Lomcevak

Locked in the Rack

Screen Detail

I found these pictures in my phone when I was getting ready for a firmware update. I meant to write about ‘em earlier but I guess I never got around to it.

This hung scanner was stuck in the rack (kind of looks like it’s stuck in a little toilet) and none of the buttons produced any response. I remember getting some funny looks as I knelt to grab the images.

I still like the system because it saves me time, even if I’m only in the store for a few items. I’ve been audited a few times. The audits, at least in my limited experiences, are more of a wave-of-the-hand than anything.

Other stuff about my encounters with Scan-It are here and here.

This morning brought a little bit of snow. Last night it was said that it was supposed to be a huge honkin’ storm but it turned out to be not much snow at all, just a dusting. Pam went outside to get the newspaper, as she usually does on Saturday morning, but came back inside empty-handed. “There’s no fuckin’ paper,” she muttered disgustedly, partially to me and partially to the Universe.

A little while later I was checking the weather maps to see what had happened to our storm and collecting the morning email. Here was something from the paper:

Good Morning from the Home News Tribune!

We’re experiencing possible delays throughout our delivery area today, December 19, 2009 due to the current weather conditions. We apologize for the inconvenience; however you can access our e-edition immediately by visiting [...]

A couple of years back the paper took the decision to outsource delivery to some faceless fulfillment company. And years earlier than that they stopped the practice of using neighborhood kids on the street. Each change has brought a corresponding drop in service levels.

Anyway, those kids earned their tips. (I wrote about newspapers and delivery gratuities last year, too.) Weather? It just didn’t matter; the newspaper was delivered and that was that. I think our parents called it “responsibility”.

Our e-edition is an exact replica of the printed version that will be delivered to you later today.

And it is, I guess, but the navigation is clunky and you can’t fold it up on the dining room table while you enjoy breakfast and coffee. Also implied is that they intend an eventual delivery, but they’re already four or five hours late.

If you like the Home News Tribune e-edition, you may subscribe by visiting [...]

Extra, or a substitute for pulp delivery? Not sure, as I write.

It happens that I just paid the bill for our subscription. Delivery performance has incremented downward and the paper itself has shrunk – actually become considerably narrower – over the past year. Yet rates had risen again. We already know they’ve outsourced delivery. Apparently they’ve also outsourced billing because my check went to a PO box in Louisville, KY. It used to go to an address down the shore.

Newspapers all over are wringing their hands over their reduced market share. The Internet is kicking their collective asses! Is it any wonder? Maybe they deserve it.

About a month and a half ago my main personal computer, an (ancient) HP zd8000 laptop, began dropping keystrokes. I traced the problem back to the battery. No longer taking a charge, the interrupts generated as the charging circuitry tried, failed and tried again were interfering with the keyboard interrupt. My typing is bad enough; I pulled the offending battery, scanned the ‘net and ordered a new battery from overstock.com based on – what else? – price.

That was September 3rd, and the replacement battery arrived some days later. Unfortunately it was the wrong one! The order showed the correct number as did the packing list, but the thing that sat on my desk clearly showed a different number. The plastic bag it came in was already open (uh oh, could mean trouble) so I took the opportunity to stick it into the laptop, thinking perhaps it was a substitute. Nope, the computer refused it.

I used the online chat on Overstock’s Web site and explained the situation. The rep thought it best to escalate to a tech person so she told me to expect their call, which came some hours later. I hadn’t expected his call so quick. The tech generated the RMA and return shipping label and said he’d overnight another replacement.

Meanwhile I did a little checking. HP has an excellent online parts lookup tool, and I used it to check the two part numbers in question. They were markedly different. I looked them both up on the Overstock site and found the descriptions to be remarkably similar. Maybe this was the problem?

As it turned out, the next few weeks proved frustrating – for both me and Overstock – as we shipped the same incorrect battery back an forth across the country three times. In the end they said that they didn’t have the correct item. They’d process my refund and I was free to keep the incorrect battery. I sent it back anyway; there’s no sense in recycling a perfectly good battery I couldn’t use.

But that’s not the end of the story. Last Friday evening I took a call from Thomas at Overstock. He explained that my case had made it up to the executive level and that they had spent some time analyzing what went wrong. There were a few things, including a mis-SKUed warehouse bin (aha!) and lapses in communication. The analysis had resulted in some process improvements and Thomas called to tell me about them. We talked for a while about things like quality and customer service. Full disclosure: Thomas offered – and I accepted – compensation for my frustration and understanding: a correct battery and some store credit. He left his email and direct phone number.

(The correct battery arrived this afternoon, shipped overnight from Overstock’s supplier. The number fits several applications; the plastic cover trim isn’t right for my particular laptop, but I have spares from previous replacements so it’s no big deal. Overstock, if you’re reading this, don’t panic – I’m good, and I appreciate all you’ve done. You might want to follow-up with the warehouse, though.)

In my experience, the larger a company becomes the less likely is becomes that a minor customer problem actually results in action. Sure, refunds and credits are common enough, but not the continuous improvement part. To do that, and more importantly, to take the additional step of reaching out to the customer after the transaction is complete is exceptional. More should follow Overstock’s example. I’ll use them again.

It seems absurdly simple. We’re spending money hand over fist. Taxes will, with absolute certainty, soon rise. It seems likely to me that taxes will rise to rates never before seen in this land.

Can anyone tell me a rational reason why churches enjoyed tax-exempt status?

We absolutely need to tax all churches, as we do every other non-profit.

Check out this Web site to learn a little  more (edited 2-Sep-09) to read some more; it was the first hit Google returned when I searched.

Who’s with me on this?

…but I’m not complaining today!

As I get into the morning’s activities, I’m reflecting on the fact that when I rose this morning it was 68 degrees (F). A bit cloudy then, the morning sun’s burned it off and the temperature’s risen by a couple of degrees. Nearly every window’s open and there’s a gentle breeze wafting its way through the house. Other than a short, loud blast of bad pop music as an obnoxious neighbor drove through the community, all I hear are birds, an occasional plane and the hum of my laptop’s fans.

As far as the weather goes, this is what it’s all about!

Of course, it is mid-July and this is only the third such day of summer so far. (Yes, I have been keeping count!)

There’s something wrong with the weather. But not today!

Bob Evans wrote in Information Week’s Global CIO Blog an article entitled IBM, Microsoft, And The Myth Of ‘Our Jobs’.

Proving once again that there are statistics to support just about anything you’ve got to say.

So I’ve used the Scan-It system several times since my initial encounter. By-and-large it is a time saver. I haven’t been audited… yet. But the system is not without its share of problems either.

• Crashing the POS Terminal I was most of the way through the usual ‘finish and pay’ cycle, at the point where one waits for credit card authorization. “Please wait – system processing…” The next thing I should have heard was the audio prompt for my signature. I looked away to set the handbasket aside and parked my motorcycle helmet upside-down next to the scanner/scale plate. It may have touched the plate as it rolled around. At that very instant the screen threw up an error dialogue complaining of an inputoverlaperror – yeah, one word – with a cryptic error code and a single OK button. I summoned the attendant who had never seen that error before. She scanned her ID card and dismissed the dialogue. The POS screen threw at least three error dialogues in rapid succession before clearing to display what appeared to be a ‘ready for the next customer’ display. Hmm, would I mind not having a receipt? Yes, I would mind, actually. So she scanned her ID again and accessed a supervisory function to retrieve my order. It appeared to not have been paid for. While we talked about what to do next – pay again or walk away, the screen suddenly cleared to text mode. It reported it had suffered some kind of fatal error and announced it was shutting down. And it did. The slack-jawed attendant summoned someone from upstairs, a kid in a collar and tie. I described the events that had passed; he had never hear of an ‘inputoverlaperror’ either. So he got on his knees, opened a panel beneath the conveyor (on the customer aisle side), fumbled out a wired keyboard and reached in again to restart… a PC. Running Windows. Win2K. I couldn’t resist making jokes about an unsupported OS as we waited for the boot, him sitting crosslegged in the aisle at my feet, keyboard in his lap. He was unable to retrieve my order. With no receipt and no order to refer to, there was really no choice but to let me take my bag of stuff and leave. (My credit card vendor later confirmed the charge went through, so there were no free groceries that day.) Not sure whether this was the POS or the Scan-It system or the combination of the two. But I’ve used the self-service checkouts countless times over the years and never saw one go tits-up quite like that.
• Free Bread There was a new kind of rye bread on the shelf that day. We picked up a loaf and I scanned it. “Beep!” I glanced at the tiny screen and it looked like it said the price was $0.00. I pulled out my glasses. Yup, there it was, right there at the top of the item list, $0.00. We finished collecting more stuff (which posted their prices correctly) and checked out. Later we inspected the paper receipt which was missing the bread altogether. I think I’ll be buying more of that bread!
• Bad Printing The deli counter apparently had problems with one of its printers, it was printing labels that the scanner ignored. When I moved from meat to cheese a different printer was used, so the cheese scanned fine. At the checkout, that scanner wouldn’t see the bad labels either, so I called to some nearby suits who apparently had nothing better to do. One of them summoned an attendant who scanned their ID and keyed the labels in directly, using a screen that regular customers don’t see. He told the suits – all three had come over to share in the fun – that the last 20 or so deli orders had been that way. No wonder I didn’t see him around: he was busy with someone else’s override.

I’m not complaining. Even with the problems I’d say I’m still pretty far ahead, time-wise (plus one loaf of rye bread). But I’d be interested in seeing the ’shrinkage’ numbers before and after installing the system.

It’s been about a month since I dipped my toe in the Twittery waters and I still don’t quite know what to make of it. Statistics tell me that traffic to my personal Web properties has increased rather dramatically. That’s a good thing, right?

I should mention that I quickly learned that there’s little/no restriction on creating new IDs, and it’s very useful to do that in order to experiment with stuff. It’s nice that they allow you delete your ID, too, so if you play that way it’s just nice to clean up when you’re done. That dopey ID you made for testing might be the one someone else is seeking.

So let’s take a look at few Twittery things I’ve noticed, shall we?

Tools Twitter’s API is lots of fun to play with. There’s so much you can do with it and zillions of folks are hard at work trying to figure out how their pet hack can bring them fame, fortune and, yes, money. I’m not at all crazy about the hosted tools that need you to enter your credentials before they’ll function. It’s a trust thing. (Test IDs can come in handy here.)

Advertising Like everywhere else on the Web, everybody’s trying to sell you something. The current worldwide economic climate has spawned a kind of desperation that’s driven some to every imaginable online get-rich-quick scheme. And Twitter’s incredible popularity and growth attracts ‘em like poop attracts flies. In fact, there are more Twitter users expounding on how to make money with Twitter than you can shake the proverbial stick at!

Loneliness There’s an air of sadness, loneliness, melancholy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s definitely there.

Celebrity Lots of celebrities of all levels are on Twitter. Some are even personable and cool. You’ve really gotta take it with a grain of salt, however. Who’s real? Sure, it’s uncool to impersonate, but uncool isn’t a crime. Who’s got staffers writing for them? Who’s just there for shameless self-promotion?

Risk Many tweets include URLs, and most of them have been shrunk to fit the 140-character space using one of the many URL-shortening services. Unless you take steps to preview – and it seems like nobody does – you just don’t know where you’ll end up. And that can be double-plus-ungood. You really need good client-side defenses – you just know you’re gonna end up clicking that link.

Twitter reminds me alot of the CB craze back in the ’70s (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth). This time around, though, you get the fickle tides of Internet trendiness instead of an 11-year sunspot cycle to interrupt the fun. (Internet trendiness is not unlike that surging feeling in your stomach as your Scrambler car changes direction, or the wave pool at Typhoon Lagoon on a hot Wednesday afternoon.) Technically, there’s nothing really new here; all of the technology behind Twitter has been around for quite a while. Doesn’t matter, its popularity is on fire now, and the big question is how it’ll make money. I’m not going to speculate.

I’ll leave you with this cartoon. It’s silly, but it also pretty much sums it up.

I hate grocery shopping. I’ll try just about anything to minimize the time I waste in grocery stores. So I was delighted when I recently encountered Stop & Shop’s new Easy Shop system. (ed. 13-Mar-2009: The system is called Scan It!, not Easy Shop, in our area.)

All you need to do is swipe your customer card at a kiosk, pick up a hand scanner (ergonomically designed, high contrast color screen, made by Motorola), collect a few empty bags (paper or plastic or, for you greenies, use your own reusable bags) and go hit the aisles. Scan your items as you shop and load your bags the way you want them loaded. Along the way, the scanner periodically spams you with relevant special deals that might interest you. And when you’re finished, the scanner quickly uploads its list to the register. A quick credit card transaction and you’re out the door!

Naturally I was interested in what others had to say about the new system, and I wasn’t surprised to find that many (most?) don’t like it. After all, out here on the Web we love to complain! (Google “Stop & Shop” and “Easy Shop” and see for yourself.) One of the big complaints seems to be that it would put cashiers out of work. Do you really presume to think that by assuming a tiny bit of inconvenience you can preserve someone’s position? Besides, I love to talk to anyone and everyone and I have not met a single cashier yet that actually likes their job. Other users don’t care for the random audits, feeling like they’ve been singled out. I don’t know what triggers an audit and I’ve only used the system once (no audit), but I don’t know how else they could detect shrinkage or ensure customer honesty.

There is an RFID-based system being developed – I think it’s being tested in Germany – whereby you simply load up your cart and push it out the door. No hand scanning is necessary and your entire order is tallied en masse as you exit, billed automatically to your credit card. It sounds intriguing but I think we’re safe for a while.

Oh and before you ask, yes, I have tried Peapod. The service is well worth the fee, but the product selection is… suboptimal.

Oakey-Dokie, then. The good ‘ol USofA now has a new President. So why do I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach? Hold onto your ass with one hand, dear friends, and your wallet with the other; we’re in for one helluva ride.

Even though I’m so immersed into the online world I still subscribe to a pulp-based newspaper. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you snickering right through the wire. I scroll, er, page through it every once in a while but mostly Pam reads it in the morning on the weekend. So we keep a Friday-Saturday-Sunday subscription to the Home News Tribune.

old Home News building

I live in the town I lived in as a boy and this paper has served the area as far back as I can remember. Like almost every other paper, it’s changed hands and merged more times than I can count – I remember it as the Daily Home News. A fun elementary school trip was a tour of their building on How Lane (image) where it the paper was written, printed and distributed. As a kid I sometimes delivered the paper, by bicycle, to the neighborhood, subbing for friends when they were sick or vacationing. (But I never had a route of my own – that coveted job was only for the ambitious and motivated – not me, back then!)

Back in the day, the flow of subscription money was much different than today. The carrier (delivery person) would buy the papers needed to service the route at discount and collect weekly from subscribers, pocketing the difference. Tips, of course, could be a good part of your earnings. As a mini-business you learned about profit and loss, commitment, relationship-building and all that other good stuff.

Today there’s no neighborhood kid or bicycle, just a guy (I think it’s a guy) speeding around in a beat-up car before dawn. I haven’t got the foggiest idea how they’re paid but I get a bill from a faceless entity somewhere across the state (ed. 19-Dec-2009: now it’s Louisville, KY) once a year. On the payment form is a space for a ‘carrier gratuity’. Service has been good over the years – the paper’s always there when I expect it – and so I tend to tip pretty well. Looking back over my records I see it varying between 50% and 100% of the subscription price. The billing office, I’m thinking, distributes the gratuities to the carriers. Subscription renewals come up all the time so there’s probably a steady stream of gratuities. There should be, anyway.

There was an eighth-sheet-sized, ink jet printed request tucked into one of this weekend’s papers – a tip request! It got me to thinking.

Last year there was another request just like this. A couple of weeks later there was communication from the publisher telling of a scam that had been taking place on their routes. The scam worked like this. The fraudster would put notes in the delivered papers – they’re delivered very early in the morning. Then, they’d come by before delivery collecting any envelopes left by subscribers. What a racket, eh? I suppose this would work for any early-morning service: deliveries, trash or recycling collection – heck, everybody seems to expect tips these days.

What do you think? Do you tip off-hours service people this way? Did you ever think that maybe your gratuity isn’t actually going where you think? How many actually get up nice and early to handle it personally?

The other morning on the televised news I heard of (yet another) corporate muckety-muck drawing a comfortable salary (USD6M, in this case) despite their company’s recent losses (some USD40B). And it got me to thinking about terminology.

Take the term from which this entry derives its title: ‘loss’. I’m thinking that this is one of the most misused terms around – especially today, as it applies to business and economics. It seems to be deliberately chosen to create a feeling of sympathy for the ‘lossee’, and I think that the feeling is completely misplaced.

Let’s first look at a perfectly accurate usage. “Joey Psychotic lost his home and all of his possessions to fire this morning, believed to be started when his hungry cat kicked over an unattended prayer candle…” This makes sense – Mr. Psychotic had a home. But it was consumed by fire, reduced to a wet, smoking pile of rubble, crawling with investigators. Not a home by any stretch of the imagination. You feel sorry for Mr. Psychotic, and you should (even while questioning his religious rituals).

Now, how about this one: “The Acme Prayer Candle Company lost forty billion dollars over the last three quarters of this year due to slacking demand. Stockholders fear bankruptcy as…” Nope, I don’t buy it. That which you do not have cannot be lost. Acme didn’t lose anything – they never had it in the first place. See the difference?

Let’s take a stab at writing that a little more accurately: ”The Acme Prayer Candle Company failed to realize forty billion dollars in profits over the last three quarters of this year. Acme executives cite slacking demand as the cause of their failure to deliver promised value to stockholders, who fear bankruptcy as…” Acme didn’t lose, they FAILED.

Fail brings a whole different set of emotions than loss. It’s not that failure is necessarily bad, either. After all, failure can be a very powerful teacher – well, provided one can grasp its message, which isn’t a given.

I don’t feel much sympathy toward anyone that can (mis)direct their company to failure, and yet still pull down six million greenbacks. I won’t bet on their learning anything, either, unless it’s something along the lines of, “hey, look what I just got away with!”

Maybe the companies that are failing should be allowed to fail, their directors along with them. A multitude of companies, built on good ideas, managed competently, would certainly spring up in their place. I’m not denying that there would be great steaming heaps of economic pain along the way, the likes of which most alive today have never seen.

But America, still the greatest land on Earth, would emerge stronger than ever.

Some days ago we stopped at the supermarket for a couple of things. Standing in the checkout line we saw something new – Chocolate Skittles.

Chocolate Skittles

Now, I actually like Skittles. Especially the sour ones that are encrusted with that crystalline stuff that stimulate your taste buds not unlike a full stack of Marshalls cranked up to 11 does to your ears. My kid, like 99% of all kids, loves that stuff, too. (An equal proportion of adults hate that taste stimulation, incidentally, which I believe is by design.)

But these chocolate things? Ugh! Gave ‘em to my kid. He gave ‘em back. My wife refused to try ‘em after watching our reaction. ”Tastes like ass.” To say that the flavors in the package – S’mores, Vanilla (huh? vanilla in a ‘chocolate mix’?), Chocolate Caramel, Chocolate Pudding, Brownie Batter – seriously miss the mark is a gross understatement.

Products don’t just spring into being without consideration. Somewhere in Mars there was a meeting, the result being a decision taken to bring these abominations to market. Probably a bowl or two of ‘em right there on the conference table, alongside the coffee cups and water bottles. I wonder if any of the suits actually tasted ‘em. Somehow I doubt it.

Some years back I knew a girl that worked for Mars. She said that samples from their (rather extensive) product line were freely available in all their offices. I’ll bet the bowls of these never, ever need to be refilled.

Toyota earns a fat zero in my book for that awful ad campaign they’re running with that tag-line.

Over and over and over again. Oh, I’m so sick of hearing it. And besides, what with the economy in the toilet it’s just what the weak need to hear: a pitch for a zero-percent loan to buy something so stupid as a car. Wake up, people. Do you really think a corporation is going to let you borrow their money for free? Oh, you’ll pay, one way or another. And that’s something you can take to the bank.

As for me, I’ll need to long-forget that abysmal ad before I’ll even consider buying anything from Toyota.

The other day I read the WIRED piece by Paul Boutin where he tells us that blogs have passed into obsolescence. I’ve got no disagreement with many of Paul’s points – the rampant commercialism, the decline of text as a medium of expression, and so on. Who can compete with legions of professionals? But is that really what it’s all about?

I don’t see much difference between the basic evolution of blogs and the basic evolution of other forms of expression. Blogging started small, just ordinary folks with something to say, and the development of tools to make it easy for the non-technical (or less-technical) to reach the world. Some producers became popular and the money started to flow. Traditional media, their livelihoods threatened (yet again), jumped into the fray. Followed by legions hoping that they could finally get rich quick. Blogging exploded.

Today there are countless blogs, far too many for anyone to keep track of. Every one can’t be at the top of a Google search. Not every one can generate scads of revenue. Not every one can be the most popular. Is your blog on the top 100 list? Nope, mine isn’t either. But honestly, that list is the last place I go for stuff to read. How about you? One thing I’ve noticed that the usefulness, the interestingness, of a blog is inversely proportional to its sponsorship and associated advertising. See those sidebars, bulging with beckoning animations and such designed to siphon your wallet? But that’s just me.

No, the blog is not dead. It may smell a little funny, but that’s okay. Keep reading. But, more importantly, keep writing.