Don’t ask why, what choice did he have

So yesterday was Prime Day, a self serving event that Amazon invented a year or two ago as an excuse to have a large sale.  Early in the day Cindy and I took advantage of the combination of Prime Day pricing and an Amazon Echo voice ordering spiff to get a second Fire TV stick for 15 bucks.  However later in the day a much larger purchase occurred.

When the hoverboard craze hit last year I thought they were pretty cool however I never jumped on board, no pun intended.  In retrospect I was relieved I didn’t as the stories of shoddy workmanship as well as reports of the boards catching on fire when their lithium batteries burst into flame surfaced.  They were yet another example of a long list of sub-par Chinese products.

Well when I was browsing Prime Day deals I stumbled across the Segway miniPro.  First I was surprised to see the Segway name on a new product.  I had thought they went out of business years ago.  When I did some brief research on Segway I found that the company was actually sold a couple times, the last time to a Chinese company named Ninebot.  Of course seeing it’s Chinese ownership did not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling however I saw that Ninebot sort of has followed the Lenovo blueprint.

Lenovo is a Chinese company that took over the IBM PC business.  They have managed to maintain a high quality product over the years.  I have actually owned a few Lenovo PC’s.  Ninebot has the reputation of doing much the same, building high quality, well engineered products instead of the typical knock off Chinese junk.

The miniPro has been available in other markets for a few months but only has been released in the US recently.  It is somewhat similar to hoverboards in appearance but there are a lot of differences when you look closer.  The base specs of the unit are impressive being able to support riders weighing up to 220 pounds.  It has a maximum range of 14-15 miles and has a maximum speed of 10 mph which is way faster than I could run for anything beyond short bursts.

The steering of the Segway differs greatly from hoverboards as well.  You still go forward and backward by adjusting your weight in either direction but the steering is not done with the feet.  Instead you use the thing that looks like a seat which is positioned between your legs.  By applying slight pressure you control left and right turns.  All the reviews I saw of the Segway indicated it felt like a superior control method to the foot pressure other hoverboards utilize.

Instead of the solid, unforgiving tires that other hoverboards use that cause traversing anything other than smooth sidewalk a bone jarring experience, the Segway has rubber pneumatic tires which absorb bumps much better.  I saw a video of a guy off roading on a trail with the miniPro and having very little difficulty doing so. It was pretty impressive.

The Segway has some other flashy features like Bluetooth integrated with a phone app that gives you lots of information about your rides as well as a bizarre remote control mode.  The miniPro can be driven around without a rider by a phone, having no issue keeping itself upright.  It also has very cool LED lighting and a status panel that lets you know exactly how much juice you have left in the battery.  Unlike the cheap boards, the Segway is UL certified and has a higher end battery charging system that will not potentially ignite the battery if left plugged in for too long.  You can completely charge the unit in four hours. Ninebot actually has some bigger plans for the platform, demonstrating a “robot” add in that utilizes the miniPro as it’s base at the most recent CES.

So anyway, enough of the sale pitch. The whole reason I did all of this investigation was because Amazon had them on special for Prime Day for over 40% off what they normally list for.  Now if I did a logical analysis of my need for something like this the end result would of course be no, I do not.  However being an adult approaching 50 with no kids I have more disposable income than my child bearing counterparts so I decided to bite the bullet.  I only did so once I got Cindy’s enthusiastic approval for the idea.  It will be fun, plain and simple.

I also noticed that there is rather gaping black hole of US based real world YouTube videos with the Segway miniPro.  I hope to help fill that void in the near future.

Yesterday Bernie officially endorsed Hilary for the democratic presidential nomination.  Within milliseconds the criticism started rolling in.  Of course I thought this was ludicrous if anyone took a moment to look at his options.  If Bernie decided to run as a thrid party candidate he would probably do better than any other third party candidate in history, but still lose. The end result of his run would be siphoning off mostly HRC voters which would surely make a Trump presidency a reality.  Even if he simply withheld his official endorsement out of principal, once again all it does is give Trump more opportunity to succeed which the majority of the country clearly does not want.  To me it is Bernie being a realist and sacrificing himself up for the greater good.  In my opinion this election is clearly a “who is less bad” scenario which is sad and depressing but it’s the choice we will be given.

Regardless, for people to take shots at Bernie, who may be the most honest and committed presidential candidate I have seen in my lifetime, is low class and serves no useful purpose.