Nothing less than the existence of God can explain this funny world. His edgy sense of humor is manifest in all things. This occasional blog helps you take comfort, of a sort, from that divine finger in your eye.
Our Christmas cards are getting out late again this year -- one of our most honored holiday traditions. Here is an advance electronic distribution of the tedious newsletter that gets folded up inside. If your card doesn't arrive for Christmas, feel free to print this, stuff it inside of an on-sale Christmas card of your choosing, and forge my name.
Walking Amber Down the Aisle in Tampa, Florida on New Year’s Eve Day
Prologue
As I sit down to write this sentence, on Saturday, November 12, 2011, I am, as far as I know, still an expectant grandfather. That is, I don’t think I am a grandfather yet – we were promised a phone call on Amber’s way to the hospital – but it is only a matter of time now, and not much time. When this has been mailed and delivered, Liam and Eva, or Eva and Liam, depending on the order in which they are delivered, will be the newest and second newest members of the family. Irene is taking to the whole grandparent thing way faster than I am but I don’t suppose that I am unusual in that regard. I think it is a sex-related thing – something carried on the Y-chromosome. If you take your typical middle-aged man and you hand him a baby, saying: “Here is your grandbaby, Lee. Love it forever”, then he will. But until that moment it won’t seem altogether real to him. On the other hand, a woman, on hearing that her daughter, who lives five hundred miles away, is a week late and might have managed to get pregnant, will immediately head for the nearest store where baby paraphernalia can be had at a discount. Once there she will scour the shelves for unisex merchandise, mostly featuring fluffy yellow ducks – the pink kittens or blue puppies will come later once the sex of the baby is determined. In our case, expecting one of each, we bought everything in sight, but the ducks were first.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
from the North Carolina Branch of the Haslup Clan
Since I mentioned the date on which I wrote the prologue, I will tell you that I am starting this paragraph two weeks later. Liam Connor McPherson was born on November 23, 2011, a few minutes before his twin sister Eva Claire McPherson. I am now a grandfather, with all the privileges and responsibilities pursuant thereto. Having gotten that out of the way I will now get on with the Holiday Newsletter. If my narrative wanders, my new grandfatherly status requires you to cut me some slack.
Amber and Lee cutting the cake.
Lee and Amber have had the most eventful year of anyone in the family and the most tightly-scheduled one as well. They were married on New Year’s Eve day in Tampa, Florida during Amber’s brief midwinter break from her studies at the Lake Erie School of Osteopathic Medicine in Bradenton. The ceremony was beautiful, the weather perfect, and as is traditional, the flower girl completely stole the show. It was wonderful to see so many of our favorite people but, as the parents of the bride, we saw them only fleetingly, as we had to stay in constant motion to keep the event on schedule. Now that both of our kids are married off it is someone else’s turn to host the next weddings – it’ll be nice to have a leisurely, more sociable role at a wedding or two.
Shortly after the wedding Amber started her Clinical Rotations – a series of clerkships in various clinical settings – that will comprise most of her third and fourth years of school. Since Amber and Lee were eager to start their family they decided to attempt to have their first child during Amber’s one-month fall break. There was some nervousness about the schedule when Amber found out she was expecting twins, since they often come a bit earlier, but Amber managed to finish enough of her Radiology Rotation to get full credit before her condition made it necessary for her to stay closer to home.
Amber came back to North Carolina briefly so we could throw her a baby shower. This proved a very efficient way for her to catch up with all her friends in a very short visit. Instead of having her drive around like mad while she was here, trying to see everybody, we threw a party and had everybody come to her. Brilliant! … and quite a nice party, actually.
At Amber's baby shower.
Lee and Amber continue to live with her grandfather (my dad) in St Petersburg. Dad recently celebrated his 85th birthday and remains active and in generally good health. Lee’s mother arrived before the twins were born and was there until December 13th. Amber was grateful for some experienced hands while she and Lee were learning how to deal with two babies in the house. Irene and I will be there for Christmas. Lee teaches chemistry at a local college, which is convenient just now, since much of the work associated with the job is done at home and many activities involved in dealing with the nutrition and hygiene of twin infants are more conveniently handled as tag-team events. Things seem to have gone fairly smoothly for the first two weeks although not altogether without some family adventure. They have learned, for instance, that when a key breaks off in the ignition on your way home from the pediatrician’s office, two adults, two infants, two car seats, and a big pile of baby-care hardware and expendables, will not all fit in the cab of a tow truck. Fortunately, dad’s friend Marty Hallas drives a big van was close to her phone.
Reid and one of her professors
Chris and Reid have been married now for over a year and it doesn’t seem possible that it has been so long since the wedding. It has been an eventful year for them. For one thing, Reid finished her PhD this year. It turns out that getting a PhD is a bit like making Chinese lacquer work – the piece is sort-of, mostly, generally “done” for a long time but it always seems to need just one more coat of something or other to achieve its full shiny black perfection. When her committee signed off on her dissertation they extracted a promise of some follow-on cleanup work, basically so they could go on bossing her around after she got her degree. As of this writing that work has been completed, too, and she is now actually done. She is making good progress on adjusting to her various name changes. “Mrs. Haslup” is starting to feel natural and “Doctor Reid Haslup” only sounds a bit odd, but “Doctor Haslup” still makes her think people are talking about Christopher’s grandfather.
Chris continues to enjoy his job as a graphic designer at Capstrat and Reid has found a position in the Chemistry department at UNC in Chapel Hill. They are looking at houses in the area and thinking about buying when their lease is up early next year. I realize that all this puts them rather out-of-step with many of their generation – not only are they both working, but they have jobs that have something to do with their college degrees. Despite being a bit strange that way, we love them both and are very proud of our kids. Our main struggle is to avoid becoming insufferably smug, and I am afraid that battle is half lost.
Calvin is a big Wallace and Grommet fan; thus the cake topper.
Our long-time friend, and next-door neighbor twenty-some years ago, Calvin Powers, was married this past year and Irene and I were in the wedding party. Calvin married Pat French, an editor of medical journals, whom he has been dating for several years and whom Irene and I like very much. Calvin and Pat are our most reliable social friends in the area – the people with whom we are most likely to go out to a movie, or to dinner.
Bling the Merciless: Evil Master of the 1%
Irene and I very much enjoyed their Halloween party this year (as we do every year) and our costumes, drawn from things that were in the news at the time, were well received. Irene went as the “Ghost of Muammar Gaddafi” and my costume – “Bling the Merciless, Evil Master of the One Percent” – won a prize in the costume contest.
Family group photo.
The photo at right is of Pat and Calvin posing with family members just after the ceremony. The two young ladies with the bouquets are Pat’s daughters. Calvin’s dad is in the center in the back and the rest are relatives of various sorts. Irene and I were also in the wedding but weren’t in this family-themed photo. Our other social friends, Bill and Caran, drove up from Atlanta to meet us in the mountains of North Carolina in October for a Photo Safari vacation. Karen, Irene and I are all avid amateur photographers and Bill enjoys driving around and looking at the scenery. Timing a trip to the mountains for the peak color for the fall leaves is as much a matter of luck as of planning. Peak color depends on the weather and it comes earlier at high elevations than lower ones. We were incredibly lucky this year to hit the peak exactly in the Grandfather Mountain area of the Blue Ridge Parkway. The views and the weather were gorgeous.
We also had an opportunity to spend time with Bill and Caran, and with Calvin and Pat over the Labor Day weekend because we all attended a Science Fiction/Media convention called DragonCon. I think it was Pat’s first time at DragonCon – the rest of us had been many times, although Irene and I have missed the last couple of years due to scheduling constraints.
Costume at DragonCon. Her hat has a pirate ship being attacked by a giant squid.
It is interesting that Pat and Caran are both medical editors. There aren’t a lot of them in the country (or in the world for that matter) and they tend to know one another by reputation. Pat and Caran recognized each other’s names when they first met at Christopher’s wedding last year.
Bill and Caran
Irene continues to frustrate my by often taking better photos than I do, as in this one of Caran.
We are sending out Christmas wishes to my sister Holly (Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Lowe) who is finishing up a deployment in Afghanistan where she has worked in an outpatient clinic. In her latest note she mentioned packing up stuff to be shipped home but seemed a bit vague about when she would be back in the US. So her Christmas wishes are being sent via psychic emissions, and for the more-concrete wishes in the form of a Christmas card she may have to wait until she has a mailing address, even if we get the cards sent out on time for once.
Holly in Afghanistan
This will be our second year running where our empty nest has left us with a bit more passive and flexible role in our Christmas planning. In past years with our children unmarried, it was pretty clear that everyone would come to our house for Christmas and the only real decision we had to make was whether I would cook a four-rib roast for Christmas dinner or whether three ribs would be sufficient. (In general, both are true: three would be enough but I cooked four anyway.) Last year, with Chris and Reid at her mother’s for Christmas and Lee and Amber getting ready for their wedding a week later in Tampa, Irene and I were planning to spend Christmas Day as a couple when a chance encounter with my cousin Bill Dawson landed us a last-minute (and much appreciated) invitation to Christmas dinner with his family. It was much more festive with a bigger group and the food and company were lovely. This year we are spending Christmas in St Petersburg, Florida, to see the new grand-babies. I am sure there are some sorts of plans for Christmas activities but we aren’t making them. We just plan to show up and enjoy whatever happens. And whatever happens will probably be wonderful for us. This card is sent in the hope that the Holidays turn out wonderful for you, too.
A few random photos:
Speed Racer in DragonCon Parade
Photographing Parade from Fourth Floor of Parking Garage
Group Photo from Amber’s Wedding
Irene in Blowing Rock
The Simple Pleasures of Beach Week on Hilton Head Island
Breakfast at Le Farm while Amber was up for her Baby Shower
Liam_and_Eva
At Christmas we remember a birth that changed the world. They all do.
Several commenters have asked if I was able to get a full refund or if I found myself out the 'restocking' fee. As of earlier this week I have recovered the full amount. Please bear in mind that charging a restocking fee is not always a rip-off. When you cut the manufacturer's seal on a product and open the box you have destroyed a noticeable percentage of the product's value in the retail market. If the product arrives in good condition, is as advertised, and was shipped in good faith then the vendor is entitled to some compensation for that lost value if you change your mind about the purchase and send it back. But, if any of those conditions do not apply -- if the product arrives broken, or the advertisement was deceptive or inaccurate -- then, provided that you can document the problem, your credit card company can probably recover the restocking fee. The trick is to expect to write to your credit card company twice, once for the initial partial refund and once to get the restocking fee back. Your credit card company's computers will assume that the initial partial refund is fair and will automatically close the case. The second letter to your credit card company will re-open the case and bring the attention of a human investigator who will evaluate your claim.
From the merchant information on my credit card transaction and from my return authorization email, BestPricePhoto's mailing address is 2389 60th St, Brooklyn, NY. I was fortunate to find Don Wiss' page where he has photos of most of the Brooklyn Camera Store storefronts (http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/). I sent him a note asking if I could use his photo of the building but he said it was too old and he would send me a newer one. His newest photo is still a couple of months old and the "going out of business" signs may be gone. And to be totally fair: the building shown in the photo has two addresses. The "going out of business" shop (at 2378) may not be related. BestPricePhoto.com, technically, does business out of the whited-out door on the right (2380).
I found BestPricePhoto.com through Google's shopping application. Their offering wasn't the least expensive one I found -- another dealer sells refurbished Nikon D7000s for a bit less -- but they were slightly less expensive than Amazon.com and claimed to be selling new products with US warranties. Here's the ad to which I responded:
The Ad, a screenshot by bigleehimself on Flickr. Note the line items for "Battery" and "1-Year Limited Warranty" in the content list
Elsewhere on the page this text appears:
bpp3, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr. Note the promise of a USA Warranty
Before your online order is processed, BestPricePhoto will give you a call to make sure the order is legitimate and correct, and to help you select additional accessories you might not have thought of when you placed your order. When I spoke to Chris, who helped me with my order, he asked if I wanted the "two hour" or the "four hour" battery. The item list for my order included a battery but BestPricePhoto has several battery upgrade options available. I declined his offer but later I looked up the batteries they have available for the D7000.
bpp4, a photo by bigleehimself on Flickr. What is shown here is their advertised price. Five-star reviews from grateful customers have suggested that BestPricePhoto will frequently give discounts on these batteries when ordered to replace the battery that comes in the kit.
But the funny thing is... There is only one battery that can go in the battery compartment of a Nikon D7000 -- the Nikon EN-EL15. It's a new battery and the knock-off battery manufacturers haven't gotten around to it. As far as I know there's no such thing as a higher-capacity version, nor a "demo" battery. All four options -- "battery" "EN-EN15", "Nikon EN-EL15" and "EN-EL15 Extended Long Life Lithium Battery" -- are the same item, with an MSRP (as of this writing) of $72.95.
Two attempts were made to charge my credit card. The first (by MCJ DISCOUNTS INC) was declined by American Express as suspicious. I received email both from BPP's billing department and from American Express, both saying the charge had been declined and asking me to verify it. I didn't think much of it at the time. Credit card companies will often call to verify a charge that seems 'unusual' and I don't place orders of that size with online dealers all the time. I called AmEx, verified that I had expected a charge for that amount on that date and then called BestPricePhoto to tell them they could try again. The second (successful) charge shows the merchant as
8887821617BESTPRICEPHOTOBROOKLYNNY Doing Business As: 8887821617BESTPRICEPHOTOC Merchant Address: 2380 60TH ST BROOKLYN NY 11204
My camera arrived nine days after I launched my order, within the time I was told to expect. The contents of the shipment were a Nikon box for a D7000+lens kit with the 18-105mm lens pulled out, presumably to sell separately. The promised "accessory pack" was a no-show; no toy tripod, no memory card wallet, but I hadn't wanted that stuff anyway and I didn't care. The accessories were all present and the charger had US plugs. The contained no "quick start guide" and no warranty paperwork of any sort.
I tried to register the camera online. The Nikon product registration page didn't like my serial number.
I called BestPricePhoto and spoke with “Raymond” who appears to be their entire customer service department. I mentioned the lack of warranty documentation. His response, as I recall: “Oh, did they forget to put that in?” I also mentioned my inability to register the camera with Nikon. His response was that they worked directly with a Nikon service facility and that they would handle the process of registering the camera. He promised me a certificate of warranty “straight from Nikon” and made me hold the phone while he “had the Nikon guys send it to me.” After a few minutes wait he said he had the certification and would send it to me along with another copy of my invoice so everything would be together. In a few minutes another email arrived. Here are the more interesting parts of it...
My “certification of warranty” didn’t mention a warranty at all – no warranty period, no description of coverage, nothing – it was merely an assurance that my product had been registered for me. Also, the telephone number provided was the toll-free number for BestPricePhoto and, being, I’m afraid, a suspicious person, I wondered if the note had actually come “from Nikon” as claimed.
I contacted someone who does work for Nikon (but has asked not to be identified), providing him with the text of the note above and asking if the warranty it described was likely to be legitimate. His opinion: "None of the information you provided looks legitimate. If the serial number of the D7000 is 6223221, this is not a USA model."
I called BestPriceCamera and, once again, spoke to Raymond. I told him that the warranty confirmation he had sent, since it contained no information about what was warranted, for how long, what would be fixed or by whom, was not sufficient and that I considered his advertisement deceptive and wanted to return the camera. At this point he offered to give me a warranty in writing and to extend the warranty to three years at no charge. He told me that the warranty would be offered by CSPCentral.com and that I should look into them and I would be satisfied. He sent another invoice, this time including a three year warranty (paperwork to be shipped at a future date).
I researched CSPCentral.com and found that, while they have a well-designed website, their reputation for servicing warranties on high-dollar items was spotty. The mailing address provided on the CSPCentral “Contact Us” page -- 1678 McDonald Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11230 – was exactly one block from the address for BestPriceCameras. I am once again indebted to Don Wiss for this photo of CPSCentral',s storefront:
Those not familiar with Brooklyn addresses might find this map useful. Point "A" is BestPricePhoto.com and point "B" is CPSCentral. View Larger Map
A Few Thoughts About Online Reputation
One problem one has when complaining about one's treatment by an online merchant is how many happy, contented customers they have -- how many five-star ratings they have been given. One feels about as welcome as the guy in the third row at a magic show who yells things about mirrors and shaved cards. Most of BestPricePhoto's customers are blissfully happy with their transactions, and many of them have every reason to be. They were looking to buy a working, inexpensive camera at a discount price. And that's what they got. There may be a few line items -- for accessories and upgrades -- where they have paid more for showmanship than for value, but they are happy with the bottom line nonetheless. The ones who have purchased the less expensive cameras may have been ever-so-slightly ripped off in the warranty department but warranties for cheap cameras are of very little value anyway so, hey, if they are happy with the camera, why not?
It's the people like me -- people who fall for their "Hot Deal Today Only" special on the more-expensive 'enthusiast' cameras -- who queer the deal for everybody. If we are sold an expensive camera that we plan to use for many years and it has no warranty, or a warranty of limited value, and if it will be difficult to obtain service for the lifetime of the camera, then we have been harmed. Many of us won't know there will be problems getting service for the camera for years and when we do find out most of us will be mad at Nikon.
I decided that I could not accept BestPriceCamera’s latest offer since: 1) what was shipped was not what was advertised, specifically a camera with a US warranty; 2) When questioned about the warranty BestPriceCamera had made a concerted effort to conceal the warranty status of the camera, including sending me the above email, claiming it came from Nikon; and 3) the warranty they offered when they realized they could not convince me the camera had a Nikon warranty was not a fair substitute.
I called BestPriceCamera back and told Raymond that, having looked into the matter I still needed to return the camera and that, if charged a restocking fee, I would contest it since the product shipped was not as described when I ordered. Before he would issue the return authorization he had me go to his website and view a different listing for the D7000. He was hoping to convince me that I had received a gray market camera because I had mistakenly ordered the “Nikon D7000, 16.2 MP Digital SLR Camera Body” instead of the “Nikon D7000, 16.2 MP Digital SLR Camera Body -USA Retail Kit With Long Life Battery & Quick Charger”. It is impossible for me to know what I would have received if I had ordered the other (slightly more expensive) item but if you open both offers and look at the “This Product Includes” list you will see that both kits have the same exact contents listed including the same exact wording for the “one year limited warranty”.
The camera has gone back and a replacement ordered from Amazon.com. Whether I wind up paying the 10% 'restocking fee' to BestPriceCamera remains to be seen.
My wife's pocket camera has a tiny sensor and a tiny lens. It struggles to collect enough light to capture images in indoor settings. It is also haunted by a tiny robotic ghost of Science Fiction Artist Kelly Freas who tries to help out.
Kodak, who made her M1093-IS camera, calls the robot, "noise suppression" software, but this image (cropped from an un-manipulated image straight from the camera) shows Kelly's inimitable touch. Kelly loved faces, science fiction subjects and shiny objects. Notice how every single pixel in the face, hat and hair, and in the shiny device she is holding, have been painted over by the robot in this image. Please (please, please) view this image as large as possible so you can admire his brushwork.
If you keep clicking on it you will eventually arrive at the Flickr Light Table which is pretty good.
Not sure who this young man is. He was ahead of me in line waiting for an escalator in the Marriot. I grabbed a quick shot while he was posing for someone else.
One of the side-effects of having my GPS stolen out of my car is that I had occasion to dust off the MP3 player that I used to play audiobooks in my car before I acquired my Garmin. One of the audiobooks loaded on that player is a LibriVox.org reading of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (Read by Elizabeth Klett.) I've mentioned this audiobook here several years ago but it seems worth revisiting.
Northanger Abbey was one of the first books Jane Austen wrote and one of the last to see print. Miss Austen sold the rights to Northanger Abbey to a London publisher for £10 very early in her career but it was never published while she lived. After her death her brother (and literary agent) Henry Austin bought it back from the publisher for the same ten pounds they had paid his sister many years before. The publisher was apparently unaware that Miss Austen was, by then, the anonymous authoress of four very popular novels. Northanger Abbey was finally published the year after Miss Austen's death.
It is Austen's most overtly comedic book and is the book where we most clearly hear her voice as author. In her later, more mature, works she stands back and speaks only through her characters, but in this early, somewhat self-indulgent book she is very much a presence, commenting wittily on her ingenuous heroine, on the virtues and uses of novels, and on the literary scene as a whole. The prose is much more playful than in her later work and parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny. Here's a bit where our heroine, Catherine, is greeted by her friend, Mrs. Allen, who is something of an air-head:
Catherine found Mrs. Allen just returned from all the busy idleness of the morning, and was immediately greeted with, "Well, my dear, here you are," a truth which she had no greater inclination than power to dispute...
Elizabeth Klett's reading of the book is very nearly perfect. Her intonations are spot on and she does a very good job of giving each character a subtly distinctive voice that helps the listener sort out who is who in long multi-way conversations. She reads at a good pace and never stumbles over any of the peculiar phrases or odd word orderings that sound strange to modern ears and tend to trip up other readers. Her Northanger Abbey gives testament to just how good a volunteer-produced, public-domain audiobook can be.
For those of you who are not local to the Research Triangle area in North Carolina and have been wondering about our experiences with Hurricane Irene, I have a few photos of the aftermath here in the Triangle. For the most part, in Cary Hurricane Irene gave us a fairly breezy rainy day. For those of us who secretly look forward to hurricanes it was a bit of a letdown. But it was not without some effects:
Fortunately, I have seen the affected homeowners this morning and they are already at work rebuilding after yesterday's storm.
Update: 30 August 2011
It's been a funny week. I posted this joke about a tree limb falling and the next day we had a thunderstorm come through and about an hour after the storm was over the tree I was writing about dropped about a ton of broken wood and wet leaves at the end of our driveway. The teleospouse and I had gone out for a late supper when our next door neighbor called to say a big branch had fallen but missed the car. I didn't get any photos of the branch where it fell because we had to saw it up and move it last night so we could get the cars out this morning. Here's where the branch broke off:
Now that the branch it gone it is easy to see the bit of yellow insulation that hung up in the tree when a tornado destroyed a Lowe's Home Improvement store this past spring and spread bits of debris over the whole county. It's about 25 feet off the ground and well beyond the reach of my ladder so it will be there for a while.
I wish I had gotten better shots of the pile-o-wood but I only had a minute to snap a shot or two on my way out the door to go to work. Here's the wife bundling up some of the leafy bits for the yard waste pickup. This pile she is standing behind is about 1/3 of the cut up branch.
The tree in question, by the way, is a Bradford Pear. A Bradford Pear is a very poorly engineered tree -- after it is about eight years old it will have grown more heavy foliage that its relatively fragile wood can support. They are famous for falling apart in the wind or an ice storm. They are one of the things I offer as proof of the existence of God; a poorly engineered tree requires a spotty engineer. The obvious mistakes in the way the tree was made seem to require a creator having an off day.
It has been pointed out to me by readers who have come to my blog looking for something in particular, that I tend to ramble. For any such no-nonsense readers who have come to this page looking for specific information about BestPricePhote.com and my experiences with them, I have color-coded this posting. Notice the background color of this paragraph. To skip the fluffy bits just hit the old scroll wheel and only read the stuff that is this color. Or, you can just read the Jack Web Version (Just the facts, Ma'am).
Still with me? I call that blue-gray color dodofo. Dodofo is my made-up Japanese word for the color with the RGB hexidecimal code #D0D0F0. But I digress; I had intended to start my review with some observations on nuclear weapons and Dave Letterman's jokes. Sorry. I'll try to stay on track.
Letterman and the Bomb:
The fusion reaction in a hydrogen bomb is really hard to trigger. It needs a more-traditional atomic-fission bomb just to set it off. Similarly, David Letterman has only one joke and it never fails -- he has made a career of that one joke -- but it needs another joke to set it off. It works like this: Dave stands in front of the camera and tells a cheesy joke. For a second nothing happens, Dave grins. Then the audience starts to think about Dave telling that stupid joke to millions of people on national TV. Half the insomniacs in the US have tuned in to hear Dave tell that dopey joke. It's absurd that he would offload such a dud on a highly-rated show. Absurd and funny. The audience laughs. It works. Every. Time. Brilliant!
I mention Dave's ever-funny joke to get you in the mood to understand why Gabora, the Gorilla Girl has always been my favorite sideshow on the midway. To see Gabora costs each rube a couple of bucks. The audience stands around in a scruffy tent waiting for the show to start, then the Emcee (who doubles as ticket-taker) puts a rope across the entrance, closes the tent flap, steps to the front and goes into his spiel. He tells about Gabora who is from [some geographically unlikely part of] Africa and who escaped [from something bad -- witch doctor, mad scientist, something like that] and who, because of her experiences there, will turn into a gorilla if hypnotized.
The curtain opens and we see a bored-looking girl, in a rabbit-skin bikini, standing in an alcove behind heavy iron bars. The Emcee goes into his hypnotic cadence "Think 'gorilla,' Gabora! Gorilla! Gorilla! Gorilla!" and sure enough, as the light goes down on one side of the dusty half-silvered mirror and comes up on the other, Gabora is transformed. Actually, since the guy in the gorilla suit behind the mirror is never quite on his mark she is not merely transformed, but translated as well, the gorilla being several inches to the right or left of her reflection.
Once the back-stage rheostat has been turned all the way and the transformation is complete, the gorilla beats his chest, runs forward, grabs the handle on the mirror to slide it out of the way (with a sound like a sliding glass door), runs forward to the bars and pushes them down. This is the exciting part. The bars really are heavy. They make a loud bang as they hit the indentations that years of previous shows have made on the plywood stage.
At this point the gorilla runs out into the tent and rampages through the audience as they exit. On nights and weekends, when the take justifies the expense, they will sometimes have a shill in the audience to scream and run out of the tent for an extra thrill. The whole show takes about three minutes. Everyone in the audience is thinking "For this, I paid two bucks?" But it is fun in a stupid sort of way. What most people in the audience don't realize is that it was fun because of the two bucks. If it didn't cost you it wouldn't work. It's like Letterman's joke.
A Memorable Moment on the Sidewalks of New Orleans:
I remember once, when I was a much younger man, some friends and I were attending a convention in New Orleans. Three of us slipped out to check out some of the strip-joints near Bourbon Street. At one point one of my friends had gone to the bar to get a drink and another had gone to the head when one of the girls approached me and asked if I was interested in a private show "in the back." I mentioned my friends and she said that there would be room for all three of us and she could set it up for twenty bucks. That sounded interesting so I ponied up and she directed me to some chairs set up nearer to the stage. Oh, I thought, that's where "in the back" is -- kinda disappointing.' I guess the show was better from there but we shared our "private" show with several other patrons who seemed to be drunker that we were and to have a better time. I was also distracted by a sign plainly posted on the wall that said that seats in our "VIP" area were $5.00. I had paid $20.00 for three. But, oh well... What the heck. I tried to forget the sign and watch the girls but it was a struggle.
When we left the bar, not long afterwards, I confessed to my friends that I had been taken -- that I had let one of the girls convince me to pay twenty bucks for us to sit on the other side of the room. One of my friend's mouth dropped open. "But," he sputtered "I paid twenty dollars for the show." We glanced at the third member of our party. He stared at his feet for a minute and then nodded. That was a great moment -- standing there on the sidewalk like hayseeds who had come to the big city to be fleeced. We had been taken by experts. The girls had waited for exactly the right moment, when we were separated, and had acted with skill and precision. A good hustle has all the elements of a magic trick -- the pledge, the turn, misdirection, the prestige -- they were all there and they were perfect. We never had a clue. It was an honor to get to see it... and well worth sixty bucks.
Brooklyn Camera Shops:
So, having established the compensatory pleasures of appreciating a skillful ripoff, even when it costs you money, we come to the attractions offered by Brooklyn photographic equipment discounters in general, and BestPricePhoto.com in particular.
A bit of background before we turn on the dodofo and invite our impatient friends to rejoin us: When purchasing discounted photographic equipment from online vendors one makes certain allowances. The product will frequently have passed through the inventory of several vendors who, for whatever reason, found it difficult to sell, so it is not unexpected for the packaging to be shopworn. Packages will frequently have been opened and the contents rearranged; items packaged to be sold as bundled kits may have been separated and sold individually. With a first-tier retail merchant, any of these things would be cause for complaint. But when you are bottom-fishing in the discount market they are par for the course.
What one should insist on is that the shipment contains the equipment listed in the advertisement, and that the equipment is in the condition described. Manufacturer’s warranties are of particular significance in such transactions since one of the possible reasons the equipment wound up in the discount market is that there is a problem with the equipment and, since the vendors who sell such equipment online frequently have limited resources to deal with product complaints, a valid manufacturer’s warranty offers some assurance to the buyer and is factored into his buying decision.
I found BestPricePhoto.com through Google's shopping application. Their offering wasn't the least expensive one I found -- another dealer sells refurbished Nikon D7000s for a bit less -- but they were slightly less expensive than Amazon.com and claimed to be selling new products with US warranties. Here's the ad to which I responded:
The ad to which I responded in making my purchase (see above) listed the following:
• Battery
• Charger
• Eyepiece Shield
• Rubber Eyecup
• USB Cable
• A/V Cable
• Camera Strap
• Hot-Shoe Cover
• Body Cap
• Software Suite CD-ROM (incl. ViewNX)
• 1-Year Limited Warranty [emphasis added, not in original]
The term “USA Warranty” should be mentioned here since it is intended to reassure buyers that they are not buying gray market merchandise. When photographic equipment manufacturers build their products the serial number of each unit is associated with the market into which it is to be sold. For Nikon, as I recall, the regions are: the US, Canada, the Americas (except for US and Canada), Europe, Japan, Asia(except for Japan),and Oceanea (Australia, New Zealand). “Gray Market” equipment is anything sold outside of the market for which it was made. Manufacturers generally will not honor the warranty for gray market products and Nikon USA, in particular, is very restrictive in that most Nikon service facilities will not even offer out-of-warranty, paid service for gray market products. It is neither illegal nor unethical to openly sell gray market cameras provided that the buyer is not misled about their gray market status, but because of their lack of a manufacturer’s warranty and the longer-term difficulty in getting service, they command lower prices.
An example of a reputable company that sells gray market products is B&H Photo. They don't carry gray market digital cameras but do carry gray market Nikon lenses which are clearly identified in their catalog and each entry has a link to an explanation of how the product is supported. Here is their policy on the gray market products they sell.
The First Act: The Order Confirmation Phone Call
Before your online order is processed, BestPricePhoto will give you a call to make sure the order is legitimate and correct, and to help you select additional accessories you might not have thought of when you placed your order. When I spoke to Chris, who helped me with my order, he asked if I wanted the "two hour" or the "four hour" battery. The item list for my order included a battery, of course, but BestPricePhoto has several upgrade batteries available. I declined his offer but later I looked up the batteries they have available for the D7000.
What is shown here is their advertised price. Five-star reviews from grateful customers have suggested that BestPricePhoto will frequently give discounts on these batteries when ordered to replace the battery that comes in the kit.
But the funny thing is... There is only one battery that can go in the battery compartment of a Nikon D7000 -- the Nikon EN-EL15. It's a new battery and the knock-off battery manufacturers haven't gotten around to it. There's no such thing as a higher-capacity version, nor a "demo" battery. If any other battery existed you could find it on eBay. Try searching for "nikon d7000 battery -charger -grip -mb-d11 -door -multi" and see if anything but EN-EL15 pops up. Oh, and Nikon's suggested list price? As of this writing, $72.95. So, you might be tempted to ask, if the camera comes with a battery, what is in those other options? I dunno. My theory: Profit Margin
Act two: Fun with my Credit Card
The next event in the sequence is BestPricePhoto's efforts to charge my credit card. The first time they sent it through AmEx declined it as suspicious. I received email both from BPP's billing department and from AmEx both saying the charge had been declined and asking me to verify it. I didn't think much of it at the time. Credit card companies will often call to verify a charge that seems 'unusual' and I don't place orders of that size with online dealers all the time. I called AmEx, verified that I had expected a charge for that amount on that date and then called BestPricePhoto to tell them they could try again. Oddly, later, when I was reviewing my credit card transactions,I noticed that the first attempt to put the charge through (the one that was declined) showed the merchant as MCJ DISCOUNTS INC while the second (successful) charge shows the merchant as
8887821617BESTPRICEPHOTOBROOKLYNNY Doing Business As: 8887821617BESTPRICEPHOTOC Merchant Address: 2380 60TH ST BROOKLYN NY 11204
The only things the Google search engine could come up with for MCJ DISCOUNTS INC was that it was incorporated in May of this year (three months ago) and its address is 80 Broad St New York, NY 10004 (fifth floor).
It was good to get an address for BestPricePhoto.com, though. Web sites are so impersonal. After calls to confirm my order, and calls to get an invoice, calls about my credit card, calls to get tracking information, etc., etc., I was really starting to feel like I knew those guys. I think there are three of them but I've only talked to two. It was fun to know where they worked so I could visualize them while I had them on the phone.
I was going to use a screen shot from Google Maps Street View to show the address but the last time the camera car went down that street seems to be quite a while ago and several businesses have come and gone in the interim. I was fortunate to find Don Wiss' page where he has photos of most of the Brooklyn Camera Store storefronts (http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/). I sent him a note asking if I could use his photo of the building but he said it was too old and he would send me a newer one. His newest photo is still a couple of months old and the "going out of business" signs may be gone. And to be totally fair: the building shown in the photo has two addresses. The "going out of business" shop (at 2378) may not be related. BestPricePhoto.com, technically, does business out of the whited-out door on the right (2380).
Act three:My Nikon D7000 Arrives
My camera was waiting for me when I came home from work nine days after I launched my order. Even with the delays involved in getting the credit card charge to go through they had gotten it to me within the time I was told to expect. So the shipping was OK; I'll give them that. And the contents of the shipment were, at first glance, more or less what I expected: A Nikon box for a D7000+lens kit with the 18-105mm lens pulled out, presumably to sell separately. The promised "accessory pack" was a no-show; no toy tripod, no memory card wallet, but I hadn't wanted that stuff anyway and I didn't care. The accessories I did care about -- users manual, battery, charger, strap, etc., were all there and seemed in good order. BUT a few things were missing...
The box contained no "quick start guide" and no warranty paperwork of any sort. I checked the users manual to see if there was a section on the warranty in there. No go. I did some online research and found discussions that said that Nikon DSLR bodies don't require a paper warranty card -- you can just register them online. I tried that. The Nikon product registration page didn't like my serial number.
A note on the value of Warranties: Modern digital cameras are surprisingly reliable. Occasionally, you will find one with a manufacturing defect that keeps it from working right out of the box, but usually they will work fine throughout the warranty period. Less expensive cameras are less durable and tend to wear out after a while -- but still long after the warranty is over -- and the vast majority of purchasers of such cameras will never have occasion to find out if their warranty is worth anything. Additionally, no one expects to get their cheap camera repaired once it is out of warranty -- they just throw it away and buy another one -- so out of warranty repairs on a hundred and thirty-dollar camera are not an issue. But for cameras costing anywhere north of five hundred dollars, with an expected useful lifetime that can run into the decades, matters are different. More on that later.
Act four: Misdirection
I called BestPricePhoto and spoke with “Raymond” who appears to be their entire customer service department. I mentioned the lack of warranty documentation. His response, as I recall: “Oh, did they forget to put that in?” I also mentioned my inability to register the camera with Nikon. His response was that they worked directly with a Nikon service facility and that they would handle the process of registering the camera. He promised me a certificate of warranty “straight from Nikon” and made me hold the phone while he “had the Nikon guys send it to me.” After a few minutes wait he said he had the certification and would send it to me along with another copy of my invoice so everything would be together. In a few minutes another email arrived. Here are the more interesting parts of it...
It's really remarkable the pull that BestPricePhotos's service center's Nikon Guys have with the company. Nikon USA seems to be filled with rage at the gray market -- often willing to alienate their own customers if they think it might depress the value of gray market products -- but when BestPricePhoto's guys at the "Nikon" service center ask Nikon to fix up a gray market camera with a warranty, they apparently say: "Well, as a favor to youse guys I guess it's OK..."
For those of you who aren't into photography, let me tell a story that illustrates what a remarkable document they had sent me.
A satanist walks into a church, saying he wants to confess his sins and seek forgiveness. He says that he has reached an age where satanism just isn't as much fun as it used to be. The thrill of human sacrifice has faded; he has grown too fat for orgies and is sure that he looks ridiculous at them; finding virgins to despoil on alters grows more difficult every month and he is ready to change teams. He asks the priest if anything can be done. The priest ask for a small donation -- for the work of the church -- and walks off. A few minutes later he returns with a piece of paper and gives it to the satanist. As the satanist reads it he becomes more and more amazed. "I had hoped there might be some hope," he said, "but I never expected full absolution in the form of a hand-written note from the Pope!... and in a Lutheran church!"
Act five: Someone in the Audience Sees the Trap Door!
My “certification of warranty” didn’t mention a warranty at all – no warranty period, no description of coverage, nothing – it was merely an assurance that my product had been registered for me. Also, the telephone number provided was the toll-free number for BestPricePhoto and, being, I’m afraid, a suspicious person, I wondered if the note had actually come “from Nikon” as claimed.
I contacted someone who does work for Nikon (but has asked not to be identified), providing him with the text of the note above and asking if the warranty it described was likely to be legitimate. His opinion: "None of the information you provided looks legitimate. If the serial number of the D7000 is 6223221, this is not a USA model."
I called BestPriceCamera and, once again, spoke to Raymond. I told him that the warranty confirmation he had sent, since it contained no information about what was warranted, for how long, what would be fixed or by whom, was not sufficient and that I considered his advertisement deceptive and wanted to return the camera. At this point he offered to give me a warranty in writing and to extend the warranty to three years at no charge. He told me that the warranty would be offered by CSPCentral.com and that I should look into them and I would be satisfied. He sent another invoice, this time including a three year warranty (paperwork to be shipped at a future date). The line item on the invoice contains no indication of who will be providing the warranty, again allowing credulous customers to think it is Nikon.
I researched CSPCentral.com and found that, while they have a well-designed website, their reputation for servicing warranties on high-dollar items was spotty. It didn’t help that the address provided on the CSPCentral “Contact Us” page -- 1678 McDonald Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11230 – was exactly one block from the address for BestPriceCameras. I saw this as a negative because at this point I had had rather enough of Brooklyn for a while. A am once again indebted to Don Wiss for this photo of CPSCentral',s storefront:
Those not familiar with Brooklyn addresses might find this map useful. Point "A" is BestPricePhoto.com and point "B" is CPSCentral. View Larger Map
A Few Thoughts About Online Reputation
One problem one has when complaining about one's treatment by an online merchant is how many happy, contented customers they have -- how many five-star ratings they have been given. One feels about as welcome as the guy in the third row at a magic show who yells things about mirrors and shaved cards. Most of BestPricePhoto's customers are blissfully happy with their transactions, and many of them have every reason to be. They were looking to buy a working, inexpensive camera at a discount price. And that's what they got. There may be a few line items -- for accessories and upgrades -- where they have paid more for showmanship than for value, but they are happy with the bottom line nonetheless. The ones who have purchased the less expensive cameras may have been ever-so-slightly ripped off in the warranty department but warranties for cheap cameras are of very little value anyway so, hey, if they are happy with the camera, why not?
It's the people like me -- people who fall for their "Hot Deal Today Only" special on the more-expensive 'enthusiast' cameras -- who queer the deal for everybody. If we are sold an expensive camera that we plan to use for many years and it has no warranty, or a warranty of limited value, and if it will be difficult to obtain service for the lifetime of the camera, then we have been harmed. Many of us won't know there will be problems getting service for the camera for years and when we do find out most of us will be mad at Nikon.
Act six: The Curtain Comes Down
I decided that I could not accept BestPriceCamera’s latest offer since: 1) what was shipped was not what was advertised, specifically a camera with a US warranty; 2) When questioned about the warranty BestPriceCamera had made a concerted effort to conceal the warranty status of the camera, including sending me a an email claiming to come from Nikon; and 3) the substitute they offered when they realized they could not convince me the camera had a Nikon warranty was not a fair substitute.
I called BestPriceCamera back and told Raymond that, having looked into the matter I still needed to return the camera and that, if charged a restocking fee, I would contest it since the product shipped was not as described when I ordered. Before he would issue the return authorization he had me go to his website and view a different listing for the D7000. He was hoping to convince me that I had received a gray market camera because I had mistakenly ordered the “Nikon D7000, 16.2 MP Digital SLR Camera Body” instead of the “Nikon D7000, 16.2 MP Digital SLR Camera Body -USA Retail Kit With Long Life Battery & Quick Charger”. It is impossible for me to know what I would have received if I had ordered the other (slightly more expensive) item but if you open both offers and look at the “This Product Includes” list you will see that both kits have the same exact contents listed including the same exact wording for the “one year limited warranty”.
The camera has gone back and a replacement ordered from Amazon.com. Whether I wind up paying the 10% 'restocking fee' to BestPriceCamera remains to be seen.
Since the Teleospouse is an occasional reader of my blog let me start by pointing out that this is partly her fault. OK, actually, she shares the blame with our friends Calvin and Pat, and -- ever so slightly, I suppose -- with me. But it's not mostly my fault. If the caterer at Calvin and Pat's wedding reception hadn't served the chicken -- or if my lovely wife hadn't pointed out its superior tenderness or how much she liked it -- then the soldering iron would have stayed safely in the toolbox in the garage and Sunday dinner could be cooked without referring to the USDA FSIS Time-temperature Tables for Cooking Ready-to-eat Poultry Products.
What was obvious about the chicken at the reception was that it had not been cooked the way chicken is usually cooked -- baked in a hot, dry oven to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees Fahrenheit (the temperature recommended by the 1999 USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service rules for the cooking of uncured poultry.) A chicken breast cooked to 160 degrees is safe to eat; at that temperature it will be pasteurized in something under fifteen seconds. But it will also have the dry, tough and rather chewy texture that explains why a half bucket of leftover fried chicken will consist mostly of breasts that were ignored while people dug for the juicy, less-temperature-sensitive legs and thighs.
I am a fairly good cook. When the wife mentions that she has enjoyed a dish we have while we are out and about my first thought is to try to figure out how to make it at home. The caterer's inexplicably-tender chicken breast required a bit of research. After many long hours of flogging Google's search engine I think I know: a) how the caterer cooked the chickens they served, and b) a method available to a home cook to achieve something similar although it would be difficult to create an exact duplicate without expensive, commercial-grade equipment.
What a) and b) above have in common is that they rely on more recent standards released by the USDA that provide guidelines for pasteurizing meat and poultry at lower internal temperatures by holding that temperature for a longer time. The same germ-killing goodness that is achieved by holding the internal temperature of a chicken breast at 160 degrees for 15 seconds can be achieved by holding it at 155 degrees for 45 seconds or at 150 degrees for three minutes or at 140 degrees for half an hour. Please note that this is the internal temperature -- the temperature of that coolest spot right in the middle of the meat -- not the temperature of the oven or the surface of the skin. For a chicken breast to be safe to eat when you cook it to an internal temperature of 140 degrees that coolest spot in the center has to be at least 140 degrees for at least half an hour.
As for item a) -- how the caterer probably cooked the chicken (and the tenderloin) served at the reception -- my guess is that it involved a commercial steam/electric/convection combination oven (something like this one, for instance). As to whether this sort of thing is also available to the home cook, and thus is a candidate for the answer to item b), it would depend on your budget, and on the size of your kitchen and how much highfaluting plumbing and wiring you are willing to install. For most home kitchens I expect the $20,000 price tag would be a problem. But if you have the dough, and if you have a really big, industrial-style kitchen, and if the idea of cooking ten nearly-perfect roasted chickens at the same time appeals to you, then by all means get yourself a steam/electric combo oven and stop reading now.
...
Still here? I thought so.
The other way to cook a chicken breast similar to the one served at the reception is to cook it in a controlled-temperature water (or oil) bath at, say, 138 degrees Fahrenheit until it is thoroughly cooked through, and then pop it is a hot pan (or under a broiler) for a few seconds to brown the skin. To keep it from getting too waterlogged during the extended cooking session you probably want to put the chicken in a vacuum-sealed plastic package to protect it from the water. This cooking process (which you will have seen if you watch the show "Iron Chef" on TV) is called Sous Vide (say it "soo VEEd") from the French term which, I am told, means "under vacuum."
<Mister-Wizard-segment>
To understand the necessity for the water bath, imagine yourself setting your oven to 140 degrees, putting in your raw chicken and climbing in with it yourself. Ok... there are a couple of problems with my thought experiment. First, your oven can't be set that cool, and second, you won't fit. So let's try again. Imagine setting your sauna to a rather-cool 140 degrees and taking in the raw chicken with you. That's easier.
Assuming that you have given the temperature time to equalize before you climb in with your dead avian friend, everything in the sauna will be at 140 degrees -- the rocks on the heater, the air, the cedar bench -- all 140 degrees, assuming that nothing is wet (we'll get to that later). When you plop you flabby thighs on the cedar bench a thermal tug-of-war ensues. The 140 degree cedar will give up heat trying to get your skin up to its temperature, and your skin will pull heat out of the cedar which will cool it down. At the point of contact a compromise temperature will quickly be reached. Since the lightweight cedar has a low specific heat (it can't hold much heat energy,) and since your skin has a much higher specific heat, the resulting temperature at the interface will be much closer to skin temperature than to cedar temperature. And, since cedar is a poor conductor of heat the temperature will tend to stay fairly cool and the hot bench won't burn you butt (or cook your chicken, for that matter.)
Of course, while the cedar is a good thermal insulator it isn't perfect. Heat will continue to flow from the rest of the bench to the part touching your thigh, and on into your skin, and through the layer of flab to your gluteus maximus, and from there it proceeds into your bloodstream and all over your body. You will gradually get hot. That's why you get into a sauna. But you won't really cook because when your skin temperature goes up you will begin to sweat and the evaporation will cool the parts of you exposed to the air. (The part sitting on the cedar bench will stay hot and start to make an ass-shaped puddle.)
Your chicken, being dead, can't sweat, so it will heat up faster. (Do birds sweat, actually, by the way? I'm not sure. Dogs don't -- except for a little bit on their feet -- they keep cool by panting and drooling. I dunno how birds keep cool.) But chicken meat is wet and there will be considerable heat lost to evaporation. Also, neither air nor cedar is a good conductor of heat and, even without the loss to evaporation, it would take a long time for the chicken to get to the internal temperature where bacterial growth stops -- a bit over 130 degrees -- given that the temperature of the sauna is not that much hotter. Clearly we need a way to bring the bird up to temperature faster so it doesn't spend too much time doing the funky chicken before it finally cooks.
There's a couple of things that would help -- we could pour some water on the hot rocks to increase the humidity and minimize evaporative heat loss, or we could point a fan at the chicken to blow hot air against the chicken (the fancy-schmancy oven I mentioned above does both) -- but the easiest thing is to surround the chicken with something that has a higher specific heat, such as 140 degree hot water. To see how that works remember what happened in our thought experiment when the back of your thigh met the 140 degree cedar bench. Now imagine that the carpenter who built the bench left an exposed nail head -- let's make it a big twenty-penny nail, a full half-ounce of 140 degree, buttocks-searing iron -- and that you sat on it. The thermal tug-of-war where your thigh touches the nail head will go differently than before. That nail will have rather more heat energy available to try to bring your skin up towards its temperature. Even though the nail starts out at the same 140 degrees as the surrounding cedar it will feel hotter when you sit on it. You will notice it.
So if you have a sauna and you want to use it to cook chickens at the same time as you beat yourself with birch branches, the trick is to have a fifty-gallon steel drum filled with 140 degree hot water in the corner. Open the lid of the drum and drop in your chicken. Put the lid back on the drum so evaporation doesn't cool the water. While you are doing the traditional Finnish sauna thing -- shower, get in, sit and sweat, get out, shower again, get back in, flog yourself with the vihta... lather, rinse, repeat -- don't forget to open the lid occasionally and give the water a stir (so the water near the chicken stays hot). After about an hour of Scandinavian fun you chicken should be pasteurized and safe to eat. Voila! as the Fins say when speaking French.
</Mister-Wizard-segment> Since I don't have a sauna, that plan was out. Also out was the eight-hundred dollar gadget at Williams-Sonoma, although I do admire it. It's a little too rich for my blood. Here's their video:
The three-hundred dollar Sous Vide Demi Supreme is also tempting but still more than I want to spend. Then there are several controller units that you plug your rice cooker or crock pot into to control the temperature (here and here). They cost about $150 if you shop around. Candidly, they probably represent the most sensible option but I am still too cheap.
Which brings us to the do-it-yourself kits on eBay. Here's the one I bought:
The price was about fifty bucks but the vendor is in Canada and the shipping set me back another twenty-five.
Of course the kit only includes the key components. There are one or two more items you will need to put together a working device. Here's my kit along with the other items I bought to make it work:
Many of the above objects are things that someone who frequently tinkers with electronics would have on hand, but I didn't. If you add the price of all the wires, jacks, fuse holders, grommets, twist connectors, etc. to the price of my kit you start to get awfully close to the price of the pre-assembled controller... but, if I had bought that I would have missed all the fun of making it myself. *sigh*
One thing that makes it hard to decide how much to claim I spent on the project is how to account for the stuff I had left over. Lots of items I needed came in large packs. I used one of the thirty-one grommets in the bag below and two of the twenty-five twist connectors.
I had planned to make the cutouts in my dollar-store plastic box by drilling a pilot hole and then shaping the hole with a nibbler. Unfortunately, the nibbler needs a fairly sizable pilot hole and the plastic box has a tendency to shatter when you try to drill it. I found it easier use a Dremel multi-purpose cutting bit both for drilling and for shaping the holes. It gives you a messy looking cut but I had face plates to cover the messy bits.
The outlet assembly has jumpers that join both socket's line connectors and both socket's common connectors so that both plugs can share a single line and a single common connection if desired. Here I am breaking the jumper off on the line side to separate the two outlets. I want one of them to be controlled by the temperature controller (so I can plug in my crock pot) and the other to be live whenever the switch is turned on (so I can plug in the aquarium air pump that drives the circulator.)
Here is what the finished product looked like. The power cord comes in on your right through the rubber grommet. A few twists of electrical tape around the cord just inside the grommet provide strain relief. The line connection goes to the switch and is split three ways coming out of the switch. It goes to the circulator outlet, to the solid state relay and through the 1-amp fuse to the PID controller. The dc output of the PID controller goes to the input side of the SSR which causes it to drive both the crock-pot outlet and the neon lamp when it is turned on. The common (ground) return wiring completes the AC wiring which is generally to the right of the PID controller. One the left (yellow wires) is the wiring for the temperature sensor jacks. I tried to keep the AC and the sensor wiring separated to avoid crosstalk that might corrupt the temperature reading.
Since the photo of my wiring is not particularly helpful and since my description in the preceding paragraph is probably indecipherable, I have drawn a schematic. The PID controller came with a manual (of sorts.) I can't be sure but, from the way it reads the manual was translated to English from its original Klingon by drunken elves.
One of the parts of the manual that can be made out is a schematic somewhat similar to the above. A few parts are mislabeled in the schematic in the manual and, oddly, it shows the SSR between the heating element and ground. This seemed less safe to me since it would mean the crock-pot connection would have line voltage present even when the relay was off. In my device (and in my schematic) the SSR controls the application of line voltage to the heating device and the ground is always connected.
When I finished the wiring, checked my connections, plugged the device in and turned it on there were two problems that slowed me down. First, the wire I used to connect the PID controller to the jacks for the temperature sensor were stranded and when I soldered the connection to the jack plugs a stray strand caused a short circuit. This caused the temperature to read -199.9 degrees Centigrade at all times. I found the short and fixed it which corrected the temperature reading. The other problem was that the neon indicator light -- which was supposed to show that the crock-pot heater was turned on -- was lit up all the time. After hours of research I decided that the SSR had enough leakage current when it was in the "off" state to light the neon bulb. I could add a bleeder resistor in parallel with the lamp to fix the problem -- or I could let the crock-pot heater serve as the bleeder resistor and remember that the neon lamp only indicates correctly when the crock pot is plugged in and turned on.
Here is the device holding the crock pot at 57 degrees Centigrade (about 134 Fahrenheit). The PID controller has a self-configuration process where it measures the parameters of the device it controls and sets itself accordingly. It took about half an hour, during which time the temperature of the water went up and down by several degrees. The automatic configuration process seems to have worked well. The device holds the temperature of the crock pot within 0.1 degree Centigrade and seems quite stable.
Here is the whole setup operating in its place of honor on top of the chest freezer in the garage. It is holding a chuckeye roast at 57 C for 30 hours. I divided the roast into two pieces and sealed the pieces with sprigs of rosemary in ZipLock vacuum freezer bags. The ZipLock bags work quite well; you pump the air out with a cheap, washable plastic hand pump; the bags hold their vacuum well and are designed to go in the microwave so they resist temperatures up to, and slightly above, the boiling point of water.
If you look closely at the photo above you will see that the lid on the crock pot doesn't quite fit. It is the lid from our other (smaller) crock pot. There is a funny story about that but first, instructions for how to drill a hole in the lid of your crock pot for the temperature probe.
Please read these instructions to the end before starting. Be sure to wear safety glasses.
The best way to drill holes in glass is to use a diamond-dust-coated drill bit but you can use a less-expensive carbide bit to do one or two holes (after which it will be dulled). To drill a crock pot lid you select the location for the hole and place the lid upside down on a work surface you don't mind drilling into. Arrange the lid so the location to be drilled is the lowest point and pour half an inch of water into the lid. The water is to lubricate the drill and keep drill and glass from overheating. Work slowly. Don't force the bit; just keep a steady light pressure and stop occasionally to let any heat dissipate. You will notice that the water starts to get milky. This is from fine particles of glass suspended in the water. By this method you can drill a hole about half way through the tempered-glass lid of your crock pot. Then it will explode. Tell your wife you dropped it. Later you can confess in your blog.
The problem I had hoped to solve with the hole in the lid is the positioning of the temperature probe. The probe is stainless steel, about four inches long and nicely waterproof. I don't want to get the cord in the water since a leak at the place where the cord joins the probe might throw off the temperature reading. If you lay the probe on the rim of the crock pot and lay the lid on top it sits at too shallow an angle and barely touches the surface of the water. If you stick it in farther then the cord gets wet. Googling for other people who have made similar apparatus I found found crock pots that have screw-on handles that can be removed and the mounting hole used for the temperature probe. I am still working on the temperature probe / lid problem.
Here is a closeup of the crock pot it the lid off to show its contents. Inside are the two pieces of chuckeye roast and a circulator made from (hot-water-rated) CPVC pipes and joints, copper tubing and an aquarium air pump. Around the rim, clockwise starting at 9:00 are: the temperature probe for the PID controller; the temperature probe for my meat thermometer; the copper pipe that feeds the circulator and my frying/candy thermometer.
The circulator uses an air-lift to pump water; the bubbles rising in the vertical CPVC pipe lift water from the bottom of the crock and the water flows out the horizontal tube. The warm air flows out the top of the vertical tube and exits the crock through the gap between the crock and the lid (where are the pipes and wires and probes hold it up.) The circulator works fairly well (you can see the stream of water flowing out) but is a bit noisy and quite a bit of water is lost through evaporation. In a bit over 30 hours of operation I needed to top off the water five times. As well as cooking your food the rig makes a pretty good humidifier. As such it may be able to come in from the garage during the winter when warm, humidified air is more welcome than it is at the height of the warmest summer in NC since 1952.
Here is the reading on my meat thermometer. 57 degrees Centigrade is 134.6 Fahrenheit so we are a degree and a half off. That's may have something to do with the lid being removed (it had been reading 134 with the lid on) but is good enough anyway. The reason I have three thermometers going is that when you are using sous vide techniques to slow-cook rare meat at low temperatures you are only about ten degrees away from safety problems. Obviously with a newly homemade device I want a bit of confirmation that the temperature is right. It seemed OK. Next time I will omit the frying thermometer but the meat thermometer is probably a permanent fixture because of the added safety factor and because my PID controller only does Centigrade and it is handy to have the meat thermometer to remind me what temperature 57 C is in temperatures I can understand.
Results
ChuckEye:
When it was time to serve the chuck steaks I took the meat out of the bags and sliced each of the pieces in half (giving me four steaks, each about 1 1/2" thick). The (rare but thoroughly cooked) steaks went on a hot grill for a very quick sear and were served. They were quite tasty -- really good, actually, for such an inexpensive cut of beef -- but I think I over-salted them in the bag; they had a bit of a cured beef taste and texture (a bit like corned beef) and had lost quite a bit of liquid in the bag. But they were very tasty and I saved the beef tea from the bag to make onion soup the next day.
BBQ Chicken:
I did boneless thighs and deboned breasts. The thighs went in the sous vide first for two hours at 160 degrees (to soften the connecting tissue so they wouldn't be chewy) and then I dropped the temp to 140 and added the more-temperature-sensitive white meat for another hour and a half. When they came out I covered them with a smoky-sweet BBQ sauce and threw them on a very hot charcoal grill for just a bit of caramelization. It was very tasty but next time I may leave the ribs on the breasts to protect them from the heat on the grill while I am giving them the quick char.
Duplicating the Caterer's Chicken from the Reception:
Haven't attempted a whole chicken yet. I think I know how to proceed but they had a sale on rotisserie chickens last week at the store where we shop and we are a bit tired of roasted chicken right now. I'll keep you posted.
In General:
The electronics seem to work flawlessly; the temperature control is very good -- quite stable and recovers quickly without too much overshoot -- but the crock pot lid / temperature probe positioning issue is still a work in progress. Nor have I perfected my sous vide recipes quite yet. But I remain hopeful and will let you know.
Links:
My photoset on Flickr for this project contains a few more photos of the process with notes that may expand on the information provided here.
A commenter asked for a photo of my circulator. I don't have a good one so I drew the above diagram to give him/her ... OK, him since I can't imagine a female type asking that particular question ... where was I? Oh yes, to give him an idea how it works. The device consists of six short pieces of hot-water-rated PVC pipe, two tees, two elbows and about ten inches of small-guage copper tubing. An aquarium pump provides air through the copper tubing to lift water from the bottom of the crock pot to the top where it flows out the upper pipe while most of the air continues up and out the top. It works fairly well. All of the parts that are actually in the crock pot are rated for use with potable hot water. Nothing is glued -- I just put it together like tinker-toys each time I use it and pull it apart when I am done.
The main problem with it is that it pumps air into the crock pot which has to go somewhere so there is a constant flow of hot moist air out of the lid which condenses on nearby surfaces. In addition to making things damp this water needs to be replaced. While I am running the rig I need to add two ounces of water per hour to replace evaporation and keep the level constant.
Other people use fountain pumps but I am not sure I like them with hot water and cooking appliances. I would love to find a better circulator -- something that would do as good a job of circulating the water without requiring the air pump.
![Clinic%20Crew[1] by bigleehimself](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7018/6543134747_fe5cc0e479.jpg)
