Why The Lexus Was Hated

Know me, know my car.

Many of us name our cars. Oh, we’ve had a Skip, a Haakon, and let’s see.., Nalla, Peppy, Dexter, and Declan. And then there was my most recent set of wheels, known only as “The Hated Lexus.” Why, you may ask, was this premium 2005 ES 330 despised so fervently by it’s owner? Basking in the glow reflected off the brand new Caspian Sea-blue 2011 Volvo S-80 T6 All Wheel Drive vehicle which has just replaced the Hated Lexus in my driveway, I’ll tell you.

I bought the car two years ago under duress. The previous car, Nalla, the 1997 Volvo, had swerved after hitting some debris on the Long Island Expressway and made the ultimate sacrifice of itself to keep it’s two passengers safe after smashing into the concrete divider and thankfully not getting hit by oncoming traffic. So you can say, pun intended, that I got the Hated Lexus “by accident.” My rental car while searching for a replacement was a pickup truck. Fun if you’re moving into a new apartment or have dirt bikes I suppose.

This was 2008. The Fall of 2008. The dreaded, horrible, wretched and terrifying Fall of 2008. The car was not the only thing that had crashed. The very last thing on my mind, given the state of the business and the world, was buying a new car. We hurriedly looked around and decided that the Lexus was the best bet – three years old and with about 20,000 miles on it.

Some things I noticed right away. Like the complete absence of places to put your wallet-sunglasses-pens, and other junk you bring into your car. Or the high-buffed overly glossy interior wood trim which made me feel like I should be chewing gum and wearing some gold chains. The slick steering wheel always felt vaguely greasy in my hands. There was a center console located back by my right shoulder. It consisted of a deep storage area, and a very shallow one on top of it – maybe an inch deep. The problem here was that the latch to each compartment was right next to each other so if you wanted to open the top (shallow) compartment and grabbed the wrong latch the top compartment would go vertical….and all your stuff in there would go flying.

The electric windows were overly sensitive – the slightest touch sent the window all the way up or all the way down. To open a window only partially involved a comical up-down-up-down-up progression until I finally zeroed in on what I wanted. I figured it was just a matter of time before I adjusted to it but no. This was in the minor irritation category, like the dashboard readout of time, temp, radio settings etc…. that would disappear when you put on sunglasses.

There were a number of attempts by the car to think for you that I did not enjoy. The headlights always stayed on for 20 seconds after I left the car leaving me to wonder if they would go off by themselves or if I had somehow screwed up. The trunk had no “handle” – you could only open it by pressing the key fob. Doors would automatically lock once you got moving - makes sense to an engineer but how many times do you stop to pick someone up quickly in town and don’t bother putting it in Park? Answer: a lot! And each time I would have to slap my forehead and say Oh right, I have to unlock the doors (that I did not lock)

There was no ipod connection (one year too early). The car was absolutely and inexcusably terrible in snow. There was some sort of oddball airfoil on the trunk that prevented the use of our bike rack. I asked the dealer if he could remove it. Nope. I did not trust the car dealer (who wanted to change my brake and transmission fluids for about $180 each) and they were located about 15 miles away in the other direction from my short commute.

The rain sensor was beyond annoying. Instead of a controllable intermittent wiper setting, you had no choice for intermittent except to let the car do it on it’s own with a rain sensor. At first it didn’t work at all. I even poured a bucket of water on the windshield. No reaction. Of course all the time I was trying to get this to work I was driving in rain with my windshield wipers OFF, very safe, that. I took it to the dealer and they said, oh yes, common problem and they fixed it. But now once it got going, it started going very fast. Or again not at all. It never ever worked. The Volvo has a rain sensor too but you can turn it OFF (which I DO) and use a manually adjustable intermittent wiper setting.

And so, it became The Hated Lexus. Did it drive? Yes? Good power and handling? You bet. I desperately wanted to find some way to get along with this car but it was just far too annoying on a daily basis. The Hated Lexus is no more. And symbolically, so too is the nightmare of the Fall of 2008.

Welcome, the Beloved Volvo.

Latest Assault on Guinness Record Successful

LONDON – AP – The world record for Exclamatory-Remarks-Over-A-Four-Day-Period was shattered last week at Acadia National Park in Maine by a 51-year old man. What started out on the ride north up Route 1 from Brunswick as simple, but repeated comments like “look at that, isn’t that pretty,” soon gave way to incessant hyperbole once the pink granite hills of Mount Desert Island came into view.

The man, Ted Bahr, of Laurel Hollow, NY, apparently did not intend to set a record when he booked a four day trip to America’s 10th-most-visited National Park, accompanied by his 12-year-old son, Peter. But by the second day, it became clear that something was stirring in the air. With the encouragement of his enthusiastic son, the two visitors made the most of their trip, spending mornings traipsing up the coastal mountains to reveal “incredible,” views, also termed “unbelievable,” as each new treeline was crossed and more “amazing,” views came into sight.

Afternoons were spent climbing and scrambling across the coastal cliffs, over giant boulders, up rock walls and engaging in the local sport known as Acadian Parkour. By the third day, record keepers were having trouble keeping up with the stream of declarative adjectives flying out of Mr. Bahr’s mouth. The final tally, aided by an exceptionally crisp and sunny last day of the trip was 378 “fantastic’s,” 490 “incredible’s”, 503 “amazing’s,” 728, “unbelievable’s,” and a staggering 1,381 uses of the word “awesome,” for a grand total of 3,480 utterances, or, 870 per day.

The previous record for a four-day period was held by Buckwheat Stewart of Hound Corner, Alabama, who set the mark of 3,263 before, during, and right after the 2007 Daytona 500, at Daytona International Speedway in central Florida.

Two Tales Of Extreme High-Tech Evil (and yes, one is Google)

In keeping with the name of this blog it is only fitting that I get around to revealing and railing against two of the more irritating business practices in the high-tech world. Unless you are a stockholder of Google or Hewlett-Packard that is!

The first practice concerns Google’s AdSense scheme. This program allows you – as a website owner – to place a small box on your website into which Google dynamically loads text (or now display or video) ads. The ads are context-sensitive, meaning if your website talks about tropical fish, Google will send tropical fish ads to your box. If someone clicks on the ad, they generate money for Google and money for you, depending on what the advertiser has been paying and other algorithms. Ahh…the famous “Google algorithms.”

Unlike virtually any other partnership known to man, Google will not reveal what percentage of the revenue they pay you. You just get a check. You got a problem wit dat, too bad. What are we, the website owners, getting? 30%? 35%, 19%? No idea. And the contract with Google plainly states that they will never ever tell you. So think of this now, you are Google with millions of clients and a month to go in the quarter. Need to increase revenue at a 100% margin? Just change the formula! Last quarter they paid the website owners 30%. This quarter they pay 29%. The math is too painful to do.

Now this is just conjecture, right? Google wouldn’t do this, after all, that would be evil. To that, all I can say is that 5 years ago we got checks in the $600-700 dollar range monthly. More recently that had trickled down to less than $100 despite having tripled our page views served. Recently we decided it wasn’t worth it and took Google AdSense off our sites. You decide.

And another thing……

How about the HP 4480 printer we (my family) bought a year or so ago that tells YOU when to replace the ink cartridges. No, not warns you. The printer demands you replace the ink cartridges NOW or it will not print. WTF?! I’ll decide when the ink is too faded thank you, after all aren’t I the one driving the car? What if I have run out of cartridges and I just need one little copy? What if I don’t care if the magenta is 10% too strong? It’s an outrageous gun-to-the-head move by HP to sell more ink - I mean who even knows how empty these things are. In the old days when HP gave you a warning, (and it was up to you what to do with it), you could get another 20-80 copies out of the cartridge. Not now. Printer won’t let you.

Nice way to juice up revenues but I’m buying a Canon or Epson today. And will never ever ever buy another HP printer again.

Harrumph!

Toyota, Lexus Management Woes Continue

TOKYO, Japan - (AP)

In an embarrassing series of events that underscored the problems at the vaunted car Japanese car manufacturer, Ralleye Lexus of Glen Cove NY has apparently botched the kidnapping of a Laurel Hollow man. The owner of a 2005 Lexus ES330, Ted Bahr, 51, brought the vehicle in for a routine 45,000 mile tune-up on Thursday morning, which quickly went array.

The original plot involved Bahr bringing his car into the dealer for a brief, normal service, during which the customer would simply read magazines and attempt to ignore the 56-inch HDTV set while sitting in the waiting room. Once carless, the Lexus dealer planned to keep Bahr waiting with a series of “one-thing-after-another” repairs until he wilted and gave in to their demands (which were not known, at presstime).

Aware of the potential for this, Bahr demanded a loaner vehicle that the dealer, anxious for the plot to remain undercover, then provided. Bahr drove off in a spanking new 2010 RX 450 Hybrid, making sure to transfer anything he might need over the next several weeks into the pristine and environmentally sensitive vehicle.

Demonstrating the lack of competence not to mention utter chaos reigning at Toyota and Lexus dealers, Ralleye Lexus remained oblivious to the fact that Bahr now had a much better car in his possession, and they went ahead the planned series of dispiriting phone calls to the customer with reports of one unpredictable micro-repair after another.

Bahr reported that his mood was actively lightening with each successive call that the dealer had to “wait for another part to arrive,” as a standard wheel alignment was now rumored to be taking at least two weeks. “I’ve got the good car and I’m actually getting used to it - the fools can keep the 330," laughed Bahr as he took off on an unscheduled trip to Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, ME.

Reedtown Massacre Reveals the Future of the Trade Media Business

The trade media business, such as it was, has been ripped apart and largely destroyed by Google. The musical chairs game that Private Equity players have been playing is finally out of seats and many household names have been left holding the bag, trying to hardball the banks into restructuring or just going bankrupt. The “strategic” multi-market players are shedding print assets like pounds in a sauna wearing a rubber suit.

And so, last week’s shocking closure of 23 titles by Reed merely underscores the evolution of our industry back into what it once was, and I will paraphrase Bill Ziff, who said,

“It used to be that our business was run by enthusiastic eccentrics - people who worked and lived day in and day out in their markets and hardly even realized that they were running a ‘business,’ in the classical sense, at all.”

The key observation above is that most trade publishers in the Old Days were single market companies – smaller nimble companies dedicated to their niche industries. The trade conglomerates that grew in the 1980’s and 1990’s benefitted handsomely from ganging printing, fulfillment and the usual assortment of backroom operations to run properties at a much lower cost, as well as the trend toward professionally managed trade shows which coined money for them back in the day.

Over time, the best managers in their market were given additional responsibilities managing other markets or being switched to other divisions ala Jack Welch’s GE. The best salespeople became Publishers. Then Group Publishers and VPs. They were promoted away from their markets, from their customers, from their street-level expertise.

This happened again and again at Reed, Advanstar, Penton, VNU, Cygnus, Miller Freeman, and at their various successor companies. Eventually, the “professional managers” of various market segments became less and less embedded in their industries, spending their days in budget and forecast meetings and battling other execs in different markets for investment and acquisition dollars.

I know the feeling. A lifelong computer and electronics industry publisher, for a time I found myself managing all sorts of alien market groups. I remember the acute embarrassment I felt at being paraded around as a high level executive at the key trade shows for these different markets when I barely has a clue what was going on in these customers’ businesses.

Of course, this alienation and lack of understanding of markets didn’t kill the business – Google and paid search killed it as identified by IDG’s Pat Kenealy 6 years ago. But now that b-to-b publishing is in tatters, a post-apocalyptic vision comes into view: small, nimble, single-market-focused companies, run by people who have labored in their markets for years, getting to know the vendors, the readers, the nuances and intricacies that can allow them to be successful, despite Google.

By shuttering 23 publications, Reed has left the door open for more than a few groups of dedicated market experts to re-colonize and emerge as the trade media companies of the future

Gates, Jobs Agree: “Back to Electronics" Movement Going Well

FEBRUARY 14, 2010

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA (AP) --

Technology rivals Bill Gates and Steve Jobs agreed on one thing at the annual TED Conference finishing this weekend in Long Beach, California; that the “back to electronics” movement was making great strides among the nation’s youth and population in general.

“Awareness of electronic devices and the role they play in the Earth’s fragile ecosystem is at an all-time high,” said Microsoft Founder Bill Gates, “and not only that, but people are participating, getting directly involved in technology far beyond the humble PC in their study, and are literally surrounding themselves with wireless and wired devices.”

The grass-roots “Back to Electronics” movement, believed to have started shortly after the introduction of the first generation iPhone, gathered steam as waves of parental resistance to cell phones with unlimited text and data plans gradually buckled under the pressure from the nation’s youth, who can usually be counted on to spearhead such cultural shifts. Evidence of the Movement’s penetration into everyday life were cited at TED2010 with discussions of people barricading themselves inside their house for months at a time to see if they could survive “living off the Internet,” as well as groups of Apple fanatics known collectively as “iPhone-huggers.”

Movement proponents cite the many benefits of getting Back to Electronics, including evading the sun’s harmful rays, recycling of air in closed spaces, allowing animals and plants in the wild to exist without any interference from or the presence of humans, and improved thumb dexterity.

Groups of electronics activists have been camping inside bars and Starbucks coffee houses to form “flashmobs” or to participate in “tweet-ups” based on the popular Twitter platform that allows people everywhere to have instantaneous and detailed information about the status of virtually everyone else. Others have been venturing out to the more remote and desolate edges of the electronic wilderness, living for weeks at a time in virtual worlds like Second Life.

Technology advocate and dreadlock-wearing self-promoter Jaron Lanier has announced plans to take advantage of the movement by holding ChipStock, “An Electronics Exposition, 3 Days of Peace and Technology,” to be held in an empty industrial park off of Lawrence Boulevard in Santa Clara CA, as well as virtually, wherever a WiFi hotspot can be found. Lanier is also rumored to be the head of the more radical group, Electronics First!, which advocates such extreme practices as placing wireless hotspots inside churches and in otherwise pristine natural settings.

Oven, 4, Released from Prison

AP – JANUARY 12, 2010

A wayward kitchen oven was restored to functionality yesterday to the great relief of the Bahr family of Laurel Hollow, NY. The appliance, a DCS 1800, was arrested in June for attempted arson when it refused to turn off and sent smoke billowing into the house. The crafty and rascally device waited until the adults of the family had left, and then dared the children of the house to stop it, a scandalous crime that rocked the Cold Spring Harbor School district and attendees of the annual spring benefit for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities (SPLIA).

The Oyster Bay-based Atlantic Steamer Company responded quickly and managed to thwart the plot by turning off the circuit breaker and without even having to smash all of the windows in the house. The oven had remained disabled since June, prompting a variety of novel cooking efforts by Rebecca “Martha” Bahr in the interim. Bahr taunted the nearby imprisoned oven and set a U.S. record in early December by baking 22 different types of cookies in a small toaster oven normally restricted to “Eggos,” and the occasional tuna melt.

Ted Bahr, 51, contacted the Appliance Correctional Review Board and asked that a pardon be considered after his wife set plans to cook a whole suckling pig in a crock pot, saying, “Ok, this has gone far enough, we need the damn oven back.” The ACRB released the oven under it’s own recognizance.

Robert MacKay, Executive Director of SPLIA, noted that, “there’s quite a history of ovens committing crimes on Long Island actually – beginning during the Revolutionary War when several ovens used for baking bread in Oyster Bay tried to burn down the homes of known British Loyalists….and then during the War of 1812,…..”