Ikea. What other furniture store lets you drop in late Saturday night, head straight to the aisle, pick up furniture, and then drive home to spend the rest of the night putting them together? Not to be confused with spending the weekend furniture shopping. I’m too young for that. Putting them together, on the other hand, now that’s an idea for a theme party.
Self-check lines. Can’t decide if I love them or hate them. The Ikea scanner was dyslectic, hard time picking up the bar code. The Safeway one could pick them from a distance. But neither one lets you punch in a quantity, so with ten of the same you need to scan them one by one by one by one by one.
Then there’s this annoying guiding voice that just slows you down. Clearly needs a ‘been there, done that, just let me through’ expert button you can push to make it shut up.
Function and form. I have a soft spot for products designed for people like me. They do things different and better. They aim to please. And they look great. What can I say, I appreciate good packaging. Extra points if they’re designed right here in the Bay Area. And I do like companies that don’t treat me like a bonehead consumer. So I’m switching.
One piece at a time, the house is filling up with method products.
Earthlink. Pretty darn pissed. If you remember, I had trouble reaching functional tech person to help me fix the flaky DSL line. Decided to cancel. Apparently not without paying an early termination fee for the few months of rejected dysfunctional service left on my service. Did it work? Not really. Turns out they “forgot” to cancel my service. Stay away.
Quine. Just for fun, let’s see if we can cut Ryan Davis’ original two characters short:
_="_=%p;$><<_%%_";$><<_%_
Above, the SuperTest: who’s the superest hero of them all?