Complicated products

We've never been too lucky with our video recording devices; from VHS tapes to DVD, we haven't used those enough to get a full enjoyment of watching videos through them and more often than not, they've all managed to becoming obsolete and inoperable as we failed to fully use them. So when we decided to get a new, state-of-the-art DVD player, I did some research to find myself amidst technical chaos, confusion and sheer ignorance. Everything had transformed itself; products were now “blue-ray,” internet-ready and appeared to do more things than the best Swiss-army knife was ever engineered to accomplish.

In an attempt to gaining some critical knowledge, I first started on the web and got – at best – a fuzzy impression of what my options were. I had to take a trip to Best Buy and talk to some of their techies, but most importantly see, touch and manipulate the real products – before I finally gathered a better understanding of what I was up against. I also read tons of users reviews (that was on the web) and was expecting the very worst when I began unpacking the device and hooking it up to our TV. To my astonishment, it worked! The system miraculously connected to our wireless network and got installed in minutes; it was a breeze! I felt proud of myself for having regained a temporary foothold into the world of technology!

Out of adjustments

In the last months, we have experienced some major technical breakdowns with our electronic devices. It first began with my spouse's computer that couldn't produce any sound whenever she wanted to watch a video on it. I thought the sound-card was gone and was ready to invest into a new one. I then realized that a thumb-wheel that controls the audio volume had been mysteriously turned all the way off. Then our clock radio went out of service and its only after some painstaking re-setting that I resurrected it. Last Thursday, it was our A/V receiver's turn to go belly up. No more radio, no more iPod music or streaming audio. We assumed it had lived it's useful life after 19 years, and it took me a couple of hours, the next day, to figure out what was wrong and finally fix it.

These three incidents all had a common denominator, and it was our beloved grandson Finn! That's right, the little guy loves to tinker with anything electronics and never fails to leave some frustrating tracks for us, the day following his visit, yet we never seem to relate technical breakdowns with Finn's presence. Three is a charm; we'll remember now!

Failure to communicate

Canyons, one of our local resort is badly in need of a refresher course when it comes to good business practices and modern communications. Late summer, when it announced its ski pass program, the resort was boasting about its two brand new high-speed chairlifts and a more streamlined access to its gondola. It also wanted to be seen as the next local alternative to Deer Valley, the resort voted #1 in North America by the readers of Ski Magazine. It wanted to do so because Talisker, its owner, is into luxury real estate and can't stand being perceived as the #3, low-life resort in Park City. So it raised its pass price, bundled it with numerous services season pass holders had no need for, and tried to use “smoke and mirrors” to hoist itself to a higher standard, and hopefully pass Park City Mountain Resort for #2.

It didn't happen that way as it never does because Canyons failed on a few basic business principles. First, it didn't manage customers expectations by announcing a date without being sure it would meet it, then it failed to communicate by letting its pass-holders know first about the delay and then it allowed for two many debate before it came with a remedy to its problem. After all that snafu, Canyons remains well settled in its long-time #3 position in the Park City market and will first to learn about running the resort decently before ascending into the kind of glory it aspires to. Canyons has the best ski mountain, its service remain largely below par, but if you love skiing this is a wonderful place to recreate. Some marketing folks will never understand how to position their product!

Postal Service going down...

Last week, the U.S. Postal Service said it lost $8.5 billion dollars this fiscal year, blaming it on a continuing decline in mail volume. It actually dropped some 3.5 percent, as most of us are paying their bills on-line and only use the phone, email and instant messages to communicate.

The Postal Service is the second employer after Wal-Mart with more than a half million employees and is so labor intensive that its salaries and benefit account of 85% of its total budget. In spite of all that, the USPS keeps on delivering mail and staying open for business on Saturday! If there's a governmental service that should be privatized, this is it, and to help our government made that decision, we won't sent any Holiday Cards this year. Instead, we'll have a video on Youtube and those of our friends who still aren't on line will get a personal phone call from us...

A dubious closed club

Today is Thanksgiving and a very frigid day in Park City. Minus fifteen degree Fahrenheit, early this morning! What is it in degree Celsius? Good question; I just “Googled” it: An impressive minus twenty six! This brings me to today's subject. The metric system is the official system of measurement for all nations in the world except for Burma, Liberia, and the United States. As you can see, our good old USA is in very good company! The metric system was adopted by France in 1791, but was first proposed by John Wilkins, first secretary of the Royal Society of London in 1668. At the time, the Brits didn't think the idea was cool.

I believe that we, Americans, are still resisting the metric wave because it wasn't invented here. Yet, it costs us billions of dollars both in inventory duplication, ineffectiveness of all kinds and lost export sales. I know, we can't afford switching to metric now; instead, we pour billions of dollars monthly that we don't have, prosecuting a “just” war in Afghanistan...

In search of smooth skiing

Want to ski more, improve your form and strain less? Bring smoothness into your skiing. Do as little as you have to, but whatever you do on your skis, do it right, effortlessly and invisibly. Trying hard is exhausting and there's always a better way to execute, but we live in a world of instant-everything. We want to pick up skills quickly, become an all-around skier overnight and can't stand suffering a long and endless learning curve while state-of-the-art equipment, well-groomed slopes and some fast instruction can get us there in a matter of days. Yet, speedy learning always comes at a price; we get the rudiments, we garner the large building blocks, we're ready to fly solo, but we're still missing this magic quiver of “insider-knowledge” that may unlock the doors to stress-free skiing.

The technique from thirty years ago was developed around an equipment that often was crude, generally difficult to harness and not nearly as forgiving as it is now. Before reaching today's levels of excellence, snow grooming often was hit-and-miss and it took countless drills and practice before skiers could become autonomous and able to truly enjoy themselves. The flip side to that drudgery however was that these same skiers, after spending hours learning some grueling basics, became much more aware of what happened under their feet and around their ankles. They were alert to the messages they were receiving from the terrain, knew how to set an edge accordingly and could read the snow and the slope so well that they'd telegraph instantly to their edges what would become cat-like moves over the snow. Anyone who knows skiing well will agree that edge-control still remains the sport's holly grail.

If elevating your skiing to the upper echelon is important to you and if you still have the nagging feeling that you're missing this elusive tiny bit that robs you of a limitless supply of fun, there's probably some room left for fine-tuning your technique and becoming one of these smooth skiers you see floating on the snow and that seem impervious to anything. The beginning of a new season is the perfect moment for deciding to hone those important skills, fine-tune them, finally master that ankle and edge sensitivity that will spring your technique forward in a matter of weeks and let you enjoy it for a whole season. While they're fairly easy to understand, these subtle elements of skiing are extremely difficult to just pick up on your own. They require repeated drills, a perfect model to follow, an attentive outside observer and some highly skilled coaching. Why not then commit to spending your first hours of the winter with a trusted instructor that can share all these precious tips with you and guide you into a entire season of effortless skiing?

Boycott China?

How to bring pressure on China is a big issue and a dumb question at the same time. Our countries are so intertwined that I don't see how our government can exert much influence on the new economic giant. Between currency issues and tacit support for Iran and North Korea, there would be numerous areas where the Asian nation could do much better than it does, but just won't. We should also be vigilant in attempting to reclaim our manufacturing base and – if it's already not too late - prevent our technological leadership to flee there as well.

The only effective solution that I see, is for us, the consumers, to begin initiating a boycott. It will be hard at first, because everything from iPhone to socks are manufactured there, but if we begin thinking about it, if we become aware of where the goods we consume come from, we might be able to wrestling or at the very least, slow the voracious tiger down. Of course, we can't go cold turkey on our gluttonous China diet; It will take a very long time, but we owe to initiate that move sooner than later. I can't help but think that China is the drug dealer and we, Americans, are the junkies...