My wife and I were watching the news last night when she started laughing. Apparently someone creating the text blurbs on the screen didn’t proofread his work.
Driving a pedicab with a large passenger
When we were downtown the other night, we saw a large number of pedicabs driving around. As we were sitting at dinner looking out at the street and watching the people, my wife asked what if a large person wanted a pedicab ride (or say three adult males) and the pedicab driver couldn’t physically pedal? Can the driver discriminate based on weight? Would the driver just have to attempt to pedal and go nowhere? I’m sure this has come up before; there doesn’t seem like a good solution besides maybe having the large person do the pedaling.
Enforcing the law
The San Diego city council keeps making up little laws, such as no smoking on the beach, no smoking here are there, etc. While I wholeheartedly support these laws, not only are they hard to enforce, the police are stretched so thin that they can’t enforce the current laws. On Sunday, my family and I went to hear a concert in La Jolla and saw several dozen dogs there. There are signs clearly posted that don’t allow dogs from 9 am to 6 pm in the summer. There were lots of people, but I didn’t see one police officer enforcing the law. This drives me crazy because we follow the law and didn’t bring our dog; I love dogs and would love to bring my dog everywhere, but years ago, we got warned about having our dog at Mission Bay, so we’ve been very aware of when and where we can bring our dog.
C’est la vie!
Target was issued a violation!
I just got a call from the San Diego County Agriculture/Weights & Measures department about my complaint of Target overcharging me. They inspected the items I indicated I was overcharged for and also found that they were overcharged. In addition, they performed a routine inspection of 50 items and were overcharged on 9 of them. If that wasn’t enough, they got cited for not having the required notices about being overcharged.
I’ve never seen a public agency act so quickly on a complaint. While my overcharges were pennies, the inspector said that he was overcharged $5 on an item.
Scott’s message to all…carefully check your receipts and be aware of the shelf prices.
Price Scanner Accuracy
It amazes me that with the ubiquitous nature of price scanners that stores are able to keep their computers and shelf tags reconciled. I’ll argue that the scanners themselves are 100% accurate, but it is human error that causes the shelf tags not to match what’s in the computer either due to a special ending or a mistake ended for the price. Today we were shopping at Target and picked up some candy for our trip to the movies tomorrow. We purchased 5 separate candy items (2 of one of them) and as we’re checking out, I caught a mistake on 2 of them…the shelf said 3 for $4 or $1.33 each; I bought two and got charged $1.49 each. The cashier corrected the mistake. Then after we checked out, I looked at my receipt and saw the other 3 items at $0.57 each when the shelf tag said $0.44. My wife let me go over to customer service to get my $0.52 back; it wasn’t the money, it was the principle. I told the associate about the issue and maybe it will be corrected, but I doubt it.
So the question is, how many unsuspecting people overpay all the time? Like a good citizen, I dutifully prepared a complaint and faxed it into the San Diego County Agriculture/Weights & Measures department.
While checking the website of San Diego County Agriculture/Weights & Measures, I saw their list of complaints to be quite short which is amazing. Several years ago, a few drug stores and grocery stores were sued for repeated violations of this and now post accuracy guarantees which probably drives the complaints down. I have used these guarantees on a number of occasions. Now if stores had electronic tags everywhere instead of paper ones, this probably wouldn’t be an issue. However, the shelves would have to be wired or have everything wireless and put batteries in every tag which would be a waste. Alternatively, if each item was only in one place, it would be significantly easier to keep paper tags in line with what’s in the computer because when a price change happens, there would be only one tag to change.
Fast work by SDGE
I got a letter in the mail the other day saying that SDGE (our local power company) would be replacing a transformer at about 1 pm and to shut off sensitive equipment, etc. I heard the trucks outside around 12:30 pm and shutdown everything, but left my server running as it is on a UPS and has about a 60 minute runtime. The outage said it could last about an hour. Promptly at 1 pm, I heard the refrigerator shutoff. 12 minutes after I heard my UPS start beeping, I heard the refrigerator start up again. In fact, here is the log from my UPS:
Thu Aug 02 13:11:45 PDT 2007 Mains returned. No longer on UPS batteries. Thu Aug 02 12:59:46 PDT 2007 Running on UPS batteries.
Excellent work! I’m quite impressed with the very short amount of “downtime” (it really isn’t downtime as I have a cellular modem and a laptop, so I was still working when the power was off).
Recovering my sales tax
After several email exchanges, I’ve been refunded the $6.93 and $3.10 from ASI Order and VMWare, respectively for the sales tax they collected on my completely electronic downloads (the first for the marathon pictures I ordered and the second for a copy of VMWare Fusion). This is a small victory for me, but I feel that these companies need to get with the 20th century and look at the tax laws for electronic commerce. ASI Orders appears to still be charging sales tax on their website, so I suspect they refunded my money on the sales tax to get me to be quiet.
Military security?
At today’s marathon, the finish line was at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. As part of being on base, all bags were subject to search and weapons were not allowed. My dad forgot that he had his Swiss Army Knife in his pocket and had to go back to his car to drop it off; that’s fine, but the policy of “weapons” is not evenly applied. At the start line, runners could check gear in “gear check” bags; I had zip tied my bag closed and all bags were transported on UPS trucks to MCRD. While the bags were clear, it is quite easy to conceal stuff in the bags and they were never searched. So after I got my bag, I couldn’t open it and asked a vendor if he had a pair of scissors. He gladly said yes and cut the zip tie off my bag. Are scissors not a weapon? Furthermore, how many of the vendors had box cutters to open up their boxes? Most likely all of them.
It’s a good thing that nothing really exciting happens at MCRD. At friend of ours is a civilian contractor at MCRD and he said that they don’t have weapons or anything interesting on the base, except for the weapons that the military police carry (some had pistols, others had some type of automatic rifles).
Is there magic to using plastic wrap?
A number of weeks ago, I tried to wrap up leftovers from our dinner and it dawned on me that I’ve always hated plastic wrap. I think there must be something wrong with me as I can never rip it off the roll without making a mess and it usually doesn’t stick. Years ago, I recall my father buying the big rolls at BJ’s Wholesale Club and I hated them. Plastic wrap seems so popular, but the mechanism for slicing off pieces hasn’t evolved. My mother-in-law wrapped stuff up when she was here to visit without any problem, so I think that I need a few lessons in plastic wrapping.
ReceiptWallet on Sale!
For one day only, MacUpdate Promo will be selling ReceiptWallet at a discount. Visit MacUpdate Promo at: http://www.macupdate.com/promo/index.php?buy=OoOlQDvPDeq2 on Thursday, May 31, 2007 for the special promotion. MacUpdate Promo has a special deal everyday on some great software; while I’m not encouraging people to wait to make a purchase to get the discount, if you’re looking for some new software at great prices, check out MacUpdate Promo.
Note: if you miss this special on ReceiptWallet, I don’t know if or when it will run again and I can’t give discounts if you miss it.