Ellsass

Thinking about getting a Kindle WITH ads just so I don’t...

Sun, 06 May 2012 08:08:49 -0400

Thinking about getting a Kindle WITH ads just so I don’t ever have this nightmarish face flash before me again. (Taken with instagram)

Home delivered groceries

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:28:09 -0500

I love shopping online. I don’t find much appeal in trekking to a traditional brick-and-mortar shop during whatever their hours happen to be, forcing a smile when the cashier mentions the weather, and waiting in endless lines. So it was with great excitement that I discovered that finally, in 2011, I can have groceries delivered to my suburban home for a reasonable price. Specifically, ShopRite in Niskayuna offers both in-store pickup (free) and at-home delivery at least as far as Latham (free until Thanksgiving for $50+ orders, otherwise a very fair $6.95 fee).

So how did it go? The ride was a little bumpy, likely due to ShopRite being very new in the area, but it all worked out well.

It starts with the web site. ShopRite.com doesn’t make a big deal about it, but the link is there offering the ability to shop online. I was brought to a 2002-style third-party site. Nothing to look at, but functional. It’s designed for browsing — very few featured items are suggested up front, and instead you’re left to browse or search for items you have in mind. Which is great for me, because that’s how I shop in person.

The prices are the same as in the store. All of the sales and specials are represented. No hidden fees, no BS, just food. You can be specific about amounts, for example choose meat items in quarter-pound increments and produce per unit or pound.

I picked my items and checked out. There was a disclaimer that some items could be substituted but that I would be notified first. I was given the opportunity to enter the number on my obligatory shopper’s “saving” card. I’m not sure about coupons; I didn’t have any to use, and I didn’t look around for where I could enter one.

The delivery options were decent. I was shown a calendar with available dates for both in-store pickup and home delivery. It was Monday evening and the first available days were Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. After choosing a day I was asked which time slot I wanted. Fortunately the options were not too cable company-esque — I had the choice of three different 2-hour windows in the late morning, afternoon, and evening. I chose 19:00-21:00 (that’s 7pm to 9pm, of course).

I got an email receipt detailing each item and the amount which was convenient because I needed to run to the store in the meantime (how barbaric!) and didn’t want to buy any duplicates.

The day of reckoning arrived. This is where ShopRite stumbled. About an hour before my window opened, I received a phone call but missed it. I called ShopRite back and could only call customer service who tried to connect me to the delivery department. I ended up on hold for 18 minutes listening to some pleasant golden oldies (no muzak!) before I gave up and tried later. During the second attempt the call routing system failed miserably, constantly directing me back to the main menu after a few rings. Finally I got through to a person and she suggested (but couldn’t verify) that my missed phone call was probably about a substitute item.

I got the sense that this whole delivery thing was very new to the employees there. Although there were other deliveries being made the same evening by the store’s two drivers, as soon as I gave my name I could practically hear the woman on the phone nodding knowingly and the words she chose suggested there weren’t more than a couple deliveries that evening.

Nevertheless, my delivery was late. Very late. I got a call at 21:45, 45 minutes after the delivery window closed, politely and apologetically informing me of the delay and asking if I’d like to wait another hour. I didn’t mind since there were no ‘emergency’ groceries and it wasn’t a school night. The driver finally arrived at 22:35, an hour and a half after the close of my chosen time slot.

My groceries were intact and in good condition. It all came in double-packed plastic and paper bags with just a few items per bag; not too green, but relatively fail-safe.

The groceries appeared as if someone walked around the store and filled up a cart on my behalf — and actually, that’s exactly what ShopRite’s web site says they do. Produce was dropped into plastic produce bags, and meat was measured and metered and tagged. I didn’t order anything overly fragile like eggs or tomatoes, but my broccoli and meat was not smashed or damaged in any way. One package of ground beef was leaking slightly from the bottom, but meat is sometimes like that in the store, so I don’t blame it on the delivery process.

It turned out that one item (by-the-pound pork liver) was not available, and therefore not delivered or charged. Several others claimed to be substitutions, but I got the same items that I ordered. I was given a very detailed listing of my items and it looks like the “substitutions” were either a change in SKU or a different weight (eg, I got three-quarters of a pound of Parmesan cheese instead of a quarter).

All in all I’m happy with the experience. In the future, the $6.95 delivery fee means I’ll probably only use the service when I am planning to make a pretty big purchase and don’t feel like wading through the crowded aisles. For anything time sensitive (i.e., specific items for a planned dinner party or barbecue) I recommend padding your delivery time by a day since my delivery could very well have been moved to the next day. But overall I found the experience acceptable and would recommend it for the occasional restocking of the fridge and pantry.

Das boot! (Taken with Instagram at Wolff’s Biergarten und...

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 20:27:00 -0400

Das boot! (Taken with Instagram at Wolff’s Biergarten und Wurst Haus)

seldo: This is genuinely Microsoft’s idea of a “streamlined”,...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 15:27:35 -0400

seldo:

This is genuinely Microsoft’s idea of a “streamlined”, “optimized” UI for Windows Explorer. They were so proud of it they wrote a blog post about it.

The post is a sort of masterpiece of crazy rationalization, but I think my favourite part may be this screenshot:

Here, they proudly overlay the UI with data from their research into how often various commands are used. They use this to show that “the commands that make up 84% of what users do in Explorer are now in one tab”. But the more important thing is that the remaining 50% of the bar is taken up by buttons that nobody will ever use, ever, even according to Microsoft’s own research. And yet somehow they remain smack bang in the middle of the interface. The insanity is further enriched by this graph:

Again, this is Microsoft’s own research, cited in the same post: nobody — almost literally 0% of users — uses the menu bar, and only 10% of users use the command bar. Nearly everybody is using the context menu or hotkeys. So the solution, obviously, is to make both the menu bar and the command bar bigger and more prominent. Right?

Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody.

Allen Paltrow: My Experience with Jobs and Apple

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:22:00 -0400

Allen Paltrow: My Experience with Jobs and Apple:

allenpaltrow:

Update: I have appended this follow-up.

Growing up I was a huge apple fan-boy (fine, still am.) The first NY apple store in Soho opening was probably the coolest thing that happened to me between the ages 6 and 12. For a while I would spend almost every weekend there. Every year for halloween…

A storm sweeps Buenos Aires. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 10:10:52 -0400

A storm sweeps Buenos Aires. (Taken with instagram)

Cheaper than a cone. (Taken with Instagram at Ben and...

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:07:22 -0400

Cheaper than a cone. (Taken with Instagram at Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream)

Bark in the Park (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:35:07 -0400

Bark in the Park (Taken with instagram)

The life of an iPhone game

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:31:28 -0400

Hear about a fun game
Download the game, which puts its icon on the fourth or fifth page of the springboard
Forget about the game for now because when the App Store opened it found some trivial updates for apps I barely use but I can’t leave that badge just sitting there
Happen upon the game’s icon a week later after someone actually called me (with a phone!) and I need to hunt down the Phone app (which is banished to a “Cannot Delete” folder with Stocks and Weather and whatever else) so I can get rid of that missed call badge
Play the game. Hey, it’s kind of fun.
Later, have a desire to play the game and swipe-swipe-swipe to that last page to reach its icon
Repeat the previous step at increasingly shorter intervals
Get tired of swipe-swipe-swiping and simultaneously realize the game is among my five most-used apps
Decide which first-page app is getting bumped (Maps, again) and move the game into its place
Resume my usual Twitter/Reader/SimpleNote/iPod/browser usage of the iPhone. Between each one, I see the game’s icon which begins to gnaw at me because this is “work time”, I will play the game later during “game time”.
Think of increasingly pithy comments about the “cute” character in the game’s icon every time I pass over it to tap on a “useful” app. Begin ignoring it out of spite.
Realize I never play the game anymore. Remember how much fun it was, but struggle to get over its smarmy little icon who thinks it’s just so important because it’s always on my goddamn home screen all the goddamn time.
Delete the unfinished game, making a mental note to stop spending $2 on “games that I never end up playing and just sit there taking up space”

Llama Walk (Taken with Instagram at Wunsapana Farm)

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:18:21 -0400

Llama Walk (Taken with Instagram at Wunsapana Farm)

Bed time. (Taken with instagram)

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:15:57 -0400

Bed time. (Taken with instagram)

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Mon, 30 May 2011 21:08:12 -0400

I spent the weekend in a lakeside cabin that only gets one radio station. And that one radio station only has about twelve songs. Among them was Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep”, which is such a blatant rip off of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that I felt embarrassed for her.

The entire song sounds similar, but the chorus is particularly egregious (at 0:57) :

And the original (at 1:06) :

Fantastic spams.

Sat, 21 May 2011 12:57:49 -0400

Fantastic spams.

So’s your font. (Taken with instagram)

Wed, 11 May 2011 22:00:03 -0400

So’s your font. (Taken with instagram)

MUSIC TWEETS

Mon, 09 May 2011 22:30:24 -0400

robdelaney:

I realized I’ve written a lot of tweets about music. I have compiled some for you here:

I just took a HUGE “Eagles Greatest Hits.”

I love the album Abbey Road so much I think I’m going to name my first daughter “Road.”

Rap-rock is the soundtrack to date-rape.

Read More

robdelaney: It’s not surprising that a photo of a terrorist...

Thu, 05 May 2011 22:20:27 -0400

robdelaney:

It’s not surprising that a photo of a terrorist with a bullet hole in his face would turn Sarah Palin on. The way she asks for it to be released though, is an interesting bit of dishonesty.

“Show photo as a warning to others seeking America’s destruction.”

I’m imagining a group of terrorists sitting around a computer, pulling up a photo of Osama Bin Laden’s corpse, and one saying “WHOA GUYS, if we try to ‘destroy America’ they might try put BULLETS in our FACES. We better knock this malarkey off ASAP. Return that fertilizer to the hardware store and let’s use the fuel we’ve stockpiled to power the generator at my nephew’s school for a few weeks.”

Terrorists, especially of the Jihadi variety, are frequently prepared for and SEEKING death, whether it comes in the form of a bullet, explosion, or underpants conflagration on a Detroit-bound flight.

But I presume Sarah Palin knows this. So her tweet is both “politicking” and “drama.” It’s theater, in fact.

And way to wrap it up with “That’s the mission.” Though she didn’t shoehorn the words “Islam” or “Muslim” into her clunker of a tweet, she did finish it with a word whose definitions include “a group of people sent by a religious body, esp a Christian church, to a foreign country, to do religious work.”

I’m glad she was so transparent about what her “mission” is. And let’s also salute her for sneaking the word “pussy” in there. Osama Bin Laden is killed while Barack Obama is President, and Sarah Palin’s immediate response is to explicitly link him with the word “pussy.” Would she have worked the word “cocky” in there if he released the photo?

To conclude, her tweet is bloodthirsty, purposefully dishonest, willfully ignorant, xenophobic and rude. It’s a fantastic snapshot of who she is.

Easter walk part 2 (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:22:54 -0400

Easter walk part 2 (Taken with instagram)

Easter walk (Taken with instagram)

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 14:21:56 -0400

Easter walk (Taken with instagram)

I’m at Holiday Inn (Colonie, NY) “Mobile browser conf with @PPK” ...

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 14:12:59 -0400

I’m at Holiday Inn (Colonie, NY)

“Mobile browser conf with @PPK”

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I’m at Guptill’s Ice Cream Stand (Cohoes, NY) “First day of...

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 23:50:40 -0400

I’m at Guptill’s Ice Cream Stand (Cohoes, NY)

“First day of spring.”

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