20 Aug 2010

What I Carry in My Pockets

Dave and Patrick started this, so blame them if you think it's boring. I love this crap, though.
  1. Front Left: Cash (on the rare occasion when I actually have any).
  2. Front Left: Keys, including a small LaCie thumb drive that I almost never use, thanks to Dropbox.
  3. Front Left: Plastic bound together with a Field Notes Band of Rubber.
  4. Front Right: iPhone 4.
  5. Back Right: Field Notes notebook which is unspeakably awesome.
  6. Back Left: Pilot G2 Mini, the greatest non-boutique ballpoint in existence.
18 Aug 2010

Things that are making me happy right now

  1. The anticipation of an evening out with my lady celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary (tomorrow night).
  2. That said lady and I decided that anniversary gifts are off the table this year because neither of us could think of anything cool to give.
  3. There's a new episode of The Talk Show.
  4. There's a new episode of Macbreak Weekly.
  5. The Hold Steady
  6. How great it is that I get do a super cool job from my own house using sweet Apple equipment and almost never wear shoes.
  7. The great big impromptu hugs I just got from my kids.
  8. My Field Notes band of rubber.
11 Aug 2010

The Costco Thing

Earlier today, I posted a toot about how Costco was on my shit list, but gave no explanation. I got a few replies asking me what the story was, so here you go.

A few months ago, my wife and I were in the market for a new printer. We shopped around for a bit and, in the process, found ourselves at Costco, where we have a membership and shop occasionally. They had an HP OfficeJet 8000 for a reasonable price, under $200, which was attractive to us. While we were there, we noticed a small placard taped to one of the displays:

This was exactly what we'd wanted to hear. Anybody who has purchased an inkjet printer recently knows that the reason the printer itself is so inexpensive is that the manufacturer gets to regularly take you to the cleaners when it's time to refill your ink cartridges. This seemed like a pretty sweet deal and, knowing that Costco generally does a stellar job of offering legitimate deals to their customers, we felt we'd found our printer and wouldn't be forced to take a bath on ink refills. Wrong. A few days ago, the printer started bitching that the black cartridge was running low and needed to be replaced. This made sense, since I'd printed several copies of my ebook in preceding weeks for my friends to proofread. It wasn't a huge deal since I was safe in the knowledge that Costco would refill my cartridges for a fraction of what it would cost to replace them. This afternoon, I yanked the mostly-empty cartridges from my printer, kissed Joana on the cheek and drove down the street to Costco. I hopped in line at the Photo center where they also do the ink refills, made my way to the front and plopped them down on the counter. I told the young guy behind the counter that I needed to get them refilled and, before I had fully removed the from the bag in which I'd carried them, was told "We don't refill those." I had seen a sign as I walked up that said something about the refill service only being available at select locations, so I asked, "This particular location doesn't refill these? Or Costco doesn't?" Turns out, no Costco will service these cartridges. That I bought from Costco. Which were made by HP. Which is one of the three manufacturers enumerated on the sign offering inkjet refills. You can understand my frustration, particularly given the fact that the sign didn't say "some HP cartridges". So, I'm a little miffed. I bought that printer from Costco in large part because I thought that ink refills would be inexpensive. Since this isn't the case, my next course of action is to return the printer that I've used for the last 3 months and for which I no longer have the packaging. Costco lets you do that. I'm told.

28 Jul 2010

GPOYW - I Showed My Sideburns and Now Feel Dirty Yet Fabulous Edition

26 Jul 2010

Pilots ejects seconds before hitting the ground

I won't bother commenting on the song that's playing since it's already been said much funnier than I could hope to say it.

(ht: @KimPrice)

21 Jul 2010

Tumbler on Tumblr.

21 Jul 2010

Flipboard is pretty sweet. They should c...

Flipboard is pretty sweet. They should charge for it to pay for infrastructure as it's currently over capacity.
20 Jul 2010

No, you're immature.

10 Jul 2010

Commit Message Generator

10 Jul 2010

Bad Sales Pitches

My scant 31 years on this planet has taught me that any unexpected knock at the front door on a Saturday morning is from somebody I'm not at all interested in seeing. Take, for instance, the teenager who just showed up at my front door a few minutes ago peddling subscriptions to the local paper. I knew before he finished knocking that I was going to be pitched on some super sweet deal on something when I opened the door.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not, generally, a huge dick to people for no reason. That said, I'm do go out of my way to be noticeably curt with people who come to my door trying to sell me things because I don't want there to be any chance of them mistaking my being friendly for my being interested in the crap they want me to buy. Most of the time, I'm able to end these encounters in less than a minute by firmly and repeatedly informing the person on my stoop that, no, I don't want any and to kindly enjoy the rest of their day.
 
Now then; here's a slightly paraphrased recap of the conversation that took place at my front door only moments ago:
 
Kid: *knocks at door*
Me: *opens door* "Hi."
Kid: "Good morning sir - how's, uh, how's your morning going?"
Me: "Fine."
Kid: "Well that's good, I'm here to talk to you today about the newspaper - the Orange County Register - maybe you've heard of it"
Me: "Yes, I've heard of it - but we're all set, thanks for stopping by."
Kid: "You're all set with the newspaper? What paper do you get?"
Me: "We don't read the newspaper."
Kid: "Oh, so you don't like being informed?"
[This is the point where, if the kid had even the slightest chance of making the sale, it was gone and I was a little miffed.]
Me: "Have a nice day." *closes door*
 
I could tell by the way the kid said it that he didn't really mean to sound like a condescending prick, but that's exactly how he did sound.  
 
I realize that there's no point to me telling this story, but I thought it was funny.

Brett Kelly's Posterous

I'm a software developer and writer from Southern California.