Patrick Stuart.com

Category: Rants

  • To Blog or Not To Blog

    Is blogging dying?  Dead?  For me the answer is pretty simple.  Most likely.  With Twitter and Facebook, most people are using those social networking sites far more then a blog.

    What is the answer?  Should blogging be expanded, encouraged?  Should it be eligible for some sort of government bailout 🙂

    At the end of the day, it comes down to time.  Facebook and Twitter are easy to use, and users will always gravitate to what is easiest.

    So I haven’t given up on blogging, just haven’t had a lot to say lately.  At least not anything I want to say publicly 🙂

  • Trouble at the Drive Through

    Simple question.  What is the McDonalds policy for telling someone at the drive through to pull ahead and wait?

    This morning I ordered breakfast (my turn to cook) and with only one car behind me, who order basically the same thing as me, I was told to pull forward and wait.

    A minute later the manager came out and brought the food, no one else was in the drive through.

    I asked him why I was asked to pull ahead and why the person behind me got their food before me.  He just stood there, no answer.

    I am guessing McDonalds has a policy to move cars through the drive through at a specific rate.  Moving a car ahead doesn’t count as a wait at the window.  So he pushed me through, gave parts of my order to the car behind me and met his quota (or at least caught up).

    Moral of the story, don’t ignore your customers and treat them equal. It’s McDonalds, and he probably isn’t making a lot, but still he shouldn’t cheat the numbers at the expense of the customer.

    Oh well, I’d love to find out what McDonalds policy is for moving a car to the waiting area.  Anyone ever say no?

  • Please Print This…

    Letter to the Industry: “Don’t Print” isn’t “Going Green”

    Charlie Corr, Chief Strategist at Mimeo.com published this open letter to the Industry highlighting the “issues” we see with the challenges the printing industry is facing with people not printing things, and somehow thinking that not printing is saving the environment.

    Mr. Corr makes some good points about paper in general and it’s environmental impact.  However he fails to address the key fact that technology has replaced the need to print and archive documents.  Especially unimportant documents, such as email or web pages.

    Certainly, printing out billing statements, contracts and other important documents aren’t in question (well, maybe billing statements) but the generation of workers who’s first reaction to email is to print it out needs to change.

    He also doesn’t address the cost and labor associated with the safe and secure storage of the billions of pieces of paper printed each year.  In industries link insurance and health care, there are many reasons other then the environment to reduce the amount of paper printed.

    Overall, the challenge the printing industry is facing is self induced.  The industry predicted such a dramatic growth of printed pages due to digital print technologies.  However, they failed to see the convenience factor of not having to print or carry around printed materials with the adoption of PDA’s, cell phones and ipods.  it wasn’t the environmental movement that caused the printing industry its problems, it was the failure of the printing industry to adapt to the changing market and the adaption of non-printing technologies, such as the internet and email, text-messages, instant messages and blogs.

    Let’s face it, I could have written this blog post out on a piece of paper, using a ballpoint pen, then had someone type it, then send it off to a printer to be typeset once again, then proofs made, approved, plates made, printed 10,000 copies (to get the cheapest price / piece) and then mailed it out or stood on a street corner somewhere and handed them out.  But I didn’t.  Why? because this post cost me nothing but my time.

    Paper isn’t going away, but the use of paper, especially in printing and distributing a message is changing dramatically.

    So, please for Mr. Corr and the entire print industry, please print this post.  Ironically, Mr. Corr could have printed and mailed out his article as well, yet he choose to use the “new” technologies to get his message out. 

    FYI, I have made it easy for you to print this, at the bottom of this post, you will find a “Printer Friendly” link to format this page for printing. Oh the irony…

  • Microsoft C#, LINQ, XML, WPF and the Lack of Good Examples

    Ok,

    My rant for the day is about trying to use Microsoft C# and LINQ and XML and WPF. I spend more time trying to figure out simple stuff, because nothing exists as solid examples of how to do what I need to do.
    I spend so much of my time trying to find decent examples of how to do stuff on the net, and find nearly nothing.
    Why?
    I know people are doing this stuff, is it because its a closed source system and sharing the code just isn’t “cool” by the users?
    I am sick of it, and I am going to try to lead by example and post my minor victories in trying to do things using this great platform.

    Why?
    Well, couple of reasons…
    1. Code should be free. Not as in not get paid for it, but how to do something should be shared, knowledge isn’t worth anything unless you share it.
    2. Selfish reasons, I can find different things I find much easier and watch my progression through the products
    3. Cause I haven’t really found a good reason to keep posting regularly on my blog, and this just might be a good excuse.

    So, there you have it, my rant for the day and my promise to share my code examples of what I am trying to do.

  • A&E Factory Service Do Not Do Business With Them.

    http://www.aefactoryservice.com/ae_consumer/index.html

    These guys are scammers.

    We had a Whirlpool washer timer fail. My wife places a service call and someone from A&E Factory Service comes out and identifies that the timer has failed.

    He then says the part isn’t in town and will have to order it. Even though they say on their website:

    Fully-stocked vans with the most frequently used parts — Our goal is to do the job right the first time.

    So, my wife pays for the call and the part on one check and he leaves and leaves a washer down for days.

    I hear about this service call, and tell my wife to call around and see if she can find the part local. She does on her first try. I tell her to call back and cancel the part order. She goes and picks up the part less then 19 miles from the house and has a working washer again, same day. This is where it gets interesting.

    She tells me they can’t cancel the part order. What? Seriously? In this day and age? You can’t cancel a part order?

    So I call and speak with a Joe who is a supervisor. He tells me that they can cancel the part, but it isn’t in the system yet. He also says they order parts directly from Whirlpool for warranty reasons. I am to call back the next day and they will cancel the part.

    So I call back the next day and get a completely different story. A&E Factory Service says they can’t cancel the part and that I have to call Whirlpool, remember they order directly from the manufacturer? I escalate as far as I can, and get denied at every level. At this point I am asking for a refund on the part, which they insist that I have to wait for the part to be delivered and then return it. What a waste to ship a part and then ship it back, when canceling the part order would have been easiest.

    So I call Whirlpool to see if there is any way to cancel the part, since A&E Factory Service says they order directly from Whirlpool. Guess what, Whirlpool has no record of the order. What? Could A&E Factory Service have lied to me once more? After this many lies, what’s one more? I filed a formal complaint against A&E Factory Service with Whirlpool, but I am guessing that won’t go far.

    Anyway, a couple days later the part arrives. Guess where from? A local address. Confirming that the service tech lied, the part shipped from a location less then 25 miles from my house. So, the tech lied, A&E Factory Service Customer Service lied about not being able to cancel an order, the supervisors lied about where the part was ordered and about giving me a refund.

    End of story for now. We will see if I can get my $90+ back from A&E Factory Service for the part they shipped, especially considering we found the part locally for $70. What a scam.

  • Kodak v570 Camera and Google Picasa 2

    Why can’t companies make standards based equipment for the consumer?

    I have a nice Kodak v570 dual lens digital camera and was sick of Easy Share and wanted to use Google’s Picasa 2. Well, Picasa doesn’t “see” the camera, heck windows doesn’t see the camera, only easy share does.

    My old sony works fine, so does my old canon. Why can’t the kodak one work?

    And on that note, why can’t these camera makers use standard usb or mini usb connectors? Kodak, Sony, Canon, almost everyone seems to have a different sync cable. I hope this gets fixed soon. What a great 3rd party fix, a usb cable with a ton of different ends to attach to any device.

    My rant for the day… Hopefully someone has some creative way to make Picasa 2 see the Kodak camera so I don’t have to import into easy share first.

    Frankly, nothing against easy share, just don’t need all the extras it offers and eye candy. Just need a simple image manager like iphoto on the mac.

  • African Printing Scam

    Wow, months after the African Puppy Scam I get another one over the weekend.

    Started off with a simple email requesting a quote in print price…

    Hello Sir/Madam,

    My name is Rev James Hopper and i want to make an order of SOME FLYERS .I will like you to get back to me as soon as you with the pick up price of the following models and sizes;

    1. measures 8.5′ x 11′
    2. 80# Gloss Text or
    3. 0.25 – White boarder
    4. One sided

    Please provide a quote on 98,500 copies

    l want you to write of the flyer (Love One Another).I want you to go ahead and quote me the total pick up prices plus tax without shipping and will also like you to get back to me with information on the major credit card you accept for payment and how soon can you get that ready for pick up as i have a shipping company that will come for the pick up as soon as they are ready. also get back to me with your contact phone number and full name so we can proceed.

    James Hopper.

    So, I responded with a few questions and here is the response…


    i will like to inform you that this will be black only and will like you to get back to me with the total cost and will also like to know if you accept credit card for payment and how soon can you get that ready for pick up.

    so I gave a quote for the job and this is the hook response I got.

    Thanks for the quote..
    But it is unfortunate to inform you that I have a family emergency,(my wife just had an accident)and I will be on the next available flight to Germany but I won't be back till further notice.Meanwhile this order is to be delivered to a church in Ghana,West-Africa.
    So I would like you to contact the Freight Company with the approximate weight of the order and your address and get me the freight charges for delivering the order to the address below:

    Rev. Matthew Banson
    ( World Miracle Church )
    352 Lemon St.
    Accra, Ghana,00233
    West-Africa.

    Freight Company Contact Details:
    COMPANY NAME:Melcome Shipping Company.
    EMAIL ADDRESS:Bulkshippers@hotmail.com

    i will like you to go ahead and contact them and get back to me as soon as you can so i can provide you with my credit card information for you to go ahead and run that for the Grand total of the order plus shipping so we can proceed.. also let me know as soon.

    May God Bless You
    JAMES HOPPER

    How great, using religious titles like Rev. makes scamming people all that much better.

    Now, a couple of things really got me interested, first the quick swerve on the emergency, can’t pick the job up, have to ship it to Ghana, West Africa.

    Then I did a lookup on where the email originated from, after all its a yahoo.com email address right? Email came from an internet cafe in West Africa… Interesting, considering the person is supposedly able to pick up the printing.

    I still don’t know what the angle was here? Credit card fraud? Free printing? A staged scam to get the printer to pay to clear customs on the promise the client would pay us back?

    Anyway, don’t know, but a simple reply saying we don’t ship internationally seemed to qwell the scammer.

    Net of it all is beware online, do your homework and don’t get scammed. Also, use google, and you will find links like this http://bizcardpro.com/PrintingScam.htm

    Hopefully no body gets dupped by this scam.

  • My Thoughts on Drupa 2008

    Well, I’ve had some time to step away from the week long trip to Germany and the Drupa Print show. The trip was fun, and informational.

    Day 1 – Recovery from flight, stayed local, near the hotel. Cab driver from Airport spoke great English and knew more about Abe Lincoln then I did. Gave us a great recommendation on where to go in the Alt Schtadt (old city).

    Day 2 – Train ride to Heidelberg. 3 hours on a train, no Heidelberg people bothering us, except the one woman who kicked us out of our car to accommodate some Ukranian customers. Hope they bought something, cause it pissed me off. Moved to end of the train. View was amazing traveling up the Rhein river. Got to Heidelberg, to the print manufacturer tour, band was playing, slightly raining, but no big deal. Got on a bus and did the tour. Not the best tour but the facility was amazing. German manufacturing at its finest.

    Headed up to Heidelberg Castle ruins and was blown away by the sights and view. Amazing. Hopped on the bus back to the train station and 3 hours back to Dusseldorf. 2.5 hours into it, finally someone from Heidelberg sales pokes in. Got a conversation he wasn’t expecting.

    Day 3 – First day at Drupa. Wow, the people, buildings (all 16 of them) and the walking. That stupid Drupa song before the doors open… Still can’t get it out of my head. Blown away by Heidelberg’s new VLF offset press. The ground actually shook watching it run at 15,000 sheets an hour. KBA was impressive, except for our appointment with our rep. He wasn’t going to arrive till the next day. Still got a good tour and conversation. Strange drinking beer on a show floor.

    Day 4 – Had a meeting with HP. Rep wasn’t answering his cell, gave us the quick tour, the HP inkjet press was impressive, but not running when I saw it. Indigo 7000 has potential, need to see more and do lots of testing to see if it can finally break out of its productivity challenges. Uptime looks great, but not sure if it can crank out the sheets over a month like an iGen3 or Nexpress can. Back to KBA to meet with our rep. He’s jet lagged and zoning, told him to go to the hotel and sleep, planned on meeting us for dinner, he never showed. Can’t say I can blame him, we were in good hands with Travis. Spent some time with Man Roland and talking JDF / JMF and telepresence. They have some cool stuff.

    Day 5 – Kodak showed us some cool stuff. Stream actually running offset quality at high speed, on coated paper. Very impressive. Saw working versions of Prinergy 5, Prinergy Direct, Colorflow and much more. Kodak has some of the best software from web to output. Absolutely amazing stuff, the future looks very bright for Kodak, wish I could say that about the printing industry.

    Day 6 – Last day, time to run around and hit everything I haven’t seen. Xerox booth, wow, not much new here. Couldn’t get an appointment to see XMpie, so had to go over to HP to get a demo. Strange. iGen3 220 concept was interesting but not actually running. Couldn’t get an appointment to hear about iGen4 but seems like a spiffed up iGen3 with all the trimmings. Saw where the igen3 fire was, all cleaned up, nothing to see really. Hit a whole bunch of ink jet guys, not that impressed with any of it yet as it compares to offset, Stream still seems the most impressive. Got a demo of Press-sense iWay. Wow, worst demo ever. Excuse was it was in beta, but just eye candy, nothing more and very, very slow. Hit 12 buildings and every vendor I wanted to, nothing really grabbed my attention, but maybe it was just show overload. Feet were ready to fall off.

    Day 7 – Trip back… Hotel was ok, no real air conditioning and a feather down comforter to sleep with. Very expensive hotel, and not the best for the price, but sure beat taking a train in from Koln each day. Internet was expensive, but needed. Phone worked but didn’t dare turn on data. Landed back in the USA, cleared customs and went home and crashed.

    Overall, ink jet Drupa, maybe, offset peak for sure. Amazed at the offset tech, and software. Can’t wait to see how quickly all this cool stuff comes to market. Fun was had, beer was drinken, food was consumed and pictures were taken. Till next time.

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    It’s the quickest I’ve ever used.

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