katsmeat

Catsmeat is looking for new snowboard bindings at some point.

My first-generation, K2 Cinches worn out, I think I've progressed past them and the design was always an annoyance in some ways. I'm hearing many, many good things about Salomon Relay, intermediate/advanced bindings and the nice chap at the local ski shop, hoping for a sale, has lent me an old pair to bash about on for a few weeks to see if I like them.

Naturally, I've taken him up on the offer, whilst looking for Relays on eBay.

Cue jaw drop....

( eBay Screen Cap. )

"Used for one week on snow" is par for the course for ski and snowboard eBay listings. But this is a new level of abbreviating the experience. Clicking on 'other items from seller' pulls up two complete sets of boards, boots and bindings - I would guess 'his' and 'hers' from the sizes and models. Pricing it up, somebody spent over £800 on an hour of riding the Milton Keynes indoor snow hill, and did so about 12 to 18 months ago as it's all last season's stuff. The unknown snow-shop sales-person also managed to do the usual upsell with accessories to this pair of would-be thrashers, with a bullet tool, which is naturally still in its blister pack.

Contrast that with my consumerist guilt over replacing bindings because they still work, despite them being hammered for three years, having broken springs, badly worn ratchets and design flaws that have slowly grown from unnoticed to niggling to annoying.

I'm left with two conclusion. Firstly, I have simply no comprehension of the thought processes that govern a good many people's purchasing decisions - I'm not good at sales because lacking this comprehension makes it harder to exploit these people. Secondly, the medium and long term future, which promise a huge scaling back in people's lifestyles in the cause of the environment, may actually leave me more or less unaffected as it is already modest. It's people like this who'll feel the pain, assuming they're actually still solvent.

Yesterday, I rewired a dead desk-lamp that normally lights the workbench I use for bike stuff. The insulation of the cheap thin wires in it had cracked in the bulb's heat, shorting it out and taking out the fuse.

That sort of thing I like because it's like the world is screaming in my ear "THROW IT AWAY, THROW IT AWAY, IT"S EASIER TO BUY A NEW ONE FOR £4.99 FROM SAINSBURY'S" When I flippeded the switch and the light came on, it felt like I had flipped the finger to all that. Anyway, I feel mildly good for saving the carbon footprint for making a new one and shipping it from China and not making Sainsbury's slightly richer.

Later on, in Boot's, I was shopping for a toothbrush, amongst other things. I was about to unthinkingly grab whatever brand was 2 for 1 when I noticed the "Boot's Basics" ones that are 28p for 2.

They look weirdly incongruous, surrounded by ranks of all the other brands. All the ones round them, are brightly coloured and have bizarrely shaped heads, built in ultrasonic thimajbobs, and all other kinds of wonders that promise superior cleaning. Features some demented types with rimless glasses and a Masters in Marketing dreamt up in about a thousand brainstorming meetings, where they used thick marker pens to write single words in large letters on a flipchart about what Ms Average wants when she buys a toothbrush. Features that have more to to with getting the product sold than cleaning teeth, that they think will give you a small burst of positive emotions when you pick the item up and are essentially what happens when advertising and the product merge into one.

There amongst all that were the Boot's Basics. They are white and are 1/20 the cost of the others. My internal dialogue went as thus:

"Get the usual ones, they're on two for one."

"But those ones are cheap."

"Which means there's something wrong with them, you fool. How can something without 3D-Angled Bristles™® and a Multi-Flexi-Head™® possibly call itself a toothbrush?"

"Excuse, me! Bristles and a handle! What essential toothbrush features do these lack?"

"Look, it's only three pounds extra to get the proper ones."

"And exactly what benefit will I see from that expenditure?"

"I don't know, but you're just being weird again because nobody else buys the 28p ones."

< sighs >... "If I promise to uses these these for cleaning oil from bike cassettes, if they're unsatisfactory, will you shut up?"

"I suppose. But I bet you'll be back to get one of the others."

"Yeah... whatever. Fine."

< grabs Basic toothbrushes and stalks to the checkout >

Though, I'm now slightly suspicious that the 28p ones are carefully designed and packaked by cunning marketeers want to appeal to smug people who believe they can see through the transparent blandishments of marketing. Perhaps marketeers are like the devil - their greatest trick is to make you think they're not there. But they always are.

This is getting seriously paranoid. Sod it, I need coffee.

I've gone vegetarian, at least to a limited extent.

I'll happily eat free-range meat. But no more pies, pasties, etc - I think it can safely be assumed that any processed product containing meat is going to contain the cheapest, crappiest, most hormone and antibiotic infused animal-product the manufacturer can possibly source. That originates in some Animal-Auschwitz industrial unit whose name includes the word 'farm' but which otherwise has as resemblance to the traditional idea of agriculture as a pit-viper has to a Sherman tank.

Unfortunately, while I like pasties in general, I loathe cheese and onion ones and nine times out of ten, that seems the only non-meat option.

< shrugs >

< sigh >

Isn't it great being into bikes in the UK?

Park lockring spanner - US$13.95 or UK£16.50

Only two and a quarter times more!

So want one of these:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/86dd/

< evil grin >

I wrote a bitchy post on Bikepirates about a stainless steel Egg Beater pedal whose spindle cracked on me without warning. I politely emailed Crank Brothers without much hope. I told them the full story - the pedal was bought 2nd hand on eBay about 10 months ago (the vendor claimed it was only a few months old, though that's quite possibly BS). Therefore, it might be within their 2 year warranty period, but it might not - there's no way of knowing and I have no way of proving it.


Despite this, the guy form CB just emailed

Thanks for the email. I can mail you a replacement spindle, it should be easy to swap that out. Please let me know your mailing address.


jason // rider support
Crank Brothers
310 Broadway
Laguna Beach, CA 92651



(cp to bikepirates )

< grins, wishes all companies were as cool as this >

My (3 day old ) Macbook Pro developed a problem. It was in a padded slip-case in my bike-messanger bag. There was enough pressure in it to flex the screen and put it into contact with the keyboard pannel - puttting a faint horizontal mark on the screen.

I called Apple (I bought 3 years Applecare so figured they may as well earn it) assuming there might be a way of removing it - alcohol screen wipes or something. I simply wanted to be sure of not using a solvent that would
damage the screen finish.

Instead, they agreed to send me a new Mac without me even asking.

< still slightly boggled >

Can I say that whoever devised this product in time for the holiday season ^D^D^D shopping season, should be shot in the belly and left to bleed to death somewhere.

Devilshly clever though - hit small girls with the fantasy and the reality of feminity one go.

Laptop decisions making (again).
( Read more... )

They're out!

Come to me, baby!