Fix your windshield for cheap

Several months ago I found myself behind a gravel truck on the freeway, and before I could maneuver out of the way a tiny pebble flipped onto my windshield and gave me a tiny crack.  It was just big enough to be annoying, but not big enough to justify replacing the entire windshield.  For several months I just lived with it, but it bothered me because I’ve heard that it weakens the glass and can cause more serious problems later if you don’t take care of it.

Fortunately I discovered that there are several cheap solutions, all covered by my auto insurance.  Windshields.com will give you a summary of the options in your area, customized to your car make and model.  In my case, there weren’t any locations close enough to bother, but I found that my local Jiffy Lube will do it too, while I wait.

Although the cost is covered by insurance, I was apprehensive about fixing it. Wouldn’t they raise my rates? My insurance company (Amica) said they don’t.  Leaving it unrepaired exposes me to potentially more serious damage later, and besides, the cost to fix it is pretty minimal.

A professional auto glass place will charge everything to insurance, so it’s actually cheaper than Jiffy Lube, which makes me pay $5 as a convenience fee.  But finding an auto glass place and scheduling an appointment is too much hassle, so Jiffy Lube it was.  And it really was fast: they had the glass repaired and I was out of there in 15 minutes.

They don’t actually replace the windshield.  They basically just squirt some special glue into the crack to seal it and prevent further damage.  Although supposedly this makes the glass about as safe as a full replacement, you can still see evidence of a crack, so it’s not a perfect solution.

Here’s how it works: the technician first cleans the hole, by drilling it carefully.  Then he uses a special vise to “pull” the windshield glass in such a way that the crack opens enough to fill it thoroughly with the glue.

 

The glue is essentially a special transparent resin that seals the glass and prevents further damage.

You can’t use this process for cracks longer than 6 inches, but for marks like mine it seems just perfect.

Sharpen your lawnmower blade

You’re supposed to do it once a season, but Consumer Reports says that 25% of owners never sharpen their lawnmower blades. I’m happy to report that I no longer fit in that lazy category, and found to my delight that it was easier than I thought.

First step was to pin the blade down in such a way that it wouldn’t harm me while taking it off the mower.  The directions say use a 2x4 board, but I didn’t have one handy, and I found that a brick works just fine.  In my case, a quick counter-clockwise turn of the main bolt was enough to remove the blade safely.

 

How to sharpen the blade: I suppose I could have found my own sharpener (I hear you can buy a small $4 blade sharepner that works with any power drill for example) but that was too much hassle.  People say that local plant nurseries, or hardware stores will sharpen the blade (for free?) but after some calls to Lowes and Home Depot, I came up with nothing.  Eventually I discovered that our local equipment rental place (Eastside Rental, in Bellevue) would do it while I wait.  They charged an exorbitant $11, but it was worth it.

You should see how much better my lawn looks now!

Andy Raskin’s book tour at Queen Anne Bookshop

Andy Raskin and I first met in graduate school, where both of us were interested in Japan, and over the years we somehow keep bumping into each other, often in strange, coincidental ways.  There was the time, for example, when he wrote an article for Wired about the country of Tuvalu and WebTV Networks, which (unbeknownst to him) just so happened to be the company where I was working. 

A year ago, while in San Francisco for a press tour, my PR colleague and I found ourselves with some extra time in the middle of the day.  Knowing that Andy was a writer with ties to the high-tech world, I thought it might be nice to look him up so my colleague suggested we stop at the Apple Store downtown for a bit while I tried to find his contact info.  Of course, right at that moment, who should happen to walk into the Apple Store?  (this photo was taken that day)

He told me he was working on a new book, that he had just signed a contract with Penguin and would be writing about some experiences he’d had with Japan and the inventor of instant ramen (who had died a few years ago). 

Well I was pleased to hear that the book is now finished and that Andy will be in Seattle for a book signing at Queen Anne Bookshop on Tuesday, May 26th at 6:30. [iCal  or Google Calendar ]

Andy’s book, The Ramen King and I, looks very interesting, and has already hit the  San Francisco Best Seller list.  I can’t wait to see him and hear more.

Digital socialism = capitalism.

In the Jun 2009 issue of Wired, Kevin Kelly uses the loaded term "socialism" to describe how the fragmentation of everything is giving us access to more choice than ever before.  He admits to using a word with much cultural baggage, and it's not clear if by coining the phrase "digital socialism" the result will be to co-opt and re-define the popular meaning of the word, or if careless readers will simply think he's giving a nod of approval to a dangerous meme that of necessity is associated with coercion and top-down control.

Open Source founder and guru Richard Stallman reminds us of the two meanings of "free":  The first ("as in beer")  refers to not having to pay for something. But the second, which embodies the real power of the open internet, means liberty, the freedom to choose what you like, with no coercion from a government or supplier.  Traditional socialism offers a world that is free in the first sense ("free healthcare") but not in the second ("freedom to choose a non-government appointed supplier").  Capitalism, in the original Adam Smith sense, emphasizes the second (liberty) aspect of free. The Invisible Hand won't work unless you can freely choose your suppliers and customers.

Kevin Kelly's insight is that we are moving to a world where we can have both meanings of "free".  The best things in  what the Wired issue calls the "New New Economy" are free in both senses (e.g. Wikipedia, which lets you both access and modify freely without payment).  He calls it "digitial socialism", but he wants us to think of it as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates about traditional capitalism and socialism.

But it isn't a third way.  What Kevin Kelly calls "digital socialism" is just plain old decentralized, Hayekian capitalism: zillions of independent, free actors whose individual self-motivated choices add up to something bigger than any of us. The real baggage of socialism, and the reason I think Kevin Kelly's term doesn't work, is that it relies on coercion by a third party (government) to make it work.  Capitalism and liberty are always tightly associated because neither can work without the other.  Socialism's "free as in beer" is always associated with a strong (government) Leviathan who can (by force if necessary) redistribute from one person to another.

In the digital world, where redistribution has no cost, Kevin Kelly thinks we can remove the coercive aspect of socialism.  Nobody forces you to contribute your Linux bug fixes or Youtube videos to the collective -- you give freely and selflessly, something he believes you would never do in a world motivated only by money.   But capitalism isn't about money, as  Adam Smith himself notes: "The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it."  If Kevin Kelly's digital socialism simply means we no longer need government to reduce the cost of acquiring things, then why not use the term that already describes a system that does exactly that:  capitalism.

update: Lawrence Lessig agrees,  disputing Kevin Kelly’s word choice.  Socialism requires coercion.

I (heart) technology

Heart CT
Originally uploaded by sprague

At my annual physical this week, my doctor suggested that I get a $99 CT Cardiac Score to find out how good my arteries really are. Rather than guess that my low cholesterol is keeping me safe from heart disease, why not find out for sure?

So this morning I went to Bellevue Medical Imaging and 15 minutes later walked out with this video. No needles, no yukky medicine, no poking. I just laid down (in my regular clothes) for a minute or two while they ran this donut-shaped CAT machine over my chest.

I have no idea whether this is a good heart or not -- some expert will need to interpret it for me -- but you can't beat how easy it was.

Move over Mercer Island

The weather has finally changed enough that I can close my eyes and imagine it’s springtime, and that’s a good time to think about adjusting a bunch of things, including my blogs.  When I started years ago, this blog was a central place to keep my stuff.  Why post book reviews at Amazon, or restaurant opinions on Yelp, or advice about contractors at <fly-by-night websites> when it’s just easier to keep track of everything on my own site?  Plus, the engineer in me says if you want to understand the Web you need to jump in and do it yourself—don’t just read about it.   The downside of this is that my blog has tended to be a bit of a jungle: a little of this, a little of that, with no obvious theme or relevance to anybody but me.  (Even my mom doesn’t read me that much anymore).

So I’m switching to be a bit more thematical and that means focusing my posts in a way I didn’t in the past.  I didn’t expect that so many people would read me for the posts I made about Mercer Island.  I love it here, of course, but unless you do too it’s not going to be all that interesting.   Careful readers will note that I haven’t posted much about Mercer Island lately  because for the past several months I’ve been posting instead on a new site: iMercerIsland.com.  Go there if you want to read about local issues.  I may cross-post now and then, but generally speaking from now on richardsprague.com will be more about general ideas that I find interesting and less about the wonderful place where I happen to live.

The nice thing about iMercerIsland.com is that it’s open to posters besides me, so feel free to contribute yourself (email me if you want to learn how). 

By the way, if you want to get even more up-to-date MI information, you’ll want to follow Mercer Island on Twitter.  See you there!

The many faces of me

I’m a blog social media hobbiest.  I do this for fun, not for a living.  But as more people come on line, both friends and work-related colleagues, and as more people shift to online as their main source of information, I’m finding myself worried a lot more about my “brand” and how I appear online.  It’s enough to give me writer’s block. Here’s why:

Every one of us who uses online social networking can point to interesting and fulfilling experiences that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and we become evangelists for the cause. I think it's because any interesting person lives a complex, multi-dimensional life with at least the following faces:

1. Locational [people who happen to be physically near you] neighbors, the mailman, your barista.
2. Professional [how you make your living]: work colleagues, your boss; customers, others in your industry
3. Situational [associated with a particular time or event in your life]: your college years, grad school, that summer you spent in a timeshare in the Hamptons
4. Associational [organizations you belong to]: church or synagogue, service organizations like Rotary Club, the PTA.
5. Beliefs [people who share opinions or beliefs about something]: religion, politics, superstitions
6. Familial [immediate family and relatives] : brothers & sisters, uncles, ex-wife.

In the real world, these faces collide only occasionally, and when they do it can be an experience that ranges anywhere from wonderful to embarrassing.

In some cultures, these dimensions are marked with strict rules about clothing, use of eye contact, and even language. In Japanese for example, you literally change your vocabulary to suit the dimension you are in at a given moment, and it can be awkward -- even offensive -- to use certain styles of speech in an inappropriate situation. Even in English, we switch "speech registers" all the time: think about the words you use around your poker buddies versus the way you talk in a job interview.

Which of these is the real you?

Although we generally socialize with a given person based on only one of these dimensions, sometimes seeing little snippets of another dimension can make that person seem more alive and interesting. But go too far, expose too much of another dimension, and you've violated some rule that is awkward for you and your listeners.

Politics and religion are the easiest examples: what happens if your professional relationships find that you have a different (perhaps unpopular) opinion than they do? You are hopefully proud of your political or religious opinions, but express it too loudly among people who disagree (or who don’t understand) and it can be an unnecessary distraction.  Instead of being “that really smart guy who works hard and knows a lot about X”, you’ll be “That <member of minority group> who somehow knows about X”.  Even outside the obvious politics/religion examples, this can be true on lots of topics like health or even favorite movies and books.  Will it really help your “brand” if people know you like <such-and-such sappy musical group>?

A few weeks ago I heard a talk by Dalton Conley, sociologist at NYU and author of Elsewhere, U.S.A. who thinks the future might require us to meld these worlds into one. You will become a "hall of mirrors", with so many of your dimensions exposed that people simply won't be able to tell which of you is "real" except in context -- and we'll all just take it for granted that people are multi-dimensional.

Many of the “leaders” I know in marketing or management think they’ve solved this problem by ignoring their personal brand identity.  “I’m too important to be online” or “I make my team be online, so I don’t have to”.  But I think that’s dinosaur thinking.  You can’t understand the digital world if you don’t live in it yourself.  There are many faces of me, but I’m not going to figure this out unless I jump in.