I read the following warning label on a speaker a few days ago:
Take note that this speaker is not edible and should not be placed in your mouth.
It’s admittedly a small speaker, but still!
Recently in Commerce Category
I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks. — Bruce Schneier
That would certainly beat the various draconian and invasive measures I’ve been reading about. And it’s not as though any of them would even work. Most of them wouldn’t even have prevented the latest attack that got prevented just fine without any of the new proposals.
Security is hard. In this case, you’ve got quite a lot of airport security people who aren’t getting paid exceptionally well trying to catch one person out of every billion or so travelers who’s willing and at least mostly able to blow himself up. And you need to do that on tight schedules with no false positives.
To make things just that much harder, everyone else in line is already annoyed with you because of the existing inconveniences of travel and airport security, often combined with long lines, making it exceptionally easy to get a false positive based on behavior (if anything, you probably need to be most concerned about anyone who looks serene through the whole process). And that’s just a couple of the issues involved.
Sigh. I’m going to be flying in less than a week, going to a mostly undisclosed location for a business-planning retreat. Hopefully some of the hysteria will have died down by then and I’ll be able to legally at least read a book during the flight. If I hadn’t already prepaid the entire trip, I’d cancel it and go find a cottage in Maine instead.
I just read the following in a brochure:
(Such and such) is optimized for label printing with the ability to print 2” per second in black and 10’ per minute with full color.
Unit conversion in comparisons can be used to make a stat seem better than it really is (or worse, if that’s your goal). Color printing is usually slower than B&W printing (on account of there being a lot more data/work involved), and I’m curious how much slower it is, but in this case, I think someone just messed up:
- 10’ = 120”
- 1 minute = 60 seconds
- 120” per 60 seconds = 2” per second
I wonder if it was supposed to be 10” per minute instead of 10’…
Vermont’s form for submitting taxes withheld has enough boxes on the “Vermont Income Tax Withheld” line for an employer to withhold $999,999,999,999.99 per quarter.
Yes, that’s one cent shy of $1 trillion in state taxes. Vermont’s overall personal income tax collections for 2008 totaled $622 million and change ($83,042 in change, but who’s counting?), a quarter of which would be $155.5 million. So, I suppose that if Vermont has one exceptionally large employer, accounting for two thirds of all salaries in Vermont, one could actually use all those boxes.
It really makes my contribution seem rather measly, though. It’ll take some growth before I’ll be contributing $100,000,000+ in state income tax on a quarterly basis, even assuming I discriminate based on geographical origin and hire all future employees from Vermont.
(“Some growth” = using loose assumptions, and ignoring scaling issues, my customer base would need to include roughly one missionary for every ten people on the planet. Give or take.)
This is a new one. I just called Verizon’s business sales line to see what Internet options there are for a property I’m considering, and after struggling through the voice-activated phone menu (it: “Please say or enter your ten-digit number. If you don’t know it, say ‘try another way’ or ‘new service.” me: “New service.” It: “Please say or enter your ten-digit number. If you don’t know it, say ‘try another way’ or ‘new service.” Me: “New service.” It: “Please say or enter your ten-digit number.” Me: “New service.” It: “You must enter a ten-digit number.” Me: [0]. It: “Please hold for the next available agent.”), got a new message — “due to unusually high call volume, no agent is currently available to take your call, and we are unable to put you in the queue” (paraphrased — the gist is that they’re out of circuits).
Do they really have that many people trying to order new service? Or are the customer service lines on the same system? And what’s this with a phone company running out of phone lines?
(This was shortly after calling Verizon to have my current office DSL upload speed fixed after they goofed the most recent change… again… and having to go through three different departments to get that done.)
I ordered 1180 prints from Wal-Mart’s photo center a couple of days ago (two different pictures, which will be going in some Christmas mailings), and paid for expedited shipping, so they were supposed to arrive today. Wal-Mart shipped them yesterday, sending me an E-Mail saying so, and that they were expected to arrive today. They didn’t. Or, at least, haven’t, and I’d be a little surprised if FedEx makes another delivery tonight given that it’s 9:45pm as I’m writing this.
The tracking number that Wal-Mart gave me in the shipping confirmation E-Mail doesn’t work at FedEx (which is the company listed as the carrier in the E-Mail). Neither does searching by reference number using the tracking number, invoice number, or order number.
So, I clicked on the online tracking link that was in the E-Mail.
Someone might want to communicate to the designers of that page that it’s not necessary to list the order status for each of the pictures individually.
Take note, all ye people who mail animals via the post.
Effective the beginning of this month, you may no longer mail an animal that is going to be used in an animal fighting venture. You also are prohibited from mailing any sharp instrument that is designed or intended to be attached to the leg of a bird for use in said venture.
And, finally, you may not print messages on a box that will be mailed (whether or not it contains a prohibited animal) that could be construed as condoning said animal fighting ventures. Unless you’re talking about birds, and the fighting would be happening in a state where it’s legal. (You still can’t mail the bird being promoted, regardless of whether or not it’s legal.)
If you’re curious, an animal in these rules refers to any live bird, live dog, or other mammal, not including humans. You’re apparently able to mail the latter.
Animal fighting specifically excludes hunting, so you can mail your hunting dogs, at least according to the new rules posted this month. Whether or not this is disallowed elsewhere in the mailing manual is outside my area of expertise.
For any of you who are planning on writing a web-based shopping cart tool, here are two basic tips to keep in mind:
When giving a shipping estimate, asking for state and zip code is redundant. It’s okay to have both fields, but if someone (like me) puts in the zip code, don’t give an error saying that you also need the state. Because you don’t. And be absolutely sure not to just return the user to the page without giving any sort of error at all.
When someone clicks “Add to Cart”, without entering a quantity, you can safely assume that the quantity is 1. An alert box saying “The following errors were found: — please enter a valid quantity before you add this item to the shopping cart” is something of a turn-off.
Bonus point:
People considering buying something off of a web site generally want to know what the item costs. Most web sites, if they include pricing information but don’t have free shipping, don’t actually tell you what the item really costs until you get 75% of the way through the buying process. You get bonus points for having the total cost right on the page with the item’s description.
Just ask for the shipping zip code, and provide a link for internationals or fancy shipping. Store said zip code in a cookie, and always display the ground rate on the page, giving the potential customer the option to view different rates using some sort of clickable popup.
It looks like Amazon might have opened a warehouse in New Hampshire. At least, I ordered a book from them yesterday, and it shipped today out of Nashua (and went south to UPS central in Chelmsford on its way north to Lebanon, but we’ll forgive them that — it doesn’t change the delivery date).
That means next day service at 3-5 day prices, at least for the stuff that’s stocked there. Nice!
Speaking of Amazon, if you haven’t seen my sidebar link to an article describing how Amazon does order fulfillment, it’s worth a read, and has lots of pictures.
I just had the nicest customer service experience talking with someone from Verizon Wireless. On a Saturday, no less!
I didn’t have to go through a single voice-activated menu. Just two number-activated menus, without long spiels.
I was on hold for less than 10 seconds before speaking to a live person.
She was friendly. And not of the “I’m friendly because the script tells me to be” variety.
She was located on this continent, and had an easy to understand accent.
The line was clear. Neither of us had to repeat ourselves at any time.
I didn’t have to give any redundant information.
Her instructions (on swapping the phone numbers of a couple of phones, which had to be done directly in the phone due to some glitch in their computer system) were simple and concise. And they worked.
Other than having to update the phones manually through the handset instead of using the standard *228 activation procedure, I couldn’t have asked for a better support call. (And, actually, given my nature, I think I preferred getting to go into the guts of the phone anyway!)
I just thought I’d mention that. Verizon Wireless has consistently treated me well (even if they don’t always get things right the first time), and I appreciate it.
