach, based on my learning assessments.

Last night when I was riding home from work, I felt and heard some troubling sounds in my drivetrain. By the time I was about a quarter mile from home, I had a good idea of what had happened, because of a uniquely terrible weeble-wobble that occurred every time I tried to take a pedal stroke: something in my bottom bracket had eaten itself, most likely at least one bearing, if not more.

It was dark and I was tired, so I left the project of inspecting things further until the following morning. The following morning confirmed that it was time for a driving field trip up to the bike shop, stat. Sigh. I hitched up the car and altered my itinerary to make it a driving one instead of a bicycling one (bike shop; hardware store; grocery store 1; grocery store 2; work).

Thankfully, the shop was able to take a look at things today, and they had a replacement in stock. Given that they'd installed the previous bottom bracket less than a year ago, they comp'd me the part! Whew.

Meanwhile, I'm having some bicycling jacket ponderings. But before I get to that, I want to tell you a story from around 20 years ago. It will eventually become related. At that time, I had saved up for and bought a pair of fancy, noise-canceling headphones, from one of the very first companies to make and sell such a thing. Those headphones were wonderful in many ways - noise canceling technology makes airplane travel so much more pleasant, and the company touted its acoustic expertise. However, I eventually discovered that those headphones had a fatal flaw: the headband was made of plastic, and over time that rigid plastic fatigued at a swivel joint, and snapped.

What to do now? So much for a high-quality product. Seriously, there are a lot of other headphones on the market with sturdy headbands made of metal. It's not that hard. I pondered my options, and eventually decided that I wanted to just send the headphones back to the company that manufactured them. They weren't any good to me anymore, and it was a company that claimed to be all about quality, so I figured they should find out that I wasn't impressed in this instance. I didn't ask for anything, I just felt like they should have to deal with the consequences of their shoddy design.

...lo and behold, a month or so later, I was very surprised to receive a pair of brand-new replacement headphones in the mail! But given that they still had the exact same flaw, I gave them to my brother, and he eventually reported that they failed in the same place. I think he probably threw them in the trash to go to a landfill.

Anyway, regarding the bicycling jacket ponderings: when I lived in California, I had an opportunity to buy a lightly-used cycling jacket of a brand that is pretty expensive but with a good reputation among people who bike all the time, everywhere. I pounced. That jacket served me well for a number of years, but it eventually failed by way of all of the tape for the seams disintegrating.

Based on my appreciation of the jacket's functionality, I bought a replacement at full price from the manufacturer. All too soon, two zippers and velcro on that jacket failed. I still wear it occasionally, but it's basically barely a windbreaker, not a rain jacket, and on its way to disintegrating, too.

So, I'm ready to shop for a replacement. But just like with those headphones, I'm feeling like I don't want to just toss these previous two jackets into a landfill. I don't see an easy way to repair them, either.

So I think I will once again mail both jackets back to the manufacturer, with a letter. If the manufacturer has made a product that wears out and fails, they need to deal with the resulting waste.

I really hope they don't send me anything, so I guess I'd better say as much in my letter. I have appreciated the rain pants I obtained from the same company, so my issues with product quality aren't universal, at least. Well, one of two pairs of rain pants. It's just...if all our transactions are online, I'd like places to provide more information about durability and repair options for the goods they sell. I know I'm unlikely to turn the tide, but I don't want the responsibility of putting these things into a landfill.

Some companies are aware of this perspective, but more need to become aware. With any luck, my next jacket purchase, from a different company, will last longer and serve me better.