Three-Letter Acronyms & Four-Letter Words

Apparently I misjudged the popularity of Xbox 360 at Christmas time that or I misjudged the supply and demand capabilities of Toys R Us.

The three Toys"R"Us stores around here are all sold out. Now, I know that the 360 is a popular system, but I didn't think it was going to be completely sold out popular, I figured there would be one left on the shelf for me.

However, there are plenty of 360s over at Best Buy and there are plenty over at Target. So why am I so hung up on Toys"R"Us?

Gift Cards.

I have $500 in Toys"R"Us gift cards. One of the perks from NetworkIP is that we get to buy gift cards to various stores for 25% off.

So that is why I am stalking the 360 at Toys"R"Us.

And today while reading my regular round of comics, and "Real Life Comics" was making fun of Home Depot, in that they are selling Xbox 360s. I thought they were joking. No, no they aren't. I went to www.homedepot.com and there it was, it appears they are only selling it online though. Which is fine, because the price they are charging is well above the price in every other store out there. I think they might have screwed up on that, as the accessories are all basically the same price as everywhere else.

Jeremy and I have decided to get DS Lites as well. He and I are going to be hanging out in NY next weekend and that should give us a chance to play head-to-head. I forgot to mention that Toys"R"Us is all out of those.

And before I get off my soap box about Toys"R"Us, back in 2002 they restructured shutting down about 64 stores. I think I know why they had to restructure and it has to deal with the fact that their infrastructure is fscked up.

I mean here are a few things.

#1. Supply Chain
I walk into a store and ask them about the 360. They tell me they are out, they then tell me that they don't know when they will get more. This is explained to me to be due to the fact that the manufacturer just sends them product whenever. Ok, fine I guess I can give them this. But, as popular and old a brand as Toys"R"Us is you think they would push for manufacturers to at least give them some sort of "We will have some more this week, just not sure how many."

#2. Inventory Management
When told that they are all out at store #2, I decided that I didn't want to drive all the way south to store #3 to hear the same thing. So I asked the guy "Hey can you tell me if the other store has any in stock?" His reply, "No, but here is their phone number."

There were two things wrong with his answer. The first is a general customer service problem, good customer service (given there was no line behind me in the checkout lane) would be that he should have called over there for me. The second is, it is 2006 and there are nationwide store chains all over that can lookup the inventory in another state, yet these guys can't tell me what is in stock across town.

#3. Online and Brick-and-Mortar unification
This is related to inventory management. But the ability to look up a product on the website and see if it is in stock at a store near you. Shit, there is even then the ability to buy the product online and pick it up at the store nearest you. This is an amazingly novel concept. They do not have this functionality.

#4. Alerts for when they get restocked
I also asked one of the clerks if I could get on a list or something to be notified when a product comes back into stock, the answer was "No". Now, I wasn't expecting them to notify me by phone that would be retarded. But come on, let me drop my email into a database. Again, this comes from having a fairly automated computerized inventory control system.

In general, I fully understand why Toys"R"Us had to restructure. They have not embraced technology to build the efficiency that they need to compete against WAL-MART or BestBuy or CompUsa. Go and take a look at CompUsa and you will see what I would consider the standard of how a nationwide brick-and-mortar store needs to operate today. Their website is integrated with their inventory system. They have a nationwide inventory system that allows them to lookup product at other stores.

I mean, Toys"R"Us was sold the fsck out. So their brand still carries a ton of weight with consumers. I mean the BestBuy that is within eye-sight of the Toys"R"Us had a bunch of 360s. And I know not everyone has $500 gift cards in their pocket that is forcing them to buy from Toy"R"Us.

End of Rant.

Laterz

I was about 30 seconds too slow (or maybe it was WindowsXP) from being able to make a post from the free wireless at a rest stop in between Austin and San Antonio.

I was able to log on and get the blog post written. But as my father was speeding away from the rest stop. I was able to keep the connection at an impressive amount of distance from the central building there (which is where I presume the router is). I would say that we were at about 175 ft from the building before I lost connection.

Now we are sitting in the lobby of the hotel, Pops and Jim are inside changing contacts and stuff before dinner. And I am leeching the wifi from the parking lot, so that we can look up movie times.

Rachel is pestering me to stop typing blog and get back to the task at hand.

Laterz

It rained and rained and rained.

Then it finally stopped.

We had a wonderful turkey dinner that Gina prepared.

And have been sampling chocolates from Rachel's store that she works at in Portland.

I believe we are going to the bowling alley. I will let you know more about that later.

I have to go now, I'm being chastised for being on the computer.

Laterz

Just a quick post to say that we are still alive and well.

I worked from home yesterday on a project that I have to complete by the end of today. Technically I am on vacation though, but responsibilities must be fulfilled.

I have to run to Lowes today and pick up a few more things for the house and possibly a gift or two.

I haven't done all my holiday shopping, par for the course. I am not sure what to get everyone is part of the problem. For next year I will need to keep my eye open all year.

The house is coming together, we need to paint some walls and put up some switch plates, put up some baseboards. But the bulk of the work has been completed.

I was in Dallas the last two days for some meetings.

As it has become the norm, when I travel I tend to lose sight of things like blog posting and calling friends and family. I think it is something to do with being out of my normal routine.

I need to make a more conscious effort to keep in touch with people. I tend to gravitate towards being a loner, I think in high school my time spent with my anti-social friends ingrained in me the idea that I don't NEED to talk to people. I classify us as anti-social, in that we hung out with one another, rarely interacted with other groups and often excluded one another from time to time in activities.

I think that this coming year I will make some "New Year Resolutions" (a tradition for some, but not for me).

One of the things that I think is going to be a resolution is that my pc gaming habits are probably going to die off. My current rig is a fine PC, it plays BF2142 just fine along with World of Warcraft. However, I recently purchased Star Trek: Legacy and my PC can barely run the game in a playable fashion.

I think I might finally take the plunge into console gaming. I am going to use x-mas money to buy myself a XBOX-360. Jeremy has had his for about 4 months and really likes it. I miss playing against Jeremy and a few other friends online in co-op or deathmatch modes.

I have usually avoided console gaming in favor of pc gaming. Not sure of the exact reasons, but mostly because the types of games that I liked were usually only good on the PC. That isn't the case these days, for the most part the same types of games are better on consoles (not always though).

Regardless, I need to get out of the house more too. So I think getting away from my +8 hours long strategy games on the PC might be a good change. I have sworn off MMORPG, at least until I retire. They just eat up way too much time. If a really cool one comes out I might try it out, just so that I can comment on how it plays or what not. But I won't be planning to make it my life.

I think I will do a longer post about the other resolutions and changes I want to make.

Back to the grind.

Laterz.

I have been enjoying blogging. While most of my blogging is more just a journal of my life. However, I occasionally find the opportunity to comment on topics a bit more community based or based upon others people's blogs.

In doing so I am not only trying to give some data back to the 'Net, I also am contributing to the blogosphere. I have made comments on a few blogs here and there but tend to just read. I have found myself using my own blog to comment on other people's posts more and more.

This morning I saw on my feed reader that Anil was talking about "More Sociopathic Writing". I took the opportunity and commented on his first post, trying to be more social in my online interactions.

I feel quite honored that Anil mentioned me in his follow-up post. It sounds really cheesy, but I feel like a real part of the blogosphere now.

Well, I need to go and get ready. We are going to Ikea today!

Laterz

In reading over Digg and Slashdot you occasionally find things that you find funny. And other times you find things that are funny, yet disturbing because they seem too outlandish to be real.

I have come across two such stories recently.

The first story I read on Slashdot. It is about a business owner who is planning to sue a blogger, because the blog's Google page rank is higher than his businesses. Ummmm, yeah. So the business owner sent the blogger an email telling him to remove he search term so that the businesses Google rank would become the best.

Free country right? Not to mention that the page ranking has like nothing to do with the blogger, except for the content he publishes. So the logical conclusion to a person who can tell the difference between , would be "Maybe I need to make my site better with content that pertains to my search terms better."

I can't understand why the concept of "I need to make my stuff better." doesn't come to mind before "I need to make that guy take himself out of the system."

The next story I came across on a blog that I read fairly often, Anil Dash. I found it intriguing enough to comment on his site.

The story is about a bed-and-breakfast owner who is being hounded by a couple who got a certificate for two free nights. However, the issue is the certificate has expired. So the couple begins to try to haggle with the B&B owner. "How about we just stay one night?" and "What if we come in the off season?"

The couple knowingly acknowledges the certificates are expired. In the end the B&B owner finds a review for his establishment on the Net, from the couple. They trash him. But in trashing him, they CLEARLY STATE THAT THE CERTIFICATES ARE EXPIRED.

I mean the audacity of some people.

Back to the grind.

Laterz.