Blessed by the Potato

I had this thought ages ago, and started to write this article/post back on the Potatomas break. Unfortunately, a change in government and apathy made it more or less pointless to bother finishing & posting it. However, Netbug’s recent post reminded me of this, so I decided to ressurect it.

My thoughts on the matter are quite simply that Crown corporations can be put to a lot of good if the government would use them as such. CN & Bell laid transcontinental networks when it was economically unattractive to do so publically; the CBC gave us an ostensibly independent broadcaster; the LCBO prevents a company from being tempted by profit to sell alcohol to minors (and also brings more than beer to the North). In this line-up, PetroCanada stands out a bit, having only been started after foreign companies already had a decent gas distribution system in Canada. Perhaps that’s why it was privatized so quickly.

But, it has a big capacity to do important things if the government would turn it towards those uses:

• A government-controlled oil company can help control pump prices, relieving the fears many Canadians have that oil company collusion is robbing them blind. Perhaps not the best thing for the big picture, since high gas prices might help more than they hurt (vis-a-vis curbing demand for SUVs, making people actually walk down the block, etc.).
• Use the already present retail distribution system to introduce alternative fuels such as E85, hydrogen, or battery charges. This could be huge, since it can break the viscious new technology cycle: oil companies don’t want to offer alternative fuels because they don’t sell, since no one has the cars; the car makers don’t want to build and market the cars because no one will buy them; and no one will buy them because they can’t take them anywhere and expect a fill-up. It’s why we’re pretty much stuck with hybrid technology as the only alternative to gas/diesel (it’s good, don’t get me wrong, but we could perhaps do better).

I find it an exciting prospect, really, to leverage a Crown corporation’s ability to bring about uneconomical transformation on the taxpayer’s bill. It’s something that could become really big: once the government has a decent distribution system out, it can make the car makers sell a certain percentage of cars taking advantage of that (and knowing Canadians, a decent number would buy anyway, once it’s even remotely feasible). If research needs to be done, well a few well-directed NSERC grants could plug that hole. Then, the manufacturing & product design could be done here in Canada, providing jobs when the technology eventually starts to spread south of the border.

Now, let’s move on to talking about electric cars.

They are a very strange beast: they produce zero emissions (though you will need the generating capacity somewhere, so at worst we might just say that they take the emissions that would clog a downtown area and shift them to the location of the power plant… which can also conceivably scrub them better), get great acceleration and decent cruising efficiency, yet are barely produced at all currenly. The reason, of course, is that electrical storage in chemical batteries has terrible energy-to-weight ratios (after all, you have to carry around all that battery, rather than burning it up completely as you go), so their range is often limited.

Range is, in fact, probably the biggest reason electric cars haven’t taken off: you simply can’t recharge them quickly, like you can with a quick stop at the gas station for a hybrid or traditional combustion engine car — so once you run out your battery, you’re stuck there for 8 hours while you charge up the slow way. And the range just barely covers relatively routine treks (such as to the cottage, or driving downtown and back to the 905 five times in a day), which makes many people nervous.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way: tons of devices around us have replaceable/rechargeable batteries, and that is perhaps a model for electric cars that the car companies haven’t looked at closely enough. When my camera runs out of juice, I simply go to any convenience store and pick up a pair of AA’s, plug them in, and off I go. We could make cars the same way: pick a decent-sized battery and make it standard across all cars. A small car might have 6, say, and a large electric SUV might sport 18 in an array, but the point is that you can then drive across the country and swap out your batteries as they dry out. All you need is a distribution system that keeps a decent number of them charged up and in stock.

Which brings us back to PetroCanada.

Of course, this concept is not without its challenges. In addition to having someone decide on the battery standard, and having someone set up a distribution system of chargers before the first car is actually sold, there are engineering challenges to solve. Electric cars that currently exist (or, for the EV-1, I should say, formerly existed) are engineered tight, with all kinds of innovations made to save on weight and extend range. If batteries were broken down into smaller standardized subunits, it would make them heavier and bulkier since more space would be wasted on the plastic casing and less spent on actually charge capacity. It might also make placement in the car more difficult, since you’d need to get access to the batteries somehow (whether from beneath the car, the trunk, hood, or from panels in the side), so they couldn’t be squeezed in between other parts wherever space could be found. The bigger the battery is, the faster a changeover could take place, and the more efficient the design would be. However, batteries are heavy, so it doesn’t take much before it’s infeasible to expect even a relatively healthy, in-shape person to change them manually, let alone an elderly, injured, or out-of-shape driver. Planning on simple hand-pumped cranes to help might work, but even the most simple tools foil some people (there are people out there who can’t pump their own gas as it is). At first, providing full-service might work, especially since even self-only stations still have at least a cashier on hand, and the electric fleet will likely be small enough at first that that person could afford to run out on the rare occasions he or she was needed.

An interesting social dilemma is also raised: who owns the batteries? Who is responsible for replacing them when they no longer hold a charge or are otherwise damaged? With permanent batteries, it comes down to either the car owner or manufacturer (depending on the warranty) owning up. But with batteries changing hands every time someone takes a trip of more than 250 km, it becomes more complicated. At first, PetroCanada could own the batteries, but that would raise all sorts of problems once other distribution lines opened up (whether say, Shell also got in on the recharging station game, or if an all-new company started up like an Ontario Solar & Windmill Recharged Green Electric Car Coop). Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this one. Even if the batteries were insured by a government agency (perhaps funded by a portion of each new electric car’s purchase price), that would leave open the problem of American cars coming across the border to change out their faulty cells.

Completely new technology, such as capacitor banks, flywheels, or superconductors might allow permanently installed storage devices and bypass these legal issues, while still allowing for quick-charge stations to extend range… but none of these, AFAIK, store electricity well over the long term.

Finally, one very clever method to extend the range of electric cars is the Genset trailer. I’ve never personally seen one of these, but they look absolutely brilliant. They basically consist of a small gas or diesel generator that provides the electricity needed to run the car (or, if you prefer to think of it this way, the electricity needed to constantly charge up the batteries as you drive). I don’t know why they don’t sell electric cars along with one of these right now (or with a roof-rack or trunk-mounted version, since a generator + fuel tank doesn’t have to be huge). It’s basically like having a plug-in electric car with the option of switching to a hybrid mode for long-distance travel.

Footnote: the transmission on my car has been making unhappy noises since I got it back from the police. I think I might go and give the Civic Hybrid and the Prius a test drive while the weather’s nice, and start thinking about retiring the Accord (though that’s probably still a few years down the road).

What a goddamned fucking mess these bills are from the Gran Melia are: do not stay there, especially if you need receipts to get reimbursed.

In addition to the general shittiness that we knew about when checking out (not honouring the quoted conference rate, charging for 3 people after 1 had checked out, weird, non-translatable spanish only), we’ve uncovered a new wrinkle: they charged us twice. Not double, not quite that bad. No, what they did is they charged our credit cards for $168 US before we even got there.

A week before we got there.

What $168 US is, we have no idea: the student rate on the room was $115, the supervisor rate was $150, and the hotel’s regular rates weren’t actually too far off from that, with rooms starting as low as $109 (which is why it was a double piss-off to not honour the conference rate: we got like 25% off at the other place, but this place the conference rate was quite close to their normal rates). So, what they did is they put in a credit for our accounts for $168 US (in Pesos, so we probably got screwed on the double exchange) as soon as we checked in, then racked up the charges on top of that. It means a few things that really screw with our heads: first, is that the grand total I signed off on was *not* the grand total charged to my credit card, since there was that extra at the beginning ($1,481.50 was the bill I approved at check-out, but I was actually charged $1,669.66). Next, the receipt is only for $1,481.50, so I have to somehow explain to the hospital’s accounting department that they need to look at the first line of a 3-page bill and see the credit there as something else they need to pay me. I have my credit card statement, and hope that will help me, but they’re notorious for not accepting statements on the same footing as receipts (especially when it’s dated a week before the conference you were ostensibly travelling to attend!).

It’s also strange that we had this charge since they never told us that there was an advance charge/deposit (and, in fact, had a seperate deposit charged upon check-in). It was also charged well before their published no-fee cancellation date, so it’s not like we were being locked in at that point.

Talking with others now that I’m back in Canada has added new dimensions to this affair as well: they knew very well that early check-outs from rooms with 3 people checked out, despite continuing the charges, since they got in a fight before they let them go. In order to prevent one person from a room fleeing and sticking the charge on the other person, or leaving without paying by claiming that someone else was still there when you were really the last to leave, they require you to present a check-out pass before the bellboys at the front door will let you off the property. If you’re just doing a partial check-out, and sticking the bill with someone else, they need to call that person and get their permission. I was out of touch, so they almost didn’t let my roommate catch his bus back to the airport… I’ve got to call shenanigans when they claim they don’t have a record of him checking out.

The bills of other students are even more pockmarked, where not only were the conference rates not honoured, but they changed every day they were there. Correcting entries (“traspaso cuentas”) were made on various days, adding hundreds of dollars to the bill, then taking almost all of it back off.

All of this is on top of the general non-communication from the hotel: no 1-800 number to call, getting put on hold when calling regular day-time long distance, not answering a single email of ours, and not telling us any of this billing stuff until we find, with a shock, that VISA wants the money from us. I can’t do much about it: arguing with them for 20 minutes in person didn’t do much, so calling them long-distance is probably just throwing good money after bad. Hopefully work will sort all this out and I won’t get stuck with it (my Accountant is better than my Spanish). In the meantime, I’ll just do my best to pan them here and on other travel review sites.

We didn’t get a chance to stay there since they were destroyed by the Hurricane, but the Marriott was much better about at least responding to emails and phone calls while we were setting up our booking in the first place (even if they, er… lied about their ability to open on time and host the conference at all).

I work with an Evil Genius, it’s clear now. Look at what they did to the desk of the girl who won the best speaker prize while we were away. Just marvel at it! I couldn’t stop laughing the whole time I was at work today, and it’s just going to be awesome to watch her take her revenge on these guys.

Note the attention to detail: they individually wrapped all the levers on the desk chair. The lightswitches were wrapped in such a way as to still be functional. The nozzle on the hand cream pump was very elegantly wrapped; the airconditioner and its cord were wrapped, as were the coat hangars. Everything inside the desk drawer (including the interior of the drawer) was wrapped. There’s even a circle you can see where an elastic band had been covered. What I love most is the Kleenex box on her shelf, with the newspaper coming out the top, it’s so artistic I well up a little just thinking about it.

I’m totally hiring these guys to wrap my Potatomas presents.

This prank also made me realize how very terrible my digital camera is. Even with a well-lit room and standing remarkably still, I got motion blur with most of the pictures I took.

As I mentioned in my previous reports of Cancun, the food down in Mexico was not very good on the whole. I don’t deal with spicy stuff very well, and almost everything was hot. Some other standbys had strange interpretations (in particular, the bruscetta, which is essentially defined as consisting of tomatoes on bread; it had no tomatoes, just a slice of french bread with a thin tomato paste and some cheese).

One thing that I did like when I was down there was a cucumber dip for nachos. I never caught the name of it: the cucumber dip was always served with a red, spicy paste dip, and the waiters told us a name that seemed to refer to both of them. When we asked for some later, we got only the red paste dip, and had to painstakingly explain the properties of the cucumber dip to get some of that, too. Now, I forgot even the name of the red paste dip.

Anyhow, it was a very surprising how well cucumbers went with nacho chips, and it’s a kind of dip I’d like to make here. However, I’m having no luck trying to Google the recipe, so I’m hoping someone has heard of this stuff before and can help me out. Essentially, it consisted of cucumbers chopped very finely (into roughly 3 mm cubes) in an oil base, along with small amounts of diced tomato and (we think) grapefruit. It had some sort of sweet green herb for flavour (Cilantro, perhaps?), as well as just a hint of spice, presumably from ground cayenne pepper (or from being in the same room as the spicy red paste dip).

Update: I got some supplies and made an attempt at reproducing this. I’m not quite there, but what I made was eminently edible. The recipe is now available in the recipes section as Cucumber Salsa.

I had over 50 messages in one email account, and 115 in another account that I pretty much only use for the BEMs discussion group. I thought that maybe some of the discussions at the meeting had spilled over into something that was intensely intellectually stimulating on the email list.

It was better: a massive flame war had broken out. It’s fantastically lame, all these scientists & tin-foil crazies sissy-slapping each other in public email, while others call for order, sometimes even in all-capitals. I haven’t finished plowing through it yet, but so far no one has made a Hitler simile; not even an oblique reference to communism, asbestos, or giant robots. It doesn’t appear as though usual usenet flame rules appear here; a carefully balanced system in which Godwin’s Law does not apply. It’s possible that this flame could burn for years, with new students joining the fray and taking up the moronic position of their thesis supervisors, continuing the fight for generations to come. I’m tempted to introduce new technology to the battle, such as the flame form or profanity, just to see how they react and handle it.

Checking out of the Gran Melia was hell: they charged us $65 US per night for the 3rd person in our room (after quoting $50/night for the conference rate). However, we only had the 3rd person and the cot for 5 of the 7 nights, but got charged for all 7. We tried to fight it, but they told us the charge was for the 3rd person, not the cot. I pulled out my receipt showing that I had checked in a day after the other two, so even if they had lost the records for the first person checking out a day early, at the very least that was proof there were only two people for the first day. They sat there and refused to take the charge off. Finally, my ride to the airport arrived and I had to give up and go. Hopefully work will cover it.

That pretty much sums up the hotel: the facilities were decent (except for the hot water capacity… there only seemed to be luke warm water in the afternoons, probably due to the sun beating on the pipes). The staff was reasonably friendly, but the prices were just insane for everything. They constantly screwed up reservations, bar bills, and changed quoted prices on the fly. We knew it was an expensive place heading out, and it turned out to be significantly more expensive than planned when leaving. I can’t recommend it as a vacation destination for anyone who hasn’t won the lottery. A few years ago, we stayed at a resort in Costa Verde, Cuba, and it was about half the price for a place that was almost as nice. The only thing Cancun had over Cuba was the option to go into town for shopping/bars/restaurants/clubs if you wanted (which we didn’t really), and I doubt that’s high on most people’s list of priorities when they look for a beach resort.

The flight back was pretty decent: we ended up coming back almost an hour early. I was the first one through customs, but then had to wait about 20 minutes for my bags to come up on the conveyor. I got bad directions from someone at Pearson for the Park ‘n Fly shuttle — they pointed at section “C” and said what I thought was “C”. After waiting almost half an hour for a bus that should have come every 10 minutes, I found out from someone else that the bus would be in “P” (they do rhyme). Once I got to P there was a bus waiting for me. While waiting though, the interterminal busses came by like crazy there: the terminal 1->3 bus came by so often that the next one would arrive and honk at the one that came before since it hadn’t had a chance to leave yet. You were never a moment without being able to see one of those. There was less than two minutes to wait for the 1->2 busses.

In the end, I was the only one who didn’t get sick and didn’t get a sunburn (fancy that!). After I wore a T-shirt into the pool on the second last day I was there, all the guys were wearing T-shirts into the pool.

After getting home I was telling all my stories to Wayfare — which mostly involve complaining, as you can imagine — who commented:

Wow, you’re not so much of a ‘my glass is half empty’ kind of guy so much as you are a ‘my glass is broken!’ kind of guy.

At dinner one night, a question was posed to me: if money was no object, where in the world would I go? I didn’t have an answer to that question at first. They goaded me: “Surely there must be somewhere you’d go, for historical reasons, or for the sights, or even the chocolate…” but no, I’m just that much of an agoraphobic that if money were no object, I could just pay to have people come to me :) Eventually, I changed the hypothetical a little: if money, agoraphobia, arachnapobia, ophidiphobic, etc. were all not an issue, I’d visit the rainforest and monkey around the trees with the primates, or go diving with the penguins off Antartica. I asked them where they’d go, and everyone at the table replied, in unison: Bora Bora. It was a little freaky, to tell the truth. Where would you all go?

Finally, it looks like Sword of the Stars is recruiting beta testers. I’m tempted to apply, but afraid it will destroy me ;)