Blogs of a bunch of friends

29 December 05 - 06:41Rubbermaid Roughneck Storage boxes

I hate Sterilite's storage tubs.  They are only marginally better than the store branded crap that has replaced the good Rubbermaid Roughneck storage boxes that was once available at many different stores.  They are flimsy, crack easily, and generally can't handle the abuses storage tubs should be able to take.  Of the nearly 40 Rubbermaid Roughneck storage tubs I have, only one has been permanently damaged (liquid parafin will react with the plastic and cause it to bend out shape) by the many abuses I have put them through. I can see why people are attracted to the store brand storage tubs-- they are cheap.  I suppose it must be the translucency of the Sterilite ones (since they are only a little less expensive than the Rubbermaid) that attracts people to them.  Why don't people realize they aren't worth it.  I have Rubbermaid Roughneck tubs that over 10 years old that have taken many abuses and are still in fine condition.  The few pieces of Sterilite brand tubs I have owned have never made it a year without a crack.  Now if I could only find some place that would let me order a half dozen of the sizes of Rubbermad RoughNeck tubs that I need.

brian - - one comment / No trackback - § ¶

23 December 05 - 05:25A new phone

So, I got a new cellphone last night. The unpleasantness of my experience at Wal-Mart is not fit for public consumption. Instead I rant about the setup of the phone. Getting it activated with TracFone was simple and quick (I have been extremely happy with their service in the 4 years I have had phones with them).

So with activation out of the way, and after hearing the annoying "Nokia tone" on the test call, I set about finding the ringtone that sounds as much like an oldschool phone as possible. There are about 30 ringtones on the phone; I would guess several cause dogs pain, a bunch were clearly designed to turn dead famous dead composers over in their graves,and the rest are simply annoying. I now appreciate at least one of the reasons so many phones out in the real world have such obnoxious ringtones set. There seems to be nothing that sounds like a simple ringing phone or a non-obnoxious subtle beeping. It's set to vibrate only now, I'll have to get back to this problem.

Noticing the date and time wasn't set, I dig through the settings menu to set it, annoyed that it didn't autoset the time initially (I think all devices that could possibly autoset their own time should.) Finding the option "Auto update of date and time:" with the options "yes", "confirm", "no", defaulted to "no" did not amuse me. There is good reason to have the option to require confirmation of automatic time updates (some people might wish their phone to tell the time in their home time zone even when elsewhere), but there is no excuse for the default to be off. Turning it on, I expect my phone to know the correct time shortly. A couple of hours later, the date and time are still unset. I dive back into the menu to set the time. Bad TracFone, if the feature doesn't work, don't let me see that the feature even exists.

I never did find a boring unoffensive choice for a ringer. I settled on a single beep followed by a vibrating alarm. What I really want is a series of beeps that increase in volume over time. Damn Nokia.

admin - - two comments / No trackback - § ¶

21 December 05 - 08:06Best Buy lines at Christmas

I was in Best Buy a week ago. It being the holiday shopping season the experience was even more painful than usual. Having found what I was looking for, I made my way up to the line for the cash registers. At first glance they appear to do the correct thing and have a single line for all the cash registers. This is the most effiecient way to optimize for the lowest average time in line for customsers in general. As I stood in line for a little over ten minutes I was able to observe that Best Buy continues to be all about appearance. At the front of the line was a blue shirt employee pointing people to individual lines at each cashier. While queuing one person at each cashier is a wise idea, any more gains nothing and could extend the time of some people.

Finally reaching the blue shirt, I am told to head to cashier 8 and that "someone will right with you." I approach cashier 8 and wait in line. For 7 minutes I stand in line. During that seven minutes, I watched cashiers fumble with minor issues with cash registers, spend time acting as salesmen hawking service contracts, and being unable to answer basic questions on the return process. I'll give the counter jockies the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is poor system design and poor training at fault for these long lines. So in this particular case, I was indeed one of those people that had a longer than average time wait time. Thanks Best Buy.

brian - - one comment / No trackback - § ¶

20 December 05 - 04:00THE PACKAGE IS DELAYED DUE TO EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL

I was supposed to recieve a package from UPS on Friday. It left the warehouse before 7am on Friday to be delivered. It returned to the warehouse (which is less than 3 miles from my house) about 12 hours later with the " THE PACKAGE IS DELAYED DUE TO EMERGENCY CONDITIONS BEYOND UPS' CONTROL". Now snow wasn't an issue for us on Friday (the last snowfall was Wednesday). A call to UPS customer support revealed to me yet another reason to avoid UPS.

Inquiring about what the emergency condition is led nowhere. I was however told in as many words "when a driver can't deliver a package on the expected delivery date an emergency condition is at fault."  So not only will UPS not make any guarantee fortimely delivery of Ground shipments, but they also will be deceptive to deliver it "on time".  Now if only more companies would be willing to ship USPS.

brian - - one comment / No trackback - § ¶

19 December 05 - 04:53Computer Hardware Reviewers are bad people

Simply put Loyd Case of Extreme Tech is a wanker. As is typical of computer hardware reviewers, they assume that everyone is spending thousands a year on computer hardware. People like him have article after article showing off this $500 video card, and that $800 processor. They rarely have useful articles telling normal people what hardware to buy. They don't do comparative reviews of sanely priced video input hardware. They don't do articles discussing how to work out what the limitation of a system to know what to upgrade next. They don't discuss if it is better to put the extra money in the processor or the video card.

My annoyance with Loyd was usually pretty mild as Extreme Tech's articles are usually pretty bad and not worth serious consideration. But a few months ago he wrote about upgrading his system. I saw the system he was upgrading from, with it's 3.4ghz cpu, 2gigs of ram, and $400 video card), and was disgusted. When he commented how parts of the system were feeling "long in the tooth" I just about lost it. Reading further it seems that his problem was not the hardware, but the fact that he had the same windows install he had three motherboards ago. No real suprise his boot time was 10 minutes. Normal people would have backed up their data and done a freh reinstall. No, this columnist went and built a $2200 system (oh, but he did use a dvd drive and the ram from his old system, that saved a whopping $200).

My loathing of Loyd was brought back to the forefront of my mind when I saw reference somewhere to a second article on his new system. It seems less then a month after he finished his system he finds it doesn't work well and swaps out a bunch of hardware again. I said it three paragraphs ago, and I'll say it again. loyd Case is a wanker.

brian - - three comments / No trackback - § ¶

17 December 05 - 18:17Sharpie.com

A surprising change for a blog full of complaints about the world, I have complements about a corporate website. Sharpie's website is pretty much exactly what I would expect of a website for a company that makes markers. They have nice pages that can be browsed by color or by tip type. There is a cute video showing the production of sharpies, and the Material Safety Data Sheets are readily available. So bravo Sanford, a division of Newell Rubbermaid for making a product site about a boring product line that provides the information I sought.

brian - - one comment / No trackback - § ¶

12 December 05 - 12:28Big Burrito shops

I was at Chipotle for lunch the other day. Having made through the line and up  to the first employee I am asked what I want. I say burrito. The employee next asks what kind? Why do they do this? That information isn't important yet. The first question should answer what type of vessel you want your grub in (a large tortilla, three small tortillas, or a bowl). Next they should ask if you want rice, followed by black or pinto beans.  Then they can ask what type of meat I want. 

This is not how is works though.  After I say burrito, they ask what kind, I say steak, and by the time they get to adding the meat,  am dealing with a new employee on the line or the employee has forgotten what I said and offers me chicken.  So why do they ask at the beginning of the assembly counter?  Sure, if the customer wants to volunteer that information, fine, but why bother specifically asking? While Chipotle may not be a massive retailer that finds the need to optimize everything for efficiency, this is a pretty simple one.

brian - - No comments / No trackback - § ¶

12 December 05 - 09:29Target wins!

In a surprising twist, I have praise for a big box store. Target (like pretty much every sizeable retail establishment) has a customer facing swipe card/debit card reader gizmo. The device is a little different than many as it does not read your card by swiping it through a slot but eats it like atms of yesterday did. The neat thing here is that I was able to insert my card, sign the digitizer pad, and get my card back back into my wallet before the nice cashier lady finished scanning my purchases. So Kudos to Target for designing a system that made my giving them money easier.

brian - - No comments / No trackback - § ¶

08 December 05 - 14:44Registering DVDs

I pop in the movie Kathleen and I are going to curl up and watch. Once past four previews and an annoying opening clip for the dvd menu I navigate to the setup menu to make sure the correct audio format is selected. On the setup menu (right next to "Audio Setup" and "Caption Setup") is "Register Your DVD". The hell? Since when do DVD's need registering. Selecting the menu option, I am told

REGISTER YOUR DVD

BY REGISTERING YOUD DISNEY DVD, YOU BECOME ELIGIBLE FOR:

THE DISC REPLACEMENT PROGRAM THAT ALLOWS CONSUMERS TO REPLACE A DAMAGED DVD

DVD TECHNICAL SUPPORT

NOTIFICATION OF SPECIAL OFFERS AND UPDATES ON OTHER DISNEY DVD TITLES

SIMPLY GO ONLINE TO REGISTER AT DISNEYDVD.COM/SUPPORT

Let's see, the disc replacement program isn't awful. $7 replaces a scratched or damaged disc. Why exactly would I want to bother to register before I had the problem? Speaking of which, why should I need to register at all. I should send them the busted dvd along with $7 and they should send me a new disc.

Dvd Technical support? I don't really ant to comtemplate what this entails.  

Notification of Special Offers? So disney is gonna use my registration information to advertise to me? At least they are honest.

Only a company like Disney could up with such a brilliant plan.

brian - - one comment / No trackback - § ¶

06 December 05 - 06:56Supermarket Savings Cards

This morning in route to work I stopped at Copps grocery store to restock my lunch supplies. After ringing up the contents of basket, the counter jockey asked me if I had a "Key Savings Club" card (the name of the silly "club" that gets you access to special club only sales which would be the normal sales other grocery stores have). Having played this game many many times before I asked him to use the store card. Surprising to me, he said he could no longer do that, but he did offer me a form and said that I could fill it out and mail it in and he would give me the discounts today. I told him that was fine, he gave me the discounts, and as I passed a garbage can in route out of the store I deposited the form where it belongs. The funny part of this is that I always use the same credit card to pay for groceries and thus they could easily enough be tracking my purchases anyway.

brian - - two comments / No trackback - § ¶

05 December 05 - 05:10Pretax dollars for Parking

Working at a university in a crowded downtown means I pay for parking. Since parking is a non-trivial expense and since the IRS allows this to be paid for by pre-tax payroll dollars it is a wise idea to do that. Now if you are an employee and have a regular monthly permit this is easy, the 36-86 dollar amount is automatically deducted from your paycheck before taxes. Now if you are enrolled in the flex program (very brief descrption: a mobile in car parking meter that is paid for as it is used with smart cards that have money put on them) life is not that simple(pdf). The basic process goes something like this.

1. Puchase smart card
   
2. Log on to poorly designed web system to setup money to be withdrawn from your next paycheck.
3. Wait until money is withdrawn from paycheck
4. Submit reimbursement request
5. Wait 2-4 weeks
   
6. Hope you remember to do this all within a 60 day window from time of purchase of card.
   

It is possible to have automatic monthly deduction (this is not effective for me as my usage can vary by 200% in a given month). So for me from when the money is withdrawn from my account until I get my reimbursement check I have effectively paid twice for the smart card. This isn't a real complaint as we are speaking of at most $100, but it is an indicator that the system is broken. 

It would be quite possible for Transportation Services to process the payroll deduction, but I when I inquired about this matter I was told -- That would be more work then we are interested in doing.

brian - - No comments / No trackback - § ¶