25. February, 2004 - How hard can it be?
- I stopped by Organized Living yesterday, as part of my ongoing quest for a trash-can for my kitchen. You wouldn’t think it would be such a chore, but I wanted a steel trash can, finished in white enamel. Apparently nobody sells such a thing anymore. Well, they had a few in the store, but the only person who seemed to be working there was the cashier (there were a few people wearing aprons, but they were standing in back talking to each other and ignoring everyone who came through the front door), and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) answer my fairly simple question:
Does this model come in white? I can only find stainless steel.
I don’t think I’ll be shopping with them again. It looked like they had a crapload of useful stuff, but based on what I saw in the store, they’re just not that interested in selling it to me. I’m probably just being cranky about the whole thing, but I get awfully frustrated when I’m in a store trying to buy something and none of the people working there will actually sell it to me.
- I had also stopped by a Williams-Sonoma store (I was out in Edina, so the two were within a few minutes drive), and the help there was actually helpful, and apologetic about not having any actual trash-cans in the store, since they are a catalog- and internet-only item for some reason. This morning I mail ordered a trash-can from their website. It looks better than the model I wanted at Organized Living (rectangular, instead of oval), and in white. I probably paid an extra $40 between the slightly higher price and the shipping, but I actually got what I wanted, and for some reason walking into a store and getting greeted with a
Can I help you?
followed by some actual help (the guy showed me how to find the trash can on their website and wrote down the part number on a card), made me feel like giving them money.
- Of course now that I’ve ranted about trash-cans for a couple paragraphs, the Google Ads over there in the lower right are already coming up with many different sources for me. I shoulda just ranted before even going to a physical store, I guess. I do like the fact that while I load the page as I'm building it in the morning, google indexes it, and the ads are reflecting my topic before I’m even done writing the page for the morning.
- Susan recommends Twin Cities Free Market now that I’m a homeowner. Looks interesting, but the only appliance I’m looking to get rid of is an electric dryer that I’m not even sure works. I don’t have a way to test it either, as I don’t have handy access to 220V in the garage (where it’s currently serving as a table holding a bag of birdseed). I bet the city will get that one of these recycling days. There might be some things I’d want to get, but when I started thinking about it, I figured that the first thing I’d need would be a truck to haul things in. I think maybe I’ll take my time on that.
- I’ve been thinking about using WordPress for the blog here. It’s the official successor to b2, which I always thought looked interesting.
- Then again, Donncha has released b2++ 0.8. Guess it’s not completely dead after all. I dunno. I probably won’t be making any changes real soon. There’s plenty of other stuff to keep me busy at the moment. [holy schmoly]
- U.S. Still Mining Terror Data, and have been all along. Total Information Awareness didn’t die, it just moved into the “black budget”.
- Viet Dinh, John Ashcroft’s pit-bull, says that The Patriot Act Is Your Friend. I feel so much better about it now.
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Wed, 25 Feb 2004 07:25:48.