While prepping all of my old boneyard machines for donation to Interconnection, found an old version of my original website, funkaspuck, complete with a cache of some old poetry. Oh the days before I knew I could drown my misery in alcohol =p
Archive for February, 2010
Founding the Past
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010New Pogo
Friday, February 12th, 2010My favorite remixer, Pogo, has a nice remix of Empire of the Sun’s Walking on a Dream
I always find it amusing when I discover a song that I downloaded as a free promo track from Starbucks, but hadn’t ever listened to yet.
Pennywise, Pennyfoolish
Thursday, February 11th, 2010Someone was smart enough to write up a system that inserts an extra flyer in every new county library card, that goes to a city resident, to let them know that they won’t be allowed to make book hold requests. In a library system with 45+ branches over hundreds of miles, that’s basically saying, “this card is useless to you, unless you can afford to drive all over the place”.
They weren’t smart enough to make that a prominent notice during the on the online application form, once you give them a Seattle residence.
Cost of inserting an extra piece of paper in a mailing? more than zero times number-of-new-cards.
Cost of inserting an extra piece of html in the application webpage? more than zero, but only once.
Add in the chances that some of the cards you mailed out will never be used because of the policy.
Add in the costs of fulfilling interlibrary loan requests from the city library. The library that will charge the same patron $5. I’m sure they’ll send on some of that money, but seems like a whole lotta waste when the county library could just charge the fee themselves, saving wear and tear on the poor book, if nothing else.
I blame Tim Eyman, just like I blame him for the way Olympic Security guards stood by and watched a 15 year old girl get kicked in the head, after she came up to them begging for help. They were chosen because they are cheaper, because they aren’t paid to intervene, only watch. They replaced effective guards that were too expensive after Tim cut transportation taxes.
(non-) Fulfillment by Amazon
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010So Amazon has this program that sounds all sorts of nifty for the marketplace seller and buyer, Fulfillment by Amazon. The theory goes, the seller sends Amazon all their inventory, Amazon stores it in their warehouse with everything else, and when something gets bought, it goes into the system like any other product sold by amazon, complete with free super-saver shipping and all that. Sounds nice.
The reality seems to be somewhat less than it could be. I ordered two items that are supposedly in stock in the Fulfillment by Amazon system, and two items that are supposedly In Stock as part of amazon’s regular system. For no reason I can figure out, they won’t be shipping anything out till next week, a full 7 days after the order was placed. The only reason I picked the Fulfillment by Amazon seller over one of the others, was the assumption that Amazon would actually ship out the item in a reasonable timeframe. schmucks.
“Amazon locates your products using our advanced web-to-warehouse, high-speed picking and sorting system.” –any system that takes a week to find two books doesn’t deserve the name “high-speed”.
UPDATE: Looks like I’m not the only one feeling the Fulfillment By Amazon hate.
UPDATE2: How interesting. It would seem that complaining had an effect, they shipped the order early, this morning.
Extra Chocolate
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010Whenever I go thru starbucks, and this one lady is working, she always gives me a little cup with the extra hot chocolate she has leftover. She never gives Brian an extra cup of hot water when she makes his americano. =p
Pente Powers Activated
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010I love it when I can see a pente win coming on, full of the knowledge that they can not escape the trap I have laid. Of course I’ve been known to make mistakes and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This is the problem with playing non-realtime. I’ll take an unwarranted loss or two, in exchange for having peeps to play with.
Finally Found
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010Finally found the right search terms to find another childhood book series I only half remembered. Turns out it was “Danny Dunn“. I could really only remember two stories’ plots, and that only pieces. One was a robot dragonfly, and the other was a cold ray that they used to cause rain, IIRC. I was about ready to spend an askme, but for once, there really was a previous question that applied to my current question, and the answer was revealed.
happy happy, joy joy
Faildate
Monday, February 8th, 2010Saturday night’s date attempt was full of fail.
Starts off with an email 5 mins before meetup time, saying “running 45 mins late, and I already ate”. Continues with actual arrival time of more like 1.5 hours late. I failed to garner us an ideal location at the venue, and was asked for a ride home after less than an hour out. He wasn’t at karaoke last night, at least not by the time I left.
shrug.
back in the hole.
Cinerama panorama cropped
Monday, February 8th, 2010
One of the few panos I’ve done with people in it, that turned out OK.