Products

Jan182011

My Value is Melt[ing]aways

It’s a new year and that means a new set of convictions (to add to my existing set of course).  Over the course of last year I would stumble on some food products that left a bad taste in my mouth.  Generally this was due in part to the ingredients or preparation.  However, every once in awhile something in the product marketing overshadowed how good it might have tasted or just put the experience even further in the hole.  This year I’ve decided to call attention to these situations for a couple of reasons.  If it is a deceptive practice, then you should be aware of it as a consumer.  If I’m just viewing it wrong or missing some aspect of it, I would like to know so I can adjust my opinion appropriately.  No surprise, this particular post is case in point.

hit the jump to see the details of the issue:

Continue Reading…

spacer
Nov072010

Anatomy of a Pumpkin Carving – A Tutorial

Happy Halloween Everybody!! Yeah, I know it’s a little late for that, but this post was suppose to be done last weekend. I was awaiting a response to an email that has not come yet and decided waiting any longer would be wasting the moment. Those that know me, are aware of my passion for this particular holiday. Of all the big ones, this has to be my favorite. The reasons for this are not entirely clear to me except there are many fond memories of reading horror book after horror book while in my early school years and always had fun carving up the scariest pumpkins my brother Ron and I could dream up. By the way, the former did result in a note of concern to my parents from my 7th grade teacher. Apparently reading Amityville and The Shining is not normal for that age. Never mind those books were huge and I was spending my time reading instead of boob tubing it – oh, and not to mention I haven’t had any urges to ax murder any members of my family – must be all those right from wrong discussions my parents were instilling me at the same time. To this day, the house gets decorated with all kinds of Halloween related items and as mentioned on a previous blog we have an annual Halloween Party.  Every year I also try to add a new pumpkin carving to the collection.  Try is an accurate word since it often requires more time commitment than is available.  The carving concepts have remained over the years, but the implementation has changed significantly since the days Ron and I laid out the newspapers, found the sharpest knives in the rack and splattered pumpkin guts all over the place.  These days, it is all about the foam and Dremel.  The hardest part about spending all the time carving real pumpkins is always watching the shrivel process destroy all your hard work.  Technology has come to the aid of us pumpkin aficionados.  Some genius has developed the fake pumpkin created out of an orange coated thin foam shell.  This shell even mimics the two toned orange found in real pumpkins providing for the same half cut shavings we have cherished from our real pumpkin experiences.  Adding the fact it can be carved with power tools, we are truly living in a golden age.

This brings me to the topic of this post.  This year I took the time to add another carving to my collection and in addition decided to give a little something back to all the up and coming carvers out there looking to branch out from the store bought stock patterns.  For the last 6 or so years I’ve been perfecting my abilities to create unique patterns and scene combinations.  The following is a mini tutorial on how to create that special pumpkin to impress all your friends.  But first off, a quick notice regarding a copyright issue.  Although drawing is a pastime of mine, my skills have a long way to go before being able to capture exactly what images are floating around in my conscious.   When it comes to the horror genre I tend to defer to the absolute stunning talents of others.  As a result, I tend to lurk on Google Images searching on horror related keywords looking for a image that would translate well to a pumpkin.  None of my creations are for sale nor do I market any of the resultant patterns so there is zero monetary gain on my part in this effort.  With that said, I still want to honor any copyrights and bring appreciation to the talents of others.  This year, I stumbled on an image from an illustrator in the UK name Paul Mudie.  It took me awhile to find the owner of the image I based my pattern on, but through the use of Google located his website.  I also sent him an email detailing my use of the image as a base for the carving and even sent him the actual finished pattern as a small token of appreciation.  He has yet to respond (thus the delay in this post), but want to point out that the original image rights remain with Paul Mudie.  Any use of his original image must be approved by him and any monetary use of the images in this particular post must be approved by both Paul and myself.  Thank you for your understanding in this situation.

With that said, you can visit Paul’s site at: http://www.paulmudie.com/index.htm and specifically, the base image can be seen here: http://www.paulmudie.com/werewolf.htm. Enough of the words, let’s get to the carving!.  So this is the subject of today’s tutorial.

To see the details on the tutorial, just hit the jump!

Continue Reading…

spacer
Oct162010

Let the Ghoul Show You the Way

Let’s just keep the Halloween theme going.  The previous post was driven by our annual Halloween Cookout Party.  While I was gathering up the materials for the fire pit patio, I decided to go ahead and pick up some extra items in order to attempt a new decoration  idea that I had been kicking the tires on for some time.  Each year, we try to add one new decoration to the collection.  Typically these are the latest air blown offerings, but this year we went in a different direction.  Living out in the country, it can be difficult to actually navigate to the house.  This is even more difficult at dark since there is little ambient light in the area.  This makes for a great stargazing, but not so great on the driving.  Oh, and to top it off, the GPS directs everyone to my neighbor’s driveway which is a down the road a bit.  What started as a internal debate on how to ease the difficulty for our guests resulted in this new decoration:

This particular shot was taken before darkness fell making it look a tad less scarier than it did once the guests started arriving.  Not only did this fit the overall theme of the party, but due to the clever hand placement, it also provided a functional role since it was placed at the road as an indicator for drivers to turn left into the correct driveway.  I wanted it to last from year to year, be able to withstand various weather conditions and (most of all) be relatively easy to disassemble and store away.  I don’t know about you, but those types of conditions almost always lead me to PVC.  In the sharing spirit, hit the jump to see how it was built.

Continue Reading…

spacer
Sep262010

LE[ts]GO Screw Up a Good Thing

Pretty much chalking this up to the month of angst.  It is hard to say if this is just due to over-sensitivity to all the poor service we have encountered over this period or if the current state of the economy and the incompetency in our government is starting to weigh too heavy.  We will know soon enough with November just around the corner, but for now, I’ll just chalk it up to the former and just assume we’ve stumbled into a nest of stupidity.  If you recall, from my previous post on Steam, we are very sensitive to bandwidth since our satellite service has limited throughput and a 24 hour 300M cap.  Yes, I know this is my own choosing, but you keep your large pipe and I’ll continue to use my firearms, burn when I need to and most of all enjoy the peace and tranquility the country offers.  With that said, we do have fun when everyone can make it out for  some Rock Band.  Up to this point, we have worked around the network requirements.  A few hours before everyone shows up, I fire the game up to make sure any required updates are completed and pull down any new songs for the night.  Well, that was up until last weekend.   Linda bought me LEGO Rock Band game as a gift sometime back.  One of the features of this release is it allowed you to export the songs into the Rock Band 2 DLC cache.  Not for free, of course, but like the AC/DC pack it just takes a key code, some Microsoft points and the physical disk to copy the songs from.  That is what I thought before 4:00pm the day of the gig.

First off, hop over to the LEGO Rock Band website and use the key code bundled with the game disk to generate a redemption code for the export – Check.  Next, get on the Xbox marketplace and redeem some Microsoft points – Check.  Following that, load up the LEGO Rock Band game and head on over to the Export option – Check.  Now purchase the export package and sit and listen to the disk whirl away as it extracts the songs off of the disk – Ch…. hmmm.. wait a second, it sounds a little too quiet.  Now that I recall, it did mention something regarding 1.2G download, but figured that it was just how much space the songs would take up once copied from the disk.  Could it be that it is really trying to download all those songs from the Marketplace?  This was not how the AC/DC pack worked.  A quick Google check seemed to confirm the download conclusion.  So let’s do some quick math… 1.2G / (300M) per 24 hrs gives about 4 days worth of standard download allotments.  Comparing that to the 3 hours I had left before the rest of the band showed up and you get SOL.  As with the Steam issue, the disk was legally purchased, I have the physical media in my hand, paid the required fee which added $10 to the overall cost of the disk, followed all the procedures and yet some genius decided everyone had high speed Internet and would be more than happy to wait for a 1.2G download before being able to play the songs.  Up to this point, RB has done everything right – plenty of DLC and imports of expansion packs, but this latest requirement is not appreciated.  Later that evening, I started the download in my uncapped window (1-5AM) and got it down that way so, at least  next time I’m ready.

Note to the RB coders, I’ll let this slide if you  will finally add some decent stats to the game so we can assess our efforts better.

spacer
Sep242010

Wait Equipment

My battle with a pretty nasty hamstring problem continues to rage on.  14 calendar pages have come and gone since injuring it during a run last year.  A local Sports Medicine/Surgery outfit has been putting the pieces back little by little.  Since getting diagnosed by them I’ve been spending twice a week in therapy with a steady diet of strength training and intense ultrasound.  In honor of today’s solid 2 mile run at a pretty aggressive pace, this post centers on a recently purchased piece of weight equipment.  A staple of the rehab has been leg presses/squats to re-strengthen damage in the hammie.  Up to this point I rarely strength trained the legs due to all the years in martial arts and my passion for outdoor work.  Now with the imbalance caused by the injury, it is a necessary evil.  In order to increase the pace of recovery, I decided to enhance my home gym with a freestanding leg press.  After a lengthy research and exhausting all local establishments, the winner was an offering off of Amazon.  The rest of my gym is based on a unit from Body Solid and I have had zero complaints about their product or service (they even replaced all of my cabling for free without a moment’s hesitation  after 8 years of heavy use thanks to their lifetime guarantee policy).

The unit was on sale (about $500 less than local places and free shipping), but the damage was in the grand range.  Here is what the new baby looks like.

Hit the jump to read the “Rest of the Story”

Continue Reading…

spacer
Sep202010

Let Off Some Steam, Bennett

I happen to harboring some angst this weekend and decided to get this one out of the way while I am still feeling edgy.  So I’ve been dealing with the BMW issue (see last post), yesterday an estimator for a concrete company failed to show up as promised for some work I am looking to get done and then I have the topic of today’s post.  To set the background, keep in mind I have a satellite based Internet service due to a decision to live out in the country.  Trust me, I’d make that decision again in a heartbeat.  The downside of this is a) I can no longer game with my friends across the net, b) the best performance I can get is 1.5M on nice sunny days and lastly c) my usage cap is 300M every 24 hrs with unlimited between the hours of 1 and 5AM.  This is Hughes Net in case you were wondering, which far exceeds what we were getting with Wild Blue.  With all this, I can still enjoy local gaming and tend to gravitate to the war or fantasy based games.  These are all played in solo mode of course which means the cost of any multiplayer game far exceeds my usage.

At some point I acquired Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (either Xmas or Bday gift, can’t remember).  Finding some extra time one night in my schedule, I decided to install it and play a little to relax and let of some stress.  I Made it through the packaging and dropped the disk into the drive.  Next thing I see is it needs to install Steam.  For those not familiar with this product, it is an Internet service that provides patches, friend status and in some cases copyright control.  You could have heard my groan half way into town.  This was a pain when I had cable service and now my connectivity was severely limited.  A quick check of the back packaging did reveal a small warning (at the bottom of the package) that it required Internet access TO ACTIVATE the product.  Well, activation can’t be that bad can it?  Wrong!  So first I have to install Steam which immediately goes out and DOWNLOADS the latest version of the product which takes over 35 minutes to complete with no indication of how big it is in order to keep tabs on my download limit.

I lucked out and remembered an old account when I was still on a better network.  The program eventually loads and the actual game program loads from the local disk – for emphasis, loaded from the manufacturer’s disk which was legally purchased by someone’s hard earned money.  With eager anticipation, the solo campaign icon was hit and the game…. wait.. the Steam window comes up and logs into my account.  Fine, it is probably just a quick validation and on to the ga…. wait… apparently in order to configure Steam to play offline, I have to make sure the latest version of the game is installed.  Anger has now replaced all anticipation to play.  It is 10PM and now the game needs to download patches.  Just how long might this take on the satellite connection?

That’s right folks, 1 hour and 5 minutes and again, absolutely no indication of the amount of data it is downloading so I do not even know if I can get it all in under the cap.  How cute, a little toggle to automatically start the game as soon as it is ready.  I hope the bats enjoy the game because I’ve given up waiting on it.  The dogs decided they needed to go out later that night.  Since it was after 1AM, I dropped by the computer and kicked off the download.

The next night I decide to see if the game was worth the wait.  Immediately, those plans were ripped to shreds.

The iTouch alerts and mail checks were all successful so the problem is likely on Steam’s side.  Let’s summarize, the game was legally purchased, I have no plans to play the game on the Internet, assumed the game was thoroughly tested before packing it in the first place and have zero use for Steam beyond the copy protection capabilities it is providing to the game.  With all that, I still have not been able to play the game for two days.  Needless to say, my wish list and actual purchases will no longer contain any product that requires Steam to run.  If this is the future of copy protection, then I’m calling it quits.  This is doubly insulting based on the fact this particular game was selling out all over the place when it came out.  In case you are wondering, I did finish the game.  As a review, if you like console games you should feel right at home… if you are instead installing it on a PC then recall how you felt once Unreal Tournament 3 came out and ruined the experience.

In my best Arnold imitation, “Let off some Steam, Bennett”  and go and uninstall that crap.

spacer
Jul122010

Another Successful System Upgrade!

Good news everyone, the migration from Windows XP to Windows 7 is now officially complete.  As mentioned previously, I was a little hesitant to embark on this endeavor since it is my main workhorse machine and really the heart of my day to day activities.  Adding to the complexity, my new provider caps me at 300MB per 24 hrs with the exception of 1-5AM.  It did not start out exactly smooth, but some blame is on the space between the chair and the keyboard.  The upgrade was from Windows XP Professional 32Bit to Windows 7 Professional 64Bit.  There is some question where the 7 Professional was really needed, but that purchases was pre-release and thus too many months in the past to worry about.  Unfortunately, when I slipped the 64Bit upgrade disk in an error popped up saying the install disk was not compatible with my OS.  This definitely resulted in quite a surprise.  Of course I tried it again using the exact same process expecting for some reason a different result.. yeah, I know insanity.  It then occurred to me to try and boot off of it.  A couple of attempts at that before realizing my BIOS wasn’t set up to boot off the CD Drive.  This was corrected and sure enough the upgrade boot was successful.  From that point on, the install was pretty smooth – besides working around the download of the updates in the uncapped morning hours.  It took about 5 hours for me to get all but one of my applications re-installed.  A significant portion of that was getting my mail client (Thunderbird) to resync with my backup.  I was a little worried about getting my Firebird back to my preferred state, but it turns out there is an export file it routinely creates which allows you to quickly bring back all your bookmarks.  So far, every single app is functioning without issue and there is definitely something to be said about having a pristine install.  I am still getting use to the Windows 7 UI, but other than a few oddities and slight annoyances it should be fine.

I would like to make two comments that stood out.  First off, I am a heavy user of Casper as my recovery system.  Thanks to a Thermaltake bare drive external unit (BlacX) I can slap in a bare SATA drive, ghost the system on it and slap it on the shelf.  I rotate through 3 drives allowing me multiple backups to roll back to.  Trust me, stop wasting your time with resolving viruses and go the simple route of taking  2 minutes to replace the OS drive.  Now, I utilize Raptor drives for the base OS and my gaming needs.  I think there was a 150G in there to begin with.  Since I wanted to be able to roll back to XP if issues were encountered, I picked up a 300G Raptor to ghost and replace the original drive.  Got the new drive out of the box, removed all the packaging and slapped it in the enclosure.  Ugh, the drive would not seat into the slot.  After closer inspection of the drive, they had taken a small drive about 2.5 inches by oh 4 inches and slapped a heat sync around it which brought it up to standard desktop dimensions.  This would be fine, but the drive’s connectors were at a different offset.  As a result, I had to open the case and add it as secondary drive.  Even this had troubles since the spacing was different than the case SATA cables causing me to replace it with a cable that came with the drive.  After all this, Casper successfully completed the copy and the primary drives were swapped.  Note to WD, stick with the standards and keep your user base happy.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on the last application that I finally got running after about 2.5 hours of fighting with it.  First a little setup.  Recently a certain example has become the poster child  for arguments to switch away from Microsoft and go with Apple.  Any guesses what that particular example might be?  Hint, it has to do with a standard activity that commonly happens with all computer installations…. it has to do with a certain hardware component…. got it?  Yes, the process of adding a printer.  No less than three times last month I was subjected to case scenarios on how such and such a family member struggled time and time again trying to get a printer installed on their Microsoft computer but when [such and such person] gave [them an Apple or showed them theirs], they were able to tell it to just find the printer and PRESTO, the printer was spewing out test pages in seconds.    As a result, everyone in the world should switch to Apple because all their support problems would disappear and we will all be in Pandora.  Once my OS was successfully upgraded, I brought up the add printer dialog and started my st0pwatch.  26 seconds later my network printer was successfully found, installed and a test page was coming out of the printer.  I don’t know about you, but my life can spare 26 seconds.  Now let’s talk about the final app.  The last application that needed to be installed was Apple’s ITunes.  I have an ITouch and until I jailbreak it next week I’m stuck with utilizing this ridiculous excuse for software.  So I go through the install to find out that I have registered all 5 of my available 5 computers for my username and I’ll have to remove them all to add anymore in the future – translated, I have made 4 upgrades/installs of my computer and one on my laptop.  Oh, and I can only do this removal once a year.  Once I get everything installed, I have to wait for it to download all my purchased apps.  Once that is done, I tried to point it to a copy of my previous sync directory.  After what seemed like an eternity, the import completes, but all my playlists are missing.  Thinking this was not an issue, I deleted everything and went to simply sync the contents of my ITouch to the new desktop install.  Guess what – that ain’t happening ’cause you can only sync the other way (desktop to ITouch).  So I rebuilt all my playlists by hand and re-added all the music song by song.  Finished with that, I hit the sync button and and and and … it simply came back that the sync was done, but nothing showed up on the ITouch.  20 minutes later I found a checkbox on the music tab telling it to sync the files.  How silly of me to actually think that people who install ITunes and connect up an ITouch would want to sync their music by default.  It is finally all working now and needless to say I have a counter argument for anytime anyone brings up a similar contrived excuse to move to an inferior platform.  The irony is I have an iTouch, but that appears to be something they got right but of course the supporting software frustrates me more than any Microsoft product ever has.

Anyway, everything is done now so no more excuses for not blogging!  I just might have to break out some recent Acadia pictures in celebration.

spacer
Apr252010

Precious Metals

Fresh off a four comment post (WOOT!), I figured it was time to get a service/product post out of the way.  That and it was a great opportunity to get the Macro glass back out.  Needless to say, this Macro realm is going to take some time to get adjusted too.  Thinking at this point, it is all about the tripod/monopod and possibly the wireless shutter or at worst case the old stand by shutter timer.  Honestly, easy hobbies bore me and this one looks like it will give me a lifetime of enjoyment.

You are probably wondering why there appears to be metal shavings hanging out on the left.  Could it be some colossal metal sculpture depicting the evolution of life from the moment of conception to the point they put you back in the ground (stare at awhile from bottom up, you’ll get what I mean and it will forever haunt you every time you see this picture)?  Maybe it is some civil war relics dug up during our trip out east a couple of years ago or perhaps simply some metal shavings that ended up costing me some green bills?  I’ll let you ponder that for a couple of minutes if nothing else to let you shake out some bad imagery.  If you picked ‘A’, I have some things I’d like to sell you.  If instead you immediately deduced this was a post about service and therefore selected option ‘C’ then pat yourself on the back.  These shavings are actually fingertip small and cost me about $100.  A number of weeks back, my wife decided to enjoy the whirlpool after a long agility show day.  Once filled, she tried to turn off the water but a small stream of cold water remained.  For the most part I’ve gain some proficiency in the carpentry thing, the brick/cement thing, basic mechanics and even wiring when the need arises.  There are two things I am definitely not good at – one being natural gas and the other being plumbing.  When I originally built my house, everything was electric because I could likely fix anything that went wrong and it didn’t have the threat of blowing up my house (note, since then the genset has been installed crushing my no gas plan).

So now it is late on a Sunday and we are staring at a stream of water destined to drain the well if left unresolved too long.  After some brain things inside my head, it occurred to me that it was not a crisis since I could simply close the shut-offs to the whirlpool and get it addressed before her next use.  This plan was relevant for about 5 minutes until a quick run downstairs brought awareness to the fact there were NO shutoffs on the whirlpool.  Couple that discovery with the fact there is a fully tiled elevated skirting along the two open sides of the whirlpool and you have some major suckage happening.  Last chance was to take off the Delta faucets and see if there was a washer I could temporarily tighten down to at least stop the flow.  Any guesses how that idea panned out…you’re right.  With no other options, I killed the main well shutoff and planned to open it up just long enough for our morning showers while we hunted down someone to fix it.  Lucking out, when we turned the water back on, the faucet was no longer leaking so we left the water on, got a hold of someone recommended by one of the builders we still talk to and tested our patience until that Friday when he could make it over to correct the situation.  I should point out, the job included fixing the leaks and putting in the missing shut off valves in case it ever happened again.  Long story short, the plumber successfully put the shut offs in and then started working on the faucet leaks.  Adding to my limited knowledge of plumbing, Delta now uses a cartridge concept which simply pulls out for easy replacement.  There is a spring that sits on top to engage the cartridge which allows the water to flow or more importantly shuts it off when the handles are turned.  The plumber pulls out the cartridge puts a new one in and has me turn the water back on.  Ack!  water still does not shut off.  Intrigued, the plumber turned the water back off, removed the cartridge and started probing into the faucet base.  Pretty soon he pulls out a few of the metal pieces above.  The odd thing he notices is that they appeared galvanized and thus was unsure of where they would have originated from.  Problem solved, faucet replaced and the water turned back on… not so fast… still leaks… water back off.  The faucet was removed again and sure enough more metal shavings and now the rest of them are in the tube having navigated their way through the rest of the innards.  This second attempt did the trick and the faucet officially works now.

I am still left wondering why those shavings ended up there.  I highly doubt it was luck of the draw from debris that made it in to the piping during the build phase over 3 years ago.  What is more believable is faulty faucet workmanship.  The assumption being the metal shavings were part of the faucet manufacturing process and they simply broke off over time.  I do not have the time to verify if there are galvanized components inside the faucet, but in any case, these little shavings cost me over $100.  That amount of money for the weight of those shavings put it in company with some pretty precious metals, however, it was putting at jeopardy the most precious commodity there is out in the country… WATER 8^)

spacer
Mar072010

Operation: On Snap, Block to the Wright

This will be a tough trying to keep my focus on this post while I’m all giddy with excitement due to the Oscars coming on.  In fact, I am so into this star studded affair I’m watching the red carpet shows just to take in the stellar atmosphere.  You know, Seacrest giving me stimulating insights into how such and such mega start became emotionally entwined with her character or some fabulous dude giving me a thorough analysis (yes, even with prompter arrows) on how a particular dress flows with her natural curves and highlights a recent cosmetic surgery… and you? … no… okay, I’m joking, I really don’t give a shit about actor/actresses in general, but I do watch it so I don’t feel bad when I watch one of their downloaded movies.  Do they realize this hurts their “your stealing from the mouths of my shoeless children so stop stealing my movie” mantra when they have awards shows like this?

Oh well, on to something FAR more interesting to me.  This post focuses on a Christmas present my wife got me this year.  Turns out that LEGO  is now producing an Architect line and it turns out they have a Fallingwater set.  We are both big Frank Lloyd Wright fans and had the opportunity to visit a number of his creations throughout the years.  Fallingwater out in Mill Run, Pennsylvania was one of those places.

For starters, the packaging of this kit is quite impressive with a mixture of modern day LEGO construction and Wright featured architecture prints.  I thought the 16+ age recommendation was a little high.  I understand the threat of choking, but clearly any teenager should be smart enough to chew before swallowing and based on the weak cellophane texture of the bagging, those posed no threats to suffocation.

One thing that really stood out was the manual (pictured at the top of the box).   Here is a closer shot.

It consists of a number of pages providing architecture design details of the actual building and related history.  These pictures do not show the crispness of these pages with their gloss black backgrounds.  Clearly there was some graphic artists consulted in the packaging of this product.

Hit the jump to see more details on this project…

Continue Reading…

spacer
Feb132010

Get a Grip Irwin!

Today’s post falls into the PURE STUPIDITY category.  For Christmas, a good friend of mine gave me two vise grips from Irwin.  Whoa, before you jump to a wrong conclusion, this was not the stupid part, in fact, it was a great gift especially since I am always misplacing my wrenches.  No, the stupid description applies to the manufacturer of these products – Irwin.  Take a look at the side by side packaging for the two products:

I made it easy for you to see my issue with these two products.  One is supposedly SAE (English) and the other one is Metric.  Intrigued, I asked myself why an ADJUSTABLE wrench would need to distinguish between English units and Metric units.  Isn’t that the trade off between the skinny profile of crescent wrenches needing exact measurements vs. the more bulky but universal wrench.  Curious, I started comparing the packaging more and could only find two visible difference – that being a single digit off of the product number (2078601 – 2078602) and the SAE vs METRIC label.  They even doubled up the measurement indicator 8″ – 200mm on both packages. Turns out there was actually another difference underneath the wrenches, but I’ll comment on that in a little bit.

Somewhat surprised, I turned the packaging over assuming there had to a number of differences on the back to warrant all the duplicate packaging costs.

Unbelievable, there were only TWO differences.  One was the different bar code (one ends in 9 and the other ends in 8), and the span graphics has an SAE label on one and as expected a metric label on the other.  That’s it everyone, two completely different product packaging with 5 tiny differences.    If you were keeping score at home, you might have been surprised at the number 5 and not 4 per the images above.  There was actually another difference you couldn’t tell from the photo angle.  Underneath the tool was a matching picture of the wrench end.  Turns out, there is an engraving on the wrench end with the corresponding ruler increments.  The SAE one has an English scale:

It is very hard to tell from my photo, but there is a scale on the top of the wrench opening in 1/16″.  That engraving is actually on both sides of the tool.  Unfortunately, the metric picture is even worse than the SAE one.

This scale is in MM and as with the SAE one, is on both sides of the wrench.  Am I completely off base here, or is this as ridiculous as it seems to me.  Again, the exact measurement does not matter to me much when using an adjustable wrench other than if I want to take a measurement of the bolt in which case I’ll just slap a measuring tape across the nut.  That is the consumer view of this.  Let’s look at it from the manufacturer’s perspective.  They have to maintain two complete manufacturing product lines (well, at least the engraving step) , two complete packaging sets and keep two order/invoice sets for essentially the SAME product.  Carry this on to the reseller and now you have to have multiple tag sets, redundant shelf space and maintain two scanning/bar code price lookups.

And to top it all off, IT IS NOT A VISE GRIP (check the clamp teeth) it is a WRENCH.  Oh well, big thanks to Sung for getting me the gift, I can now keep one out in the garage and one in my toolbox to address my English and my Metric needs with the same tool.

spacer