HinesSight

DIRECTV back to its irritating channel-losing ways

I'd say that I have a love-hate relationship with DIRECTV, but that wouldn't be honest. My DIRECTV relationship is almost entirely based on hate.

I hate how much our monthly subscription costs. I hate how shows we've recorded mysteriously disappear from our DVR (digital video recorder). I hate that the Pac-12 Networks aren't carried. 

And I hate it when DIRECTV engages in a corporate pissing match with the owner of one of the channels that we've paid to get, yet is at risk of being taken off the DIRECTV lineup for reasons that are never specifically disclosed but which obviously involve corporate greed.

The current channel-losing irritation is the prospect of losing KGW, the Portland NBC affiliate, at 5 pm next Monday, November 30. 

KGW is owned by Tegna. DIRECTV and Tegna can't agree on how much the former should be paid by the latter for being able to offer the local station to subscribers.

I couldn't care less who is at fault here. Both corporations are money-grubbing assholes who don't care about ordinary people, just how much money they're making. 

DIRECTV says Tegna is doing them wrong. Tegna says DIRECTV is doing them wrong, 

My attitude is that both DIRECV and Tegna are wrong to threaten the removal of programming that us DIRECTV subscribers have paid for, yet won't be getting if KGW is taken off our channel lineup on Monday.

DIRECTV is losing customers at a rapid rate. So the non-geniuses at AT&T, which owns DIRECTV, are figuring that taking away channels from their diminishing number of subscribers is the way to increase profitability? 

Not going to happen. 

Sure, currently my wife and I are stuck with DIRECTV (or Dish, which is just as bad as DIRECTV) because we live in a rural area where cable TV doesn't exist and cell service is slow, leaving us with no TV alternatives other than satellite.

But I'm looking forward to the rollout of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service, which promises to give people like us a hugely faster Internet speed than the crappy 6-7 Mbps we get from CenturyLink now. 

This will open up streaming possibilities that are closed to us at the moment. So the more DIRECTV offers up horrible customer service, the more likely it is people like us will bail on DIRECTV when we have the chance.

Which hopefully will be soon. 

If you can't be with the life you love, love the life you're with

It's Thanksgiving today. I feel like I should put a one-day hold on my usual inclination to write something snarky, critical, or in my better moments, only mildly negative.

So here goes with my modification to a song lyric that popped into my head when I woke up this morning and realized what day it was.

And if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with.

Stephen Stills performed the song, "Love the One You're With," in 1970. I turned 22 that year. Now I'm 72. The general sentiment still rings true to me, albeit with this modification.

This is firmly in a Thanksgiving theme, yet without the excessive sentimentality of the usual I'm so thankful for _____ that suffuses American households today.

Sure, it's wonderful to be thankful. However, life is difficult. And I hate to break this news to you younger folks, but life gets more difficult as we grow older. 

Not in all ways. In some ways.

Notably, when it comes to health and the pain that often accompanies our problems. Some pain is physical. Some is psychological, such as regret that one's life hasn't turned out as expected way back when.

So it's asking a lot to be thankful for things in your life that aren't welcome. I suppose my love the life you're with sounds similar, but I see some differences between thankfulness and love. Love of life is more inclusive than thankfulness for this and that. 

If our back is hurting so much we can't get out of bed, that isn't an aspect of life we want to have hang around. However, it's possible to view that pain as part of a larger life that we love. Which is sort of how we view our children when they're young.

They can be a pain to deal with, but we still love them for who they are, flaws included.

Acceptance of what is actually present in our life is a big step toward loving our life. Denial, which includes "this shouldn't be happening to me," isn't helpful, though it is temping to indulge in, since we would rather be with the life we love than the life we're with if the latter is lacking some things we value.

Via the Waking Up app on my iPhone, I've been listening to a series of short talks by William B. Irvine called The Stoic Path. One that resonated with me is called You Are Living The Dream Life.

How could this be, given all that is wrong with our lives? Well, Irvine says that out there in the world there are people who dream of living the sort of life that you or I have. Their lives don't contain what we have, being worse in those respects. Thus to them our life is a dream life.

Yes, our back hurts. But we can walk. And it doesn't hurt that bad all the time, just sometimes. There are people who can't walk at all and dream of being able to do this, even if it was painful. 

Closer to home, Irvine also says that later on in our own life, we may look upon the life we have now as a dream life. Meaning, our life might head downhill in some ways that we take for granted at the moment -- another reason to love the life we're with, since it may be the high point of the rest of our life.

Anyway, these are my Thanksgiving thoughts.

Our dog, Mooka, is lying under the small table I'm typing on, making it difficult to get my legs in a comfortable position. But I love Mooka. I'd rather deal with not being able to straighten out my legs than not have Mooka in my life. 

(Getting Mooka to move would be another option. Except, I like it when she lays under the computer table, though her motivation probably is to stay close to the person who takes her on a late afternoon walk, after which she gets dog dinner.)

My wife thinks I'm crazy. This is normal, right?

I have direct experience of being married to only two women, Susan and Laurel. In between Susan and Laurel I got divorced, to set aside any conjecture about polygamy. 

So I'm having to extrapolate from this small sample size to the much larger universe of wives.

Both Susan and Laurel thought I was crazy. Not clinically, but in the sense that sometimes, and maybe often, the way I looked upon the world baffled them. My strong suspicion is that this is normal.

Meaning, almost all wives look upon their husbands as crazy. I hope so, because otherwise I'm a husbandly aberration.

This came to mind today as I was going off to fight in the Leaf War. Since 1990 we've lived on a non-easycare property in rural south Salem. Our house is surrounded by large oak and fir trees.

The firs drop needles all year round to some extent. The oaks drop their leaves in the fall, of course. This being late November, I've been battling the leaves for some time.

But here's the thing: I enjoy the fight. Heck, sometimes I can even muster up admiration for the opposing force, as I wrote about ten years ago in "The Tao of leaf ranking." 

Last weekend I slipped into my old habit briefly when I interrupted my work for lunch, then said to Laurel, "Well, I'm back to the leaf wars." That was the old me speaking. The new me manages to mostly look upon the leaves as friends who simply need some nudging to get them into their proper places, since they aren't able to move purposefully on their own.

I actually look foward to dealing with the leaves.

Now that I have a system, albeit a constantly evolving one in accord with the ever-changing Tao, the three hours or so it takes me to do a complete run-through of our yard (which needs to be repeated several times in November) is a largely pleasurable opportunity to follow the Zen'ish adage "chop wood, carry water, rake leaves."

Which should have been called The Tao of leaf blowing and raking, because my weapon of choice always has been a blower -- raking alone, given our yard, being way more than the proverbial "bringing a knife to a gun fight." It'd be like bringing a toothpick to a gun fight.

Now that I'm 72, Laurel has been saying more often, Are you sure you don't want to hire someone to deal with the leaves? I always reply, No way, as long as I can physically do this, I want to keep on doing it.

Well, actually I'm going to still want to handle the vast amount of leaves in our yard even if I'm physically incapable of doing the job.

This is something wives find difficult to understand about their husbands -- again, I'm assuming that my experience is typical of many or most male-female marriages.

By and large, Laurel is eager to turn over a household chore, like carpet cleaning, to someone else who is wiling to do it for money.

I'm fine with this also up to a point. It just seems that my attachment to certain manly chores, such as spending several hours dealing with fallen leaves in our large yard, is greater than Laurel's attachment to certain womanly chores.

That seems to be the root of the question about how crazy I am. I am really reluctant to have someone come to our house and do something that I'm fully capable of handling, even if that thing takes a lot of time or is somewhat dangerous. 

Like, cleaning our gutters by walking along the edge of our roof with my Stihl backpack blower. 

In both cases, gutter cleaning and leaf removal, I explain to Laurel that it is simpler to do it myself, in part because the jobs are much easier when leaves and other debris is dry.

And it's hard to predict when dry days are going to occur in the fall, since this is Oregon. So I can leap into action on a dry day, while we'd need to schedule somebody else well in advance, most likely, so it could be raining when they come to do the job.

But that's not the whole story. If it was, I wouldn't seem so crazy, because that reason is rational. 

The truth is, I'm irrationally attached to certain chores that I've been doing since Laurel and I got married thirty years ago. I don't want to sit in the house and watch someone else do those things. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, they're going to have to pry my Stihl backpack blower out of my cold dead hands. 

Which admittedly could literally happen if I keep on blowing out the gutters past the time I'm able to balance on the edge of our roof.

Anyway, it doesn't bother me when my wife thinks I'm crazy. I think the same about her at times.

Men and women are different. Heck, all people are different. It's amazing that we understand each other as well as we do, given that the only mind we ever know directly is our own -- and that only partially.

Wake up to Covid reality, fellow Oregonians

I'll be blunt.

If you're wearing a mask every time you're in a public place, are physically distancing, wash your hands regularly, and aren't socializing often with strangers or with large numbers of people you know -- good for you! 

But if you're not doing some or all of these things -- shame on you! 

You are either clueless about the skyrocketing Covid cases and hospitalizations both in Oregon and the United States as a whole, or you're so selfish, you don't care if you're helping prolong the suffering of this pandemic.

Here's a chart of the depressing reality here in Oregon, courtesy of the Washington Post. 

Oregon did really well following the March 23 stay-at-home order by Governor Brown. But the order only lasted for about six weeks. After that, there was a mid-summer spike in cases, then a moderate decline. 

Cases started rising again in mid-September. In late October they began to skyrocket far above anything seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Today Oregon had the all-time record of new cases, 1,122. Here's the Oregon Health Authority report.

It looks like a Covid vaccine will be widely available sometime in the first half of 2021. So this is a horrible time to be letting down our guard against the virus. 

I've read stories about how many American soldiers were killed in the last few days of World War I. It was painful to visualize people being so close to celebrating victory, only to die needlessly. 

Equally painful is reading about the Covid deaths in Oregon.

These are the most recent deaths. They include a 62-year-old man without underlying conditions. I'm 72. This man easily could have lived to my age, and likely beyond. Yet his life was cut short, as was the 35-year-old man who died from COVID-19. Think about this: almost everybody would do whatever they could to save the life of someone drowning. We value life. We fight premature death. Yet a disturbing number of Oregonians refuse to wear a mask and do the other things necessary to save lives from COVID-19.

Yes, deaths in Oregon haven't risen as rapidly as cases. But deaths lag cases and hospitalizations by several weeks. That's why Governor Brown said this today.

Here's the Washington Post Covid death chart for Oregon.

Note at the bottom of the chart that new daily reported cases rose 49% in the past week, while the number of tests reported rose only 16%. This shows that more testing isn't the reason for more cases being reported. Also note the high positive test rate of 13%. It should be below 5%.

Salem progressives go (mildly) wild for Biden's victory

Saturday, around the country and indeed the world, people danced in the streets after our country's major news outlets called the presidential race for Joe Biden. 

A monthly discussion group my wife and I are part of had scheduled a Covid-aware outdoor meeting for yesterday afternoon in the back yard of Russ and Delana Beaton in northeast Salem.

Laurel, my wife, did a little dance at one point.

But mostly the nine of us stood around a fire expertly started by Russ, when we weren't sitting around it. Here's photos of the mildly wild celebrating by a bunch of progressives who were thrilled that the Age of Trump had come to a screeching halt.

Though there had been showers earlier in the day, by our 2 pm start time the rain had stopped.

The sun even came out for a while, proving that Joe Biden's presidency will be marked by a radiant return of democracy, civility, and idealism to a nation that has suffered under Trump's mean-spirited authoritarianism for four long years.

Russ and Delana, shown here, thoughtfully provided some champagne and a non-alcoholic alternative for toasting purposes. Each of us got to say something about why we were happy with the election results.

I'm glad that we were able to have an in-person meeting on the Saturday after election day. Thank you Rain Gods! Getting together in this fashion seemed much preferable to a Zoom get-together, our backup plan, which lacks the intimacy and communal feeling of a physical face-to-face gathering.

Biden's election was a big deal for all of us, much more so than other elections.

The reason is obvious: no previous president has posed such a threat to American democracy. Trump is a wanna-be authoritarian, maybe even a dictator. If he had been re-elected, there would have been no bounds on his efforts to make the federal government a tool of his personal power.

Not surprisingly, post-election Trump is acting just as horribly as pre-election Trump. Even more so, in fact, since the Liar-in-Chief is asserting with zero evidence to back him up that the election was stolen from him. He can't say how, because there is no how to speak about.

Thus his pie-in-the-sky court cases are going to go exactly nowhere, as election law expert Marc Elias pithily points out.

Maureen Down, a New York Times opinion columnist, has this to say in her piece, "We Hereby Dump Trump."

We expected more of Donald Trump.

An epic, Jack Nicholson-in-the-Overlook-Hotel meltdown, not just Rose Garden-variety mewling. A conspiracy with grandiosity, not merely pathetic blathering about pointless lawsuits from his entitled children and oddballs Rudy Giuliani and Richard Grenell.

The president has had all this time to hatch a spidery plot to ruin democracy on the way out the door, and this is the best he can come up with?

The election has been stolen!

What’s your proof?

Because I’m losing.

At yesterday's discussion group meeting I talked some about the deliciously absurd press conference Rudy Giuliani held on Saturday at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia. 

Yes, not the Four Seasons Hotel, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

The Independent (a United Kingdom publication) has a must-read story about this fiasco. Here's some excerpts from the beautifully written "I saw Donald Trump's presidency come crashing down at Four Seasons Total Landscaping."

It began, as all good 2020 capers do, with a tweet from the president of the United States. It ended with his personal lawyer in the parking lot of a landscaping company, struggling to be heard over a man in his underpants shouting about George Soros.

They say a star burns brightest just before it dies, and this was the Trump presidency in all its flaming glory.

...I arrived to see a media scrum around a chain link fence that led into the parking lot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping. The building itself was one-storey, with a neat lawn and a row of hedges at the front. It was in that part of town that every town has, where businesses which have no right being grouped together nonetheless gather due to one reason or another — usually the cheap rent.

Across the street from Four Seasons Total Landscaping was a crematorium. Next door to it was an adult book store with a bright yellow sign that displayed its offerings: DVDs and lotions, novelty gifts, viewing booths. It was called Fantasy Island. In retrospect, it was an omen of what was to come.

...Private security guards hired by the president’s lawyers began to call in media outlets by name so they could enter the parking lot. When a media outlet was called, the gathered Trump supporters booed those which they felt had been unfair to the president. “Washington Post”.. “Boooo.” “Fox News”.... “Boooooo!” “CNN” “BOOOOOOOO!”

This was an American pantomime.

In the Four Seasons Total Landscaping parking lot the cameras were assembled, the sound levels checked, the pens were poised and the gates were closed. The world’s press waited for the evidence that would blow this big scam wide open. The sun shone brightly.

Then, out of nowhere, a journalist with a European accent announced the news: “CNN called the presidency for Biden!”

The assembled journalists were paralysed for a moment. Phones started to ring and calls were made. Some were given instructions to leave and started to do so.

Soon after, the sound of car horns honking and cheers in the street began to drift into the backlot of Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

...Just a few minutes later Rudy Giuliani appeared. This was the second press conference Mr Giuliani had called in Philadelphia in a matter of days, both to make unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud. The first took place at an airport hangar.

...Amid all the drama of the last 30 minutes, it appeared no one had told him that Joe Biden had been projected the winner of the election. A member of the press asked him how these lawsuits would overturn the call for the former vice president.

“Who was it called by?”

“All of them,” came the response.

Mr Giuliani took a moment before erupting in mock incredulity: “All the networks? Wow! All the networks!” He raised out his arms and looked to the sky, for a moment looking and sounding like Larry David doing a bit. But the wind had been sucked out of him. The smile had gone.

Starlink app shows how good my view of the northern sky is

I live in a rural area near Salem with crappy CenturyLink DSL the only broadband option -- if you can call about 7 mbps download and 1 mbps upload "broadband."

CenturyLink has told me that they are going to bring fiber optic broadband to our neighborhood exactly never. 

And fast 5G wireless likely will be available in our area in the wilds of Oregon (six miles from the Salem city limits, the state capital, but it might as well be six hundred miles) at about the same time -- almost never.

So Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network is my best bet to avoid internet depression. I follow Starlink news on Twitter and was thrilled to see an Ars Technica story today, "Space X Starlink public beta begins: It's $99 a month plus $500 up front." 

SpaceX has begun sending email invitations to Starlink's public beta and will charge beta users $99 per month plus a one-time fee of $499 for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router. The emails are being sent to people who previously registered interest in the service on the Starlink website. One person in Washington state who got the email posted it on Reddit. Another person who lives in Wisconsin got the Starlink public-beta invitation and passed the details along to Ars via email.

SpaceX is calling it the "Better Than Nothing" beta, perhaps partly because the Starlink satellite service will be most useful to people who cannot get cable or fiber broadband. But the email also says, "As you can tell from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations."

Well, those lower expectations sound pretty damn good to me: 50 to 150 Mbps, so vastly faster than my 7 Mbps. Back in June I signed up for updates on the Starlink web site. I'd like to be a public beta tester, though the chance of this is slim. 

As a consolation prize, the Ars Technica story mentioned Apple and Android Starlink apps. I eagerly downloaded the version for my iPhone. The main thing it does for me currently (actually, the only thing it does) is show how obstructed the view is of the northern sky. 

This afternoon I climbed up on our roof and sat down in various places on the ridgeline. A ridgeline placement looks to be the easiest to install, according to two PDF files I found via some Googling.
Download Ridgeline_Mount_Guide.pdf | DocDroid
Download Volcano_Mount_Guide.pdf | DocDroid

Here's how an unobstructed view of the northern sky looks on the Starlink app. I took this screenshot from Lake Drive, the road our house in on.

Unfortunately, there were trees inside the bottom part of the circle from every point on our roof's ridgeline that I tested for an unobstructed view of the northern sky. That's the bad news.

The good news is that since we live on ten acres, we own all of the obscuring trees. Three tall firs and two large oaks. I forgot to take a screenshot from our roof, but here's photos of the trees from an elevation that is fairly close to the height of the ridgeline.

The three firs in the middle and middle right of the photo are quite a ways from our house. The two oak trees partially obscuring the rightmost fir tree are much closer. Below is a photo of the trees that focuses on them.

Hopefully we won't have to cut down the trees. Mostly our view of the northern sky through the Starlink app is clear. So when it's possible to order Starlink, my plan is to set up the dish on our roof, hook it up to the router, and see what happens. 

If we can't connect to the Starlink satellites, or have a poor connection, then I'll call Elwood's Tree Service and have them take down the two oaks. Since they're close to our house, it makes sense to remove them to reduce the wildfire risk. If there's still a poor connection, I lean toward removing the fir trees one at a time.

My wife and I are tree lovers. However, large trees fall down frequently on our ten natural acres from wind, snow/ice, or old age. We're fortunate to have many large firs, oaks, and other types of trees on our property. Even so, cutting some or all of these five trees down isn't my first choice. 

It just is extremely frustrating to have such a slow Internet connection. Some days our DSL slows markedly, making it difficult to do anything on the Internet. Streaming movies on Netflix or other services is problematic. Usually we can do this, but not always. 

Maybe as Space X puts more Starlink satellites into orbit, the need for a totally unobstructed view of the northern sky will lessen. We are a bit south of the 45th parallel, so within the 44 to 52 degrees north latitude that will reportedly be the first rollout of the Starlink system. 

I can hardly wait.

Take the Salem Climate Action survey, though it is strange

I urge you to take the Community Survey that is part of the process for preparing a Salem Climate Action Plan. I believe you have until November 4.

However, having just taken the survey myself, be aware that it is decidedly weird. Much of the survey has little to do with the climate, or actions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or with the planning process. 

For example, early on a question asked me how often I did the following: work on a community project, attend a public meeting discussing town or school affairs, attend a political meeting or rally, attend a club or organizational meeting, volunteer, attend faith-based services/meetings, participate in some other community involvement activity.

It's difficult to discern what this has to do with the Salem Climate Action Plan. 

Further, it seems obvious that people who take the time to complete the Community Survey are more concerned with what is going on in Salem than the average person. So in no way will this survey tell us much about the community activities most people in Salem engage in, leaving aside the question of why this is relevant to the Climate Action Plan.

The Community Survey page on the City of Salem web site does describe the purpose of the survey. 

As a valued member of the Salem community, you are invited to take this survey so that your perceptions and opinions about Salem can be used to better understand Salem’s strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to the changing climate. Your insights are important to us - your responses will help inform the development of Salem’s Climate Action Plan. We appreciate your input in building a city that is resilient to climate change.

OK, but this language set off some warning bells in the political cynicism part of my brain, which, given my age of 72, has a lot of historical material to work with.

City officials haven't been leading the charge for Salem to join other cities in Oregon with a Climate Action Plan. The City Manager, Mayor, Public Works Director and other high-ranking officials ignored this until progressives on the City Council and 350 Salem OR pressed for a Climate Action Plan.

Ten days ago the City Council approved greenhouse gas reduction goals for Salem, a major step forward and a laudable accomplishment of 350 Salem OR.

So when I completed the Community Survey, under one write-in question I said that climate change deniers should have zero influence on the Climate Action Plan, because the greenhouse gas emission goals already have been determined by the City Council.

What remains to be determined is how to achieve those goals in Salem, not whether the goals should be achieved. 

That's why I found the language explaining the purpose of the Community Survey to be worrisome. It talks about the need to  "better understand Salem’s strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to the changing climate." Huh? That makes no sense. 

What needs understanding is how to reduce Salem's carbon emissions, most of which come from the transportation sector. Hence, driving less in more efficient vehicles (battery powered, ideally) for shorter distances is going to be necessary.

The goal is to do our part to slow down and ultimately stop the changing climate, not to determine how the changing climate will affect us. Likewise, the last sentence, "We appreciate your input in building a city that is resilient to climate change," is even more perplexing.

The primary purpose of the Climate Action Plan shouldn't be to make Salem "resilient" to climate change.

It is to reduce carbon emissions in our city that are contributing to climate change. Sure, a secondary purpose could be to find ways to cope with the bad effects of climate change. But resiliency is a code word for adapting to climate change, rather than taking strong action to combat it.

Now, maybe the strange questions in the Community Survey and the worrisome language in the description of the survey aren't really an indicator of how city staff are viewing the Climate Action Plan.

I'm just worried that these are signs of city officials trying to water down the impact of the Climate Action Plan.

Salem, mask up in the name of freedom

Fall is here. Leaves are falling. COVID-19 isn't. Infections are rising in Marion County, in Oregon, in the United States.

Not good. In fact, horrible. People have become complacent about wearing masks and physical distancing. It doesn't matter if you're inside a grocery store or the home of someone who is having a social gathering. 

Wear a damn mask! 

In the name of freedom. Yes, freedom. Too many people have the crazy idea that going maskless shows you're a freedom lover. Actually, it shows that you have no idea what freedom means. 

If you don't believe me, read this opinion piece: "There's a Word for Why We Wear Masks, and Liberals Should Say It." That word is freedom. 

One of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In “On Liberty,” he wrote that liberty (or freedom) means “doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, as long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.”

Note the clause “as long as what we do does not harm them.” He tossed that in there almost as a given — indeed, it is a given. This is a standard definition of freedom, more colloquially expressed in the adage “Your freedom to do as you please with your fist ends where my jaw begins.”

Now, conservatives revere Mill. But today, in the age of the pandemic, Mill and other conservative heroes like John Locke would be aghast at the way the American right wing bandies about the word “freedom.”

Freedom emphatically does not include the freedom to get someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, sneeze on someone in the produce section and give him the virus. That’s not freedom for the person who is sneezed upon. For that person, the first person’s “freedom” means chains — potential illness and even perhaps a death sentence. No society can function on that definition of freedom.

...Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by the idiot who refuses to mask up. Even John Stuart Mill would have agreed.

Recently my wife and I wanted to get an estimate from a Salem company for some work our house needed. The guy who came out wasn't wearing a mask In fact, he didn't even have one. We gave him one to wear while he was inside our house. 

The estimate was too high. But even if it had been acceptable, we wouldn't have hired this company, because they obviously don't respect our freedom to not get COVID-19. We also won't buy food from restaurants that don't do their best to keep their customers safe.

So it's bad business to ignore public health measures like requiring mask wearing indoors.

It also is selfish for anyone to go maskless. For example, the Salem-Keizer School District can't have in-person learning for all grades until the local infection rate is much lower than it is now. Thus everyone who fails to wear a mask is helping doom children and teenagers to online learning.

Here's some charts that show how Oregon and Marion County are doing. Again, not good.

Statewide, we've surpassed the COVID-19 previous peak of mid-July. In Marion County, our cases per 100,000 residents for the past seven days are the fifth highest of the 36 counties in Oregon, even higher than Lane County, which has been put on a Watch List by the Oregon Health Authority.

Marion County has about 42% of the Multnomah County population, yet 64% as many COVID-19 cases as Multnomah County. If we don't get our act together, Salem, along with the rest of Marion County, could have our re-opening policies rolled back.

My geeky search for the perfect winter tire

OK, "perfect" isn't a word that goes with "tire," so probably I shouldn't have used it in the title of this blog post. But my quest today was to find the nearest thing to perfect in a winter tire.

I enjoy browsing the internet for tire information almost as much as I enjoy browsing for car information. It took me months of perusing automobile web sites and watching You Tube videos of car reviews before I settled on getting a 2020 Subaru Crosstrek Limited to replace my VW GTI. 

Since the VW's winter tires won't fit on the Crosstrek I've got an ad running on Craigslist for the almost-good-as-new Michelin Pilot Alpin winter tires that were on the GTI. Question is, what winter tire should I get for the Crosstrek?

Well, the question before that one was, "Should I get winter tires?"

Since I hate to put on tire chains and we live in rural south Salem on a road that is never plowed when it is snowy or icy, plus our driveway is long and steep, for many years I've said yes to using winter tires from November to March.

True, it hasn't snowed in the Salem area the past two years, maybe three.

But we've gotten heavy snow and ice before that. And I figure that with climate change affecting the weather more and more, the chance of a polar vortex or whatever causing a big snow/ice event in our part of Oregon is a matter of when, not if.

So yesterday I brought home four 18-inch wheels from Capitol Subaru that the parts department had ordered for me. Since I like the look of the wheels that came with the Crosstrek, I figured it was worth some extra money to have winter tires mounted on the same wheels. 

Now, maybe I should have watched this video early this afternoon, rather than hours later, after I had spent a lot of time researching the best winter tire for my car -- since I probably was overthinking which winter tire to buy. This Auto Trader Canada guy correctly says that you've gotten 90% of the way there by simply deciding to get winter tires.

They're that much better than all-season tires in snow and ice. Plus cold, another benefit of winter tires even if it never snows, since winter tires stay soft in cold temperatures while regular tires get stiff, which reduces their effectiveness.

At any rate, I did my overthinking before I saw the video. And it turns out that all that pondering could pay off, since eventually I came across the fact that Michelin has recently released a successor to the X-Ice Xi3 which has the much better name of X-Ice Snow. 

However, I found that since this is a new tire, it isn't available in all sizes, including 225/55/18, the size of the Crosstrek tires that came with my car.

I was disappointed, since early reviews and You Tube videos of the X-Ice Snow rollout test put on by Michelin this year showed that it has some benefits over the previous X-Ice designs. 

For example, the Snow has siping (tiny slits) all the way to nearly the bottom of the tire depth. And the special compound the tire is made of is 100% of the tire, whereas other brands of winter tires basically turn into all-season tires after the tire is worn down by 50% or so, since the more pliable compound is only in the outer part of the tire.

So my first idea was to email and text Michelin, asking if the Snow will be available in 225/55/18 soon. An even better idea came to mind after that -- go down to a 17 inch tire, preserving the attributes of the 18 inch tire.

TireRack.com suggests doing this for winter tires, since a narrower tire cuts through deep snow better than a wider tire. Tire Rack can calculate a "minus size" tire for your vehicle. Mine turned out to be 225/60/17. Which, pleasingly, is available for the Michelin X-Ice Snow.

I then found a web site which compares the characteristics of two tires, in my case 225/55/18 and 225/60/17. Tires in these two sizes are very similar in the important variable of speedometer accuracy. It turns out that at 60 mph the 17 inch tire would produce a speed of 59.8 mph. Really close.

Tomorrow I'm going to check with a Capitol Subaru service advisor to make sure it's OK to put 17-inch wheels on my Crosstrek Limited. Since other Crosstrek trims come with 17-inch wheels (Limited is the only trim with 18-inch wheels), I'm anticipating this will be fine. And won't void the warranty in any way.

If I get the go-ahead to use 17-inch wheels, I'll return the 18-inch wheels to Capitol Subaru and get four 17-inch wheels. I don't like the look of the 17-inch wheels as much, but they will be more attractive than the steel wheels I've used before with winter tires.

Also, more expensive, but I figure that it is worth it to have wheels I enjoy looking at during the cold months, rather than looking forward to getting them off in the spring.

How I won my PayPal dispute against Peppermint Berri

Peppermint Berri is a disgusting company. Their 38 Trust Pilot reviews are all one star, the lowest possible, though somehow they end up with a 1.4 rating.

I made a big mistake when I ordered a weed remover tool from them on May 14, 2020, having seen a Facebook ad for the device. I then filed a complaint with PayPal on July 22, where I said this.

After ordering a weed remover on May 14 and not receiving it, I emailed Peppermint Berri three times on June 5, June 30, and July 20 asking why my order hadn't been received. Each time I was told there was a problem with the "courier" or shipping service. I was given a tracking number, but the information never changed.

I just checked reviews for Peppermint Berri and found that 36 people have given this Singapore company horrible reviews, with most saying they never got a product, or the product was defective, or they couldn't get a refund. It seems clear that Peppermint Berri is scamming people and shouldn't be allowed to have a PayPal account.

I've repeatedly asked for a refund and keep being told that the weed remover is on its way, but there never is any change in the tracking information -- which supposedly originates in Los Angeles. I live in Oregon. It shouldn't take months to get a product from California to Oregon. I want my money back, and I want Peppermint Berri to be preventing from scamming other people.

This seemed to me like an open and shut case. I expected that PayPal would tell Peppermint Berri to give me a refund. But I learned that PayPal makes it difficult for people like me who get crappy service from a sleazy company. 

PayPal wanted me to go through a dispute resolution process even though the scammers at Peppermint Berri (an online store based in Singapore) clearly had no intention of resolving my problem -- just stringing it out for as long as possible. 

I got some satisfaction out of a writing a scathing blog post on July 22, "Read these bad Peppermint Berri reviews before buying from them." But what I really wanted was PayPal to stop doing business with Peppermint Berri, or at least to give me my money back.

Which finally happened on October 6, almost five months after I ordered the weed remover. Peppermint Berri sent me the weed remover at some point, September, I recall, which I promptly returned, since I'd asked repeatedly for a refund after learning what a scam this company is. 

The secret of my success was not giving up. I had to contact PayPal via chat after the weed remover came and I returned it, because there was no way to submit additional information via the PayPal Resolution Center. 

A PayPal employee said I could send a PDF file with the additional information about the return to them, and they'd add it to my case.

It was frustrating to have to go through so much work to get PayPal to do what should have been done quickly -- tell Peppermint Berri, or Resilient Media (the parent company, apparently) that I should get my damn $88.94 back.

I learned a couple of things from this mess.

One, PayPal is an easy way to pay, but it isn't really a safer way to pay. I got screwed by Peppermint Berri and PayPal didn't make it easy for me to get my money back. They seem to favor sellers over buyers, probably because sellers are how PayPal makes most of its money. 

Two, don't blindly trust Facebook ads for products. Yes, I've learned about some great products via Facebook ads. However, I should have looked for Peppermint Berri reviews before ordering from them. Buyer beware is familiar advice, yet also great advice.