Charlie Munger once said: “If you mix raisins with turds, they’re still turds.” Meaning, you can’t make a bad investment better by mixing it with a better one.
Nowadays, when everything seems to be about artificial intelligence (AI), I think this statement might make sense:
“If you mix AI with shit, it is still shit.”
Ok, so it is not the same. AI is not the raisins, it might actually be just more shit. Shit mixed into shit. Point is: AI won’t fix everything it touches, regardless of how much Microsoft tries to push Copilot into everything from Excel to Notepad.
If your product sucks, fix it. Don’t think AI will magically make it better.
There is this book I have read every year for 3 years now. Actually, I read it every day1. It’s The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman. I read one page per day, and each page has its own date on top.
There are quite a few pages that has piqued my interest and which I have marked and underliened. October 30th was one of those. It is about self-improvement and prioritization .
The average person somehow manages to squeeze in twenty-eight hours of television per week—but ask them if they had time to study philosophy, and they will probably tell you they’re too busy.
And this applies to a lot more than philosophy. A lot of people—myself included—use the “I’m busy” card often, but what then do we spend our time on?
I have set a limit for 10 minutes per day on Instagram, and it has shown me how fast those 10 minutes goes. In those same 10 minutes I could have emptied the dishwasher and taken out the trash.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use Instagram or watch TV. Just be mindful of what you have spent your time on the next time you are tempted to say “I haven’t had time” or “I’ve been too busy”.
If I miss a day, I’ll just catch up when I’m back home. ↩︎
There are many interesting new technologies out there. And as a manager, you may want to attract and hire developers with these skills.
But while doing this, you may have forgotten what actually keeps the light on; a codebase written in C that only one person knows.
No amount of front end developers will help once this person is gone.
By always prioritizing — and internally praising — new initatives, you are communicating that the core business is not imporant.
So, as a manager, make sure you understand the business you are in. Whether you know it or not, you are responsible that the legacy codebase gets the love and care it needs.
It doesn’t help if your product can integrate with a thousand other platforms if your backend isn’t running.
So, after my Zodiac failed me — and I discovered that it has more than one name — I bought an Icom IC-M94D. Icom is supposed to be one of the top brands, and Icom IC-M94D is the first hand held VHF with built in AIS receiver.
Sadly, IC-M94D had two major annoyances which made me return it. I may have been unlucky, but if that is the case, I was unlucky twice; because I tested two different units.
Annoyance 1 — Dual watch stuttering
Compared to my old Zodiac Seacom 150, the IC-M94D stuttered more when using dual watch. I usually listen to a selected channel for traffic information, and have channel 16 on dual watch.
I did a test with my watch and found out that when there is talk on the selected channel, it switches quickly to channel 16 to listen if there is traffic there every 1.5 second. This is quick enough to make it hard to understand what is being said. On the Zodiac, this switch happened every 3 seconds, which is much easier to listen to.
Annoyance 2 — Static noise
On top of the first annoyance, if I listen to a selected channel without dual watch, there is a lot of static noise each time someone press or releases PPT (push-to-talk).
So if a VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) and a ship is talking with each other, each time one of them press or release the PPT button, there is a half a second long static noise. And it is loud, and it is not possible to remove with the built in noise canceling.
Static noise in combination with the dual watch stutter made this VHF useless for me.
Conclusion
I returned the Icom IC-M94D, but had to pay a fee to have it checked and reset the MMSI number, which was a bit annoying itself, since I think none of the two units I tested worked as one would expect.
On the bright side, I managed to fix my old Zodiac Seacom 150 afterwards.
Below is a list of VHF radios, and they have more in common than just the functionality. With exception of the last one, they are identical in every way except the logo and the startup screen.
Zodiac Seacom 150
Recent RS-38M
1852 VT-39M
Retevis RM40
MariQuip MRQ-HHFLT20D
TX SEA6720
Icom IC-M91D
The last one, the Icom, I would guess is the original one, and the rest are copies that have been white labeled; In other words, sold under different brand names.
I have collected some images of the various “brands” that you can see at the end of this post.
Summary
I would not recommend any of the 6 first on the list. They are fairly cheap and easy to use, but the quality is not exactly the best. I do not know about the IC-M91D, but since it has a different body, it might be of a better quality.
My Experience with Zodiac Seacom 150
My experience is with the one branded as Zodiac. It was a gift. Actually, I have some experience with four of them. Two of them had issues with the GPS and had to be replaced, while my own copy had issues with water. Even light rain could make it stop responding, and it had to be shaken to make it respond again. It just said “water detected”, and no matter what button I pressed it did not go away.
I had the Zodiac until I lost the antenna. I bought a new antenna (1/6th of the price of the radio itself), and then it stopped working all togheter. A repair would probably cost at least half of the price of a new one, so I started looking at something else.
Icom IC-M94D
After the Zodiac failed on me, I bought an Icom IC-M94D. It pride itself as the wolds first handheld VHF radio with AIS receiver. This is not important to me, but GPS and DSC is, and the other Icom models I found did not have either. In retrospect I should probably have done some more research online first.
IC-M94D is slightly bigger than the Zodiac, and thus also IC-M91D. I do not yet have any real experience with it, but I have noticed one thing that bugs me a little; dual watch.
When receiving on the selected channel, and having dual watch on, the sound is stuttering. This is likely because it is switching back and forth between the selected channel and channel 16. And it makes sense; but on the other hand, this was never an issue with the Zodiac.
Images
Below are pictures of the different branded radios.
