Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals

As I begin today's post, I must confess I am not much of a Black Friday shopper. I prefer to spend the Friday after Thanksgiving skiing and not standing in line trying to get a good deal on stuff. Unfortunately the ski areas around me in Utah are still closed. Yes I could go to Brighton or Solitude but the limited terrain available has kept me home. Being home still didn't convince me to go shopping on Black Friday.

Cyber Monday rolled around and that is known for great online deals. I received a number of e-mails letting me know about great prices on things I might be interested in purchasing. While some of the deals looked interesting, I didn't make any purchases on Cyber Monday either.

Travel Tuesday followed Cyber Monday and I must confess that I finally made a purchase. My wife and I plan to go ski Alyeska in Alaska during the month of March and so I kept my eyes open for deals there. I didn't receive any notifications. I just looked at the ski area website and saw they had a limited sale going on. The only catch is that you have to prepay the entire stay and if something comes up prohibiting you from the trip, you have to eat the cost of lodging. My wife and I are pretty set on going so I purchased plane tickets and then paid for the slope-side hotel. We are now ready for our trip.

At the beginning of the ski season, I started looking for a new ski jacket. About a month ago my wife found me the perfect one and so I purchased it at a really amazing price. Unfortunately I still get daily e-mails from ski jacket companies trying to entice me to buy their wares. The prices for jackets I looked at always seem to be dropping. My hope is that I won't be inundated by Alyeska asking me to book another trip to come ski with them. My trip is scheduled and unless the snow is extra amazing, I don't plan to go back. I would rather try new areas. I'll be interested to see what happens.

This is the same sort of phenomenon that happens when you donate to certain charities. They then use the money you gave them to solicit more donations from you until you politely asked to be removed from their mailing list. Even then, you will still probably get a few more requests. 

Are You Feeling Lucky?

Last week my wife and I got to see the movie "Wicked: For Good" at a free screening. We received 3 tickets and brought our youngest daughter who is in her 30's. While I enjoyed the Broadway play, I found the movie to appeal more towards a female audience and suffered through it. I know my wife and daughter loved it so I attended with them. They came out extolling the virtues of the film while all of the men in the audience came out shaking their heads saying, "What a weird movie." When I mentioned that to my wife, she said it appeals to women because the two primary characters experience what 90% of girls in high school do. That seemed like a good enough reason for me not to question her logic.

This morning I received another invitation to a free screening for the same movie. I do not plan to attend but I sent it out on our family text message stream should anyone else in the family be interested in seeing it for free. Perhaps my daughter-in-law wants to see it a second time or something.

This got me thinking about a study I once read regarding people that feel lucky. The study organizers asked a group of people to come in and answer a bunch of questions. The question book contained a message to study participants to show the message to the organizers and they would receive actual money. I think it amounted to something like $50 but I could be wrong. At the end of the study, the same people that claimed to be lucky happened to be the same ones that received money. Those that claimed to be unlucky missed out on the extra cash. The takeaway from the study is that sometimes people are not more nor less lucky, they are just more observant.

Being more observant is very important in today's society. While I received an invitation to a free screening, I also received an invitation to participate in a number of scams this morning. Your powers of observation will allow you to determine legitimate offers and bogus ones. 

I remember once getting a call from a guy telling me I had won a free Samsung tablet. He immediately blurted out that I really had won something and not to hang up thinking it might be a scam. I remembered entering the contest and after a bit of conversation provided the necessary details for them to send me the tablet. Fortunately I didn't have to provide much more than my physical address as asking for personal information such as my Social Security Number would have been a deal breaker.

There are lots off opportunities out there and it just takes a bit of careful research. You might get free movie tickets or even a free tablet. The trick is to ask the right questions and use your common sense. 

The Evolution of Music Listening

This week I have been thinking about my personal evolution of music listening habits. Part of this has been triggered by my problems with getting Spotify to play from my playlist instead of substituting recommended songs. Another part is due to the Thanksgiving holiday and the technological advancements I am thankful for.

I know this will date me but I remember getting a Sony Walkman for my 14th birthday. I wish I still had it because those things are worth a lot of money now but mine is long gone. When I got the device, I could listen to my favorite radio stations on either the AM or FM bands. It also included a cassette-tape player. My parents thoughtfully included Def Leppard's Pyromania tape with the gift as it happened to be my favorite album at that time. The tape player only had basic functionality and could not skip songs nor reverse back to the beginning of the song. Each side of the tape held 5 or 6 songs and when you finished one side, you flipped the tape over and listened to the other side.

Dual cassette boom boxes became all the rage so you could copy songs onto blank cassettes and create your own mix tape. That way if you only liked a few songs from a particular artist, you could fill a blank tape with a dozen or so of your favorite songs from different bands. I'm sure music companies hated those dual-cassette devices but it didn't take too many copies of copies for the music to start sounding ugly.

Next came the compact disc or CD. My oldest daughter never had a Walkman but she did have a Discman, which she loved. Like a cassette tape, the CD could only hold a dozen or so songs. Unlike the cassette though, you never had to flip it over as one side had the songs and the other had neatly silk-screened graphics. One feature the Discman had that the Walkman did not is the ability to randomly shuffle songs. Yes, it would pick one of a dozen random songs to play next. Talk about technological advancement.

The next evolutionary moment came from two new technologies: MP3 files and inexpensive hard drives. MP3 files are important because you could now squish an entire song that used to take around 33 to 65 MB of space down to 4 or 5 MB. That means you could fit a lot of songs on a fairly small hard drive that could be packaged into a personal-music device. 

I am a big fan of Sony and work for them. I also know how Sony lost their market lead for the personal-music-device market. They lost it by throwing their weight behind CD's and ignoring MP3 players. Why, because they also owned Sony Music and the lawyers didn't want to make copying music any easier. Remember that you can make as many copies of a digital song as you want and it will always play the same with no degradation in quality.

Apple seized on Sony's missed opportunity and created the iTunes store. You could now buy the listening rights to a single song and store it on your iPod and later your iPhone. Now it is almost impossible to find CD's any more. We also discovered that moving your music from one iPhone to another became a problem as Apple tried to limit sharing of music. There is still a way to do it but requires a little bit of technical knowledge.

Now everybody has moved to streaming music. Nobody buys a song any more. Instead we stream songs from our favorite service such as Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, or Amazon Music. It is like we have gone back to listening to the radio but with much more control over the songs that get played. If you don't want to listen to meaningless advertisements, you can upgrade your streaming service and listen ad free.

Thinking about this evolutionary cycle, I have decided that I really don't like streaming music services and prefer going back to an MP3 music player. You have control over what songs you listen to and if you paid for them, don't have to continue to pay a monthly fee nor listen to those stupid ads. Then again I don't add to my music playlists very often. I have a set list and don't mind adding a single song a month for $1. If you are someone that changes the music listened to frequently, then you probably prefer a streaming service. I just happen to fit that demographic that doesn't. 

What to do for the Thanksgiving Break

This year is turning out to be a late year to start skiing. Normally I would have skied 5 days or so by this time. Unfortunately we don't have any snow and so that will be tough to do. It also has me questioning what I should do during the Thanksgiving break. Normally we throw the turkey in the oven and go skiing.

My daughter suggested the idea of driving down to Cedar City where she lives and skiing at Brianhead, which is open for skiing. Then my wife looked at the ski resort's website and saw they have a single run open. That is a long drive for a single run. Then I got a call from my ski buddy Jim. He asked if I had skied yet this season and I confessed I have not. He then gloated that he spent the day at Mammoth in California skiing some great runs. I decided I needed to be a bit more creative.

I know that the storms have split and gone north or south of Utah. I looked at the conditions at Banff and Lake Louise. They have a good covering of snow and have a lot open. I checked airfare prices online and decided $1300 is too much to spend for early-season skiing. That didn't include hotel nor rental car, both of which would be needed. I looked at some northern ski areas a bit closer to home. Big Sky is about a 5-hour drive and they open Wednesday. Furthermore I can get half-price lift tickets because of my Alta/Bird season's pass. I'm not sure I will go but I could do all this research from the comfort of my desk courtesy of the Internet.

My research today is a far cry from my teenage years. One day I didn't have much to do and wanted to know when ski season would begin. I called every ski area in and around Lake Tahoe to get opening dates. I felt proud about my research and had a pretty good idea when to start planning the first trip of the year. A relatively short time later my parents received the phone bill and I got a lecture about asking before making so many long-distance calls. You see, before the ubiquity of Internet phone calls and unlimited mobile phone plans, it cost money to make phone calls outside your local area. This is one of those things that surprises the young kids of today. My research didn't cost anything other than my time. I think that is a win for modern technology. 

Alexa Power Users

I have been staying at my son's house over the past couple of days and am experiencing what it is like to live with some young Alexa power users. My oldest son has to be in Amsterdam for 2 weeks. I used to have to travel like that and hated it when I had to travel over a weekend. When he mentioned the trip, I told him to take his wife. She could only manage one week and I knew my wife and I could handle watching their 3 children with the oldest being 8 and the youngest 2 and a half.

My son's house is only 20 minutes away and so it is not too much of a stretch to go home daily and check our mail or pick up packages before porch pirates find them. As soon as my youngest grandson wakes up from his morning nap, we will head home for a few errands. My wife will need her car as a way to get home once my daughter-in-law arrives.

Hanging out with my grandkids has helped me realized I am a mere novice when it comes to Alexa. We have a single device that sits between our kitchen and family room. Most of the time it acts as a rotating picture frame. We get to see photos from previous vacations and those of our grandkids growing up. When my oldest grandson comes over, he can carry on lengthy conversations with the device. If you have that kid always asking questions, just put him or her in front of an Alexa or Google home unit and let the questions fly. It is entertaining to watch.

My oldest son has quite a few Alexa devices strategically placed around the house. There is one in each of the bedrooms as well as various other rooms in the house. One contrast with my house is I have clocks everywhere while my son does not. That is because when anyone needs to know what time it is, they just ask Alexa. I heard my grandson talking this morning and he just asked the time to know if he could get up or not. He could and so he had Alexa reading him a story while he slowly gathered the strength to get out of bed.

When it comes time to go to bed, each of the children has a favorite bedtime track they listen to while they fall asleep. My youngest grandson who is 2 and a half listens to guitar music, my 6-year-old granddaughter likes Taylor Swift, and my oldest grandson listens to the music from the Harry Potter films.

Alexa does so much more than play music and tells time. My son has quite a few lights connected to smart outlets that can be turned on or off with voice commands. Any time someone needs a timer for important things like baking cookies or ending 30-minute reading session, you just ask Alexa to set a timer. It doesn't matter if she has one going already as multiple timers can run simultaneously. If you get stumped on a homework question, there's even an answer for that.

It has been very educational to see all the uses of Alexa and what smart devices can do. While some things are definitely easier, others become quite confusing. I'm not sure what lights are controlled by a switch and which ones are on smart outlets. When the bedroom light came on unexpectedly I quickly figured out I could just say, "Alexa, turn off the bedroom light," to turn it off. I suppose if I had set everything up, there would be much less of a learning curve.

I'm not sure I will purchase too many more Alexa devices but I could definitely buy off on the fact they are more useful than I have given them credit. I could probably expand to having a device in my office and one in my wife's. Then we could use them as intercoms to talk with each other. I could also see the benefit of adding one to our bedroom and maybe a few of the guest ones. The only drawback would be listening to my grandson carrying on a lengthy conversation in an empty room when he comes to visit.

Watching Old Movies

Recently I have found myself watching older movies and realize that younger generations may not understand them or be able to relate. Think about how many movies from the 1980's could be shortened to only 5 minutes with the introduction of mobile phones as a lot of the problems would immediately disappear. They have become so ubiquitous that the younger generations don't even know what a landline is anymore. My grand kids are not familiar with them at all as I discovered this weekend.

When I watch a movie depicting historical events such as World War II, I don't expect to see computers or modern technology. In fact, back then Jeeps represented the pinnacle of technological advancement. Now we see a movie from just a few years ago and things are familiar enough that nothing seems out of place. Then someone uses an old feature phone, which is one that makes calls and might have texting capabilities but is not a smartphone nor does it have a camera. It goes to show how much technology has advanced in a few short years.

While a number of modern conveniences are missing from these movies, there are a number of older technologies that people don't know how to use any more. I recently watched "Back to the Future" and Marty McFly tears a page out of the phone book. Does the rising generation even know what phone books are? He also checks the date by looking at a newspaper. I haven't seen one of those in a very long time. At least I know what they are, and quite frankly, miss them. The one scene showing how things have evolved is when Marty tries to twist a bottle cap off a soda bottle and his dad has to show him how to use a bottle opener.

I wonder how a 16-year old from 2025 would have to adjust to 1955? Would he or she immediately pull out a smartphone and try to get a signal? Would heating up food become a problem because microwave ovens didn't exist? Would everyone from 1955 laugh at the time traveler when he or she buckles a seat belt or puts on a helmet? These would all make comedic elements in a new movie. My only request is not to remake "Back to the Future" and come up with a slightly more original story.

 

 

Why Did Spotify Do That?

I used to ride my bike outside as often as I could. Now I have turned into a warm-weather cyclist. The weather has turned cooler so I prefer to ride on my trainer inside instead of out in the cold even though I have the clothing for it. Unfortunately riding inside is insanely boring and so I pass the time listening to music. Normally I listen to songs on Spotify but I am thinking about finding a new streaming service because of problems that recently surfaced.

I have painstakingly gone through and created a list of my 150 or so favorite songs to listen to while exercising. Recently I started hearing the same song played over and over. At one point the same song played 3 times in a row. That prompted me to go through my playlist and remove duplicates of the same song. Once I confirmed only one version of the song exists in my playlist, things went well for awhile.

Since Friday I have noticed another problem with my Spotify playlist. It has started playing "recommended" songs. I don't know what changed and can only assume Spotify did this. The problem is I don't like a lot of the songs that streaming music services recommend based on the songs on my list. While I like most Blink-182 songs, I don't like them all and have purposely left them off my playlist for a reason. I also don't like a lot of songs by All American Rejects but keep getting them recommended because they are similar to Blink-182.

Today during my indoor workout I got angry hearing "recommended" songs instead of the ones I chose for my playlist. I almost stopped listening to music altogether. Instead I just skipped the songs not on the list. The downside to that is I get to listen to more ads as I use the free service and don't pay for Premium Spotify. Basically the ad-to-song ratio went from 1:1 to an abysmal 4:1 which means I had to listen to 4 ads for every song. Secretly I think Spotify is trying to get me to start paying a monthly fee.

After my workout I immediately headed to my desktop computer and did a bit of research. I went into my settings and turned off the "Autoplay similar content" setting. My hope is that Spotify will now only play songs explicitly added to my workout playlist. If not, I will move on and give Amazon Music a try. After all I pay for Amazon Prime so I don't have to sign up for another streaming service.