Ron's Log

Biggest Apple Store In America

Photos of the grand opening of the Apple store on Boylston in Boston. Video here.

Mayor Menino getting a little update.

Observe customers waiting to get broken Macs fixed.

A new variation in photos of this well known sculpture across the street at the Pru.

The store's official website.

Milfs Shocked By Urban Outfitters

This story rises above the usual one of someone-looks-in-a-place-that-appeals-to-young-adults-who-claim-to-be-sophisticated and finds things-that-don't-appeal-to-middle-aged-moms only because of the middle-aged mom's name: Marci Milfs. Sorry, no photo of the offended Milfs is provided. Mrs. Milfs went in to the Urban Outfitters in Lynwood, Washington, and dug into some books to find Porn For Women and Pornogami: A Guide to the Ancient Art of Paper-Folding for Adults. I couldn't find the books on Urban Outfitters' own site, so those are Amazon links. You can browse some of the contents of the books at Amazon and see that the books are intended as humor. Here, for example, is an image from Pornogami:

Milfs was so appalled that she is preparing to file a complaint with the city of Lynnwood, and has already aired her frustrations to State Rep. Norma Smith, R-Clinton, and organizations including Morality in Media, Concerned Women of America and the American Family Association.

She's a busy woman, as you can see, but as an afterthought "She also called Urban Outfitters' corporate office in Philadelphia." That's probably why she didn't have time to complain about the store's high prices for clothing of dubious quality.

Urban Outfitters, for its part, presents a charmingly old fashioned approach to public relations: "A woman who answered the phone at the company's corporate office said Urban Outfitters responds only to media inquiries of its choosing and that interview requests must be mailed to corporate headquarters." I assume that inquiries must be hand-written and exhibit good penmanship.

Good Customer Service Report

The regular reader will recall that my longtime hiking companion, the Canon 450SD, ended his reliable career with an instantaneous bout of lens lockup. I replaced it with a Canon SD870 SI in March. You may imagine my consternation, then, when on the hike on April 22 I looked down at the camera in my hand and saw that its lens was extended despite the fact that the camera was turned off. Pressing the power button only produced some little motor noise and then a series of beeps. Lens lockup in less than 5 weeks!

I still had the original shipping box and all the paperwork sitting right next to my computer at home, so it was no challenge to get the stuff all together and call Canon customer service. There was a short menu to click through and then I got a human instantly. I described the problem in two sentences. The customer service agent immediately agreed with my assessment and gave me instructions on how to ship the camera to them for repair. With my long experience with Time Warner customer service (which is mostly pretty good) I at least expected the Canon man to run me through some time-wasting checks like replacing the battery, pushing the power button while he had me on the phone, etc. But no, none of that nonsense.

So it was down to Scott Matas's UPS Store in the Von's shopping plaza where, we might as well confess, the service is always good. In no time at all the camera was on its way to Chicago. Canon had estimated a 6 or 7 day turn-around time. They sent me an email when they got it with an initial diagnosis and then an email the next day when they shipped it back via FedEx. I received it just six days after I had shipped it. They replaced the entire lens and the new one works so smoothly and quickly that I can't feel any vibration at all when I turn it on. Several times I thought I had missed the power button, before I looked down at the camera. This new lens, I mean to say, is smoother and faster than the original.

Second best repair service I've ever gotten. It's second only to Apple, and that's only because with Canon I had to pay for shipping it to them myself. Small matter.

Thanks, and come again!

After running up a bill of £284.68 for dinner and drinks at Joe Delucci's Italian restaurant in Lichfield, Staffordshire, a group of ten diners noticed that on their bill just above the fish cakes and below the "Cab Sauv Glass" was a surprising, no-cost item. The BBC has fuzzed it out to protect the eyes of some sensitive soul somewhere who I'm sure does not read Ron's Log, so I will spell it out for you: "SUCK MY DICK FUCK FACE   £0.00."

The restaurant owner has apologized, offered to donate the cost of the meal to charity, and explained "the message had been meant to be seen only by kitchen staff." I guess "suck my dick fuck face" is technical restaurant kitchen jargon meaning something like "the customer requests aioli sauce with the fish cakes."

Judgement Against Enzyte

A federal court jury on Friday found the owner of the company that sells Enzyte tablets "for Male Enhancement" guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. The judgement, however, had nothing to do with the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of Enzyte itself, for which product you may have noticed they make no actual claims. Just that it's "for Natural Male Enhancement."

America Progresses

It's 2008 and not only do we have a woman and a Hawaiian-American making very serious runs for the presidency, but Sharper Image is in bankruptcy! Kurt Barnard, president of Retail Forecasting LLC of New Jersey, said that "odds are low that Sharper Image will ever emerge from bankruptcy protection." Look for their product line at a landfill near you.

Just In Time To Crash On Super Bowl Sunday

Domino's Pizza has announced that you will be able to track the progress of your pizza via the internet from the time you order it to the moment it goes out the door. Unfortunately, the drive from the store to your door remains a black hole. Why don't they organize ride-alongs or maybe just put a camera inside the vehicle that records the journey on a little chip of flash memory which the driver gives to you along with the pizza. Then, while you eat the pizza you can watch to see if the driver sneezed on it.

The tracking site is here.

Gift Idea?

At t-shirt hell:

"It's the best vomit on the market."

Fake vomit that is, and still produly made in America.

The vomitmaster smooths the mixture with the back of the spoon, the way a short-order cook does with pancakes on the griddle. Depending on weather, season and humidity, the pools of fake vomit, 500 to a batch, take overnight to a day and a half to dry. Like snowflakes, no two fake vomits are ever alike, which in the world of manufactured practical jokes is a rare trait.

Fresh Whole Rabbit

An Amazon page for Cloverdale Fresh Whole Rabbit. The interesting part is when you scroll down to "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought."

Just in case Amazon has adjusted the page before you get to it, here's a screengrab of it.

Amazon Shopping Niche Filler

If you're putting together a small Amazon order and need just a teensy bit more to make it $25 to qualify for free shipping, you may find the Amazon Filler Item Finder handy. Just tell it how much more you need to make $25, and it gives you the list of things you could buy. For instance, how about the Laurey Au Natural Wood Mushroom 1-1/4-Inch Diameter Knob for 72¢?

Blockbuster Stores Closing

The Desert Sun reports that five of the Blockbuster video stores in the Coachella Valley are closing. The Yellow Pages lists seven stores, and the article says the locations in Bermuda Dunes and Desert Hot Springs will stay open. Competition from Netflix is doubtless part of the reason for these closings, but there's also competiton from DVRs, the internet, and just plain life.

Apple Store

Don't know if this is fiction or fact, but somewhere in northern New Jersey someone (or possibly some two) received unpleasant service at the hands of an Apple Store employee. Doubtless, this problem will be fixed with the next software upgrade.

Custom Cakes at Wal-Mart

Some people that work here had a going away party the other day for a woman that is leaving.

One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. he told them to write: "best wishes Suzanne" and underneath that write "we will miss you". here's the cake that was delivered:

From The GinBlog.

Costco Slide Scanning

Recently in a conversation about film processing with someone, that someone (right, I've forgotten who) mentioned that Costco offers slide scanning. Really?! I had never heard that before, but this guy spoke well of it. The next time I was at Costco I visited the photo store. There is nothing anywhere to tell you that they scan slides. There's nothing on the envelopes you fill out, either. But I asked a real person and she assured me they do scan slides, and at only 29¢ each. So a few days later I picked out five slides and took 'em in.

Picked them up today and I'm very happy with the results. My old scanner doesn't have any digital dirt and scratch removal software. That seemed to appear on the market shortly after I bought my scanner. The scans from Costco are much, much cleaner than any I could achieve on my own.

Some needed a little color correction, but that's almost always true with film and slide scans.

If you want to compare the 29¢ to the cost of owning a real film scanner, here's the least expensive film and slide scanner at B&H that has digital dirt and scratch removal. Costs $270.

But here's the least expensive NIKON film and slide scanner at B&H, which has, of course, digital dust and scratch removal. I'm sure it would be good and costs $550. That's about 1,896 scans at Costco.

In any case, if you're sitting on a stash of beautiful old slides, get 'em scanned somehow. As time goes by, slide scanning will become harder and harder to find.

Here are my edited results (click to get to larger versions, of course), and below that are links to the very large scans exactly as they came from Costco.

Alcatraz, late 1980s. This is Agfachrome and it was a very overcast day, but the slide's color has probably shifted some.

Posing in front of the banner at my first AIDS Ride, California AIDS Ride 2. This is some kind of E6 film.

The Flamingo in Las Vegas in 2001 on Ektachrome.

Saguaro National Monument near Tucscon in the late 1980s on Kodachrome.

Tulips somewhere in Boston, E6 film, 1984.

• "Alcatraz" as scanned
• "California AIDS Ride" as scanned
• "Flamingo" as scanned
• "Saguaros" as scanned
• "Tulips" as scanned

Hey, Wha?

I've caught an ad on TV a couple of times and it was annoying in its way of not telling you what it was selling. Two guys in the style of a Mac ad going back and forth on the issue of customer service, and only at the end do they mention the name "Macgallery" and if you watch closely (who does that?) you see macgallery.com is flashed on the screen.

So one takes pity on the poorly conceived ad and types in the alleged URL and one finds that an authorized Apple reseller is opening in La Quinta with a party on the evening of the 14th with "free food and iPod give aways."

78995 Hwy 111, Suite 3; La Quinta, CA 92253

And that's all we know.

I'm On The Guest List

This sounds like satire, but here's an article saying that Apple stores will begin charging a $5 cover to get in the door. The $5 can be applied to any purchase made in the store. Only the bit about "Apple 'Muscleheads'" sounds over the top.

I think I may start asking for $1 from anyone who wants to read any comments I make about Apple products.

Downtown L.A. Gets Supermarket

A Ralph's, this is downtown L.A.'s first supermarket in 50 years. More than a thousand people lined up for the opening. "Terry O'Neil, a spokesman for Ralphs, said the company had never seen this size of a turnout for a grocery store opening."

Another Article About Costco

Can you guess which Costco store has the greatest sales? Find out here, along with some other facts about the retailer.

Got A Light?

Was at Costco this afternoon and there was a bit of a slowdown in my checkout line as one guy bought 14 CASES of cigarettes, all big name brands, some light, some regular. A case usually contains 24 cartons. Cartons at Costco run from about $33 to about $42, based on my brief survey. Let's say $37.50 per carton times 24 cartons times 14 cases. $12,600. He paid with American Express. The buyer was a middle aged man of apparently average health. It would have been too good if he carried an oxygen tank or had a laryngectomy. But no, I figure he's got a boyfriend (maybe more than one) in prison.

Wal-Mart Supercenters

Last autumn the city council of San Diego approved a ban that would prevent Wal-Mart from building Supercenters in the city. Apparently, the democratic processes are bringing that ban to a vote of the people. Here, Gerry Braun, takes a trip to our newest Supercenter and paints a word picture so that those poor San Diegans who have never visited can imagine what it would be like. The nearest Wal-Mart Supercenter to San Diego is in Hemet, but I think Mr. Braun wanted to visit a super Supercenter.

I drove to Palm Desert in Riverside County, where a supercenter opened last summer in a sprawling commercial district built on scraped desert.

There can't be many places left in San Diego where you could put a village like this one.

The 221,000-square-foot Wal-Mart sits between a 154,000-square-foot Sam's Club and a 90,000-square-foot Kohl's, and across from a 138,000-square-foot Home Depot. The blocks are Las Vegas-sized; Wal-Mart's lot alone is 24.5 acres.

In this neighborhood, the Sunroad building would look like a lifeguard stand.

I guess Mr. Braun didn't bring his binoculars (or buy any in the Supercenter) or he could have seen that this shopping area includes a Costco and Lowe's store, too. He strolls the various departments of the store and runs into Charles Crayne of Desert Hot Springs ["Charles Crayne made his first ace in 38 years of trying when his tee shot went in on the fly on the 141-yard fifth hole at Desert Dunes Golf Club in Desert Hot Springs. Crayne accomplished the feat with an eight iron he has owned since he first started playing golf."] who compares Wal-Mart's prices to those you would find at Von's. Well, jay-zus, I've thought Von's (better known as Safeway to most of the world) has some of the most ridiculously high prices around. Yes, Albertson's can go higher, and Jensen's is simply in another solar system. But if you're going to price-shop at Wal-Mart [rolling my eyes] you've got to compare it to Costco, Sam's Club, even Stater Bros.

It's too bad Mr. Braun doesn't report on any interactions with the Supercenter's employees (other than the parking lot patrol) so we could learn how that went.

The Costco Formula

A NY Times article about the differences between Costco and Sam's Club/Wal-Mart. You may want to use BugMeNot. To me the difference is obvious. Wal-Mart/Sam's Club: unintelligent, apathetic employees, shitty products. Costco: good products and employees who can put together a sentence - and even more!

Deals At Amazon

Brand Name Coupons came up with these very handy links allowing you easily search Amazon for discounts, but it's a bit cramped. Consumerist took it and improved the spacing a little. And now I've taken it and applied anal-government-retentive rows and columns to make it more readable:

Apparel & Accessories :	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Beauty:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Bed & Bath:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Books:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Camera & Photo:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Cell Phones & Service:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Computers & PC Hardware:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Computers & Video Games:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
DVD:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Electronics:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Furniture & Decor:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Gourmet Food:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
GPS and Navigation:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Grocery:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Health & Personal Care:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Home & Garden:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Jewelry & Watches:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Kitchen & Housewares:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Magazines & Newspapers:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Musical Instruments:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Office Products:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Outdoor Living:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Pet Supplies:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Shoes:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Software:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Sports & Outdoors:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Tools & Hardware:	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%
Toys & Games :	90%	80%	70%	60%	50%	40%	30%	20%	10%

Motel 6 Customer Service

Yes, more customer service complaints, but these are a little different. Didn't get rude service, just got weirdly inefficient service, as though Motel 6 were a little mom & pop business that never got a complaint before.

Back in January I made an on-line reservation for a one-night stay at Motel 6, and THEN I wisely checked my calendar to find out I had a schedule conflict. Had to cancel the reservation, which was easy since I saved all the info and they have an easy link to cancel. It went swimmingly and I saved the cancellation information as well. And that was good, because six weeks later when the credit card bill came in, I saw they had gone and charged me for that one-night stay.

No problem, right, because I still had all the info and even businesses with bad customer service can process a refund when you've got complete info. So I opened up the cancellation confirmation which includes the customer service number (800-466-8356) in several places. I called, and was probably connected to a human fairly quickly, only to find that this "customer service" number could deal ONLY with reservations, they couldn't do anything about a cancellation. The agent gave me the cancellation service number: 800-557-3435. I offered the suggestion that this phone number should be included in the cancellation confirmation information, and I thanked her. I called the new number to discover that cancellation customer service is open only during normal business hours (8 to 5, or something like that) in some time zone other than mine. Fabulous.

Fortunately, they've got a place on their website where I could send them a text message about my problem. So I gave that a try. On the following Monday (or maybe Tuesday) I got an email from them with an attached PDF. Every email I got from them was in PDF format, even though they were simple text messages. I've never run into this before. Do they think the formatting of their simple message is so precious that they have to send it as a 40 Kb file? Here's the message:

Dear Ronald Gilbert:

Thank you for sharing the experience you had with our Motel 6 property in Hollywood, California. We apologize for any inconvenience this experience caused you.

Your comments will be forwarded to the management team of this property, who will respond to your concerns within fifteen (15) days.

We look forward to future opportunities to be of service.

Sincerely,
L-- T--
Guest Relations Administrator

No phone number. No email address either. No identifying case number. A reply to the sending address bounces back instantly as invalid. And the whole message reads as though I had suggested they use more fabric softener in the laundry or ought to fix a loose step in the stairway. Why would they need to contact local management for this? So I phoned (during usual business hours) and gave the whole story to the agent at cancellation customer service. She said that the Hollywood Motel 6 is a franchise, so if they charged me they would have to process the refund, so that's why Motel 6 had to send the info to them. Okay, makes sense. Would have been helpful to include that in the non-helpful PDF.

Then 10 or 15 days later I got another email from Motel 6 (PDF attachment, no phone number, no identifying case number) which started out with the same first paragraph. Then a second paragraph saying this:

We would like to further investigate your request. Please provide use with a copy of your billing statement by faxing the information to my attention at XXX-XXX-XXXX or you may mail to our address at ... Greenville, Texas.

Sincerely,
C-- B--
Guest Relations Administrator

New Guest Relations Administrator, in case you didn't notice. The way I speak English, a "billing statement" is the thing I get at the desk of the motel when I pay my bill. Naturally, I don't have one of those, since I was never there. I called the cancellation service again for a translation. Turns out that since the location is a franchise, Motel 6 corporate has NO IDEA what they actually charged me! The only way they can verify the amount is for me to copy my credit card statement and send it to them! This has some kind of 1979 feel to it. So I copied the page from my bill, blanking out all the lines above and below the Motel 6 charge. Mailed it to them.

Now today, end of story. Instead of a refund to my credit card, they mailed me a check. The only way I know it is from Motel 6 is that the amount matches what they charged me. Nothing on the check says anything about Motel 6. No explanation was included. The check comes from Accor North America in Carrollton, Texas.

In the future I'm going to avoid making reservations at any Motel 6, unless I absolutely have to, and I've thoroughly checked all possible scheduling conflicts several times over.

Customer Service

MSN Money commissioned a poll by Zogby International to come up with a list of the 10 companies with the worst customer service. Time F. Warner came in only fourth place. The whole story started with complaints about The Home Depot last year, but they came in 14th place in the poll, with Lowe's at 18th.

Recently I had an outrageously bad customer service experience when I called Sirius satellite radio with a hardware question. I can't rank it as my worst experience ever since it wasn't very important. I wasn't dealing with a billing or reception issue. I had been thinking about buying a new receiver and the descriptions of equipment that I could find on the web were unclear or incomplete. So I called to ask for clarification. I got some pot-head who seemed to be in the middle of dinner break as he pretended to take my call. What made it bad was that (A) he knew nothing, and (B) he didn't have a script to read from. I guess we could add (C) he had a very short attention span and couldn't remember my question. I had to repeat it to him several times to get him back on track as he began to ramble and wander all over the satellite radio marketing landscape. When he finally seemed to have stopped talking after a long blindfolded wander in the dark through the thick forest of partial information I asked "Is that your final answer?" He grunted something that may have been an affirmation, so I hung up.

Customer Service Assist

Here's a website that tells you what to do to negotiate your way through the automated answering systems at many companies to get to a real human. Time F. Warner isn't on the list. The instructions range from the complex ("Virgin Mobile: At prompts say 'English', 'More Options', 'Ask a Question', 'Live Advisor', 'Something Else', then enter mobile # or say 'I don't have one.'") to the simple ("Vanguard Funds: Press 0"). The list includes those enlightened businesses that don't put an automated system in your way at all, including Chase Credit Cards, ING Direct, IBM, AIG, Anheuser-Busch, L.L. Bean, Sears Delivery, Sprint, Amtrak and Lufthansa, among others.

Too Much Money In Your Pocket?

I was traveling in Palm Desert today and took the opportunity to explore a couple of upscale marketplaces in the search for good quality boxed wine. I want to test it for Burning Man, where weight and waste are to be minimized. Those standard boxed wines you can find in any store are so VERY nasty! I think they take their worst wine and add artificial flavors.

During the search I came across a couple of silly things you can spend your money on.

First, Metromint, $1.69 for the 500 ml bottle at Jensen's.

I had to give this a try because it is simply water and "mint". No sweeteners, artificial or otherwise. And because I always have a pitcher of peppermint tea sitting in my fridge. For $1.69 I can buy a substantial amount of dried peppermint leaves at Clark's and make maybe a year's worth of peppermint tea containing water and mint, also unsweetened. This bottled stuff tastes more like a light, nonsticky version of peppermint schnapps than my peppermint tea, which contains everything that might be in a peppermint leaf. So, I guess if you're crazy about peppermint schnapps and don't want to get drunk and fat, this might be for you. They also make spearmint, "lemonmint," and "orangemint."

Second, Bald Guyz Head Wipes! Christ, they'd find a way to sell shoe inserts to a man with no feet. The description on their website:

An exclusive Swiss formula made with Green Tea extract, provides a cool feeling while our moisturizers and gentle cleansers wipe away dirt build up and the natural oil that secretes from the pores on the head. Head Wipes provide a clean and fresh feeling. Use Head Wipes anytime, anyplace.

They say it's $5 for 16 wipes. Probably more at Jensen's. Up to now I've used a paper towel when I needed to wipe my scalp and no on has yet accused me of having a nasty funkpit going on top of my head. Looking at the box, however, I am pleased to see that this product works for the bald heads of both caucasian and negroid men.

UPDATE:

This is me.

Decadence

THIS device allows you to enjoy the heavenly blessing of using your laptop while lying in bed with zero discomfort. If you don't have a laptop, it can do the same for reading big books while sitting in a chair. I haven't tried that yet. I'm still trying to clean up from the bed experience.

Sorry, but this is entirely SFW!

DVD Rentals

Here's a site that compares the various DVD rental-by-mail companies. They list eleven companies, including Netflix. Netflix scores a rating of 5.41 while Greencine gets 7.38. They don't explain the ratings, but I'm guessing a higher score is better.

Wishlists

Somehow we sailed right through December and I never thought to post my usual reminder on my wishlists. Possibly I have ascended to a completely non-material state of life. Possibly.

But Chinese New Year is coming up - soon - I'm sure. So on the off chance that someone in China might want to know, here are links to my two wishlists:

Amazon wishlist with many fine, low-priced items.

B & Wishlist [fixed link!] where there are some low-priced items as well, including batteries for my current cameras. BTW, although that Canon EOS 20D is "Discontinued" they always have a used one for sale, and you can also find it on eBay. Just sayin'.

Filthy Wal-Mart

Somebody went into the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Taylors, South Carolina, yesterday and was appalled by the filth there. Shot 120 photos and put 'em on Flickr.

Upon entering around 8:30pm, I was completely blown away by how disgusting this entire store was, I had to go out to my car and grab my camera. I could not believe my eyes. This place was absolutely filthy.

It appeared that nothing had been cleaned, stocked or put back where it belonged for weeks. The shelves were empty and had every imaginable type of spilled product crusted on and completely ignored for what must have been several days.

The 'Produce' section was unspeakable. Empty bins with crusty scraps of produce were everywhere. Rotten fruit and wilted vegetables had random merchandise strewn about amongst them throughout their containers. A carton of orange juice sat on the shelf of Windex.

The rest of the store was just as bad. A bottle of dishwashing detergent sat next to cans of soup. Shelves of sugar were a granulated spilled mess. What appeared to be dry cat food was spilled underneath the shelf of fabric softener, and a partially consumed BlowPop had cemented itself to the shelf amongst the Febreze bottles.

Best Buy Tries To Go Postal - Cops Do NOT Join In The Fray

Story of a guy who bought a CD at Best Buy that wouldn't play, so he returned to the store to ask for a refund not more than 3 minutes after buying it. The Best Buy store gives him the line that there are federal and state laws against refunding money!! Customer laughs. Store calls 911.

And now here comes the sort of vague Martha-Stewart-how-did-she-do-that miracle: while waiting for the cops to show, our customer gets Best Buy corporate customer support on the phone, explains the story, and gets customer support to agree with him that the store is out of control. He doesn't tell us objectively how long it took for the cops to show. Maybe it was a Saturday night in a drug-riddled town with an inadequate police force. So by the time the police actually drive up, the store manager has handed back the guy's money to him.

By the way, it was a Tony Bennett CD!

4 Gb Flash Drive For $17.98

At OfficeMax. Go for it.

Delightful New Product

That is the "Banana Bunker", which is designed to protect your banana — the tropical fruit kind — from being squooshed in your lunch bag. Only $5 each, or five for $20.

Gadget Suggestions

The Simple Dollar provides a list of 25 gadgets that can actually save you money. Some are fun, like a scooter, and others are not - compact fluorescents. Some are weird. For instance, they suggest replacing your desktop with a laptop, use somebody else's electricity to charge the battery, and then run it solely on battery power when at home. They figure you'll break even in just year. I don't know why he didn't mention the 100-feet extension cord that you can run over to your neighbor's exterior power outlet. You could break even in just a month with that!

What I Had For Lunch

No, I'm not really going to tell you what I had for lunch (it was carrot-ginger soup from Trader Joe's), but this may seem as bad as that kind of vapid weblog padding. I went to the new Costco in La Quinta today. I have found Costco to be an interesting place ever since the first time I walked into the Waltham store and was struck by the idea that I had walked into a temple of middle-class American consumerism. The highlighter on the receipt as you go out is like saying good morning to the priest as you leave Sunday church services.

Anyway, the La Quinta Costco floor plan is the standard huge one they use when they are not at all constrained by the shape of the property. It's the same as the stores in Concord and Gilroy and lots of other places. The main difference with the La Quinta store is that NOBODY is shopping there yet. If you have a Costco trip in your near future, I strongly suggest you visit the La Quinta store rather than the old one up on Dinah Shore. At 5 PM there were cashiers standing at the ready, calling out things like "I've got no line at register 4!" Yes! At a Costco in holiday season! Out at the gas pumps, half the pumps were shut off, but there was NO LINE for gas! The man they bring in at Christmas to push the digital cameras had no one to talk to. The sample ladies fruitlessly begged the few customers to eat from their little paper cups.

The La Quinta store does not seem to stock that super-bargain price tofu that you can get at the Dinah Shore location, nor my favorite unsweetened, flavored sparkling water, Talking Rain. But other than that, you already know everything they stock.

Another reason to shop at Costco.

Highlighters On Receipts

David Pelfrey has a real thing about retail employees asking to see his receipt before he is allowed to exit a store. Myself, I make it a practice to ignore any security alarms when I exit a store, and I've never been chased or questioned. But I'm willing to stand in line exiting Costco to get my highlight mark.

Gift Guide

A website that purports to generate an appropriate gift list for you or someone else based on your answers to a series of questions. Did it for myself and the results were almost entirely wrong. Annoyingly, when you get to the end, no link is provided to take you back to the beginning to do it again for someone else, and the browser's back button won't work. But you try it and tell me if you had better results.

Banned In Boston

We'll have none of this so-called "retailing" without you fill out the proper forms!

Hundreds of soggy videogame buffs were sent home by Boston police yesterday after waiting for hours in front of the Best Buy electronics store in Boston's Fenway neighborhood. The gamers had been hoping to be among the first to own Sony Corp.'s new PlayStation 3 videogame console, which the Best Buy store had promised to begin selling at midnight.

FURTHERMORE: Over at Copley Plaza, the crowd outside the Sony store rioted at 5 A.M., apparently because the store refused to tell the crowd how many PlayStations they had for sale. Mayor Menino wants to bill the Sony store for the expense of a dozen police cruisers sent to the scene. In this case, it would seem that Sony must have filled out the proper forms to tell the city fathers that some sort of retail action would be taking place, so how can it be their fault if the city failed to provide adequate police presence? The city can't have it both ways.

Apple Customer Service

If I measure customer service on a scale of 1 to 5 stars, I'm going to have to add a sixth star for Apple's repair service. Last week the optical drive on my iBook began to misbehave, refusing to read any data CD, even auto-ejecting the OS X installation disk. It would mount an audio CD and play it, but only very badly with heavy scratchy noises in the left channel. After considerable advice from my main Mac man "b" it became obvious that it was a hardware failure. I wonder if using it outdoors in a windy, dusty environment (like CMEN) may have allowed too much crud into the CD slot. Maybe I should put a strip of tape over it when I go camping in the future.

Anyway, the nearest Apple Store is Rancho Cucamonga and their website advises one to phone ahead before bringing in a repair. I did so, and the phone system obviously shunted me into some national customer service center where I got a native speaker of English who knew what he was doing, and wasn't just reading a script. He had me go through the expected steps to rule out software error (zap that PRAM, baby!). To fix the hardware, he said they would send me a shipping box, that I should back up everything, and then send the laptop back to Apple, and that turnaround time is usually 5 to 7 days for something like this. Also, through some sort of miracle, this was not going to cost me a dime.

Next day, exactly as he said, a box showed up at my door. Everything inside was sized exactly to hold my iBook. They included easy instructions, and even included packing tape for me to use. It took me a day to do all the backing up (and a bit of cleaning) before I was ready to send it. On Thursday afternoon a week ago I took it down to the Mailbox store in DHS (which is no longer gay operated) which is the DHL pick up spot here. I was afraid this might be the weak link in the chain. I didn't want my computer sitting overnight in some building of undetermined security in DHS. But when I went to the Apple site to check the status of my repair the next morning, it showed they had already received my Mac in Memphis, Tennessee. For the next few days the Apple site showed it was simply in the repair process. I think they should have posted an hourly photo of it, so I could see how it was doing.

Then yesterday, Wednesday, they sent an e-mail saying it was all fixed and they were shipping it back via FedEx. I wonder why shipping on the front end is DHL while FedEx handles the return to me. They said to allow two days to receive it, but when I checked the tracking number on the FedEx site they said it would come today after noon. At 11:15 (45 minutes early) the FedEx man drove up, I pulled the Mac out of the box and pushed the ON button, and voila, all was normal again. Just like the man on the phone had said, seven days turnaround time. Actually just a few hours less than seven days for me. And my only expense was a little bit of gas to take it to the Mailbox store...that, and some heartache and worry.

While it was away I had to resort to dial-up via the old Win98 machine, so I'm way behind on my web cruising. I've got work to do.

Apple Store in Providence

Three new Apple stores will open this weekend, including one in Providence, Rhode Island. Some people are all excited about some design elements being copied from the NYC 5th Avenue store, but hey, what matters is it's a store. Right there. In Providence. Why, an interested party could probably walk in and play with MS Office on a Mac, for example.

The Providence store will be in Providence Place.

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