Archive for the 'Consumer goods' Category

More on QR

Published
by
drew
on 9 July 2008
in Consumer goods, Internet and Links
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0 Comments

So after writing yesterday about QR codes, I went to the letter box (I almost typed litter box then but had backspaced before I realised how apt it sounded) and got the junk mail. Among the specials on minced beef, cordless drills and label makers, there was a Tel$tra flyer, spruiking their (or should I say “their”) very own Telstra Mobile Code innovation. I watched the short video on their qrious site today. And the implication is quite clear that this is a Tel$tra  product; at least, it’s not expressly mentioned that it’s a generic, free tool that anyone can use. It’s also implied that you would need a 3G phone to use the system, which is not quite correct. If you want to link to a web page, then yes, you’d need a web-capable handset, but the SMS feature should work on non-3G phones. Of course, T$ra are linking it to their own data services, trying to get us all hooked on phone internet (which I kind of already am, but not because they claim to have invented it, I’m not even one of their customers. Suffice to say, I don’t use any web content on my phone that was supplied by my carrier: it’s kind of lame and/or too expensive)

But in addition to the link I posted yesterday to get the QR reader, I’ve been looking at QR generators today and this is the best one I’ve found so far. Reason being, it can create a vCard that can be saved straight to your phone’s contacts. At least, it can save it straight to my phone’s contact list. You may have other results. I use a SE K800i, btw.

The one bug I’ve noticed is that (on my phone) it gets the email address and phone number mixed up. My work around is to mix them up also, but again, not having tested it on other phones, this may turn out not to be the best one. I can’t see how it would be the phone’s fault though, it would have to be the software, surely. […thinking music…] yeah, the software for sure.

If anyone gives it a go on a different phone, let me know how you get on.

Sales technique

Published
by
drew
on 25 June 2008
in Consumer goods and Ma vie
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0 Comments

I was home from work last Friday and actually answered the door to a guy selling something: insulation. For anything else I would have thanked him and bid him fond farewell but I happen to need insulation. It’s one of those next big jobs we have to do around the house. So I let him do his prepared speech and picked a not-too-inconvenient time for a sales rep to come around and give us a quote. We set this up for Monday night.

They gave me a confirmation call on the Monday morning to make sure I’d be home at the time I said I’d be home. I was thinking, he’ll come in, go through the features of his product, get up in the roof for a quick look, maybe measure up the place, give us a quote, we’ll say thanks but not right at the moment and he’ll be on his way; the whole thing should take 45 minutes, tops, then we can eat, get the kids to bed and begin to wind down ourselves.

Now, the guy who came was lovely. Really nice guy. Had I met him at a party, I would have gotten on very well with him and would gladly chat over a few beers. And that’s rare for me but he was all right. He was into his music and we had similar taste; he was a bit of a rev-head but I wouldn’t hold that against him; his wife is expecting their first in five or six weeks. You’ll notice though, that very litte of that stuff is related in anyway to recycled-newspaper-treated-with-borax-and-boric-acid insulation. Everytime he went off on a tangent, we’d have to bring him back on topic.

“Yeah, I had to go to Port Pirie last week, then drive home. Then they rang me and said they wanted me to go back the next day”

“…so… it’s recycled, you say?”

Two and a half hours later, we finally got to say our goodbyes. Through all this we’ve managed to feed the kids, get them changed and teeth-brushed, put them to bed,  get our own dinner on and keep it warm in anticipation. We’d already given him a cup of tea, no way was he staying for the meat & veg. We said our goodbyes, he got his satchel, his ladder and I helped him with his blowtorch. He was packing his car, telling us all about how messy it was and gave us a recipe book some relative of his had done for her year 12 assignment that his boss had loved and had published.

I thought we were getting a quote on insulation; I could have written this guy’s biography by the time he left. C said that’s the strategy: stay as long as you can and be nice, so they feel guilty if they say no. For me, every minute he spent here past the 45 I had allocated in my head me less likely to say yes.

So this morning, when there was a knock on the door, I stayed hidden in the bedroom. I don’t need the latest copy of The Watchtower.

…and then, this morning

Published
by
drew
on 30 April 2008
in Consumer goods and Ma vie
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0 Comments

As I was running for the train, the fucker dropped out of my bag.

So if anyone would like either

a) a recently refurbished and button-flattened SE K800i, or

b) to return said recently refurbished button-flattened SE K800i to me

there’s one laying in the grass at the bottom of Hawthorndene Drive, just near where it turns into Watahuna Ave.

I’ll be ringing it every few seconds to help you find it.

…later

Phew. Luckily, C has today off, so she nipped down the road and found it. I’m rather relieved, though still pissed I don’t have it with me.

Button problems

Published
by
drew
on 29 April 2008
in Consumer goods
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1 Comment

I had to take my mobile phone back to the shop recently to have it fixed. It’s a K800i and the joystick was doing all sorts of weird shit, mostly registering a ‘centre’ button press whenever I was trying to push ‘down’.

It went in just before Easter. They said it would be two weeks. It took three, and I got it back on April 10.

On April 11, I had to take it back. It felt a little weird when I first picked it up and I noticed later that the profile of the buttons was way out; they simply hadn’t put it back together properly so the buttons didn’t sit flat but were protruding at odd angles.

In the meantime I’ve been using an older phone: a once-water damaged w800i that I managed to resurrect and get working.

This morning, I missed a call from the phone company and I have a bad feeling that things aren’t over yet. The message was to let me know that my Blackberry was ready to pick up.

Still, I could go an upgrade…

Worst $12.50 I ever spent

Published
by
drew
on 2 February 2008
in Consumer goods and Ma vie
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0 Comments

My beeper/unlocker car thingy stopped working. So the other day I found myself walking past a locksmith, then walking back and walking in and asking if they could put another battery in. It cost me $12.50, which I thought was a little expensive but hey, putting a key in a lock and turning it… sorry, that’s just too hard.

When I picked it up, they said the battery in it wasn’t quite flat. ‘That’s weird,’ I thought.

So I got home and later when C got home with the car, I wandered down the garden path, keys in pocket to do a little RF magic.

Little fucker still doesn’t work.

Christmas: what you make it

Published
by
drew
on 27 December 2007
in Consumer goods, Events, Featured and Idea v. Reality
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2 Comments

You can’t have Christmas—not a real Christmas—without those self-righteous types who say it’s all just one big money-grabbing fiesta by the retail sector. There was a letter in the paper the other day; something along the lines of “Oh, they didn’t move xmas to coincide with the pagan winter festival, they moved it to coincide with the Christmas sales”.

They’re essentially saying that if you go out and spend money at Christmas, you’re somehow diminishing it by turning it into something commercial.

And I think that’s a load of merry shit.

I hate the conceit of this attitude; this stuck-up pretension that says “I celebrate this holiday in a more pure sense than you”, or “you may think you have Christmas but I really have Christmas”.

Does anyone think it’s really possible to have a holiday based on the tradition of gift-giving without getting the retail sector involved? I actually enjoy buying gifts for my family. It’s fun in itself coming up with ideas, conferring and colluding with other siblings to make sure we’re not doubling up (something that failed miserably this year but that’s another story), then the happyfest that takes place when we all open them (after the obligatory family portrait in front of the tree).

Do the anti-retail-xmas fanatics expect me to develop an interest in basket weaving come December 1? I tend to think my brother will actually be happier with Season 6 of Cheers than he would have been with a small wicker basket to keep all his spare buttons, paper clips, used batteries and 5-cent pieces in.

And I hate that attitude that somehow says you can’t do the retail thing while also having a very meaningful holiday, whether that meaning is based around family, religion, or whatever. Giving gifts bought from a store does not diminish whatever you want to make of a holiday (unless it’s buy-nothing day) and it’s nice to be given something you wouldn’t normally have bought for yourself. We all work hard these days. It’s nice to have someone say ‘here, have this, spoil yourself a bit, you deserve it’ and it’s nice to give a gift to someone that implies the same.

I know it’s a bit late so I won’t wish everyone a merry christmas but I would like to wish a happy new year everyone (to all four of my regular readers) and I hope you all got lots of cool stuff and spent the day in a way that was meaningful to you.

No freebies?

Published
by
drew
on 29 November 2007
in Adelaide, Consumer goods and Food
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1 Comment

How disappointing.

I went to Haigh’s this arvo to buy some more Caramel Chocs (C loves them, so instead of flowers, I get her luxury chocoates). There was not a soul in the store and three people behind the counter. I brought my purchase to the counter and the girl expertly wrapped them in the pretty silver bag and handed them to me, then we exchanged cash and change and I was good to go.

I hung on momentarily… waiting.

But she did not conclude the transaction by offering me a sample of their Maltichocs or Peanut Brittle. I was offered no Haigh’s liquorice bullet or freckle. Not even a chocolate frog’s leg.

And when you buy Haigh’s, isn’t that the little extra touch you look forward to? It’s part of their branding.

Deck the halls

Published
by
drew
on 23 November 2007
in Consumer goods, Events and Featured
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0 Comments

Here in .au, Halloween isn’t really that big, we don’t have thanksgiving and Guy Fawke’s night smouldered and eventually went out in the early 80s when you ceased to be allowed to buy fireworks over the counter. (Not sure if other .aulians celebrated that one much or if it was just my family on account of the English/English background.)

There’s no real pre-Xmas holiday that has to be finished off before the tinsel can come out and miniature pine plantations start to thin out. This means that Xmas decorations can go up sometime around mid-August. Okay, that’s maybe a tad early but I noticed the greenery was hanging in Adelaide Railway Station well before the end of October.

I noticed a local news website had a poll recently, which asked the question: are Xmas decorations put up too early?

I would argue that no, they aren’t. If they went up at, say, the start of December, it would deprive people of the opportunity to complain that they’re going up too early and people in general, I’ve noticed, like to complain about such trivialities.

I’m all for them going up early. I’ve adopted this general position based on one specific instance of intheshopsearlyness. While I do like mince pies, the sooner they get them off the shelves and replace them with hot cross buns, the better. I think bakers should be making an effort to have them in stores, first thing boxing day. Especially this year, as Easter is almost as early as it can possibly be (Easter Sunday on March 23rd!) so by all means put up the tannenbaum as early as possible, as long as it means you do the same with the best damn savoury/sweet breakfast buns ever.

As an aside, there’s a Christian bookstore near where I work. They sell a lot of bibles, a lot of Christian music and I probably won’t be buying the Richard Dawkins Box Set there. The thing I noticed though is that they had a Christmas tree in the window, adorned with tinsel and silver baubles. I know most churches prefer to have the more Christian symbol of the nativity play, obv and I would have thought this would be the case in a Christian bookshop. Isnt’ a Christmas tree a little, I don’t know, pagan?

Stout is good for you

Published
by
drew
on 15 November 2007
in Adelaide, Consumer goods and Food
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0 Comments

There’s a health food eatery not too far from where I work. It’s not one of those places that has buckets of oats and barley out the front, it’s a place to go for lunch where they have heaps of home-made stuff, but really nicely cooked. I suppose not all of it’s “good for you”… the massive chocolate crackles spring to mind, but they’re going for the whole your-mum-could-have-made-this-so-it-must-be-good angle.

Anyway, not that I’m plugging it (as I’ve rarely eaten there; it’s a little pricey) but it’s called My Goodness. So whenever I walk past there, I always fancy a pint of stout.

Just say No to Bindeez

Published
by
drew
on 6 November 2007
in Adelaide, Bairn, Consumer goods and Featured
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0 Comments

Little Miss L just had a birthday. She turned five. We bought her (and when I say ‘we’, I mean my wife and her mum went into Big W four months ago and put about $1ooo worth of stuff on lay-by) some of those ridiculous things called Bindeez.

For a start, they wouldn’t have been my choice. Having experienced the fallout of buying her presents with as many as 20 or 30 small parts, you learn pretty quickly that small parts don’t stay together for very long. Pretty soon you’re finding small dolls’ shoes, mini plastic bananas, dolls’ house plates, cups and bottles, toy money, flash cards, tic-tac-toe pieces, My Little Pony combs and assorted bits of train track all over the house. Last week she got into the trivial pursuit box, so we’re still finding bits of yellow pie under the couch.

Why then, oh why would we want to go out and buy her a toy that openly boasts on the box that it contains 800 small, fiddly, and yes… round pieces, 600 of which would invariably end up under the fridge. I somehow knew from the outset that it was a bad idea. This was a week ago.

Today, this (from which I will hereunder quote):

The New South Wales and ACT governments have banned a popular toy called Bindeez - because the colourful beads release a compound closely resembling the illegal drug GHB when they are swallowed.
…

NSW Fair Trading Minister Linda Burney has announced an immediate product recall pending further testing.

“We will advise parents as more information comes along but if you have Bindeez in your home, please remove them from anywhere where children can actually get to them, play with them and use them,” she said.

Miss L had a party on the weekend. She scored two smaller boxes of the things.

With any luck we’ll get a refund. Though I’m thinking I could make more by selling them to the crackheads down West Terrace this Saturday night.

Actually, do you think I could get my mother-in-law arrested for being a pusher?