strangely entangled

The reason I haven’t posted anything in the past week is that I’m just getting over what I describe as “SARS-Lite”. I haven’t been sick in nearly 9 years, and this cold hit me pretty hard.

Now that I’m on the mend, I have a few plans for this website. For starters, I’m still settling on a theme. I could build one from scratch, and eventually I probably will. But for the time being I’m going the prebuilt route. So expect the look to change a bit over time as I experiment.

I’ve still got to put together a proper review of the ScotteVest jacket. I’m thinking I might throw a little video together and upload it sometime next week. Overall I’m happy with the purchase, but I don’t think I’ll buy from them again. I think that the quality of the product is highly overstated. Little things like zippers feel fragile, and the overall construction is mediocre. Still, it does look good, and apparently in Vancouver that counts for something.

Other news: I picked up a Canon ZR800 camcorder awhile ago to record podcasts with. I was on a budget, and the main attraction of this device was the mic input jack. These jacks are sorely lacking on many of today’s camcorders, and are a necessity for any kind of serious work as the built-in microphones usually pick up a lot of noise.

I ordered a pair of stereo lapel microphones from Giant Squid Audio Lab, and received them a few days ago. They sound great! The only problem is, they don’t work with the Canon! I’ve discovered that you must use powered microphones with the ZR800, something the manual fails to mention. I’m a bit annoyed, because Canon went out of its way to make the jack look like a standard mic jack on a laptop. I suppose I should have known better though.

In any case, now I’ve got my eye on a  Samson Zoom H2 audio recorder. The H2 can act as a microphone amplifier, allowing me to use the lapel mics with my Canon camcorder. It can also record audio on its own, at 24-bit resolution. Much higher than the 16-bit audio that my camcorder supports. I’ve found a Vancouver store that carries them, so there will likely be one on my desk by the end of next week.

I gave up on UPS and drove out to their Richmond depot to pick up the package myself. To be honest, my first impressions weren’t all that positive. The jacket is substantially lighter than I had expected, and it didn’t look like it would fit me.

Once I got home I was able to get a better look at it and in the end I’m happy with my purchase. The medium sized jacket fits me perfectly and does look quite good. Overall quality is good, although I did notice a few loose threads here and there. It is water resistant, but I wouldn’t call it waterproof as the ScotteVest site claims.

The jacket certainly does contain a plethora of pockets, and their layout seems well thought-out. My one complaint about the pockets is that ScotteVest has stuffed a business card into almost every pocket, as well as a ziplock bag of cards in one pocket in particular. On the back of each card is a description of the function of the pocket the card was located in. What a waste of paper!

I’ll take the jacket for a spin in the great outdoors and will post a proper review, once I get over this horrible cold.

Update: I’ve discovered ripped stitching in one of the pockets. I’m somewhat annoyed about this as I really don’t want to return it (which would mean dealing with customs / UPS again). I’ve emailed SeV to see what they think. So far their customer service has been excellent (more on this later).

When I ordered my ScotteVest jacket, it wasn’t without some degree of hesitation. I had noticed that they shipped to Canada via UPS, which I consider to be one of the worst courier companies of all time. But the idea of a geek jacket with pockets inside pockets (and did I mention the magnetic closures?) got the better of me and I placed my order.

The jacket was originally scheduled to arrive yesterday. As I work from home, waiting around for it to show wasn’t a problem. And that’s what I did for the entire day. At 3 pm I noticed my package’s tracking status had been updated; apparently a delivery “attempt” was made, but they couldn’t find the main entrance to the building.

I called UPS and offered to pick it up at their depot instead. The woman I spoke to said that I’d get it the next day for sure, and that all I needed to do was give them updated delivery instructions. Our building has a 24 hour concierge, and he will accept packages on our behalf. She confirmed that the driver would leave the package with the concierge today.

Flash forward to 3:30 pm today. Nat comes in the door with a UPS delivery attempt notification. Apparently I owe brokerage fees on the package, something both UPS reps I spoke to last night mentioned nothing about, assuring me that the package would be left with the concierge.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, UPS wants to charge me $79 for “importing” the package. That’s 61.5% the cost of the WHOLE JACKET, and is completely, utterly and totally insane. I ordered a $2400 laptop from the US once and didn’t pay that much to import it.

In any case, I still want the jacket so I guess I’ll pay the damn fee. I did manage to get $30 off the jacket when I ordered it, so that offsets the brokerage fee somewhat. I called UPS and got a little angry (I apologized immediately as it isn’t the fault of the person at the other end), and arranged to pick it up at their depot (on Monday, as apparently they’re closed on weekends).

I’ve also emailed ScotteVest to inform them as to just what a ripoff it is to import one of their jackets into Canada. It’s not their fault that UPS charges what it does, but maybe they can look around for alternative shipping companies - I’ve had good experiences with Purolator in the past.

Sigh.