Neil Young and Lionel Trains

Neil Young bought a portion of Lionel Trains back in 1992.   He is listed as a co-inventor on seven Patents assigned to the company.   Yes, that Neil Young.

If you make a lot of money, you have to spend it.  And one way is to get into the hobby of model trains.  And if that doesn't spend the money fast enough, you can buy the company, I suppose.

And if it really is your passion, you can invent new accessories for the trains and create new products for the company you just bought.   And Neil Young has done just that.  Yea, the guy with the guitar.

	PAT. NO.		Title
1	8,025,545		System and method for substantially synchronizing sound and smoke in a model vehicle
2	7,880,414		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
3	7,656,110		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
4	7,364,122		Control for operating features of a model vehicle
5	7,307,394		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
6	7,298,103		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
7	7,264,208		Control for operating features of a model vehicle
8	7,211,976		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
9	6,765,356		Control and motor arrangement for use in model train
10	6,441,570		Controller for a model toy train set

Unfortunately for Young, the company, Lionel LLC,  ended up in Bankruptcy, after a couple of legal battles with competitors, and due to the decline in interest in model trains among the young (I had a Lionel 027 Santa Fe "Vista Dome" set, circa 1969, after the company had switched to cheaper plastic parts).  Hobbyists seem to gravitate to HO and smaller scale sets, over time, as these took up less space than the massive O-gauge Lionel sets.

Today, Young is still a consultant to the company, but it is not clear whether he owns an interest in it.

Everyone has to have a hobby, I guess!

Comments

Comments are not always appreciated.

In response to a number of SPAM, TROLLING, and HATEFUL comments, I have changed the comments section here to limit to people who are "members" of the blog, whatever that means.  I need a break from "Comments" for a while, as they are getting to be too much work, and frankly, many of them are problematic.

A lot of the comments I receive fall into a number of troublesome categories:

1. Hateful Comments:  Some people send nasty hateful messages.   Need I say more?  Just take that shit somewhere else.

2.  Grooming Comments:  There are companies that, for a fee, will "groom" your reputation on the Internet.  They do this in a number of ways.  They try to drown out bad reviews of products and services by putting up 500 shill reviews, for example.  Or they threaten legal action if you don't take down a criticism of a product or service. 

If they can't do either of those, they will try to ameliorate the damage by making comments on a site that call into question the poster's motivations, or say things like, "Well, granted there are problems with [product or service] but on the other hand...." 

They also use other techniques, such as personal attacks, or trolling.  The point is, if you can take a well-written and concise essay and water it down with 15 pages of bizarre comments and responses, you have done a lot to damage control your client's reputation.   "Yea, there are criticisms of my client's products, but look at the comments section!  Nothing but crazy people believe that!"

3.  Trolling Comments:   Trolling is always a problem, as people who troll think they are "clever" and what they do is try to make a comment that seems relevant enough to be taken seriously, but is just weird enough to get you off-balance.  The goal of the troll is to get you to "bite" on some piece of bizarreness and then laugh at you for taking them seriously. 

Trolls are sick people with too much time on their hands.  But again, they could be professional trolls, trolling with the idea of grooming a product or service.

4.  Off-The-Wall Comments:  These could be the result of grooming as well.  If you can hijack a discussion about Long Distance Service Providers, for example, and turn it into a debate about the future of Cuba, you can water-down the impact of an article considerably.  So off-the-wall stuff might be intentional. 

On the other hand, there are just crazy people who just free-associate and riff on things and take an issue and push it off into a tangential direction.   These comments are not helpful.


5.  Missing the Point Comments:  These are folks who don't read, or read only the first few lines of a posting and then fire off a response.  Or they read the post and just miss the point.  I point out how dangerous Credit Cards are to consumers, particularly those high-interest cards baited with points or rewards, and readers respond with, "Well, you know, you can make money on those rewards points!" 

The point is, 70% of people with credit cards carry a balance, and at those interest rates, the rewards are pretty much negated - big time.  Getting 3% back on a purchase is nothing when you are paying 15% revolving interest at the same time. 

Again, these could be grooming posts, as the idea is to sell "rewards" cards to the plebes.  They throw pennies at us, hoping we spend dollars. 

I received a litany of such comments after posting about Staple's Rewards Program.  They were all so similarly worded as to lead me to believe they were professional grooming posts.   The Staple's Reward program - like all reward programs - sucks.  You can do better by shopping online.  And no, you can't get thousands of dollars of "free  software" by gaming a rewards program.  Just give it up!  Major corporations are not handing out free money samples this week - or ever!


6.  "You are not entitled to an opinion, but I am!" Comments:  Blog is short for "web log" and it started out as a way for people to write a diary of sorts, with their opinions on everything from the price of hot dogs at Yankee Staduim, to the value of collectable Hummel figurines, to political opinions, to, well, whatever.  You write what you want to write. 

Some people don't seem to "get" this and think that I am obligated to offer "equal time" to their crackpot views, or that somehow I have to present a "fair and balanced" perspective, which to them means validating their radical opinions.

From their perspective, I am not permitted - by law - from presenting any type of opinion, other than theirs.

This is just idiotic.  If they want to start their own blog, they should do so.  But they can't tell me how to write mine, or what opinions I should have.

7.  SPAM comments:  These are usually comments that are very vague and oddly worded - probably written by non-English speakers in the 3rd world as part of a marketing campaign to "get traffic to your site!"   They say things like, "That is a very useful and informative post!  Thanks for sharing the information! Car Repair in Birmingham."   The last part, of course, being a hotlink to someone's commercial website.

These were fairly infrequent at first, but started to become more common, to the point where there were five or six a day.  And unfortunately, Blogger does not display the links until you POST the comment, at which point you then have to go in and manually delete comments.   It was just too much hassle.

* * * 

As you can see, there is more heat than light here, and while I appreciate sincere comments, it seems lately I am getting more chaff than wheat.  The only way to fix this is to just limit comments to members only.

As I approach my 2,000th blog posting, also, I realize I have said about all that I have to say.  My goal in this blog was to figure out how I was spending money and how to save it.  And in that regard, I have succeeded - cutting my monthly expenses by thousands of dollars, becoming totally debt free and fully funding my retirement.

I pretty much have done everything I have set out to do here.  So as 2012 winds down, I may publish the last 100-odd postings I have in draft form, from over the years, and then let it go.

We'll see....

Pining for the End Times...

Why do so many people seem to want the world to end?

End times theology.  Mayan Calendar predictions.   The meltdown of the world economic order.  Succession and Civil War!   People seem to love to fantasize about the world ending.  Why is this?

And you see it everywhere, in all walks of life.   Rednecks wearing Real-Tree Camo have bumper stickers on their cars saying  "A Country Boy Can Survive!" (which was also the name of a popular song from our last recession, in 1982).  The idea is, civilization is going to hell in a hand-basket, but black-powder rifle country boys will live on squirrel and deer and keep the race going.

The end-times people, who may overlap with the rednecks, are convinced that Jesus is coming back next week, and this time he is pissed!  (and by that, I don't mean drunk).   All the "True Christians" will fly up to heaven, and the world will turn to anarchy in short order.   The odd thing about this fantasy, is that much of the end-times literature, such as "left behind" is told from the point of view of people who are, well, left behind.   I thought you were all supposed to fly up in the air? (Which is why Real Christians always buy cars with sunroofs).

Mayan Calendar people, UFO nuts, apocalyptic crazies, and the like all have different scenarios, from massive floods, to climate change, mega-volcanos, meteor strikes, alien invasions, shifts in the Earth's crust, to well, whatever.  They make movies about these fantasies, and at the end, the hero and heroine survey the wreckage from a mountaintop and then restart civilization (the heroine is usually pregnant at this point).

Why do people indulge in these fantasies?   Are they just mindless escapism or are they harmful to your mental health?

The answer to the first is pretty straightforward.   Most folks who indulge in this crap are depressed people and as I noted before, depressed people are evil.   They struggle to get by in the world, because they make a lot of foolish choices in life.  They spend too much, they eat too much, they don't pay attention in school - or at work - and then they wonder why they can't be Billionaires overnight.  It is all so unfair!

So like a child overturning a Monopoly board when they land on your Hotels on Park Place, they secretly hope that it will all just go away and some other, horrific scenario take its place.   It is, in fact a death wish, a suicide attempt.   But instead of just wanting to do away with themselves, they want to take the whole planet with them.  If they can't win, well then nobody should.

It is stupid, it is infantile, it is sick, and it is ridiculous.  And yet at one time or another in our lives, we all secretly engage in this fantasy - that the end times are a-comin' and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

But is this harmful?  I think so, and let me tell you why.  While we all may engage in this fantasy briefly at one time in our lives, many folks are making the "end of the world" the centerpiece of their lives.

For example, a friend of mine returns from Bible Study at the local Presbyterian Church.   A lady there bends her ear for an hour about the Book of Revelations and how the end times are here and all the prophesied "signs" have come true.  The world will end in our lifetimes, she says to my friend.   I tell my friend to find a new Bible-Study group, one not quite so chock full of crazy.

But this is not an isolated incident.  Another friend is estranged from their son, as he has signed on to this end times fantasy as well.   He is convinced that the world will end in his lifetime, and nothing you can say will convince him otherwise.   So how does this affect his decisions in life?   He is raising children, which is scary.  "Hey honey, don't bother studying hard in school or anything, you'll be dead before you're 30 anyway!"

Not surprisingly, he is not very successful in his own life.  His career has been marked with one setback after another, and he frequently asks his parents for money - that is until he decided they were "sinners" and not worth talking to anymore (which coincidentally, happened right after they decided to stop sending him money - funny how that works).

It is easier and more comforting, ironically, to just give up on life and hope for the end of the world.   It is a human tendency - emotional thinking - just as sometimes it feels good to feel bad.   It is a human tendency, but that doesn't mean you should wallow in it.  Fight it.

The same part of the brain that makes you root for the end times is the same part that says, "Screw it all, let's become crack addicts instead!"   It is a self-destructive impulse that is unhealthy.

Pop Stocks, Again

You don't have to be Warren Buffet to call Groupon as a hyped stock.   And as I predicted, it pretty much has tanked and likely will stay tanked for a good long time.

Groupon is in the news again, and not in a good way.  The CEO is likely to be asked to step down.  The share price is in the toilet, there have been questions about accounting practices, you know, the usual shit.

And I called this when it went public, a year ago.   Groupon was a fad that was fading fast.  It had no protect-able business plan - anyone could start a similar site, and did.  And its model for making money made no sense - for the business, the customers, and the consumers.

And already, its pervasive and disturbing ads are disappearing from the Internet.  You just don't see Groupon ads anymore.   One day, it seems it was everywhere - discussed on the financial news channels, talked about with your friends, and then..... nothing.

And maybe if you were foolish enough to believe the hype, you bought the stock at $20 a share or more, and are wondering "where all the money went".  And if you are a raging true believer, maybe you think it will "come back" and are hanging on to it.

This sort of thing happens all the time.  The News is the worst place to get investment advice.  Why?  Because as I noted before, only sudden events are deemed newsworthy.   Hitler invades Poland - that makes headlines.   Hitler slowly accumulates power over a ten-year period?  That barely makes Page 2.

Or take the housing market.  The bubble bursting makes headlines.  The buildup and the warnings of the bubble bursting?  Maybe a human interest story on the inside page of the Real Estate section, qualified with a "well, you never know what will happen" kind of thing.  Sort of the same way the news waffled about Hitler at the time.

Whatever is "in the news" at a given moment is probably a bad bet.   You can just count on that.

And I know this because when I was younger, I foolishly bought Martha Stewart's stock, Martha Stewart Omnimedia.  I recently rented the movie Martha Stewart, Inc. on Netflix.  And brought back to me all the fact surrounding that case.   Martha knew all about stock manipulation, as she was a former broker, who hyped Levitz Furniture stock, which bubbled and burst, and was the subject of an investigation and, well, Martha had to find a new job after that.

And in retrospect, the idea that a "Media Empire" made out of a cooking show and a magazine could be worth a Billion dollars is kind of idiotic.   Was it worth something?  Yes.  But not a Billion.   And as some pointed out, the entire brand was based on one person, and if that one person was missing from the picture (for example, disgraced and in jail) then the entire media empire could collapse.

I made the mistake of buying a stock I didn't understand.   What I was buying was a minority share in a company, whose only assets were basically intellectual property - much like Groupon and Facebook.  And it was a fad, to some extent, that was already being bashed by the time the stock was offered.   But I confused popularity with substance - a name mentioned often in the media with success and profitability.  The two are not the same.

(By the way, MSO is still around, but is hemorrhaging cash, just like Groupon.  Companies cannot stay in business for long with negative earnings.)

So, when the Groupon IPO came out, I saw the writing on the wall.   Ditto for ZipCar and Facebook.   Highly touted companies that get a lot of mention in the media, but have no real money-making plan, or at least not one to justify the sky-high stock prices.

And yea, on page 2, there is a waffling piece where they quote some crank like me saying it is a lousy deal, which they qualify with a "well, you never know!  Only time will tell!" kind of ending.

Recently, two stocks have gotten a lot of mention in the press.  The first is Green Mountain Coffee, which shot up 25% for no apparent reason.  This stock was the darling of the press for a while, too.  Since their Keurig coffee makers are no doubt in the break rooms of the media conglomerates, the writers thought, "Gee, maybe the company that makes this is a good bet!"   And that is why they tout iPhones, too.  Whatever is on the desk of the person writing articles for CNNMoney ends up being a good buy.

But, alas, there was some financial tomfoolery about, and some questioned their financial accounting.  The Chairman was forced to step down when it turned out that he was leveraging his shared on stock options.  Like Martha and Zuckerberg, he had a lot of wealth - on paper - but no real cash.   Market Cap may sound fantastic, but when you try to cash it in, it evaporates like ether.

Why Green Mountain would shoot up in value by 25% is anyone's guess.  But if you invest in this company (or invested in it) based on the news reports of the day, chances are you will lose your shirt.  At least the company is earning money - that is if you believe their accounting practices, which have been called into question in the past.

Another example of hyped investing is the recent little scam involving ICOA, a tiny, money-losing wireless provider from Rhode Island (the only State owned outright by the Mafia) which has been trading on the "pink slips" penny stocks market.  This company was de-listed from the NASDAQ and at 0.0001 per share, you can see why.

A press release mysteriously appeared on prweb.com saying that Google had agreed to pay $400 Million for the company.  The current market cap is $848,000 - less than a million bucks.  It was a classic penny stock pump-n-dump - the sort of thing made famous by a high school kid in New Jersey, who found that suckers - Raging True Believers - would buy any stock if you just sent out an e-mail saying that it was poised to go wild.

The true believers never bothered to ask why someone would anonymously just tell them this, but instead went out and bought the stock, watched it go up, and then crash hard.  No one lost a lot of money this way, just a little bit.  But whoever put up that fake Press Release no doubt raked in thousands, tens of thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It is a scam, of course, and an obvious one.   But ask yourself this - in what way is it different from Groupon, Facebook, ZipCar, Martha Stewart Omnimedia, Green Mountain Coffee, or a whole host of other hyped companies that skyrocket in price and then crash to the ground?

And the answer is, it isn't.  The only difference is that in most cases, the big companies you read about and invest in are never charged with doing anything "illegal" in most cases (Even Martha Stewart, who was arrested and sent to jail, was not prosecuted for anything related to her own company).

Hyped stocks are never a good idea.  And the best way to avoid hyped stocks is to stop watching the financial channels, stop listening to the shouting guy, and stop being a Raging True Believer.   There is no "secret" to investing, losing weight, or living.  There is no "insider" who is going to let you in on the "real deal".

Just walk away from that mentality altogether.

Worth Fixing?

So many things are made so cheaply these days in China, that fixing things is sort of a waste of time.

Today I was riding my bike around the island and the chain is slipping badly.   The fact that I ride it on the beach and it loads up with sand doesn't help, of course.

When I got home, I cranked up the Karcher Pressure washer and blasted the grease off the chain.  I used a lot of degreaser and then washed it all off with Gel Gloss, which made it shine like new.

I then went online to see if I could find a new chain for it.   The problem is, what kind of chain?  What length, width, pitch, etc?

I looked at the chain that was on it, and it said "KAZ" and "H 8" but that was it.  It was about 7.8 mm wide.  The sprockets on the rear cassette are definitely worn - the trailing edge of each tooth is mashed slightly.  It has had a hard life.

 

I looked for the owner's manual and receipt for the bike - and found it, strangely enough.  I keep all that stuff in a big binder (appliance manuals, etc.) and it was in there.

Turns out it was a 1999 Trek, and cost me nearly $500 back in the day,  13 years ago.  Since then, I have ridden it until the tires are nearly bald (I guess that will be next).  The owner's manual is generic and worthless.  How do I figure out what chain I should use?

Fortunately, BikePedia to the rescue.  BikePedia has a listing of all bikes (or a lot of them) and what components they are built with.  The data seems pretty accurate, although it doesn't list "RED" as an available color, and I can tell you for certain it was available in that color in 1999, as I have two of them.

From BikePedia:

1999 TREK 6000

Bicycle Type	Mountain bike, front suspension
MSRP (new)	$899.99
Weight	27.0
Sizes	13", 16.5", 18", 19.5", 21", 22.5"
Colors	Dragonfly Yellow, Team Blue
Item ID	86952

Frame & Fork
Frame Construction	TIG-welded
Frame Tubing Material	Alpha aluminum
Fork Brand & Model	Rock Shox Jett T2, 2.5" travel
Fork Material	Aluminum/magnesium, triple-clamp crown
Rear Shock	Not applicable

Components
Component Group	Mountain Mix
Brakeset	Lee Chi TX22 brakes, Lee Chi LV77E levers
Shift Levers	Shimano Alivio RapidFire SL
Front Derailleur	Shimano Acera, top-pull/bottom bracket mount
Rear Derailleur	Shimano Deore LX SGS
Crankset	Shimano AceraX, 22/32/42 teeth
Pedals	Resin body/aluminum cage w/clips & straps
Bottom Bracket	Shimano BB-LP27E, 113mm spindle
BB Shell Width	73mm English
Rear Cogs	8-speed, 11 - 30 teeth
Chain	KAZ LR900, 1/2 x 3/32"
Seatpost	Aluminum micro-adjust, 27.2mm diameter
Saddle	Velo
Handlebar	ICON 6061
Handlebar Extensions	Not included
Handlebar Stem	Alloy Ahead type
Headset	1 1/8" threadless Aheadset SE-1

Wheels
Hubs	Front: Kung Ten W55F, Rear: Kung Ten W5ER
Rims	Bontrager Corvair, 32-hole
Tires	26 x 2.10" IRC Mythos XC
Spoke Brand	Stainless steel, 1.8mm straight gauge
Spoke Nipples	Brass nipples

I search online for a KAZ 900 chain and find the "Surplus Center" which has 125 in stock.  Shipping costs more than the chain.

A quick trip to eBay and I find a chain breaker for $4 from China.  So for $20 we are back in business.

Problem is, a new bike, similar to this one, can be had for about $200 these days.   Spending 1/10th of the purchase price of a new bike to repair an old one is, well, questionable - particularly if it doesn't fix the chain skipping problem.

At least, since I am doing all the work myself, it will cost only $20.   Over on Rich People's Island, they have one of these boutique bike stores.  You know the kind, that sells bikes for twice what they are worth, and does things like fix a flat tire and charges you $50.

And I see people take bicycles there to get fixed - paying $100 for a "bike tuneup" or $50 to fix a flat - for a bicycle that might be worth $50 to $100 on a good day.

And that is the conundrum with cheap products from China.   You can buy a decent consumer grade bike for $200 or so, that will last you a few years - and then you throw it away.  Heck, you can buy a ride-able bike for as little as $100, if all you plan on doing is tooling around the neighborhood once in a while.

I'll put a new chain on the Trek and see where it goes.  I am not sure I want to replace the rear cassette, as that would be just throwing more money at it.   If the chain still skips under load, I may retire the old Trek and buy than 29" (!!) mountain bike I saw at Wal Mart the other day.  $229 and take it home.

Or this monster 29" crusier bike they have for $135:

UPDATE:  The new chain arrives and when I compare it to the old one, at first it seems the wrong size.  Then I realize the old chain had stretched four whole links over time (Mr. torque pedal!).  The chain went on, and works fine, except when the front chainring is in the middle gear - the one I use most - and it slips when I apply torque.

I remove the front crankset and chainring and inspect.  The center ring teeth are worn to points and the chain slips off when I apply torque.

Back to eBay and I find a new crank set for $29.95, but it may not be the correct offset.  The crank set on this bike is the Shimano FC-M330.  I can download the spec sheet, but the chainring set is a welded together (cheap) one-piece unit (serious bikers have individually bolted chainrings). 

Or, since I am on a flat island, maybe I will just not use the center gear....  or maybe convert the bike to one-speed by removing the derailleurs and cutting the chain to length.

I found a Shimano FC-M340 crankset, which appears to be compatible with the FC-M330, although it is better made (separate bolted-on gears).  It has the 110 spindle length on a 50cm centerline and 175 mm cranks.  Unfortunately, the seller wants $59.95 for it and $12 shipping.  The part is NOS circa 2003.

So that would make $72 more I am throwing at a 14-year-old, $500 bike.

Maybe it is time to retire the Trek....  When a new bike is $250 at Wal-Mart, maybe the old one "ain't worth fixing"

So much of our technology today is disposable, it seems....

UPDATE:  The FC-M340 crankset arrived and fit perfectly.  I had to use a gear puller to get the old crank out.  But it even looks nice (black) and has bolted-on chainwheels, not welded together.

The problem is, of course, I can't get the pedals off the old crank.  So back to eBay for new pedals (the old ones were wearing out anyway).   Another $23 with shipping.

So, a simple "worn chain" problem has now cost me (with shipping):

Chain:  Chain and Chain Breaker:  $20

Crankset with Chainwheels:  $72

Pedals:  $20

Total:  $112

That is a lot of money to throw at a 13-year-old bike that cost $500 new!  You could argue that, "Well, it lasted 13 years, so now maybe you'll get 13 more years out of it" - and that is how people end up throwing money at cars that should be junked.

And bear in mind, this is doing the labor myself.  If I had to pay the designer bike store to fix it?  Forgetaboutit!

It is likely I will need to replace the tires soon, and perhaps even the seat.   Things wear out, over time.  And I have not ridden this bike as much as some folks ride theirs!

Mark has the same bike, but rode his a lot less (I commuted in mine, for a time) so it appears to be in much better shape, chain-wise.

$112 would go a long way to buying a newer bike.  And that is the rub, right there.  Most people (myself included) throw money at something trying to "fix" it and then end up breaking down and buying new.

Sometimes it is easier to just cut to the chase...

UPDATE: Eventually, we had to replace the tires as they dry rotted. We also replaced the seats which lasted about five years and then replace them yet again. I also found a pair of used wheels on eBay as I was breaking spokes on one wheel and it was starting to get bent out of shape.   Yes, I found some spokes on eBay and re-spoked the bent rim and I'm keeping it as a spare. We still use these bikes to go camping is they can be taken apart and fit on the bike rack. The cruiser bikes are better suited for riding around the island.

UPDATE:  I bought the Genesis GS7 cruiser bike and a "Margaritaville Special" for Mark (On sale for $79!).  Both have baskets and seven speeds, perfect for an island with a maximum elevation of 12 feet.   We kept the TREK bikes (now with new-used wheels on mine, and new seats - a second set) for camping, as they are lightweight, easy to carry on the truck, and easy to lift and suitable for off-road and on-road use.