Don't Back Down

As I'm eating lunch yesterday, who should be on the television but the Pope! He's just pulling into Yankee Stadium in his Popemobile - a modified Mercedes that just looks wacky, with an enclosure on the back where everyone can see him, and presumably he is safe from someone who might like to kill him. But just how safe is he?

While he's being driven along, it looks like the enclosure is completely sealed. Until a corner shot shows that his hand is out one of the windows. So obviously it's not totally closed, and one of the seventy thousand or so people in the stadium could try and get something in that opening. Nice.

Read "Do You Have a Sense of Security?" »

In my job, I am often called upon to solve problems - in fact, most of my job is less about writing code or making things pretty (no comments from the gallery, please) than it is figuring out how to make things work the way that they are supposed to. Often, the issue is actually to get everything back the way it was before a wayward upgrade skewed the normal operating procedure to a point where everything went slightly haywire.

Over the weekend, for instance, against my better judgment, I took on a job to implement an upgrade. With steps in hand from the company who supplied the software, I felt mostly confident that we could get the job done relatively quickly. Unfortunately, as we were nearing the end of the process, everything went absolutely nuts. Suddenly files were inaccessible and nothing would work. I still have to admit that I just don't know what went wrong - it's like there was a forgotten uninstall process that someone just left waiting to explode. At that point, the most useful skill was not knowledge, but being able to figure out how to restore some semblance of order.

Read "The Lost Art of Thinking Critically" »

CompUSA continues to go out of business, and it seems that they are going to be at it for a while longer. The signs on the corner say that the discounts have reached 20-40%, and if you step inside, you'll see that some of the shelves are now bare, but there is still a lot of merchandise left. Perhaps most importantly, you'll see that even though the discounts aren't going down very quickly, the real reason that the merchandise isn't moving appears to be because the prices on the items left are actually going up.

That's right, the product left on the shelves is actually being marked up while the discounts are ever-so-slowly drifting down. Not too long ago, networking equipment was at the 10% discount level. One item in particular - a Belkin Bluetooth adapter that was recently $29.99 has now been marked up to $39.99. So you could have had it for about $27 ($29.99 * .9) or now you can get it for about $32 ($39.99 * .8). Sweet.

Read "Finding Deals at CompUSA Doesn't Get Any Easier" »

The other day as I was in the grocery store, I was struck by the absurdity of just how far one woman was going in her pursuit to get a discount on a package of hot dogs. Now don't get me wrong - I'm all for scoring a discount and all, especially when it involves little to no effort, and even more so when we're talking about lots and lots of money. The greater the reward for the least amount of effort, the more exciting the prospect.

But in this case, there apparently was an ad in the weekly circular that said something to the effect of Beef Franks on Sale. Now if you ask anyone - especially my wife - if I am a stickler for language, I am. When it comes down to what someone says or what someone meant, I will almost always side with what someone says, because after all, that is what they said. I have no way of knowing what they meant. We even have our own little joke about it, saying that I have a condition - which may or may not be true.

Read "Do You Value Your Time or Your Money?" »

With the announcement that TigerDirect parent Systemax is acquiring the CompUSA brand, trademarks, e-commerce business and as many as 16 stores from my least-favorite retailer. The sixteen stores are located in the Florida and Texas in the United States and in Puerto Rico, apparently a hotbed of CompUSA action. TigerDirect currently operates 11 retail stores in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ontario (Canada) and of course their website, tigerdirect.com. The cost of the deal is about $30 million, depending on the precise locations that are acquired (I guess that hasn't quite been decided yet).

What amazes me is that the remaining locations are worth anything at all. We have made a couple of stops by the CompUSA location on Independence Boulevard here in Charlotte, because I can almost always find something that I can use at a good price, and I am simply amazed at the lack of good pricing, even several weeks into the store closing sale. Usually when someone goes out of business, they try and actually make money from the process. It is of course possible that they are not paying rent, and are planning to stiff the leaseholder when they ask for payment, but I'd think that the cost of the cavernous building would outweigh whatever miniscule amount they might be scraping from withholding the good deals from the merchandise.

Read "CompUSA Can't Even Go Out of Business Correctly" »

Not long ago, I asked how the Lynx Blue Line was doing. According to the Charlotte Observer, they had 12,000 riders. It turns out that the figure is, in fact, closer to 12,000 riders per day, which is an important distinction to make. After all, if you handle the same number in a day as in a month, you have a whole lot less work to do, right?

Unfortunately, it seems that the plans to actually handle those riders went somewhat awry. As I have mentioned previously, putting the bill collector way down on the bottom of the front means that a lot of people just can't find it. I'm sure that they will get used to it eventually, but come on - they shouldn't have to. It should be right there where they can see it, not where they have to hunt for it so long that they give up in frustration and just don't pay. The issue that you already have with light rail is that there are no turnstiles preventing people from getting on. Allowing them to use the Ticket Vending Machines as an excuse just means that many more people will skip paying.

Read "Don't Forget to Plan for the Future" »

I was having a conversation with my wife after we managed to get out of bed, some hours after the new year began, and we were trying to decide what to do with the day, it being a holiday and all. She offered to take the kids out and do something so that I could have some peace and quiet. Now I'm not normally one to ignore such an opportunity, but I also didn't think that there would be much that she could do with them.

To my surprise, it seems like just about everything was open. Malls, stores, even Chick-fil-A - and they are always closed on holidays that are family oriented (not to mention Sundays). Imagine my surprise. So we decided that we'd do our Christmas returns. It was unbelievably easy. I think we'll do it that way every year.

Read "Easy Christmas Returns and the Death of the Department Store" »

Since it's my birthday, I thought I'd talk about something that really bugs me about gift cards.

As I'm filling up at the gas station, I look up and see a sign that reads "Give the gift they wont want to regift". Yes, that's right - a gift card for a gas station. Now first let me say that I'm not a huge fan of the gift card. Sure, I like getting them alright, because I can go get what I want instead of having to deal with what someone else thinks I want. I understand their appeal.

I also understand the appeal as a gift-giver, because you don't have to put a lot of thought into the gift, and I think that's why I don't like them. Basically it means you don't have to think about it a lot. You just go to the store and get a gift card, and you're done. In a busy world, it's very convenient. Heck, a lot of stores even offer you a selection of gift cards for other stores. It's the very epitome of lazy shopping. The hard part is determining which card to buy.

Read "Have Gift Cards Gone Too Far?" »

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but I just never could seem to find the time. Both Carolinas Healthcare and Presbyterian Healthcare have applied to the state of North Carolina for a Certificate of Need. What is that, you ask? I'm glad you did. The Certificate of Need - or CON for short (how's that for an appropriate acronym?) - comes from a state law that prohibits health-care providers from acquiring, replacing or adding to facilities and equipment without state approval.

At least, that's what I hear. Put in other terms, it means that hospitals can't be built unless the state says it's okay. It's like a giant game of Simon Says. Now I'm all for the protection of the innocent and everything, but come on now. According to that article I just referenced, it's going to take three years just to build a hospital. It's no small undertaking. Surely they aren't going to slap one up on every corner just because they can. Are they?

Read "When Hospital Juggernauts Collide" »

Back in the day - let's call it 1974 - streaking was all the rage. Ray Stevens hit it big with his song about streaking. It's like everyone could just enjoy life a little bit more. No one was taking themselves very seriously. Well, maybe Richard Nixon was, but we won't count him. Everyone else just seemed to be having a good time. To be fair, I was 4, so I can't really say for sure. I imagine that I was having a nice time.

Then, for a while, it seemed like streaking was everywhere. I even went to summer camp - with the Boy Scouts, no less (insert your own joke, either about the Boy Scouts letting me in or about the Boy Scouts and their practices) - and while I was in the showers, there was allegedly a streaker who ran by outside. I only saw his feet, so I can't say if he was naked or not. Now I'm not sure, but streaking through a camp of boys just seems a little off. Safe, probably. Odd, definitely.

It certainly shows that males are more likely to streak, if nothing else presents itself to do - even among a camp full of other males, we found something to liven things up. But what has happened to all the streakers lately? Have they jut died down? Or has the pastime gone underground? That seems somehow to be against the very concept of streaking.

Read "Where Have All the Streakers Gone?" »

According to the recycling guidelines published by the City of Charlotte, if you choose to recycle, if you recycle glass, you should rinse it out. If you recycle plastic spiral cans, you should rinse or wipe out remaining food. Strangely, there is no mention of cleaning plastic. I'm also no sure what a plastic spiral can is, but this page leads me to believe it's like one of those cans you get pre-made biscuits and cinnamon rolls and things in. I don't know, because we don't get many of those.

Anyway, what I'm wondering is this: You don't want to have a bunch of food in the recycle bin because it's just nasty - keeping the food there is just asking for bugs in the best case and rodents in the worst case, so I'm thinking that it's a good idea to clean them out. But with all the hubbub about the lack of rain, and how lakes are closing their access ramp and even wells are running dry, is it an issue that we are effectively wasting water to clean items to be recycled?

Read "How Clean Are Your Recyclables?" »

Just about two weeks ago, I mentioned that customer service was really on the decline. Within perhaps 48 hours of that writing, I received a note from a rep who worked for Intuit, and he wanted to know if there was anything that he could to to help out.

Now those of you that read the post may take away a couple of things from this. First, the post in question wasn't specifically directed to Intuit, though it did mention one of their products. This shows the power of the world we live in. It was never mentioned, but I suspect the person - or one of their coworkers has a search feed set up so that anytime the company name or product name comes up, they are notified.

Read "Intuit Shows That Customer Service Does Matter" »