The Death of Brick & Mortar

So, the freezer here at YPS Manor died. We had put off doing anything about it because we were hoping that the manse would be up on the selling block and we could wait until we moved before replacing it. Alas, football season rolled around and with it the need for freezer space. So, in a wild burst of optimism, I called Sears to see if it could be fixed. The estimate to fix a 10 year old freezer that cost $300 came in at $1300. I felt so good about paying a guy $65 bucks for that tidbit of information. However, he gave me a coupon so that if I bought my new appliance from Sears in the next 60 days, I would get the $65 back as a discount.

So it became time to research freezers and see if Sears had anything suitable. Lo and behold, Sears' advertising is not a lie. They have a wider selection of appliances than any other national retailer. So after some perusal and consideration, we decided upon a frost-free model from Kenmore. As the nice man had told me I would need to go into the store to use my discount, I took a shower and put on pants this past Saturday to buy me an appliance. As it turns out, I may have been better off staying at home.

Sears' sales process for appliances these days is to have a cheerful, yet somewhat clueless, salesperson type your information into an iPad on what looks like the very same screens I could have used from home. Instead of typing my info in myself, I now get to watch clueless Bob fat finger his way through the process. The kicker comes when Bob can't figure out how to apply my discount code. The discount is the only reason I got up off my ass and came in here. No $65 off, no sale, buddy. So Bob attempts to find a coworker. Coworker explains we have to use the register. No problem, right? Except that it takes Bob no less than 3 attempts to process this transaction. At one point, he attempted to find a manager, only to find out no manager was available. On Saturday afternoon. At the mall. WTF? When did retail decide no manager on duty during the busiest shopping day was a plan? But finally, our purchase was completed and delivery scheduled. Strangely, when I went online that very morning, Sears could deliver next day, but in the store it transforms into 2 days out.

Now, I am no expert on how Sears expects to stay in business in the modern era but if this transaction was any indication, they need to rethink the plan. You need to be providing me something I can't get online when I come into your establishment, be that immediate gratification, human interaction, or physical samples. In the case of clothing, it should be things I can try on to see if they fit. For a transaction like appliances, knowledgeable and trained sales staff would be a good idea. As a bare minimum, have your people trained to complete transactions. If all you're giving me is a guy who's doing the same thing on an iPad I could do from home (and screwing it up), I have no reason to come into your establishment. I can do the data entry quicker and faster, and I don't even have to put pants on or take a shower.

Ad Targeting Failures

So, as I wander the intertubes in search of exciting consumer products to buy, I've noticed a weird phenomenon. I accept, albeit grudgingly, that my computer keeps track of what I'm doing online*. It then communicates these facts to the mighty server farms in Mountain View, or wherever the hell Google has them stashed these days. These servers then reply with appropriate advertisements based on what I've been browsing on the net. I accept this as part of the price I pay for living in a free society accessing free content.

Here's what I find odd: the ads are for the same websites I've already been shopping. Now it may be that these very same websites are the only people paying the Goog for ads about monocles and top hats, or it may be that the ad algorithm could use a little tweaking. I'm not sure which. In any event, showing me the exact same websites I'm already going to doesn't make me inclined to click on the ads. Since getting me, the hapless and foolish consumer, to click on the ad is the point of the whole exercise, I'm inclined to think it fails.

Perhaps showing me ads for similar websites might be a thing? Instead of the 1400 banner ads for Warby Parker and Guitar Center, you might throw one up for someone else in the same line of business. I think somebody else in the consumer marketing biz has a website where they show me similar items I might be interested in purchasing based on all that data they harvest.

Oh, and just an FYI: I only click the links for Elizabeth Warren to cost her campaign money, so keep putting those up. That's money the campaign doesn't get to spend more intelligently or effectively.

*Note to the privacy rabid: Yes, I know how to avoid this and am perfectly capable of doing so, but a majority of the time I'm at work and doing funny things to the work computer makes my IT department peevish.

Not All That Customary

I can honestly say I don't do this. Of course, I usually buy ammo at Wally World, where they keep it in a locked case just to prevent shrinkage of various kinds. Or I buy in bulk off the internets.

Hmm. Maybe I should start.

Late Breaking News

So, in an attempt to distract myself from the horror show of politics and the economy, I present you with news you can use. This is opposed to what I've recently been subjected to, aka "news you'll get screwed by".

Anyhow, a comparison on blanket product alternatives. I'd just like to point out to the pinheads over at Gizmodo that perhaps the time to do this is in September or October, not the end of freakin' March. Up here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring has arrived. Unless you live in some godforsaken hellhole like, I dunno, Canadia, blanket season is pretty much over. Thanks for the review. Maybe I'll even remember it when fall rolls around.

Music Hath Charms To Soothe The Savage… Shopper?

While out recently at a large chain retailer fond of sending out coupons every week, I started paying attention to the background music. I did this mainly because it gave me an opportunity to tweak my lovely and talented coblogger and spouse. As I pointed out at the time, you know your alternative-music street cred has bottomed out when the big box is playing the greatest hits off your iPod. I figure I get to make snide comments like this because the world will have gone seriously weird when the tunes on my iPod are showing up as background music outside of head shops and record stores. The latest additions to the playlist include such friendly, happy music as Combichrist, Suicide Commando, and Static X. Well, that and the Katy Perry CD. But I haven’t added that to the device because I’m waiting on new computers before I rip it. I think that CD alone blows my credibility to shreds, but I’m old and tired and don’t care much.

I could insert the obligatory old guy rant about how music today sucks and how you should get off my lawn. Instead, I’ll just reference Sturgeon’s Law and note that the old days had a whole bunch of crap being produced as well. Those of you who are even older will have to do the legwork on your own decade of choice and figure out just how much talent-free dreck made it up the charts and into inescapable ubiquity.

In other musical news, if you have a high tolerance for crap and want to hear the sound of a career imploding, go listen to the new album from Panic At The Disco. Note the lack of exclamation point, a signal that they have changed their musical style to be less exclamatory or some such nonsense. What they’ve really done is go in a direction that is almost completely unmarketable, as well as being just bad. Not that I care, as I only listen to them when J is driving. It’s just amusing to listen to a career dying.

Speaking of iPods, one of my issues with Apple, besides their lack of support for FLAC format files, was the godawful piss poor software interface they like to call iTunes. I avoided it for a long time by running Rockbox. However, Rockbox had some bugs features issues I got tired of dealing with on a fairly regular basis. So I uninstalled it and went back to using the default interface. The default includes iTunes. It annoys me no end that Apple won’t let me simply drag and drop files. So, I got rid of iTunes. I’m using MediaMonkey Gold. This has the added benefit of not needing to keep two separate directories for the different file types. MediaMonkey converts on the fly between FLAC and MP3 when I drop the song into the device. It ain’t quick at doing so, but it does it automatically. If you’re loading up the podling for the first time, it will probably take all night. After that, an album or two doesn’t take that long.

On that note, I'm off to await my insurance check so I may buy new computer hardware.

Heavy Benzene

So I was shopping online for benzene today. I found heavy benzene, where all the hydrogen atoms are deuterium. It's 10 times as expensive as regular benzene, which I can understand given the relative scarcity of deuterium.

What I can't understand is why you would want this particular substance. Is there some advantage to having deuterium in your benzene?