While we’re cheering companies that used to produce a reasonably good product, how about Brother, my all-in-one printer? I’ll never own another one. It is plain this model 402CN had some manufacturing defects. Rather than do the right thing, Brother sold them to the public. It is practically impossible to know and test all the features on a printer before you buy it. I’ll tell you what is wrong with this one.1. The scanner does not scan to the edges of the flatbed glass.
2. There is no way to change the default scan area from the European A4 size.
3. It is very difficult to kill a print job.
4. The scanner jams on anything except 20 lb paper.
5. Each flatbed scan must be manually set.
I cannot recommend the printer or the company for allowing something like this to get onto the market in the first place. It is not true that no machine is perfect because they can be made with sufficient tolerances to function for years. This one lasted less than two years.
There is good news, however. The first shipment of doggie wigs has arrived, and I now know a great deal more about the import/export paperwork. If you suspected most of it is needless government paper shuffling, you are right. The pricing is typically government, along the lines of “it isn’t a tax, but you have to pay it anyway” brand of dismal bureaucratese.
Particularly evident was our World class database system. Whereas the million dollar factories, shipping companies and airlines seem to be messed up, we are not. It was curious to watch the shipment go from 19 cartons to 17 cartons and from 2,350 pieces to 2,800 pieces. I’ve figured out what a host of the abbreviations mean, including such gems as AWB for “Air Waybill”, three initials for two words.
The process is ridiculously complex. Each step of the process uses different formats and reference numbers. Also, the factory is quite a bit out on the pricing formulas. We have a base price, with a surcharge for small quantity orders. They appear to have lost the information they sent us. On the other hand, we’ve got an excellent database that has everything to the third decimal point. Yes, it took dozens of hours to create the database, but it is already saving hundreds of hours of headaches. We’ve also discovered the factory has a hard time keeping track of colors and often lumps them together, meaning yet more savings on the surcharges.
We have a new little puppy, “Wiggles”. This replaces the first one, which I am sad to report, was not a healthy little dog. I early on suspected it was partly deaf and severely myopic. The new critter is a teacup poodle with a punk rock haircut. Ah, the life of a model, curled up in a silk lined cushion. Also, Dave, the new guy (I rarely get along with men called Dave, but that could be because there are so many of them) is a fixture over there now. Good, he can pack and unpack large quantities of objects.
I have not seen the product yet. I want to see the packaging, since that was a long time sorting out, as in months of measurements, material and migraines. Oh, another spin-off of the database is that it is efficient enough to allow side projects to creep back into my time over there. Things can slow down to a leisurely pace and still keep ahead. Today, an inquiry came in from Japan, a hoity-toity doggie specialty shop. I checked their web page, it sells exactly the correct price range of products. By pure coincidence, that Japanese web page had the same pastel colors and fonts as the new doggie wig site. So, 10,000 yen is a little over $82.15. An order from that source would be choice right now, where one large shipment could cancel out a big chunk of the startup costs.
As you by now know, I do get a lot of inside on the non-dog part of wig-making. One of the items which I think is brilliant is a wig patented by Ruth many years back. It does not cover the head, but allows natural hair to show through where it is still thick, such as around the back of the head. It would certainly be far more comfortable. She has also designed a piece that I guess you would call a type of headband with hair. It was originally intended to cover something, I forget the explanation, but it also covers receding hairlines and has become in demand.
The nice part for me is that each of these new hairpieces is being processed on the system I set up for the doggie wigs. I can smell a dollar a mile away on that one. Be quite clear on one point here: the overseas factories have been there all along, as well as the system for importation. What wasn’t there was an efficient system for tracking everything and I don’t mean just the wigs. On that point for example, the shipping company insists on counting the hair extensions, which are a matching pair, as two items instead of one. This is why 2,800 pieces arrived.
Last, Cowboy Mike didn’t show for rehearsal as planned. I cannot be disappointed, because I forgot to pay my cell phone bill as planned. It gave me an extra three hours to practice on my own. (It turns out later that he called, sure enough, right after my cell phone company suspended my service and just before I went downtown to pay the bill. MetroPCS has lousy service, really bad, as in every call cuts out or cuts off. The really sick part, however, is that their recording states the service is cut off for non-payment. They have money for embarrassing announcements, but nothing to build a better grid.)
