Category: General

A while back I blogged about Tesco’s attempt to penetrate the US Market with their Fresh & Easy chain of environmentally green midi-marts. I also mentioned the slimy unions’ attempts to keep them from opening shop.

While the Fresh & Easy near my house remains an empty lot, and the next two nearest ones are nearing completion, but a long way behind the originally announced schedule, a few have opened around town. Mostly around the wrong side of town.

One has opened at 19th Ave and Baseline, about 8 miles from home. We decided we’ve take a look today. There’s a Lowes nearby and we needed some home improvement stuff, so it made for a neat package trip. In case we bought anything cold at Fresh & Easy, we went to Lowes first. While we were there, the slimy unions struck again, placing a heavy cardstock, professionally designed and printed, full color flyer on our car window.

It’s deceptively designed to look like a Fresh & Easy flyer, but it really says it’s “Produced by Fresh & Queasy, a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers.” (Emphasis mine.)

It says, “Don’t be fooled by Fresh & Easy” and goes on with a litany of complaints about Tesco. All of the complaints are aimed at Tesco in the UK, many are scare-mongering. “Pesticides found in baby food” reads one of the headlines. “Tesco clothes made by child labor in Asia”, reads another.

Now, I’m not going to defend or condemn Tesco because I’m not in possession of the facts, nor, even if these allegations are 100% true and taken entirely in context, do they address the real issue. The grocery workers’ unions are always trying to close down any non-union grocery stores. They’ve been using this tactic for years because the real issue – that Arizona is a right-to-work state and that grocery stores that do not pay union wages are more competitive – is not one that anyone cares about.

And so they launch these well-funded hatchet campaigns designed to foster negative public opinion.

So, of course, we went shopping at Fresh & Easy.

It’s an interesting store. It’s not as big as a traditional supermarket, but it’s much larger than a convenience store. It’s stocked with a respectable selection of foods, meats, fruits, vegetables, fresh bread and a larger-than-average-sized selection of prepared sandwiches and heat-and-serve meals. Most of the merchandise is Fresh & Easy branded.

Everything in the store is packaged. Even the fresh vegetables come in containers. Why? Because they have no cashiers. The entire checkout system is self-serve, although, they bag the groceries for you and will, if you ask, scan the items for you. This is quite clever. Self-checkouts have been increasing, but they all suck.

The weight-and-transfer system used by the other stores is designed entirely to keep you from stealing merchandise. Th problem is that it’s so onerous and finicky that the system often goes wrong. (Just ask anyone who has children – one child placing a hand on either the incoming or outgoing scale results in an alarm and a visit from a store “assistant”.)

Fresh & Easy has eliminated that completely. Items are taken directly from your cart and scanned across the counter and placed on a conveyor belt which takes the merchandise to the bagger. They even have a scan gun for getting herd to scan items. There is no automated anti-theft device that I can see at all. Of course, the bagger is watching you and is a lot more intelligent than the weigh-and-transfer registers.

This system also allows you to do a full load of shopping, rather than just being relegated to the 10 Items or Less lane.

Fresh & Easy has lots of organic products and would appear to source their merchandise locally, where practical. (Bananas are still from Ecuador.)

They’ve gone to great lengths to position themselves as a “green” company, but I can’t help wondering about all the plastic containers their produce and meats come in so they can be scanned.

They have priority courtesy parking spots up front, not just handicapped parking, but also parking for adults with children and, I’m not sure because a car was parked in the spot and covering the pictogram on the asphalt, but I think they had a parking spot for “same-sex couples who think their dog is a child.” At least that’s what I concluded looking at the vehicle and its occupants.

Because the prepared meals are not frozen, they have a short shelf-life. I purchased a couple of them for my breakfast for the rest of the week. I’ll see if they’re any good. This store is too far away from home to be practical, but when they finally build the one by my house, I could see myself shopping there for small to medium to the grocery.

First, I’ll have to do a price comparison to the other stores in town. I find it hard to believe Fresh & Easy can position itself in the organic, green, upscale market without having upscale prices.

Technorati Tags: Arizona

A co-worker and I walked to lunch Thursday and, as I’d recorded some nearby geocaches, we decided to walk to the nearest, which wasn’t far from the restaurant.

The location of the first was easy to locate, but the cache itself eluded us. It seemed so unlikely that we couldn’t see it that it must have been removed or missing. We decided to try the next nearest. It was a brisk walk given the time constraints of our lunch hour, and, once again, the location seemed obvious, but the cache itself eluded us.

In all honesty, I really didn’t spend a whole lot of time familiarizing myself with the whole geocaching phenomena, and so I really just didn’t have a clue what to expect.

Today, we knew that rain was coming, but before it arrived, we decided to go out to one of the mountain parks with the kids to walk around. Just before we left, I hopped onto geocaching.com and downloaded about 5 cache locations in that area.

The first was only 0.2 of a mile from the car, and we immediately zeroed in on the area. In was in a mountain park in which many of the off-trail areas are designated closed. GPS signals are somewhat imprecise but the location was clearly off the trail. While the area wasn’t explicitly marked as “off-limits”, it could reasonably be inferred, but I decided to look anyway.

After a few minutes fruitless searching, including around a particularly promising dead tree, a group of people were approaching. Rather than get caught, I decided to move onto the next cache.

The next one was only 0.3 of a mile away. It was located – or so the coordinates would seem to indicate – up a slight hill along the side of some freeway fencing. The hill side was covered with loose rocks, and we searched up and down looking for a cairn or other marker that would locate the cache, but again we just couldn’t find it. We didn’t know what we were looking for.

This time I wasn’t going to give up so easily, but then, those same four people who had come upon us at the last cache location arrived where we were. Then I realized what was happening, as they swept across the hill, GPS units in their hands. They looking like a Star Trek landing party, tricorders scanning for lifeforms. They were geocachers on the same hunt as us.

Introductions were made and, within 30 seconds of their arrival, one of them had spotted the cache. It was a small carabiner with a screw-top end that had just enough room for a small piece of paper to be rolled up and tucked inside: The log.

Although, certainly I never would have found it, I signed the log anyway. I was there when it was discovered.

We spoke for a while, and they gave me several pointers. They had a print out of the geocaching page which showed various details like difficulty of the hiding place, size of the container and other pieces of useful information. They also told me that they (as two different teams) had found over 2,000 and 1,200 caches each! All over the world.

They also confirmed my suspicion that the old dead tree was the hiding place for the previous one we hadn’t found, so we went back and found it. It was easy when we knew where it had to be, so we set off for a third cache.

This one was half a mile away and, once I’d homed in on it, was easy to find. I helped that this one was a large tupperware container. Nonetheless, this was my first completely unassisted find. It was interesting that this cache was in sight of one of my favorite shooting locations for Fusion Patrol. We used this exact area to tape “Eli Whitney’s Wooly World” – a take off on Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, and Spottings – a rip on Sightings.

The rain was coming and James had reached the end of his hiking, so we called it quits for the day. The kids seemed to enjoy it and it was a pleasant way to take aimless wandering and make it seem more purposeful.

Now I’ll have to go back and find those two by my office.

Note: I’ve been intentionally vague about where these caches are so as to not provide spoilers to someone who might go looking for them.

Technorati Tags: Geocache

We’ve been having freeze warnings the last few nights, and, because of last year’s excessive freeze damage, Irene is paranoid about the remaining tree being killed by the cold.

She’s taken the advice of the news and put old sheets around it. (Honest, below the sheets, it’s alive, we’ve never managed to cut off the dead branches at the very top, which is what is sticking out.)

The thing is, there’s a reason that the sheets she used were buried in a hole in the store room, destined for paint drop cloths: They’re hideously ugly. The tree might survive the cold, but will it survive the taunting of the other trees?

Technorati Tags: Family

Over a month or so back, it became clear that my first choice Christmas present, a Nintiendo Wii, wasn’t a viable option – I suspect many people didn’t find a Wii under their tree this year, either.

When I knew the Wii wasn’t to be, I thought long and hard about a fallback choice, and I decided upon a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS unit.

Irene spent weeks doing her best (successfully) trying to convince me that, since she couldn’t find my first choice, she’d picked something that wasn’t on my list.

In the end, the GPS was under the tree. This one’s several models “up” from my father’s GPS, which is what we always take to Taiwan or when we go on a long trip. Amongst the most critical of features is that this GPS uses a standard USB connection, which allows it to talk to my MacBook. (I’ll make another post concerning my research shortly.)

Unfortunately, it’s been a cold, windy day, and, what with it being Christmas and all, there’s been nowhere to go. I took a walk around the block first thing in the morning with the unit but, well, that’s a little boring.

This evening, after watching the Doctor Who, Voyage of the Damned Christmas special, I worked out how to use the “Geocaching” mode on the GPS. It has a special place just for downloaded waypoints from geocaching.com an it keeps track of the ones you’ve found.

I’ve never tried the whole geocaching game, but there was a cache located less than half a mile from my house. With GPS in hand, I set out into the cold, dark Christmas night, not knowing what to find.

For starters, the city was eerily quiet, unlike during the day when the neighbors were playing loud party music and one of the car alarms was going off continuously for five hours. It seemed as if the city turned down the street lights, too, for it was darker than usual, but at least there were more stars visible in the sky.

The only thing that broke the desolation was an occasional car, and a few silent people standing outside, quiet as ghosts.

I began having second thoughts. I know the area well enough that I couldn’t think of a suitable “public” space that the cache might be hidden in. What if it was a ruse? Someone plants a geocache entry on the website just before Christmas. They know people will get them, and they’ll be drawn to the cache. They know some will come at night, and when they do: BAM! It’s an episode of Torchwood.

With that cheerful thought in mind, I continued on, now warily looking over my shoulder.

When I arrived at the cache, I was surprised that the GPS had led me to a house just two doors down from an old friend’s house (since moved to another state.) The second thing that struck me was so strange that I circled the marked spot twice. It was in someone’s front yard – no mistake about it.

In the darkness, I decided that I had better not try to locate the actual item, lest I be mistaken for someone with more nefarious designs.

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Postscript: I went back and checked the notes on the cache and the notes indicate that it is located – with the owner’s permission – in the front yard. Still, I think I was wiser not to go poking around at night.

It gives me a great idea though: A geocache webcam. Now I just have to figure out where to put on so I can monitor the visitors!

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Geocache, GPS, Technology

Seasons greetings, etc etc etc.

Just got word from my brother-in-law, that’s always good for a chuckle.

His girlfriend is taking courses at Leeds this year, and, after much arm-twisting, Johnny went to visit her over Christmas.

Mostly, he’s taking food. According to her, English food is bad (yeah, well, alright, it’s a fair cop) and there aren’t many “foreign” restaurants, and everything is too expensive for her, anyway. Including groceries. I get the impression she’s surviving on boiled water, which, if she can survive on that she might as well eat English food.

All of that is neither here nor there, but they went to London to do some sightseeing and shopping, and they went to Harrod’s. Outside, they saw something they’d never seen before: snow.

They were, of course, overjoyed and elated. Until they found out it was fake snow being dispersed by Harrod’s.

Anyone in the Leeds area got any ideas for sightseeing?

Technorati Tags: Christmas, Family

19 days of it!

Michelle has been singing that song all day long, and she just keeps going and going and going. Worse: she’s actually consistent with the days 13-19.

I was impressed she knew all the regular verses… well, except that somehow she got “a partridge in a pear tree” confused with “a palm tree in a pear tree.”

Technorati Tags: Christmas

The city of Phoenix supplies us with the wheelie bins for our garbage collection.

It came to my attention that our next-door neighbor, who, once in a while, generously puts our garbage can out on the street when they put their out, accidentally swapped our garbage cans once. I know that because theirs had a cracked lid and ours didn’t. When I swapped them back, the accidentally got swapped again! What are the odds would happen twice?!

In any case, the constant beating of our new garbage can by the garbage trucks ultimately had their toll on the can and the lid broke, allowing all the lovely garbage odors to escape. We contacted the city and they agreed to replace it, and here it is: our brand, spanking new wheelie bin.

It is a marvel of modern technology. It must be, because it came with instructions. (Click on the photo to enlarge.)

Seriously, are people so stupid they can’t work a wheeled container?

Speaking of wheelie bins, in case anyone in Australia feels like sending me a Christmas present, this would be very nice:

A cricket stumps sticker! What a cool idea! Bet that makes a lot of noise when you bowl a yorker.

(It won’t work on my fancy new wheelie bin, but it would work on my recycling bin.)

The “Out-For-A-Duck” beanie isn’t bad, either.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Christmas, Cricket, Garbage, Phoenix

A while back we installed radiant heat barrier in our attic. After the first test month, it was positive that it was making a significant impact on our electricity usage, but, with differences in the average daily temperature (it was hotter and summer was longer this year than last) it’s tough to make a definitive assessment.

The company that sold us the barrier guaranteed a 30% reduction in energy used for heating/cooling. Like all such guarantees, that’s a really tough on to prove, and it’s based on a rather imprecise measure. “Energy used for heating/cooling” is based on a federal government estimate of the total percentage of household energy usage. In other words, the 30% is really 30% of something like 70% of my electricity bill. (I don’t have the exact number at my fingertips.)

Even though we had to install a second air conditioner because the heating/cooling characteristics of the rooms changed, we’ve still be showing noticeably significant drops in electricity use, month after month, and now the real savings begin.

Here in Phoenix, we generally have mild winters and brutal summers. This, at least for my house, leads to significant swings in my summer/winter energy use. Arizona Public Service (APS) offers an equalizer plan: The energy usage for the previous 12 months is totaled and averaged and your bill for the next 12 months is set at fixed payment. At the end of the next year they “settle up” and outstanding credit or debit, and the payment is adjusted for the next year.

Our barrier was installed at the first of June. Our Equalizer plan year ends mid-November. The numbers are in. The barrier has been in for 5.5 months, including the worst months of the year, and our bill is being adjusted downwards from $363.00 to $277.00 per month, or a real reduction of 24% of the total energy bill. This doesn’t take into account the rises in cost per kilowatt hour, either. That’s a savings of $1032 in the coming year.

It’s unclear how the winter months will play out. Winter has been late coming and it’s only begun to be cold outside in the last two weeks or so. (Right now it’s a mind-numbingly cold 45º outside at 5:30AM.)

Using last month as an example, though, the average daily temperature was 65º. Last year, same period, it was 63º. This year kilowatt hour usage is down 13% over last, but how much of that is just the 2º temperature difference?

Only time will tell, but right now, I’m pretty happy with the radiant heat barrier.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Energy, Electricity, Technology

I think this will be a new “regular feature” of my blog.

Every once in a while in the course of one’s life, you hear a phrase and you think, “There’s a phrase that’s never been uttered in the English language before.”

While once incredibly rare, these moments seem to be happening with alarming regularity now that I have kids, for example, this evening Michelle came in and stated, “James is not sharing your hamster.”

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids

Personally, I’ve never been persuaded by the so-called experts’ warnings about cartoons like Bugs Bunny. I’m just not convinced that you can run an adequately controlled scientific evaluation of the impact of this type material on children.

That’s why I try to only let my children watch cartoons created before 1970.

Today, I saw that strategy come to fruition.

Michelle (5) stated that she loves Batman. James (2) said, “No you don’t. You like Curious George.”

(By way of explanation, my father recently bought James a Batman coloring book and Michelle a Curious George coloring book.)

For the next 2 minutes, the conversation went like this:

“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”

…and then James drew on the wisdom of Bugs and said, “Yes, you do.”

With baited breath, Irene and I sat in the front of the car waiting… there was no actual pause, but time seemed to stand still for just that moment, and then Michelle said, “No, I don’t.”

Victory through hare power.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids