New Product Hype

I spent some time skiing with my daughter on her day off this weekend and we saw someone skiing on a pair of skis that were supposed to revolutionize the ski industry several years ago. With the advantage of passing time we can look back and say that the prediction turned out to be quite false. I remember thinking that I didn't see what all the fuss was about when the ski came on the market. So what went wrong.

I am a firm believer that those who don't learn from history are bound to repeat it. There are a lot of products that we are told will revolutionize our lives. Sometimes the hype is warranted and other times it is not. With the case of this new ski design, it leveraged boat building technology to create a ski that floated better than other skis of the time. Skis and boats share a lot of manufacturing methods in that they both use fiberglass and sandwich construction for strength and to help save weight. Therefore it makes sense that a ski manufacturer would look to the boating industry when trying to come up with new design ideas. Sometimes the ideas work and other times they don't.

I have a pair of skis from the same era as this hyped ski but manufactured by another ski company. At the time, wide powder skis started gaining popularity. My pair of skis tend to sink in powder and so a design change would have helped it ski significantly better. One manufacturer came up with the very hyped design while all other manufacturers made a much more subtle change to achieve the same result. This subtle change is now used by all ski companies.

So what is the dead giveaway that a new technology is being over-hyped? For this ski, it came from non-skiing media sources. Ski magazine does a ski test every year and they gave this new ski some favorable marks. When I saw more general-purpose magazines and newspapers such as Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of this new ski, I began to wonder if it could live up to the hype. I learned from this experience that the source of the glowing recommendation should always be considered. I will never trust a ski recommendation from a general-purpose news magazine ever again unless there is significant support from ski industry trade journals as well. The same holds true for computer and technology announcements.

The Start of Tax Season

This week I sat down and started putting together the information for my taxes. Normally I go through all of my spending for the year and categorize everything I spent. This year I decided to try a different method. I loaded up TurboTax on my computer and started filling in information based off the paperwork I received from my employer, banks, and the government. That allowed me to input all of my income for 2020.

Next I came to deductions. I do a fair amount of donations to charities and last year I had about 8 or 9 different organizations that I made donations to. Part of the reason is I started cleaning out my basement and discovered it is better to donate than to throw away. After all, a charitable donation earns a tax deduction that landfill doesn't provide. The only problem is that all of those charities are listed again for this year and I need to figure out if I donated anything to them.

The first thing I did is go through my checkbook registers for the year to see if I wrote any checks to any charities. Then I asked my wife if she had any receipts for donations we made. Ultimately I had hoped I could eliminate a few of the steps I have used in the past to shorten the amount of time it takes me to gather everything so I can complete my taxes. Unfortunately I can't. I guess all of the steps I have used to file my taxes for the past 30 years came about from running through this process every year. Going through the steps in a different order doesn't really save any time. Oh well. I guess I had better get back to categorizing all of my spending for the year.

Google Maps Mislead Me

My wife and I just completed a ski trip at Winter Park in Colorado. We opted to drive in order to save money as the savings in travel time turned out to only be an hour or so vs. flying. Before setting out I checked Google Maps to see the fastest way to get there and back. I had 3 possible routes to use with only 8 minutes separating the quickest 2. I decided to take US 40 from Salt Lake all the way to Winter Park on the way out as it indicated it would be the fastest way.

The drive to Winter Park went well and we arrived a little after dark. The travel time came very close to Google's estimate. We checked into our on-hill condo and enjoyed being able to wake up late and walk over to the gondola as the resort opened. Eventually our 3 days of skiing came to a close and it came time to return home. This time I decided to take the alternate route. Yes it added 30 miles to the trip but was only supposed to add 8 minutes and allowed us to take I-80 back to Salt Lake.

On the way out, we had to be very careful as US-40 is mostly 2 lanes and full of wildlife. In other words, you have to watch out so you don't hit a deer and ruin your car. This makes exceeding the speed limit extremely unwise.

Taking a different way back turned out to be very scenic and we got to see a part of the country we had yet to visit. Once we got on I-80, we simply turned on cruise control at 80 miles per hour as that is the speed limit most of the way. I didn't expect to get to Salt Lake until 7:30pm based on the time estimate given by Google Maps. We stopped once for gas and then another time for 75 cent ice cream cones in Little America (highly recommended). Imagine my surprise when we pulled into our driveway an hour before we were supposed to. I like it when Google Maps is wrong sometimes. Now I only wish I had known that on the way out as we might have gotten into Winter Park before nightfall.