Much as I like that Panera for coffee, I can’t afford their lineups. So I went over to the dreaded Starbucks, who are no faster, but have shorter lines. I call it Bank of America service, just barely fast enough to keep 99% of the people from walking out. I’m the other 1% that has the guts. I had to snap this photo of the two ladies who took something like 8 minutes to order two coffee’s, but were just so heavenly thrilled at how nice the man behind the counter was, to hell with those waiting in line.
That was early, by mid-morning I was over at Ruth’s replying to e-mail, and discovering that she has some unrealistic ideas about searching the Internet – I did not say they were wrong ideas because a lot of people think the same. It is a misconception that you can sit down at the Internet and have the world of information at your fingertips. Wrong, the good information is on somebody’s web page and they want money. Explaining sponsored links turns out to be very hard to do because the traditional mind does not readily grasp why an advertiser would do such a thing.
I’ve explained it before so this is another try. A sponsored link is when an advertiser pays the search engine company for the rights to certain words. When you do a search on those words, you get the advertisers web page, no matter how unrelated it is to what you were really searching for. Get it? It is more than hypocritical of both the advertiser and the search engine and is a form of bait and switch, but nobody enforcing the law. They are too busy enforcing other things, see?
Anyway, I had to snap at Ruth over this. I am no more successful at searching for the specific things she wants than she is, but she expects it. Internet searching is like dating after you are 28 – you get tons of what you don’t want. Also, she does expect things to go faster when she is not watching, so even though they take the same time, she will always ask what you’ve been doing while she was away. I don’t mean her personally, I mean the situation. I doubt I could work there because she has picked up that my methods are more geared toward computer efficiency than business efficiency. She would be watching me all the time, suggesting improvements.
Oh, for the first time in two years, I used e-ticket, the on-line flight reservation system. I got a flight for an acquaintance of Ruth’s. My favorite [e-ticket] is Orbitz for sheer user-friendliness. Careful, that is a comparative term, it is not friendly at all by my standards. It can also shock people who are new when they use a credit card, because Orbitz plainly has a computer link tied directly to every person’s credit report. Of course, they would never, ever look at that link unless you gave them permission, and that is 100% solid guaranteed because they have a privacy policy you can trust with your life. Gag.
The overall system is beginning to take shape over there. It took a wee longer than it should have because I had to jump right in and start working. To perform right, things have to be categorized and sorted and unfortunately, this can be another difficult process to understand. What does sorting e-mails have to do with anything? Easy, so that you don’t spend even more time looking for them when you need them. A big part of the problem is that most people don’t see the savings because you can’t compare unless things go wrong. At this point the logic goes circular.
See, if you did things right in the first place, you would not have to go looking for those records. Does that sound simple? If so, you are inexperienced, because most business-minded people cannot understand this concept and will tell you to shut up if you try to explain it to them. Therefore, the effort sorting it could better be used for doing it right the first time. Except, where I can always sort records, nobody can anticipate every situation. There really is no filing system over there, just a cabinet full of semi-random paperwork.
I do want to get a microwave even though I have been doing great without one. My good deed for the day was stopping at Wal-Mart and helping this Mexican family translate that what they wanted was a trike. Not the sports machine, rather the adult bicycle with two rear wheels and a big basket. The staff kept thinking they meant a children’s tricycle. (That was one difficult accent to follow, maybe from some part of Mexico I never heard of.)
It got dark on me fast, so for a lark I wondered up and down the aisles over there. Looking around, I see almost every article for sale is now packaged more for the convenience of the seller (or factory) than the buyer. You cannot buy a single doorknob or battery. (And yes, I have several items that use a single battery. My MP3 player and smoke detector for two.) You cannot buy a package of drill bits all the same size.
I did find another source for the kerosene mantle lamp. I distrust the propane lamps because the spare propane bottles are among the first items to disappear off the shelves before a hurricane. This is so true that I have not even checked if the bottles are refillable. They probably are not. Anyway, back to the lamp.
I prefer camping gear to hurricane gear solely because I am more familiar with it. There is no savings on price, although these lamps are $5 less than the ones I found last week. Still close to $50 a pop! They are called “dual fuel” or “liquid fuel”, presumably to confuse the daylights out of someone in an emergency. Even I called them kerosene lamps, but that is not right either. You would probably not burn kerosene in them, but white gas or camp fuel.
My concern is that I have never used them in a closed area [like where I live]. I should look up to see if there is any chance of incomplete combustion. Nothing of this danger was mentioned on the box but that is not something to find out by surprise. The two mantles are required to cut down on severe shadowing. I looked for a four mantle model with no luck. I’ve seen them where you could hit a switch and use only two of the mantles. I can’t remember, but I believe these also give off a significant amount of heat, enough to make a difference in a small room.
I do remember when I was two years old, the kitchen lamp would cause the frost to melt on the upper panes of glass in the kitchen, at least I think. I used to watch it during that one winter when the whole settlement ran out of mantles. We had to use one per lamp and carry the lamp from room to room. What, I never told you about that? Well, too bad. No, nobody could drive to town to get them; “town” was 330 miles away by ship (which only ran in the summer) and nobody was going to fly them in at the then outrageous price of cost plus $1.25 a pound. We did without.
Now, I am going to relax. Play bass for an hour, watch a movie on DVD on my excellent $80 DVD unit, and then read for the remainder. Nothing beats reading to relax except writing. That is my hurricane plan, a good “dual fuel” lamp and a good book. Way to go, Coleman. Does dual fuel mean I have to burn them both fuels at the same time, mix them, burn them separately, have both on hand or decide which one is better or more available? Nothing like professionals naming your product, huh, Coleman. You are guilty of under-thinking the situation. What? Because it is impossible to over-think a situation, that expression is a cop-out of the poorly educated.
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