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I got off on a tangent with my previous post about the $398 Wal-Mart laptop.  My intent was to write about a possible ripoff situation with some other laptops that are being advertised at Office Depot.

A reader who wishes to remain anoymous sent me this link to the Black Friday site about the situation:

Going against my gut feeling, I posted earlier about Office Depot’s $299 (after-rebate) laptop computer: I thought this was Office Depot’s attempt at flying straight. Nope, it’s pretty much border-line con.

The math broke down like this:

$579.99 + ~7.5% tax (this varies by region, I used 7.5% because I think it’s a median value) = $623.50

$623.50 – $280 in rebates = $343.50 + a free printer (including tax).

Granted, this laptop wasn’t as powerful as Walmart’s, it was still $50 cheaper and a comparable alternative. Unfortunately, to order this, you had to go to a retail Office Depot location and have a Customer Service Representative punch in the Configuration Number to order it for you. But that’s not all. Since Office Depot would be shipping to you, they were charging a near minimum $50 shipping fee. One BFAds user reported he was quoted a shipping and handling fee of $78!

The shipping fee would bring the laptop to $400, which would be after rebates and would be a lesser system than Walmart’s. I personally apologize for this over-sight and hope you accept my apologies.

In the original post I said how horrible Office Depot’s rebates were, as evident by the following sites: Ripoff Report, Reseller Ratings (1.52/10) and Shopping.com’s amount of users that will never shop at Office Depot again. And perhaps my favorite thing about all of this, Office Depot owns the site OfficeDepotStinks.com. They are apparently aware of the mass dislike directed towards them!

Office Depot’s less than honest business tactics are not supported by BFAds.net. We will no longer be posting any of their items or Black Friday advertisements. We suggest you look at more respectable office supply stores such as OfficeMax (whose Black Friday sale has ABSOLUTELY NO REBATES) or Staples.

I haven’t experienced this directly, and I have gotten Office Depot rebates in the past.  If true, though, this is a horrible tactic to suck you into the store and then jack up the price through hidden fees. 

Where possible, I prefer to deal with places that either have instant or electronic rebates, as these seem to be the easiest to get processed.  But beware of hidden fees.  This is especially true if the laptop (or PC) has to be custom-ordered.  If it isn’t off-the-shelf, be careful and stay alert.

I see that Wal-Mart has a Compaq laptop (V5305WM) on sale for $398 in their stores. The specs on that laptop don’t seem too bad, and no rebates are required so you don’t have to gather receipts, send them off, get rejected, then curse them for ripping you off.

It sometimes amazes me just how far down prices go when the technology is well behind the bleeding edge. For comparison purposes, I bought an eMachines M6805 about 3.5 years ago and it cost $1549.99. This Compaq is comparable in features (better in some areas) and slightly lighter and slimmer.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison:

If I click a button marked “Save and Exit,” there’s no need to pop up another dialog asking me if I’d like to save the changes.  One would think that the “SAVE” in “Save and Exit” would be sufficient to indicate intent.

I commented about this topic quite a while back, after the last KISD bond election.  I thought it was vaguely improper to be holding a school bond election in a school building.

It turns out that my unease might have been justified:

Some experts say it’s time for local election officials to start considering how surroundings at polling places might affect voters.

Polling places may unconsciously influence a voter’s decision, according to a study by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

“Voting in a school, for example, could activate the part of a person’s identity that cares about kids, or norms about taking care of the community,” said Jonah Berger, one of the study’s researchers. “Voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness.”
…
Raborn said he hadn’t considered that some voters might be influenced by the place where they cast their ballots.

“I would assume the majority of voters have their mind made up when they get to the polling place,” he said.

The researchers say that may not matter.

“There could potentially be influence if particular candidates are highly linked to particular issues that are related to particular polling locations,” said S. Christian Wheeler, one of the researchers. “People can be influenced by external stimuli without their intention.”

The study by Berger, Wheeler and Marc Meredith was based on a 2000 general election in Arizona, but the researchers say the results would be comparable in any election.

In the 2000 election, more than one-fourth of the polling places were in schools. Voters who cast ballots there were more likely to support Proposition 301, which provided funding for education, than those who voted at other sites, according to the study.

The study also found that people who were shown pictures of schools or churches were more likely to support education-related issues and that those who saw church images were less likely to support stem-cell initiatives. “The influence of polling location … would be more than enough to change the outcome of a close election,” it said. “Choices of voting places can have unintended effects on election races.”

It ultimately didn’t affect me, but it still seemed improper.  Of course, logistics will likely make coming up with neutral ground nearly impossible unless we adopt a completely remote voting system (like Oregon’s vote-by-mail system or some sort of web-based electronic system).

After giving it some thought I’ve decided to vote AGAINST the Tarrant County senior tax freeze. 

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with their situation.  But as long as we’re all going to have to pay property taxes, I want them in the same game as the rest of us.  Seniors are very politically active, and they’re very sensitive to tax increases.  In many past elections they’ve been the deciding factor in blocking various boondoggles that came up on ballots. 

They’re sort of the “canary in the coal mine” when it comes to taxes, and they serve as a brake on unbridled government.  In my more cynical moments I can’t help but think that some politicians like the idea because it keeps the seniors from complaining and organizing against future bond proposals.  That they can also be seen sucking up to seniors doesn’t hurt, either.

Things got kind of hectic on Friday and I didn’t get back to the issue concerning “Citizens for Great Schools.”  However, Friday’s Keller Citizen pretty much answered the question, which rendered my request to KISD moot.  KISD, however, responded this afternoon with a copy of the committee filing.

Anyhow…  I found it rather disconcerting to see that the largest contributors to this committee have the most to gain.  Not that it’s illegal.  I haven’t studied the Texas Election Ethics sections with regards to this sort of donation, but I’d guess that these companies have vetted their contributions with their legal staff members.  It seems to me that a commercial entity with financial ties to a project ought not to be able to fund a committee for the purpose of lobbying people to vote for that project.  It just smells bad.

So it seems that some of our airports don’t have sufficient margin available on their runways.  At least if you take into account a year-2015 standard…

More than half of U.S. commercial airports don’t have a 1,000-foot margin at the end of a runway, an overrun area the federal government says is needed as a safety zone, according to statistics supplied by the Federal Aviation Administration.

  Some of the busiest airports in the country—including Los Angeles International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—as well as Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport have more than one runway that doesn’t meet safety standards, according to the FAA.

  The FAA says it is diligently upgrading the runways. The agency expects that all of them will meet the standard by 2015, when they are legally required to do so, according to FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.

  “Today, 70 percent of commercial service runways have a runway safety area within 90 percent of the standard,” she said, adding that 236 runways were improved as of Sept. 22.

It’s not so much this particular issue, though, that got my attention.  It would appear that the airplanes aren’t the only thing landing without sufficient runway:

“Our runways are out of shape, and the Bush administration has failed to move to correct the problem,” Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, said yesterday. “If we don’t get serious about runway problems, the result could be disastrous.”

Is there anything that this dingleberry can’t turn into a “Bush” problem?  If the overrun standard isn’t required until 2015, what’s the deal here?

Now if you want to see a short runway, check this out:

I see that tonight’s episode of Mythbusters includes a segment called “Exploding Lighter.”  They’re testing the myth of whether a small, disposable, butane lighter can explode with the force of several sticks of dynamite.

This reminded me of some of my youthful empirical studies in combustible and explosive materials.

Perhaps at this point I should include the standard Mythbusters disclaimer concerning my youthful antics.  Please do not try this at home, kids.  You’d probably be charged with a felony these days…

Growing up in East Texas I possessed a Daisy 880 pump-action .177 caliber pellet gun as well as plenty of free time during the summers to scour the roadsides for whatever items might be found.  I learned that sometimes discarded Bic lighters still had a little bit of life left in them as well as that discarded Coke bottles explode quite nicely in 100° temperatures when hit with a well-placed BB if the owner had thoughtfully recapped it before littering.  But I digress…

Curious as to whether a lighter would explode when shot with a BB gun, I set up a small experiment, which I conducted at dusk when the light was fading for best effect.  Taking a piece of tape I would light the lighter and use the tape to hold down the stupid little button.  I would then place the now lit lighter on a fence post and retreat to a (relatively) safe distance with the BB gun.  If the gun was sufficiently pumped to destroy the plastic quickly, a nice little fireball could be created when the lighter was hit.

Not that I’d want to have a lighter explode in my pocket, mind you, but it didn’t seem to be all that powerful.  Of course, this was a situation where I orchestrated a quick release of the lighter’s contents.  I would imagine that if you could slowly heat the lighter to increase the internal pressure that it might be much more dangerous.  I never did try that one, though.

Since I’m fairly certain the statute of limitations has expired, I’ll relate another of my youthful experiments.  It involved the heads of about 50 matches, some very fine copper wire, a length of larger wire, a small pill bottle, and a 9-volt battery.  I put all but one of the match heads in the bottle.  The last one I wrapped with a couple of turns of the fine copper wire, which I then joined to the larger wire.  The wrapped match head went into the bottle with the rest and the top was sealed with tape.  I then ran the wire a safe distance from the bottle and applied the battery.  It made for a nice little electrically-activated incendiary device.

Perhaps it’s better that today’s kids have Playstation and other indoor pursuits to keep them occupied.  There’s probably nothing quite so dangerous as a young boy with nothing to do during the summer (although in my defense I will note that I never set anything on fire that I didn’t intend to and no charges were ever filed   ).

It’s hard to fail to notice the synchronicity of the arrival of the postcard exhorting us to vote “YES” for the two KISD propositions and the arrival of a letter from KISD Superintendent James Veitenheimer on KISD letterhead. 

I noticed that the postcard (addressed to “CONCERNED KELLER CITIZEN”) says that it is a Political Advertisment Paid For By Citizens For Great Schools.  I tried to find out more information about this political committee, and all I could find was a passing mention in a Star Telegram article about the KISD stadium.

When the stadium opened, it met standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Veitenheimer said. But times have changed, and so have the standards. Once the five parking spaces for handicapped people are filled, people must park at least 200 feet away. Handicapped seating is another problem, Veitenheimer said. The stadium has about 40 handicapped-accessible seats on the concourse, which is basically the bottom floor of the bleachers. Watching the game, however, is difficult because fans constantly walk in front of the seats. “This is no longer acceptable,” said David Vasquez, a member of Citizens for Great Schools, a bond support group that is mailing information to voters.  (emphasis added)

A little bit more searching shows that Mr. Vasquez is a member of the KISD Citizens Bond Advisory Committee as well as a founding member and a director of the Keller ISD Foundation (please note use of “it’s” on main page…    … sorry, can’t help myself…).

I’m not trying to be a muckracker here.  It’s just that when I saw this group’s name I wanted to know more about it as well as who was funding them.  The first thing I looked for was a website (hence the Google search).  I was a little surprised that they didn’t have one, since it’s an easy and inexpensive way to provide information about your position.

Since they appear to be a political committee I took a look at those rules to see how I could get more information.  If they spent or took in more than $500 they’re required to file an appointment of a campaign treasurer with the appropriate filing authority (in this case, the secretary of the school board). 

I have submitted an email to inquire about whether they’ve filed an appointment of campaign treasurer and how to examine the documents, if they have done so (no thanks to the KISD contact form, though, which ate my request and appears to have sent it to /dev/null).

Which reminds me about the “BondQuestions” address that Dr. Veitenheimer referenced once again in his most recent letter.  I’m a bit curious as to whether anyone is actually monitoring it since I sent a question there 7 days ago and have yet to receive any feedback (not even a “we read your message and will get back to you” message).  Or maybe it’s just us cantankerous CAVEs who get ignored. 

My question concerned getting a breakdown of what went into the cost estimate of the new high school.  I really, really want to know just what’s driving that huge cost estimate.  Was this addressed in one of the “community forum” sessions they held that I couldn’t make?  Or is it just something they don’t want to discuss?  I certainly didn’t see anything that addressed the issue in that nice, glossy, mailer (how much did that cost us?) they sent last week, nor did I see anything in the information provided on their website.

It would appear that XM and Sirius are having an impact on terrestrial broadcasters, and like the Empire, they’re trying to strike back.

The radio wars are escalating. In a one-two punch aimed at enlisting regulators to their cause, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and National Public Radio want the Federal Communications Commission to investigate alleged misdeeds by satellite radio companies XM (XMSR) and Sirius (SIRI).

On Oct. 12, National Public Radio CEO Ken Stern wrote to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin alleging that the satellite broadcasters’ devices interfere with NPR broadcasts. And last week, David Rehr, president and CEO of the powerful NAB, fired off two letters to Martin alleging several regulatory violations.

It would appear that XM hasn’t been quite as diligent as it should have been with regards to following FCC rules with its repeaters, but this whole effort has the stink of sour grapes about it.  It seems, from my viewpoint, that the NAB wants to hobble XM rather than compete with it in the marketplace.  And if the NAB can further hobble XM (and Sirius) by making it subject to content restrictions, so much the better for them.  Or so they think (more on this at the end).

For example, this just seems silly to me:

In its second claim, the NAB contends that XM and Sirius shouldn’t be allowed to give away their products for free to new car buyers or online. Last week, Sirius streamed Howard Stern’s program for free on its Web site.

The NAB argues that such freebies ought to subject satellite radio to the same FCC regulations as those governing terrestrial radio. That likely would trigger restrictions, for example, on language and other racy content.

I think that NAB is trying to insinuate that this somehow brings in FCC broadcast standards, but if that’s the case, then all the podcasters would face a similar fate.  As far as I know, those standards only apply to content transmitted over the “public” airwaves, not to generally-available content.  To get a “free” subscription in your vehicle, you still have to be registered with XM or Sirius (it’s actually your radio’s serial number they use), so it’s still a subscription model and is not generally available to the public over the air.  Further, web content just doesn’t come under the FCC’s purview as I noted.

And then there’s poor NPR, being blasted off the air by all those inconsiderate and uncultured boors who don’t know not to interfere with their betters:

Finally, there’s the third complaint, from NPR, which claims that many FM modulators, used to feed programming from portable satellite radio devices into car stereos, exceed FCC power requirements. That means a driver listening to NPR might suddenly hear a blast of obscenities from Howard Stern from a car as far as 100 feet away. NPR stations have received hundreds of complaints from listeners, says Mike Starling, chief technology officer of NPR Labs, which has studied the issue.

In July, NPR Labs measured FM modulator levels in traffic in the Washington, D.C., area. While it found that 30% to 40% of the modulators exceeded FCC-mandated power levels, the study couldn’t conclusively determine whether satellite radio devices or, say, unrelated MP3 players used in cars were the violators, says Starling.

The majority of these modulators are just devices you can buy at nearly any store these days.  And in fact, it’s up to the FCC to make sure they’re properly regulated.  If they’re out of specifications, then it means that either the FCC failed to do its job or that the distributor of the device itself is in violation.  To say this is directly an XM or Sirius issue is silly, other than where XM or Sirius markets radios with built-in modulators.  But even that is a tenuous link, as XM and Sirius do not make their own equipment, but rather resell equipment from other manufacturers.  It’s up to those manufacturers to follow the FCC rules for transmitter output.

Regardless of whether an FM modulator’s output power is out of specifications, the issue of bleedover on NPR frequencies shows something that I think is interesting about how the market values NPR.  Specifically, it would seem that a significant number of people would prefer to use the frequency for their own purposes rather than listen to NPR.

Personally, I went to XM (and have had, and could live with, Sirius) because I couldn’t stand terrestrial radio.  Even in the unlikely event that the NAB and NPR were somehow able to drive XM and Sirius out of business it would not result in them gaining me as a listener.  I’d just go back to listening to MP3’s, like I did before XM was available in my area.  Although now I could also get more content and have it updated in a more timely fashion (i.e. podcasts).  There were no iPods or podcasts in 1999 when I got my first in-vehicle MP3 player (which required burning CD-ROM’s with the content) and flash-based MP3 players were pretty limited at the time.

This is all rather petty and just makes the terrestrial broadcasters look desperate to me.  It certainly won’t help them gain listeners.