Archive for Misc
September 13, 2007 at 3:13 PM · Filed under Cool, Internet, KJH News, Misc
Time for another plug for my side gig. This time, we’ve just stood up a Gizmos for Geeks version of Amazon.com’s extensive online department store. You can find it at Store.GizmosForGeeks.com.
In a nutshell, this is what’s called an affiliate site. Amazon.com was really the company that pioneered the whole affiliate marketing thing. Nowadays, you’d be hard-pressed to find any online vendor that does not have an affiliate program. Oh yeah, so what’s an affiliate? Anyone out there on the Net that gets accepted to a vendor’s affiliate program can stick up links that go to the vendor’s site. If anyone clicks on those links and then buys something, then the affiliate (like me) gets a % of that sale.
Amazon.com has an extensive set of Web Services that allow affiliate to build sites that pull back data from them in real time, so what you see on our site is what you would see if you were on Amazon performing the same browsing or searching.
You lose nothing, Amazon doesn’t lose much, as they’re quite willing to have their affiliates push even more traffic to them, and we earn income to keep our biz running. It’s a win-win-win situation. How great is that?
So next time you’re thinking Amazon, think GfG instead. Now go bookmark and get shopping. 
September 7, 2007 at 2:18 PM · Filed under Misc
I knew it! I just knew it. Researchers at several universities have done studies that show that waking up early to go to work or whatever may put you at risk for vascular disease. Not only that, a study done even earlier this year at my alma mater (UPenn) found pretty much the same thing. Who am I to argue with what my college profs say?!
July 25, 2007 at 1:49 AM · Filed under Internet, Misc
Either you already know how this works, or you’re going to say I’m crazy or that this was interesting and/or perhaps worth a chuckle. Reading the news recently, I came across the story on the giant squid that was found washed up on an Australian beach. For some reason, this led me to thinking about Octopi (and how they’re pretty intelligent), so I wandered over to Wikipedia to do some reading. I scanned the article, but somehow this external link at the bottom caught my eye “footage of an octopus eating a shark”. I had to jump over and see that! Here it is (pretty amazing video, although you should be forewarned that it’s very much one of those violent, raw wildlife scenes).
Anyway, you can see how easily you can get taken in and taken for a ‘ride’ by the Web, and that either I have ADD, or just a ridiculous wandering attention. I can’t even remember where I went after this. Probably watched a bunch of videos and then got sidetracked into wanting to learn something about some subject that popped up. Ah, if only I could stay up longer and not have to work…
July 17, 2007 at 8:33 PM · Filed under Cool, Misc
I had to blog about a very recent experience I had with Sunbeam, a popular consumer product company. I had purchased one of their products last year from a popular retailer, and the product worked great until 1 day when I plugged it in and it simply did not turn on. So I wandered over to the Sunbeam website and poked around looking for some clues or answers. (I hate sending in complaints/questions without looking for the answer first.) Anyway, not much on my particular product, so I sent in a customer service request simply asking if they had any ideas. I was totally ready to just accept that my particular device ran its course and I needed to just go out and buy another one; after all, it was only about $40, and I felt that I had $40 of use out of it.
As I mentioned, I was only looking to see if they had an ideas. I didn’t request a refund, an exchange or was even angry in my note. I would have been content if they had just responded and said “Sorry, we don’t know without taking a closer look at your broken product.” I was pleasantly surprised to get this response:
“I apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced. I have placed an order for a <product x> that you will receive within 2-3 weeks.”
Wow! Now that is first-class customer service. No questions, just a can-do, the customer-is-always-right attitude.
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July 12, 2007 at 1:52 AM · Filed under Misc
Traveling in the 21st century - what a pain in the ass, thanks to terrorists and government authorities who are either overzealous, clueless or knowingly trying to confuse the masses with the illusion of security. Airport security is a farce, and to add insult to injury, damn inconvenient to travelers as well. Yes I realize that there are many ‘experts’ on the subject who will say that I (and others) can’t possibly understand the situation or the measures in place without the appropriate background, but we have and can apply common sense to what we see, and what we see is a joke. It’s a joke that costs money in lost time and productivity as well as incredible frustration.
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July 11, 2007 at 12:09 PM · Filed under Misc
Why oh why do airlines lie to us and continue to do so? Case in point: I recently went to London. When we landed in Heathrow, we taxied to our gate and pulled up short. The captain comes on over the PA and says that there’s another airplane at our gate and it will be about 10 to 15 minutes. Ok. 20 minutes later, he comes on again and says the same damn thing. He didn’t bother to come on again, before announcing that we were actually moving to the gate. It was an hour since we landed.
Of course, there’s the timeless delayed flight. The classic example of this is when the gate attendant tells you it’ll only be 15 minutes, but a quick look out the window shows you that there is no plane parked at the gate yet and we all know it takes some time to get the folks off the plane and cleaned and restocked.
Aarrgghh. So if there are any airplane personnel reading, please chime in - we’d love to understand why you and/or your employers insist on this tactic/approach to dealing with your customers (you know … the ones that pay a lot of money to be treated like cattle for hours on end!).
February 12, 2007 at 11:02 PM · Filed under Misc
Ugh. Time goes by so quickly. All these good intentions of posting something every few days, gone up in smoke. And I have a slew of topics in the wings too. Can someone stop the ride so I can get off? For a little while at any rate?
Ok, never mind. Here’s a quick tidbit to tide you over until the next post. Shampoo manufacturer, Robert Craig, has an interesting (and plausible) take on how shampoo should be made. It should be based on the water hardness of the region it is being sold in. Yep, that’s right. So he has developed a line of shampoos based on the hardness of the water that it will be used with. If you look at his website, you will see that he has a map of the States color-coded by general levels of water hardness in different regions.
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