Why Can't I Have Normal Dreams?
I don't know what most people dream. Well, maybe my middle brother, because he used to talk while he slept. But I always thought I should dream about things like some sexy young model with a fetish for obscure libertarian bloggers.But for example, last night I dreamed about going to a major wrestling event like Wrestlemania in a stadium. I met a group of friends there. But I didn't see any of the matches; it's almost as if WWE was saying, you can't see any matches, even in your dreams, without a subscription to our network. I just remember cleaning up after the event; great, now I'm reliving my freshman year in college washing dishes and mopping floors, a heck of a first college job for a high school valedictorian and scholarship student. But then I'm trying to find my car in a sea of lots surrounding the stadium and I can't remember where I parked. (And while I'm dreaming this, I can remember telling myself, "Don't worry about it. You're only dreaming. Your car is parked outside your apartment building".)
The previous night involved my ongoing battle with weight and restrictive diets. So you might figure in my dream I've shed 75 pounds and I'm going to hit the all-you-care-to-eat buffet. Wrong. I'm going to the Catholic Newman center back at UH (where I would spent time with my friends, just getting away from academic stress). And so in this dream sequence I'm seeing all these open boxes of barely touched deep dish pizza. And I'm thinking, "Crap, I just ate at McDonald's." But just as I approach the first box of pizza, my alarm goes off. (At least a couple of things wrong with that dream: I almost never eat fast food, and I never had pizza at Newman. Lots of IT occasions maybe, but not Newman.)
Watch the Prices on Amazon
I've been a satisfied Amazon.com customer for 20 years. But there are a few items where prices are so ridiculous, forget about it. To give an example, I recently looked up dry soups and saw something I paid $2 for at Walmart, selling at triple the price (not including shipping, which may be from the vendor partner, not Amazon (meaning that it does not qualify for free shipping)). And I've seen items like Ezekiel bread, but I've seen price quotes where not only do you pay more than say the $4.50 or so Trader Joe sells it, but you sometimes pay more for shipping than the bread itself! I've seen jars of Trader Joe's curry sauce (not sold by them but some middeman) at wildly inflated prices. (It's become one of my favorite things to do, e.g., spread some Thai green curry sauce over my crock pot chicken breasts. I don't mind a markup for convenience (not to mention notoriously crowded) vs. driving 20-odd miles to Trader Joe's (don't ask me why Trader Joe's doesn't have an online sales portal), but seeing curry or simmer sauces at $8-16 per jar? I'll pass; I'll settle for some killer no-sugar BBQ sauce I've bought locally and over the Internet.Delivery Options
I have a pet peeve about packages. I still remember when I moved to Houston (prior to attending U of H), I bought something (worth over $100), and UPS delivered the package in my absence to someone who allegedly lived in a nearby vacated apartment. I didn't know the alleged neighbor and never authorized anyone but apartment management to sign for me. I think I eventually got a refund or a replacement shipment, but UPS fought it every step of the way, insisting they had performed their service. No, they didn't! (There were some very weird things in that Houston complex. I had just come home from visiting my folks in San Antonio maybe 5-10 minutes. A male and female cop literally knocked at my door and asked if my sister was okay; I don't recall them asking for my ID or anything like that. Now I do have 4 little sisters, but none of them were living with me. I kept asking them if they had the right apartment, because I lived alone. Thank God they didn't ask me to produce my phantom sister! But it was like they refused to process what I was telling them until I said the magic words that my sister was fine, just to get rid of them. I have no idea why they would have taken my word for it, but I was glad they were gone. The next day I went to confront the apartment manager, who seemed to be aware of the issue but refused to discuss it and seemed to be pissed off at me for some reason. But I had never had family visit me in that apartment and to this day I don't know what the hell that was about.)Now normally when I've lived in an apartment complex, apartment managers usually signed for resident packages as a convenience. It certainly was better than say waiting in line for 30 minutes to an hour at the post office--and I've posted in the past about a "one of a kind item" Mom had sent for my Christmas or birthday. She made the mistake of insuring it and asking for my signature. I had told my mom literally over a dozen times before not to do that, let the apartment sign for it. But my Mom demanded my signature to prove I got it. I said innumerable times I'll email or call you when I get something, but I inherit my stubborn streak from my Mom. This was in the midst of a feud I was having with the postal worker who was an arrogant piece of work. (This guy sorely deserved having his ass kicked; he was a pain in the ass to deal with and knowingly pulled every bureaucratic trick in the book to make my life miserable. I'm not going to go into details, but one of them was that he was finding excuses not to leave my packages with the apartment management, and the apartment management didn't want to get in the middle of a dispute between the USPS and me. At one point, I think it deal with my Mom's gift as I'm going to explain, the postman personally went to the management to lobby against me, and they responded by deciding they would not accept any future packages on my behalf--they would for other people but not me. And the postman gloated about their decision with a message in my mailbox. The discriminatory treatment against me was unsustainable and they quickly reversed the decision.
Because my Mom had requested my personal signature, the postman did not leave it with the apartment management (and gloated about it). That's the last time anyone ever saw the package; I suspect the son of a bitch stole or disposed of the package. I had to wait forever--remember this was the holiday season, only to find they didn't hold packages there but at another facility (not that I knew about this because I was given no address of an alternate location. It was some weird thing like I couldn't come and get it, but they would locate it and make arrangements to redeliver. Only what should have been a 15-minute search ended up being 3 weeks to find a package that was never there. Then they expanded the search to other facilities. Finally, I was told they had given up the search and to have Mom file an insurance claim. Now I've blogged before about my bad experience in dealing with a USPS insurance claim. Then there was arrogant fingerpointing between Texas and Maryland post offices. She finally collected several weeks later after filing. I think my Mom sent me something else, but not the "one of a kind item" which she still refuses to discuss.
The problem with leaving it at the apartment office is that they usually operated during my work hours, so I sometimes had to wait for weekends to pick up packages (not great if you bought things packed in dry ice, like meats, or perishable items, like an occasional tin of cookies, from Mom). Things got even more inconvenient when some delivery services decided it was simply easier to dump off all the packages at the office vs. go to each one and see if they were home (not even leaving a note on the door); I was working a swing shift back in Arizona, expecting a few deliveries (including Amazon), expecting one any day now, looking up item tracking to find it had been delivered to the apartment office. (They would usually put delivery notices in our mailboxes.) But there were a handful of times I went from my PC to the apartment office. Sometimes it was closed when they were out showing apartments or running an errand.
Remember back in the 80's or earlier when you had to find an open gas station to pump gas? I still remember when I could pull into a gas station and just pay with a credit card without a gas station attendant.
But I've lived in a few complexes where the apartment complex office wasn't open at a full-time basis. Maybe an owner had multiple properties or limited staff. I remember one of the reasons I did some long hours driving from Arizona to Maryland is because the manager would only be available on a Monday to do the lease.
I know there are some forms of secure package storage like in my Mom's neighborhood where you have an independent standing mailbox kiosk with some large package bins. So if my folks got a USPS package, the postman would drop the key in the mailbox. You pick up your package and leave the key. It's not hard to see how you could centralize and upscale that concept, not unlike similar self-storage concepts or a varying hoteling-like construct (for example, when I worked for Coopers & Lybrand, they had a concept where a visiting consultant (say, normally working at a client location) would get mapped to a local location. I wouldn't be surprised if some variants of these already exist. But it's not hard to conceptualize how you could come to some 24 x 7 facility integrated with barcode technology and/or bin access codes texted to your cellphone.
So I recently ordered some lower-carb items from one of my favorite Internet portals. Delivery was promised on Wednesday. It wasn't until Wednesday night when I remembered that and didn't see a note left on my door that a delivery attempt was made. I was used to the usual "a second attempt will be made or call to make arrangements". My stomach sank when I first read "delivered". Don't tell me this was another case of leaving it with a neighbor I don't know. Nope. Apparently they now have some sort of arrangement (maybe I'm the last to hear about it?) where they'll store it at a local UPS store for pickup. So I saw that their designated store was near a well-known shopping intersection maybe 3 miles away and they had long enough hours I could easily drive there straight after work. A little out of the way, but I liked they could confirm the package was there over the phone and they checked my ID before retrieving the package--plus sent an email notification I had picked up the package. They resolved a lot of uncertainty over my package delivery, which is a step in the right direction. I like to be able to leave a note saying for UPS to simply hold future deliveries at their local store. My only complaint is that I should have been proactively contacted to let me know the package was at the store (maybe that's a configurable option) vs. have to look up tracking numbers (but I'm a big fan of tracking number applications so I can know progress of delivery).
ESPN?
Regular readers know the story of how I became a Twins fan long before I ever visiting the state of Minnesota. (Basically I first played Little League for the hapless Twins (we won 1 game all season); I ended up getting kicked off the team. Some 8-year-old punk went around the dugout saying that I had a girlfriend; this was at a stage of life when girls have cooties (even though at the time I had 3 little sisters). So I mock-threatened him that he better cut it out, at which the coach yanked me by the collar, threw me out of the dugout and told me to go home. Well, we were playing the Yankees, which had my kid brother on the team, and so I went up into the stands and started cheering for my brother. My coach, unamused, spotted me in the stands and kicked me off the team. He even blocked me from attending the end of season fried chicken banquet featuring local former major league star Bobby Richardson as the keynote speaker. (My parents tried talking to him but got nowhere.) So in some weird way I become aware there was an actual major league team called the Twins; I became obsessed: Rod Carew, Tony Oliva, Harmon Killebrew, Jim Kaat, Bert Blyleven, etc.My baseball obsession has faden over time to maybe watching the All-Star Game, the playoffs and World Series. I would still occasional check out how the Twins were doing in the standings. This year they landed in the one-game wild card team playoff with none other than the Yankees (in NY). I only cheer for the Yankees when they're in the World Series, because I'm an AL fan. So I checked and saw that ESPN would be carrying the game. So I go to watch--and discover, for the first time in my life, ESPN was not on my cable lineup, not even a teaser channel where I call up to subscribe to an add-on package. I guess it shows how much interest in sports I have these days that I haven't noticed until now. In more recent years, I only used to watch it for certain college football games. Just as well--I missed watching the Twins lose. Not a fan of one game playoffs. On a more positive note, the Indians are 2-0 so far against the Yankees.
On a separate note, I'm continuing to boycott the NFL until Veterans Day over the anthem protests.
What Is It About People and Directions?
This is a topic I've periodically explored, e.g., on my practical computing blog. Most people I know are just horrible at giving directions. Probably the best example is when I arrived in my new hometown after being on the road. I didn't have my Garmin, and I hadn't yet used my cellphone (e.g., Google Maps). There were 2 main entries into town. I was supposed to drop off the van (really, unhook the car because I had contracted with some movers to unload the next) at a local Exxon. I didn't know the drop-off location until I had the car dolly attached at another U-Haul dealership. So no printed instructions once I got off the intersection. All I had was a local route street address. I called up the dealership for directions and the ethnic young man responded, "We're near the Amtrak station." OK, not helpful because I wasn't a local. I was calling from a prominent shopping center, and the guy couldn't give rudimentary directions on how to get to his business from the shopping center. In his place, I would today tell him: go straight at the intersection out of the shopping center. A few blocks you'll come to a second intersection. Take a left for a couple of and you'll come to an intersection where the Exxon will be on your upper left corner and the Amtrak station will be on your upper right. Someone else took the phone call and basically told me that I would eventually see an exit for the local route on my right, and then the Exxon was a few blocks on my left. But he underestimated the distance to the route, and I worried that I had missed the turnoff (and these U-Hauls with dollies are rough to maneuver on city/town streets; you pretty well have to plan around right-angle curves, no u-turns.
A second example involves find the UPS store in the above segment on delivery. It was ironically along the same road I used to explain how I would have given my directions, between major intersections--in fact the store is in a strip mall halfway between the intersections on my right. There were shopping malls and strip mall on both sides of the first intersection. She talks a Chick-Fil-A sign. OK, she got me on that one. I had never paid attention to the giant Chick-Fil-A sign (it shows how often I eat fast food). It was on the correct side of the street, although I would have wrongly assumed it was in a strip mall in the same block. The important point I gave her a giant hint and she didn't know how to deal with it, which boggles the mind. My first night in town I had to stay at a hotel (until my truck was unloaded the next morning). Right across the street was a Kentucky Fried Chicken where I ended up eating lunch after signing my lease and checking into the hotel. It turns out the Kentucky Fried Chicken is the last thing you see before you get to the target strip mall. In fact, you come out the UPS store and you look to your left, you see KFC! I still turned on Google Maps on my cellphone and she tells me my location is at my immediate right--spot on!
Final example in this segment: I was recently driving to my aunt's wake and funeral in Connecticut. I had last been there in 1995, and Dad was the one driving. I had printed instructions, but it was a maze of turns which are difficult to follow when you're driving. I turned on Google Maps (I had misplaced my Garmin cable so I didn't bring it along), and it was pretty good, except it seemed to tell me my target was this giant white house at a corner, which didn't seem right. This wasn't a street where numbers were painted on the curb or on standalone mail boxes. I called my cousin (who is a sweetheart, and I hope she doesn't read this); she stammered to explain the location of her mom's house. She started talking about a mailbox with her family's slightly varying surname to my own (another story). Well, that's fine, except you couldn't see the mailbox from the street and the lettering of the surname was barely legible--like a black imprint on a black background. It turned out that her parents' home was the right side of a duplex, the first (and only?) duplex on the left side of a street, just past the big white house. I don't think I've seen a duplex (adjoining houses) since we lived in one in south Texas where I went to high school. To me, that's obvious in giving locations.
