General – Page 53 – The Wacky World of Chris Knight

2006/02/282006/02/28

Getting off my OCD ass…

I’ve been known to have my OCD moments. It’s usually when I have something to do, and my OCD subconscious takes over to invoke Procrastination Mode. Why do I find myself completely organizing my MP3 archive when what I started out to do was just transfer it to my G5? Why can my desk be cluttered for months, but I suddenly have to clean it when a piece of uninteresting code needs to get written? Why have I not written anything to my blog in months? It’s the power of Procrastinative OCD…

I have been stuck in a blogging loop since December 31st of 2005…

WordPress 2.0 was released on that day. Needless to say, that time of the year can be hectic. (Even more hectic when the SAN that houses the db for a large client chose that night to die…) I still managed to try to upgrade from WordPress 1.52 to WordPress 2.0 while waiting for a call back from a HP tech… My upgrade blew chunks because it didn’t have my complete attention. So, I restored my backup and left it alone.

From that moment forth my urges to write have hit an upgrade roadblock. I figure I shouldn’t write anything else until I upgrade; as if I am waiting for the pressure to write to overcome the inertia of having to work through the upgrade. I can always find something more interesting to do than to come back to an upgrade project that doesn’t have an externally imposed hard deadline.

Then I bought a new server, and I should really move the site to the new server before doing the WordPress upgrade… And so on, and so on, and so on… Needless to say, I stayed in this loop for a while.

WordPress 2.0.1 has been out long enough for me to consider it stable, and I ran out of distracting things to do tonight, so I finally did the upgrade. Maybe I’ll get some more writing now that I’ve cleared the WordPress Upgrade off my excuse list? Then again, maybe not; I still have to move 50+ websites to the new server…

-Chris

2005/12/30

Pixels for dollars and your hits for free?

Cash pours in for student with $1 million Web idea

If you have an envious streak, you probably shouldn’t read this.

Because chances are, Alex Tew, a 21-year-old student from a small town in England, is cleverer than you. And he is proving it by earning a cool million dollars in four months on the Internet.

Selling porn? Dealing prescription drugs? Nope. All he sells are pixels, the tiny dots on the screen that appear when you call up his home page.

This is one of those ideas that will work just a couple of times before it becomes annoying. Even now, to look at this guy’s home page is to give yourself a headache. Thank the elder gods that this guy didn’t allow animated gifs!!!

Still… It is a little inspiring. I’ve had Tampa Bay Ads sitting on the back-burner for over a year, and this gave me the impetus to change the format of the site. Do I need $1 per pixel? Nah, I’ll settle for two bits a pixel. That should give me enough for a down payment on a 1 bedroom cottage in the San Francisco area…

-Chris

2005/12/242007/03/25

Home Depot Apologizes to Pencil ‘Thief’

Home Depot Apologizes to Pencil Thief: Home Depot Inc. apologized to a carpenter who was banned by the chain worldwide after he absent-mindedly pocketed a pencil he had used up to do some quick math.

From reading the article it appears that Home Depot is apologizing for overreacting to an actual case of theft. An accidental theft of a $.20 item that many of us remember as being given away for free by our local lumber yards until Home Depot ran them all out of business. Was a Home Depot employee out of line when they handed him a pre-printed form letter banning him from all Home Depot stores? The fact that the employee had at his ready disposal a form letter for this very purpose indicates to me that he was just following an already in place store procedure. I’d even bet that Home Depot had, at least at the time, a zero tolerance policy for theft and that they only reason they apologized was the bad press.

What I would like to see is Home Depot apologizing for treating all customers like thieves. I’m sure you know what I mean: the demeaning walk through the exit where the security guard asks to see your receipt so he/she can mark it with a pink or yellow marker. It it is illegal in most states to require a customer at a non-membership store to show a receipt, but it isn’t illegal to ask. Home Depot has been, in my experience, the most aggressive when it comes to asking to see my receipts. I have personally chosen to never shop at Home Depot again because of these two incidents:

As I was exiting a Home Depot and the guard asked to see my receipt. As is my usual, I said “Have a nice day.” and kept walking. The guard said something to me that was semi-polite, but then turned to the other guard on duty and called me an asshole. This is unacceptable behavior given my having politely refused to submit to their demeaning receipt check.
I was leaving the Davis Street Home Depot in San Leandro California. As I walked by the overall wearing employee, not a guard, at the door he asked to see my receipt. I said “No thank you, but have a nice day.” He started to follow me into the parking lot, and asked to see my receipt again. I repeated “Have a nice day.” At this point he started to yell at me that I had to show him my receipt. People started staring. I turned to him and explained that under California law I was not required to show him my receipt. He said “OK, but I can ask you to never return to this store.” I replied “Fair enough” and I walked away.

The way I figure it though, since Home Depot as a corporation allows this kind of behavior in their stores, the entire chain is guilty of treating their customers like thieves. Why should I limit my Home Depot restriction to one store? I have chosen to take that one employee’s request that I not return to that Home Depot and apply it in a more global context: I won’t shop at any Home Depot again.

There are other alternatives. They may not be as convenient now that Home Depot has run most mom and pop hardware stores out of existence. I’ll happily buy my dignity with a little inconvenience, and I hope Home Depot suffers from their ‘everyone is a thief’ mentality.

Home Depot apologized to one man after he did (accidentally) steal a pencil. The least they can do is apologize to every honest customer who submitted to their demeaning receipt check because they didn’t know they had the option to just keep walking.

I won’t shop in another Home Depot until they apologize to the customers who actually deserve it.