On the Mac, one solution is to download the program Split & Concat. Then, and this is important, rename the files from .__a, .__b to .001, .002 and so on. Open Split & Concat and choose “Concat”. Select the first file (ending in .001) and Split&Concat will extract the file. If you feel like it, donate to the developer. It’s a good program.

I’ve been able to verify firsthand (unfortunately) that what he said about their installers was definitely not true.

Based on that, I’m assuming that much of what he said was, to put it plainly, bullshit. I’ve looked into some of these claims online, but have not yet found anything close to definitive.

Here are some of his claims:

• – Bill Gates uses a RainSoft system in his house.
• – Culligan of India uses RainSoft at their office.
• – Aquafina (owned by Pepsi) is filtered using RainSoft.
• – The White House uses RainSoft.
• – Home Depot picked RainSoft from over 600 other companies.

The lying sales rep made a bunch of other claims as well, but I can’t remember them all. Now, perhaps the above statements are true, but we’ve already been very underwhelmed with the system itself. As I previously wrote, the installer was completely incompetent, not the factory trained pro of which the sales rep assured me.

What makes this all the more upsetting is that Home Depot, what I consider a reputable company, has been silent. When I went to the Home Depot in search of a water softener, they offered me a free “water test”. This “water test” turned out to be a very long sales pitch in our home and a confirmation that our water is hard. (Duh.)

Aside from the $7,000 bill from Home Depot, they’ve been silent. I’ve been to the Home Depot three times since the disastrous install and they’ve simply washed their hands of responsibility. Bye bye Home Depot. There are plenty of other places to shop.

But I digress… Anyone know about the above claims?

I went through the process of filling out a letter form on the RainSoft letters site. I used no foul language, but did express how horrible the installation went and how disappointed we were. It’s a shame that I didn’t copy the letter, because I am sure it will never see the light of day on the RainSoft letters website. I used my real name and provided an email address. An email response would be nice, but I doubt I’ll get one.

I did a quick search of the site and found that they haven’t even included one slightly negative letter. When you think about it, this is kind of dumb. People are just not that gullible.

The water filtration business seems to be one of the least transparent out there. I just felt it was my responsibility to point out the obvious by stating the RainSoft letters site is fake and misleading.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention in my post that the phony letters are not just up on rainsoft-letters.com. Here, a partial list of sites where RainSoft is posting fake letters:

• letters.rainsoftofmaryland.com/
• letters.rainsoftofnewjersey.com/
• www.rainsoftnefl.com/customerreaction.asp

They have been posting stuff to blogs as well. When I have more information, I’ll update.

As such, I’ve looked at the slim Owner’s Manuals that came with the system. Here are some highlights:

On page 7 of the Owner’s Manual for the “TC-M Conditioner Series Water Treatment System” (Rev: A 06/09) we find,

“If water contains iron, manganese or hydrogen sulfide, a seperate iron removal system is suggested to be installed prior to the conditioner.”

Aside from the awful sentence structure, they misspelled the word, “separate”. This, my friends, is a word that a spell checker easily finds.

A couple paragraphs later on the same page, we have:

“Dain lines over 50 feet long, may need to be increased in size to allow the proper flow.”

That’s right, “Dain lines”. Again, not a word, and something a spell checker would easily find. The comma placement is also wrong.

Is this nitpicky? Perhaps. I don’t go looking for these things, but typically when you find mistakes in manuals they are ones which are not picked up by spell checkers. You know the company put extra minimal effort into a manual when they misspell words like “drain” and “separate”.

I have experience translating and proofreading manuals and, while tedious to write and correct, manuals are important. Many customers do actually read manuals and it reflects poorly on a product or service when the manual is half-assed.

I have not yet read all of the wonderful literature accompanying our new RainSoft system. I just hope they put more care into making their products than they do in their installations and manuals.

The situation was actually a bit funny because Home Depot had gotten me in this mess to begin with. They’ve coupled with a local RainSoft dealer and hidden their DIY water softeners way in a back corner somewhere. Long story short, I made the horrible mistake of having RainSoft/Home Depot install a whole house water filtration system. It has been a total nightmare with such highlights as soldering flux firing out of my kitchen faucet, several bathfuls of black water, a tub which required lengthy cleaning sessions to partially remove black/brown residue, ongoing cleanup of wherever the incompetent RainSoft installer worked. I have much much more to say on this topic, but will have to write about it another time. Oh RainSoft, you have had not heard the last of me.

But I digress…. So there I was in Home Depot trying to buy five aerators. Their selection was pretty sparse (perhaps because of the upcoming law), but I managed to find a Neoperl product which seemed to fit the bill. And there it was in big capital letters: “LEAD FREE*”. This perplexed me a great deal given that a few millimeters above this claim stood: “Ultra low lead”.

I tried to wrap my head around “LEAD FREE*” vs. “Ultra low lead”. How could something lead free have ultra low lead? On the back they described the asterisk in flowery, blooming English: “*AB 1953 compliant less than 0.2% lead.” Wouldn’t you love if everything was described this way? “Traffic ticket you drive too fast.” “Delicious food ate at fancy restaurant.” And so on…

Now having looked into the Assembly Bill a bit, it appears the powers that be are redefining the meaning of lead free. In other words, they are lowering the value considered lead free. After doing a little research, I found that the legal limit for lead in related products used to be 8%. To me, .2% doesn’t seem that low, and 8% seems incredibly high. Given all the really scary stuff written about lead (and I have a two-year-old, people!), I would kind of prefer lead free to mean 0% lead. Is it that hard to make a metal product that contains no lead?

To further my confusion, another, simpler model of aerator, also made by Neoperl, states “LEAD FREE*”, but not “Ultra low lead”. So, does this mean this one is pushing the 0.2% lead content?

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Dude, why didn’t you just buy an aerator from another company claiming 0% lead?” There were none. Home Depot (or “The Home Depot” as I think they like being called now) only had these in stock.

If anyone has a suggestion for eco-friendly aerators without any lead (no asterisk), feel free to comment. Even though they say “there is no safe level of lead”, I guess AB 1953 is a step in the right direction. If it were me, and I know this would probably cause minor economic mayhem or piss off the lead lobby, I would just take a hatchet to it and make lead free actually lead free. 0%. Done.

P.S. Please also comment if you have more RainSoft horror stories.

I used to be mildly interested in Barry Sonnenfeld’s product reviews, though he’s been getting on my nerves lately.

Mr. Sonnenfeld’s latest case of product propaganda, “30 Holiday Gift Ideas for the Digital Man”, randomly features the Rockettes, and a pretty embarrassing typo. It’s hard to believe, but the typo remains on the Esquire website:

“And unlike many other portable speakers, Altec doesn’t overdo the base. The sound is bright and realistic.”

A tech review should not mispell “bass” as “base”. Am I wrong here?

Here is the link. Sorry, but you have to skip to slide 9. I wasn’t sure how to link it directly.

Allow me to explain.

The article begins when Ana Menéndez recieves a FedEx package at her place in Instanbul. (It was forwarded from New York, so you know she’s important.) There she is having a jovial nightcap with visitors (wine and a teak table are involved). She senses this package is important. The package, she finds out, claims her husband cheated on her. Upsetting indeed.

Then she backtracks to tell us how she met her husband, reporter Dexter. Two years after they became a couple, she cheats on him. She tells him, then they go on a bike tour. A few years later they marry and she is somewhat torn by playing second fiddle to Dex, but goes along with it because he’s interesting.

Things start going downhill. You know, typical stuff. Dex takes her to a public execution in Afghanistan. She’s not so into it, he wants a closer look. Why don’t couples discuss these kinds of potential conflicts before they get married? (Seriously though, what kind of person willingly agrees to go to a public execution?)

Then, the best (worst) part, which is pretty easy to overlook. Dex and Ana, tormented lovers, are awoken on September 11, 2001 by the sound of military jets. They live across the river from the World Trade Center in Hoboken, New Jersey. She doesn’t explicitly write this, but I think  given their proximity to the World Trade Center and her hotshot reporter husband that they at this point knew the World Trade Center had been attacked.

Her next sentence: “We made love.” I repeat, after being woken up by military jets on the morning of September 11, 2001 and witnessing (I assume) that the Twin Towers had been attacked, they “made love”. She continues, “And then Dex disappeared again into the story.”

Am I the only one baffled by this? At the time of their lovemaking, the Twin Towers had probably not yet collapsed, but who would really be in the mood to make love in such a situation?

This is a pretty easy question to ask because almost everyone remembers where they were when they found out about the Twin Towers attack. I remember also being woken up. I was due to fly out the next day from California to Germany. I sat half-asleep in front of the TV and was completely stunned. I remember driving around later that day feeling that I was in some kind of ghost world. Everything seemed off. And this was on the West Coast, not right across the river.

Ana Menéndez brags about her proxmity to the attacks and her distinguished reporter husband and then has the audacity to further mention her subsequent sex act. Am I the only one that thinks this is in very poor taste?

Sure, the article goes on. The woman with whom Dex apparently had an affair was killed in Iraq. Ana files for a divorce, even though Dex vehemently denies the affair. She hopes for reconciliation, doesn’t happen. At the end, she realizes that “it wasn’t Dex who needed saving.” Thank you. Correct. You need saving Ana. If you are aroused by something as horrific as the September 11 attack, you need help. If you see nothing wrong with writing this for the public to read, you really need help. And Vogue, come on. How did this even come to print?

Being a musician myself, I know it’s not 100% kosher to take copyrighted material and slab it onto a little YouTube action. Still, given the high-scale rampant copyright violation constantly taking place on YouTube, I hardly expected to have my little video muted by the powers that be.

To put this into perspective, my video has 60 odd views. It contains no hidden advertisements or agenda. I know this is YouTube trying to cover its ass, but I think this is going a bit too far.

(WMG is Warner Music Group.)

I decided to do a search for “Tree Hugger” on YouTube. (Note that this was not the name of my video.) So without further ado (deep breath):

• Tree Hugger by Antsy Pants and Kimya Dawson (has over 80,000 views)
• tree hugger by antsy pants (entire song for the purpose of just posting the entire song. over 900 views)
• Tree hugger by antsy pants (over 133,000 views)
• For Kimya. (and Juno) (almost 3,000 views)
• Tree Hugger (over 500 views. I like this one.)
• treehugger (over 500 views)
• tree hugger

The list goes on. Just do a simple search on YouTube for “Juno Tree Hugger” or similar. There are something like 70 listed based on that search. By the way, I did not tattle on (“Flag”) any of these people.

I don’t really see this as an issue of the music industry not “getting” the internet. I agree that artists need be compensated for their work. My problem here is that this is either a bad case of micromanagement, or (worse!) that one of the family members and friends to which I sent my video tattled on me.

That being said, I’ve recently run into an extremely annoying bug which seems to so far be without a fix. About 70% of the time I try to download a file with Firefox the download hangs at 100%, or a “a few seconds remaining”. This has been happening for about one week now and is, as mentioned, very irritating.

I’m not really willing to go without NoScript, though that might be a possible solution. I have, however, found a temporary work-around. While downloading the file, it is split into the file itself and a “.part” file. In the instance I’ve described, the download will stop at 100% and the “.part” file will contain all of the data, whereas the file itself is empty.

The trick is to not cancel the download, as that will automatically delete the file and the “.part” file. Instead, firsty try to pause the download and then restart it. If that doesn’t work, delete the “file” from wherever you have Firefox download stuff and then rename the “.part” file as the real file. OS X will ask you if you’re sure you “really” want to do this, as seen below.

Do it. In the picture above it’s an .rar file, but it doesn’t matter.

I’ll give you an example. Say I’ve tried to download a file named “firsteps.avi” and the download ends at 100% without ever completing. On my computer I have Firefox download things to /Downloads/Firefox. (You can find out where Firefox saves your stuff by going to the Firefox Main Preferences.) So I navigate there and see a file name “firststeps.avi” and “firsteps.avi.part”. The .part file contains all the data, but neither will work. To fix this, delete “firsteps.avi” and rename “firsteps.part.avi” to “firsteps.avi”. (To rename the file press Return when the file is selected or ctrl-click the file.)

I hope there is a real fix for this soon, but I hope the work-around I found will help a few people.

Of course, not being independently wealthy, finances would play a role. We’re talking just a small scale operation here, no economies of scale, no mass production, no greed. I figured we’d go for production of less than 1000 bottles per annum. I’m actually in the process of house hunting, so I figured I’d look for a place a bit more remote with some suitable land for a micro-vineyard.

The first dagger to the heart of my plan came when some initial research revealed pretty steep barriers to entry. Some of the equipment involved in modern winemaking is expensive, but being the spontaneous guy I am, what really hurt was that I would need five years before I could get a crop going which would produce decent wine. I don’t really like to plan more than six months in advance, and that was kind of a deal breaker. I also didn’t want to buy someone else’s vineyard. That sounded lame and can also be very pricey.

I did, however, come across some interesting factual tidbits during my research. Apparently, winemaking has a few things in common with apple preservation. As discussed in “Principles and Practices of Winemaking” by Boulton, Singleton, Bisson, and Kunkee, winemaking is quite the CO₂ intensive activity. Around 40 years ago, you’d have one dead guy per vintage in California as a result of said fellow “entering fermentors or confined spaces containing (or recently drained of) active alcoholic yeast fermentations and not adequately ventilated”. Unconsciousness apparently occurs rapidly with brain death following soon thereafter.

That book goes into all kinds of technical detail about how much carbon dioxide is produced with different kinds of wines and also describes how modern vineyards with carbon dioxide detectors make this a pretty moot point these days. Regardless, given that carbon dioxide has no scent, unknowingly walking into a room that will kill you, is kind of a scary idea.

Thoughts to ponder before you uncork that bottle of wine tonight.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.