Satisfaction Guaranteed

I was eating a bag of candy, and I happen to read the back.

To paraphrase: if you don’t like the candy, take the unused portion with the packaging plus a reason you are returning it, and mail it to the address below, and we’ll give you a new one or a different candy that we make.

This is a nice idea, I suppose, but I sat and thought about it (my wife was driving, so I had time to be pensive).

The weight of a full bag is 7.5 oz. It cost 99 cents. I figure at most, I will have eaten half of it before deciding that I don’t like it (most likely, I’ll dislike it on first bite, but we’ll use half for the rest of the exercise).

I did a postage calculation. If i sent it in a large envelope, I could get it mailed for $1.31, which is more than I paid for the candy in the first place.

So, for $2.30, I can have one and a half bags of candy, and I won’t like the half bag.

Last Weekend

This past weekend, I helped some folks I know from church to move from their old apartment to their new house.

I have been involved in a lot of moves. On a scale from 1 (meaning nothing was packed and absolutely nothing was ready to go) to 10 (meaning everything was ready to go and the move went like a well oiled machine), I’d have to honestly give the move I participated in a 6.5.

Last year, I participated in moving each of my in-laws. Everybody was either buying a new house or buying their first house last year. About six month before that, we moved to a new house.

My wife had prepared our house for moving perfectly. She had most of our stuff packed up before we ever even started looking for a new house. We purchased the new house while still owning the old one (we didn’t want to put a house sale contingency, as we could afford – barely – two mortgages), so we had about a month or so where we lived in the one and were fixing up the other. During that time, most evenings I would drop off some boxes I had loaded up that morning. When actual moving day came, we just had a few boxes and the big furniture items. My own move, as organized by my wife, is the yardstick by which I measure all other moves. Was it a perfect 10? Probably not, but it was close. I’d give it a 9.5.

So, what are some of the hallmarks that I think make for a well done self move?

1. Donuts before and Pizza after. Feed your crew. No, it doesn’t have to be donuts and pizza, but some sort of tasty treat to start out with, and end with a meal.
2. Serve coffee, water, and soda.
3. Do not serve the pizza until after the move is completed. IMPORTANT!
4. Have your truck in front of your house before the people helping you move get there. Do not gather everyone together, then go get the truck.
5. Have your boxes piled up in front of the door that is closest to where you will be loading onto the truck. This will allow for a chain of people to quickly load your boxes into the truck. You want to load the boxes first.
6. Speaking of boxes… have everything that you possibly can boxed up before the people to move them arrive. You cannot possibly maintain a fully functioning household if you are going to move and expect the move to go smoothly.
7. Reduce to a bare number of dishes, silverware, pots, pans, toiletries, towels, washcloths, blankets, pillows, and so on, and pack the rest up!
8. Switch to paper or styrofoam plates, bowls, and cups and plastic flatware for the last week at the old place.
9. Use old ratty towels and washcloths(that you are chucking anyway) in the shower for the last week, and throw them out on move day.
10. You don’t need all of your clothes in your closet until moving day. Pick out a minimal set that you can deal with for a week or two, and pack the rest up.
11. Moving is a perfect time for going through your junk drawer. Do not simply shovel all of the contents of the drawer into a box, then dump the box into a new drawer in the new place.
12. PACK UP YOUR KID’S TOYS!
13. Empty your dressers, armoires, and cabinets.
14. Pack up game systems, dvd players, computers and associated wires before the move begins.
15. Have the following tools handy: hammer, flathead screwdriver, phillips screwdriver, measuring tape, work gloves, hex wrench set, vice grips, straps/bungie cords/rope.twine, packing tape (preferably lots), duct tape is always useful..
16. Most helpers will help with a single trip from the old place to the new place. People who will help for two trips are rare. People who will help for more than two trips are nearly unheard of. You will find out who your friends are when you move.
17. In phase one, the primary goal is to get stuff from the old place into the truck. It does not have to be ideally placed perfectly in the truck. Nobody cares.
18. In phase two, the primary goal is to get stuff from the truck into the new place. It is not to put everything where it goes.
19. In the new place, there should be a place designated for a pile of boxes. It doesn’t matter that it says “kitchen” on the label. You can sort it all out later. Put it in a pile that is out of the way.
20. For large heavy multiple lifter items, the best you should hope for is it getting into the room that it will be going, but not into the position and facing it will be in. You can fix that later, too.
21. Paths into and out of the old and new place should be kept clear of debris, children, and pets.

That scratches the surface, anyway.

Chumby Yahoo! Widget

I’ve run into a few snags regarding my Chumby Yahoo! Widget.

I added preferences to it so that one could specify the UUID that specifies a virtual profile (thus allowing the user of the widget to view any virtual chumby).

I also felt it was a good idea to allow various sizes that matched those specifiable on the chumby site itself.

Apparently the flash object in the Yahoo! Widget Engine is a bit finicky. It throws exceptions periodically that I don’t have the ability to catch, which interferes with the smooth updating of my widget after the preferences are saved.

I also added a context menu item to refresh the widget just in case the preferences don’t work correctly, but this is rather hackish, and that means that, unless I find a way to modify the flash object without having exceptions thrown, I will not be submitting this widget to the YWE gallery, since it obviously isn’t ready for primetime.

Which is a shame, really.  It was almost a really cool widget.

I’ll try a few more things that I’ve thought of, and then I will post a message on the YWE forums (which is rather hit or miss regarding matters like these), but I’m not holding my breath.

As Usual, I Blame John Hattan.

Today, I was checking out the Chumby site, and decided to make a virtual Chumby.  After getting the embed tag from the generator, I realize that my virtual Chumby is nothing more than a swf file pretending to be a device.

And I remember that the Yahoo! Widget Engine can embed flash into it.

Two minutes later….

I have a Yahoo! Widget that loads up my virtual Chumby, which tells me that my life is 42% over.

Yes, the absurdity of a flash widget running inside of a virtual device created as a flash applet running as a widget on my desktop is not lost on me.

It runs quite well, actually.

The only issue I have found is customization.  Ideally, I’d like for anyone anywhere to be able to take my Yahoo! Widget, set a preference, and look at their own virtual chumby.  In fact, I think this could be a useful developer tool for chumby widget makers.

In my initial examination, it looks like the only information that identifies *MY* virtual chumby rather than somebody elses is the flashvars, which reads something like:

_chumby_profile_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chumby.com%2Fxml%2Fvirtualprofiles%2FA7616CB4-387A-11DB-B926-001372292121&baseURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chumby.com

I’m guessing that *MY* virtual chumby is identified by the GUID after the virtualprofiles part of the above.

so, i guess I could make a preference that allows the user of my widget to grab that information and plug it in to show their own widget, but I wish there were a more read-friendly way.

Missed the Boat, I Think

Apparently, I missed the boat with Click The Yellow Rhombus.  As is shown by the game You Have To Burn The Rope, the game of CTYR should have consisted entirely of a yellow rhombus that, when clicked, shows a really big “YOU WIN!” and then played a song.  It is, of course, too late now to change it, as it would then be hopelessly derivative.

Yard Work

Today was the first day of the yardwork season.  In particular, I took care of the burn pile in the garage, which consisted mainly of carboard, but there were two wooden pallets that were from last years remodel the basement project.  It turns out I had bought a number of items that came in large cardboard boxes, because it took most of the afternoon to burn these things.  I also burned the christmas wreath, which had done an exceptionally poor job of staying where I put it, and instead fell to the ground, which is where it stayed through most of the rest of the winter (it was buried at several points during some of our numerous snowpolcalyptic days)

I also got rid of the snow blower, which worked for about the first five times I tried to use it.  Most of these times, it shot fire out the side.  The thing was a relic.  It stopped midway through winter, forcing me to shovel with my “heart attack” big metal shovel.  The big metal shovel also broke a short while later.  No shovel could be purchased, as all stored were out.  So, I was down to my trusty blue plastic shovel to shovel the often foot high blown snow.

But I digress.  I put the snow blower (an ancient tecumseh) out on the curb, and a few hours later came Mr. Scrapper to take it away.  I contribute to the after-after-market scrapping community in this way.  I figure we all win this way: I don’t have to haul it anywhere but my curb, and he makes a little money from hauling it away and scrapping it.

So, the garage is a bit cleaner without the huge stack of cardboard, pallets, and snowblower (it was a monster, too).

And the usual soreness of the first time I’ve done “real work” for a while has started to set in.  It’ll be worse tomorrow.

Note:  during the writing of this post, I had a hard time typing the word “pallet”, mainly because I kept spelling the word “palette”, which I use way more commonly.

Another Note: yes, I live in a place where burning stuff like cardboard and scrap wood is accepted.

Busy Week

This was a busy week for me, meaning I didn’t get a lot of time to work on my “extra stuff”.

I can certainly say, however, that the Pipes! Widget is coming along nicely.  I’m not certain when it will be complete, but I will say that everybody will be in for a special treat.

Also, I need to mention a really great place called Assembla.com, which is a collaborative environment, but allows for “closed” projects and supports agile process.