Ted's Blog

After the first time I signed up for the Disney Movie Club in 2016, I kept finishing my commitments and re-enrolling in the club. I enrolled a total of six times and built up a huge library of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars movies, mostly blu-rays. It was never a good deal for 4k movies. In total I got 77 titles for $546, an average of just over $7 each. Included in that total is the help I got from 9 people who signed up using my refer a friend code, giving me 2 free movies each time for which I only had to pay shipping, if that. Last October or so they got rid of the promotion codes that gave you the best deal and I cancelled membership number 6 after not ordering anything for almost two years. I was waiting to get enough titles that I wanted for a new enrollment of six movies, but I had most everything I needed and would try to get 4k copies of newer releases at Best Buy or Target when they went on sale instead of blu-rays through DMC. Today they announced the end of the club after 23 years (a big number for Disney). Existing members will have until May to get orders in and new memberships are no longer allowed.

It was also revealed that day that Disney would turn over production, marketing, and distribution of DVD’s and blu-rays to Sony while Disney would focus on digital purchases and streaming. It will be interesting to see how that plays out, but doubtful it will be anything that positive as the popularity of physical media continues to wane.

When I was a kid they sold windshield wiper refills at gas stations and it seems like they were pretty cheap. But once I actually had my own car, you had to replace the whole wiper. If you did a little shopping you could still get them for a somewhat reasonable price of maybe $3-$5 each (honestly the cheapest ones never seemed to last very long). I had Honda Civics and then the Mazda3 which both had a U bend at the end of the cars windshield arm and it was pretty easy attaching the new off-brand ones to that, though it bothered me to throw away most of the assembly. Now I have a 2020 Ford Escape. After 3 years, the blades weren’t working well anymore so I went to Walmart to get new ones and they were out of one size I needed, so I bought one and then a month or two later they had the other one in stock and I bought it, though I was a little nervous I was buying the same size I already had. Ultimately it didn’t matter because neither would attach to my car. Instead of a U, there was a pinch connector attachment that Ford uses and nobody sells for anything reasonable. If you go to the dealer, they want like $70 for a new pair of wipers, which is insane. You can look around and maybe find some for more like $50, which is still insane. To make it more complicated, Ford has attached aerodynamic vanes to the wipers which means you can buy wipers with the vanes pointing the wrong, unaerodynamic, direction if you aren’t careful (though it seems like all wipers go up and to the left; maybe in British countries they go the other way).

I looked around for wipers where you could just replace the rubber blade. I found one company that would sell you a new wiper and that wiper would take blade refills, but you still had to shell out a lot for their wipers the first time (and the replacements weren’t cheap). I wondered if you could get a mechanic to just replace the Ford arms with arms that had a more standard U end, but that seemed doubtful. Amazon has just the rubber blade part, but there are a lot of different sizes and cross-sectional shapes. The basic measurement is the width of the flat back end of the blade. I was able to pull the blade out of one of my wipers and measured 5 mm, which again doesn’t seem very standard, but I did find one company that sold 5 mm blade refills and the shape seemed like it might work. In the picture above, the new blade is on the left and the old one is on the right.

They arrived today and I installed them. The shape isn’t exactly the same, so they were harder to slide into the groove, but not too bad. I got two pairs for $13 (still too much for just 4 strips of rubber) and you cut them to length with scissors. If each pair lasts a year, then that will get me to 5 years, half the expected time I will have the car, and then maybe I can buy new wipers since they are definitely showing wear from the sun and use. I haven’t actually tested them in the rain yet, so we will see how that goes.

A few weeks ago Best Buy announced it would stop selling selling DVD’s and Blu-rays in 2024. They, as well as Walmart and Target, have been shrinking their media section for years, so it makes sense those other two may stop selling movies soon as well. I’ve been writing about Black Fridays for years and what movies I picked up, but this might be the last time that happens. Like last year, there aren’t really any ads anymore featuring all of the movies that will be on sale on Black Friday. And without those ads things are chaotic. Like in past years, Black Friday isn’t really one day so much as the whole month of November, though maybe not as spread out as during Covid when they were trying to keep crowds down.

Best Buy started things off with its first Black Friday sale on October 27-29, but only for paying members of Best Buy Plus or Total Tech. For “everyone else” the sale was to start October 30. They did have some good deals for members in that first round with a number of 4k blu-ray movies priced around $9.99. Plus I had saved up $40 worth of Best Buy rewards from points earned on my Best Buy credit card that would lower the price even further. But when the sale for everyone else came along on October 30, the deals were off. A few days later a couple of arty movies came out at only $6.99 on blu-ray (no 4k available) including The Menu, Banshees of Inisherin, and Empire of Light. I didn’t like Banshees, hadn’t seen Menu, and Light didn’t get good reviews, so I used a $5 certificate to get The Menu¹ for $1.99. Those went out of stock fairly quickly, but kept coming back sporadically and Amazon would match the price while they were available.
Continue reading “The Last Black Friday?”

A few years ago I bought a new hose that I could use with my new pressure washer. I don’t want anything expensive, but my old hose lasted a pretty long time and really the only thing wrong with it was the outlet end threads were worn down since I never screw anything onto the end (and I had replaced the gasket at the spigot end a few times, but it still leaks). I got the new hose at Walmart, something in the middle range, and not too long since those always seem to get tangled worse. I didn’t realize it, but the metal fittings on each end were not the usual brass, but aluminum with a coating to make them look like they are brass. I keep that hose hooked up to a spigot on the back patio so I can use it to clean off Buddy Baer’s feet when he get them caked in dirt digging holes (at least once a day).

As I was moving the hose to sweep underneath it the crappy aluminum gave way and tore halfway loose from where it attaches to the spigot. So now I needed either a new hose or a kit where you cut the end off and put a new one on. I found a set of 3 (so I could fix my other hose) at Amazon for $11, but I don’t get free shipping. I found something that looks very similar at eBay. These were both also aluminum. The brass ones tend to be a lot more expensive ($64 for 3 at Home Depot!). Some of the identical looking ones on eBay claimed to be brass and almost certainly were not. I went ahead and ordered a set of 3 from eBay, arriving next week.

I tried unscrewing the old hose, but it was on there pretty tight for some reason. After using pliers, a wrench, a pipe wrench, vise grip pliers, and finally applying some oil and a heat gun, I was able to get it off with a basin wrench. What had happened was the aluminum had corroded onto the brass of the spigot. These two are pretty distant on the cathode chart and actually make a decent battery. Why anyone would sell something that will definitely corrode to go on brass in a wet environment is beyond me. Maybe new houses have plastic spigots? It is like when they used to use galvanized pipes for water lines instead of copper and they would corrode on the inside until the water couldn’t run through them anymore.

I tried to cancel my order for the aluminum repair kits, but it was too late. I found some at Amazon that seem to be confirmed brass by a few users, but will wait. The other thing I thought I could do is attach a plastic quick release attachment in between the hose and spigot. This would keep the two dissimilar metals out of contact, but the plastic ones aren’t that cheap and will probably last about as long as it takes for aluminum to corrode. Once I get something else to order so I can get free shipping I will just order the brass repair kit from Amazon and in the meantime will use the aluminum ones from eBay.

Star Trek came out in 1966, so not only were special effects pretty primitive, but so was our knowledge of space. It really wasn’t until the Apollo 17 astronauts went to the moon in 1972 and took a picture of Earth from a distance that we started thinking of Earth as a big blue marble. So maybe it is forgivable that Earth from space was usually represented as we would have known it, a globe: no clouds, no atmosphere. We would watch Star Trek in college and I would always say “Clear day on Earth!” when they would orbit Earth, which wasn’t that often I guess.

Yesterday I won a $25 iTunes gift card and I was looking for movies I could get. iTunes usually has the best deals on 4k movies and I did see a few things I might like to get including 4k upgrades of The Princess Bride and Alien. But I took it as a message from Star Fleet when I noticed I could get all three seasons of Star Trek in HD for $24.99.

In 2006, Star Trek, now called Star Trek: The Original Series, was remastered from the original film to show on high definition TV’s. While they were at it, they re-did a lot of the special effects, including most of the shots of the Enterprise and shots of planets. Usually it is a stand alone shot, but sometimes they will show something on screen of the bridge, so they updated that too. They weren’t overly ambitious: the Enterprise still looks like a plastic model, just a little better.

I read about the restoration and was hoping that version was what iTunes was selling, but wasn’t sure at first. Eventually I confirmed that it was the newer version, which made me want to check it out and I went ahead and purchased it. I already had all of the Star Trek movies on iTunes as well as the complete series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which I have never watched, but thought I might if I bought it. There are a ton of Star Trek series now, which I have no intention of buying or watching until I can knock out TNG. Looking at early episodes, I wanted to pick out an episode with Earth and found “Miri,” an episode where the crew finds a planet exactly like Earth, but inhabited only by children and zombies. It did show the planet from space, which makes for a good comparison.

I got these screen captures from a website that judges the restoration of every episode, which of course happened a long time ago now, but it was new to me. They always need to be careful how they change original works, but it seems like most people (including me) feel like these changes were done well.