We spent the day today on Sanibel Island.  It’s just off the coast from Ft Myers, and just north of Ft Myers Beach.  It reminded me of Door County on an island instead of a peninsula, on the gulf instead of a lake.

We saw some interesting wildlife:

The kids did some fishing, we got some shrimp and minnows and just let them cast them off of the beach for awhile.  They didn’t catch anything, but had a lot of fun.

The brochures tell you that the entire island is formed from sea shells.  Looking at the picture below, it’s not hard to believe.

Peggy and the kids spent all day picking through the billions of small sea shells washed up all along the beach.  At the end of the day, they looked like lobsters, but happy little lobsters.  We’re going to spend the day tomorrow in the house recovering and healing.

We departed Green Bay at about 7:30pm on Thursday in a very crowded Chevy Cavalier.  It was a short, uncomfortable drive, though, as we stopped in Germantown to switch vehicles.  After moving all of our gear to my in-law’s Toyota RAV4, we were back on the road by about 10:30pm.  I drove through the night, and Peggy took over around 4am, I think.  Our first stop on Friday was Mammoth Caves, KY.  We took the historical tour of the cave which lasted about 2 hours.  We ate lunch and then departed again around 1:30pm.  Next stop, Macon, GA, where we pulled into the Red Roof Inn around 10:30pm to spend the night.

After a much needed sleep in a real bed, and a hot cup of coffee, we departed Macon about 8am.  We drove straight through, with stretching and refeuling breaks, and arrived in Lehigh Acres, FL by about 5:30pm.

It was a great trip, the kids were really well-behaved.  The RAV4 was a very comfortable vehicle for the four of us.

On Sunday, we found a nice LCMS church in Lehigh, spent the early afternoon swimming in the pool at the house, and then in the late afternoon packed up the car for a short swim at Fort Myer’s Beach.  The beach was about a half-hour away, so not real close, but not a terrible drive either.  The traffic was horrible on the beach, but being Sunday, we’re hoping it will be a little lighter for the rest of the week.  We’ll see.

It sounds like today we are going to drive out to Sanibel Island where there will be lots of stuff for the kids to do – shelling, fishing, swimming.

Here’s some pictures from the trip.  We forgot to take the camera to the beach yesterday, so no Gulf pictures.  We’ll get some this afternoon, though.

I’ve been listening to classical radio on last.fm a lot lately because, frankly, classical music is the best programming background noise. One song that really gets played too frequently is Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copeland.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome song — I’m not complaining.

Having heard this song so many times over the past weeks or months, I had convinced myself that I remembered it as the theme song from the Star Trek Voyager TV series.  Well, today I heard the song again and curiosity or nostalgia overcame me, so I jumped on over to YouTube to watch the theme. WRONG!!  Not the same song at all.  In fact, after suppressing my disappointment (embarrassment) in my own poor memory, I discovered that the composer is actually Jerry Goldmith, who has composed songs and scores for many memorable television shows and movies.  If you’re done listening to “Fanfare”, you can listen to the Voyager Theme if you want:

Got some new fancy-dancy solar-rechargeable walk-way lights from Home Depot today.  Great excuse to test out my new camera.  This was a 15 second shutter time.  I love how it makes the sky look almost like late-evening.  In reality, it was pretty dark out.  There’s some serious mad scientist experiment going on in the basement.

Here’s a service that had a lot of potential, but turned out to be too good to be true.

I was informed of this service in a comment (presumably by the owner) on one of my posts back in January.  The hordit service is promoted as free, unlimited storage, for all of your files and bookmarks.

When I first looked at the site two months ago, there was no mention of any cost at all.  However, when you look at the website today, you are greeted with a “FREE 90 DAY TRIAL” logo.  So obviously there must be some cost.  But what?  The front page clearly states “it’s convenient, secure, and easy … plus, it’s free,” and if you look at the FAQ, for the question “How much does it cost?” the answer is “Nothing. Nada. Zilch.”

I signed up anyway.

Within a couple minutes I got my confirmation email.  I activated my account and was in the process of uploading a couple photos when I received another email from hordit:

PLEASE NOTE: Effectively immediately we have switched to a subscription model.  You have a free 90-day trial of all that Hordit has to offer after which you will need to subscribe.

Information will be sent to you as this your trial period comes to an end.

Welcome to Hordit.com – a place where you can store virtually anything!  But did you know there is so much more to Hordit?

Familiarize yourself with Hordit’s features with our tutorial videos here:

http://www.hordit.com/tutorials

We have browser toolbars for IE and Firefox that make interacting with your information and your groups and friends so simple even grandma could figure it out.  Log into your account and download the toolbars here:

http://www.hordit.com/tools

Stay informed about the site on our blog here:

http://blog.hordit.com

- Team Hordit

That’s what I suspected, but still no mention of what the cost is.  Obviously, I am very leery of uploading all of my data to a “free” service that is going to turn around and charge me to get it back in 90 days.  If I knew what the subscription cost was going to be, I could at least make an informed decision of how much time and effort I should put into uploading files during the trial.  I basically made the decision right then and there that any cost was too much for me.  I’d prefer to retain possession of my own files, and hard drives are cheap.  I replied to the email basically saying “thanks, but no thanks,” and suggested that the “bait and switch” style of the registration process was a little bit too sneaky for me.

To their credit, I got another email within 20 minutes:

Not bait and switch.  We’re in the process of updating the site
content/functionality.

The sub cost was messaged 6 weeks ago as $5/mo or $50/yr.

We’ve since ajdusted to $4/mo or $40/yr.

Matt

Wait.  “We’re in the process of updating the site…” followed by “The sub cost was messaged 6 weeks ago.”  If they were really interested in “updating the site”, it wouldn’t take them six weeks to do it.  I suspect the reason they dropped from $5 to $4 is because people don’t generally like getting baited with a free service only to find out 90 days later that they’re going to get charged for it.  And they’re going to keep having trouble getting subscribers if they don’t come clean and clearly state what the fees are up front.  My reply to Matt pretty much sums it up:

Six weeks is plenty of time to get your site updated with the subscription cost, or at least to insert the details of the subscription in the canned email that goes out to new registrants.  I appreciate that you were quick to respond with the details below as soon as I questioned it, but I imagine you’d lose a lot of people who wouldn’t bother to question it – just decide that it’s not worth their time.

If you believe you have a service that is worth $4/mo, then tell people up front what it’s going to cost.  Don’t try to trick them into signing up, thinking it’s going to be free, then hit them with a subscription once they’ve spent hours and hours uploading their files.  I’m sure many people would think $40/year is a bargain for the service you offer, but by hiding those details, you cast suspicion upon yourself and turn away potential customers.

Just some friendly advice, I hope that you can take it to heart.  Good luck with your service.

Eric

If you’re interested in online file storage or backup solutions, I came across this list of free services.  I suppose there’s no guarantee that any of them won’t hit you with a subscription cost after 90 days either.  By the way, I do not endorse the use of any of the services on that list.  Don’t come crying to me if you get burned.  I would be curious to hear how people feel about these types of online storage services though.  Personally, I prefer to back up my files to DVD (several copies for the critical stuff) and take my chances.  I have a real hard time trusting someone else with my files.

UPDATE: By the way, I just got another reply from Matt:

It’s not an intentional act of deceit and – agree we need to get the
changes in place sooner.  Long story.