Archive for the ‘Rant’ Category
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
As I rounded out my quarter-century on this earth (the year you can rent a car without an underage fee) I thought I had reached the last landmark year until I became a senior citizen. For better or worse, I was mistaken.
This product over here –> is household goop. I’ve been a user and promoter of this product for a long time. As far as I can tell, all varieties of “goop”, whether it be household or plumbing flavor are exactly the same. My familiarity however goes back to when it was called “Shoe Goo” and sold at your local Foot Locker or Athletes Foot right next to the shoe shine kit. As a skateboarder this product continues to provide an affordable alternative to bi-weekly shoe purchases.
This weekend Stacey and I were at our local Target and I picked up some goop. As the cashier scanned my sole (no pun intended) item she told me that she would need to see my ID. I opened my wallet and started to… hey, wait a minute. Why would she need to see my ID for a cash purchase of friggin Shoe Goo! She explained to me that she could not sell it to me unless she saw my ID and then pointed to the screen. Apparently I need to be 40 years old to purchase this item. She asked a fellow cashier who told her to push the function button to get past that screen – but she was having none of that – and I was having none of this ID showing. Problem solved of course when the manager came over and pressed the function key.
There are a couple interesting points to be made here. I suppose that this was flagged for its potential use as an inhalant – I get that. Here’s the thing though, I think this tube cost almost $4. I could buy two gallons of gas – three cans of whipped cream – probably a box-load of model glue for my $4. Why would an honest hard-working inhalant junkie such as myself choose to purchase Shoe Goo to support my habit. It makes no sense. I saw that movie Love Liza with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Some folks just dig on the sniffin’ – but I’m not quite sure targeting 18-40 year old Goop purchasers really is going to solve this serious epidemic.
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Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
Do you ever get home and see that post-it note on your door when you’re expecting a fun or important delivery? Post-its are nice, but I really prefer packages. Then after reading carefully your heart drops when you see that the sender included a signature requirement.
I have some serious frustration issues with packages that are sent via UPS or FedEx with a signature requirement for residential deliveries. Today I got just such a post-it for a UPS overnight delivery. They were willing to pay the big bucks to ensure that it got there the next day… at 10:30 AM… at my house. Wait – a better way to say it is that they paid to guarantee that the package would get there the next day with a virtual guarantee (10:30AM M-F … don’t other people work at that time) that I would not be there to get the package, with a guarantee that I actually got it (signature), if I happened to get it. I suppose my frustration should be with the sender – but why is there customer demand for this service.
I called UPS at 7:30 to change the delivery address to my workplace. Because it was after the 7:00 closing time the address change would not go through until Friday (since Thursday is a holiday). Well nobody is going to be at my office on Friday to pick up the package because it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving. Since UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday or Sunday my overnight package will have reached me in six short days.
I remember when I ordered my iBook a couple years ago Apple put this same requirement on the package. Shocker I was not there between the hours of 10:30AM and 2:00PM with a smile on my face and pen in hand. I called UPS and there were further instructions on the package that the destination could not be changed and it could not be picked up at the UPS office. So it needed to go through several delivery attempts, then three days back to Cupertino. After calling Apple they would not ship it to my work because that address was not the billing address of my credit card, so I had to call my credit card to get that address added, then call Apple back to schedule delivery.
Perhaps I sit up on a pedestal in my white-collar world, but don’t most people work 9-6 type hours like I do? You’d think Apple and UPS would be spinning their wheels constantly because of this issue – but I am made to feel like I am unreasonable by working 9-6 and by not taking a day off of work to accept a delivery. I mean, wouldn’t it serve residential customers of UPS, FedEx, and retailers better by choosing different hours?
UPDATE – UPS broke their rules and called me back at around 8:15 with someone who promised to get my delivery redirected to my work for tomorrow.
Posted in Rant, Service | 2 Comments »
Friday, October 6th, 2006
A mac keyboard is funny. It has F14, F15, and F16 keys… that is unless you’re on a notebook computer in which case they’ve admitted that those keys are useless. On the flip side – the keyboard contains home and end keys, which for some godawful reason just plain don’t work (unless you’re using a Microsoft product). My suggestion – get rid of the F14, F15, and F16 keys and actually make home and end work.
A typical PC keybard is not without its gems. The red-headed step-children of the keyboard are in exile in the upper right hand – SysRq, Scroll Lock, and Pause. Then you’ve got the Num Lock – couldn’t we have gotten rid of this once all keyboards had arrow keys built-in. Does anyone ever NOT want num lock on? I like how it’s so strange to have num-lock on, that it warrants a little LED light to tell you that its on – just like caps lock. My suggestion, get rid of the arrows on the number keys and subsequently number lock – then turn the step-children keys into ctrl-alt-delete to make life easier on Windows.
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