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Daynotes: Week of 21 - 27 Aug, MM
Daily notes and commentary -- Week 34
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* Updated: 27 Aug MM at 17:00 GMT+2.
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In the Land of LeufNet, where the Wikis serve.
Attacking some of the bookshelves today. These are the bookcases that we're
getting rid of -- small and not terribly efficient, that won't fit well in
the smaller apartment.
Some things are so simple and obvious that you have to wonder why most companies
consistently ignore them...
The best way of promoting customer loyalty on the Web is to
simply close the order and ship the product. It is so difficult
to buy anything on the Web that those sites that actually deliver something
people want to buy will have their loyalty for a long time. All other marketing
tricks pale in importance relative to fulfillment. -- Jakob Nielsen
(Alertbox Aug
20)
This premise is however true for non-website commerce as well. Close the
order and deliver!
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Most of the afternoon was put on hold, because I had an eye doctor appointment.
Not to worry: just a periodic checkup required by the drivers license authority.
It's because I have a bit more than the standard car license, not anything
wrong with my eyes except being nearsighted. Still, it meant some eye drops
that pretty much ruined my vision for the rest of the day -- no screens and
no reading for a number of hours. I'm told I look pretty weird with black
holes for eyes...
Now this evening, I'm back to normal, more or less. I did however put the
time to use by continuing packing books and other things. A few more bags,
a few more boxes. The effort felt timely and well-spent. Tomorrow we get
some more moving boxes. Many more shelves to go.
The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in
retrospect. -- Robert Louis Stevenson
Today was actually a nice day, most of it, and as it turned out a good day
for cleaning windows. On my trip last week, I had picked up the Friday issue
of The International Herald Tribune. This was mainly because it
had a longish update on the Kursk situation. Anyway, I started using the
sports section when polishing the window panes, and it proved the best paper
I've ever used for this purpose. A page would last for several windows and
produce gleaming glass. Much better than the domestic paper quality.
Although more packing was in order, I got "distracted" for a while by inserting
a few changes based on early review notes into the book. I mustn't let that
text get too distant, despite the move here.
Speaking of the move, a few remaining pieces are still unsettled, which is
a bother this far advanced in the timeline. We may have to just ignore these
issues for now. I spent some "quality time" registering the customer change
on the local electric company's website. Nice that one can fill in a webform
and arrange it online, but the website could have been friendlier.
Essentially, it was scripted several times over and worked only on the latest
IE. No real reason to script the pages or navigation that way as far as I
could tell -- but a blank page resulted for any other browser or if your
IE security setting was "too high". (One is not especially reassured by IE's
helpful "scripts are usually safe to run" alert either.)
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people
who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does
not interest them. -- T. S. Eliot
A few payments flowed in, I was happy to see, helping offset the constant
outflow of cash. Moving can be a terribly expensive proposition. Still, so
far things have been within reason.
Hmm, some of the delayed pieces just crashed when their probability
wave-equations collapsed out of their state of uncertainty, and we're on
the final countdown. Oh well, altered plans exist so that you can test your
contingency plans. The move may therefore be bumped ahead a few days to this
weekend, which might prove somewhat stressful, o-o-r-r it might be bumped
back into the following week, which will prove inconvenient to say
the least given that others are moving in here on Sept 1. Either way, it's
going to be interesting... We're forking ahead to see which concurrent plan
completes first.
Currently my main concern is to avoid packing away things which
I'll be needing during the days of flux to come. Things like the notebook
are obvious, but it's the little details that will cause grief down the road
if they're hard to find. That preventive measure proves interesting since
small things tend to drift around a lot when one is turning the place upside
down. The fallback is to ensure that everything has some kind of reasonable
context and labeled boxes.
Packing status so far looks acceptable. Have reached perhaps 50% of bookshelf
contents, luckily the more difficult half with papers and files that need
individual consideration and Triage. Across the room, the well-filled
fiction shelves await my attention, but they require only mechanical shifting
of books, not any evaluation and selection process. The kids are almost done
with their rooms; have done well in fact. The cats are just wandering around
and having a grand time with the boxes.
Vacation is what you take when you can't take what you've been
taking any longer.
Despite discouraging indications over the past while that all rentable transport
was booked up for weeks ahead, we managed to get ourselves a good free-miles
deal on a large truck for several days next week to transport our stuff.
(It's a 300 km drive.) With that issue out of the way, and a finalized target
date for the packing effort, our focus becomes somewhat narrower:
pack-pack-pack...
For a short while, it looked like maybe going already this weekend, but that
would have been tight in terms of getting everything ready. This is better.
For these journal postings, this means that Monday thru Wednesday next week
will probably not see any updates, because I'll be here, there, everywhere,
with little time or energy to find connectivity and post text.
Eventually, it either falls together, or it falls
apart.
Another day, another box... :)
Well, the office space is almost completely down in boxes now. Only my notebook
is still on the desk, plus a pile of current paperwork. I've sent off the
payments for the end-o'-month bills, so most of the remaining papers can
go into the follow-up stack, and thence into the "current office box". The
afternoon saw us go buy 30 more moving boxes in which to collect fragile
or sensitive stuff. However, we spent the evening with our neighbors instead
of just slaving away to exhaustion. Coffee and talk, and no stress. A good
decision.
Digging through our sedimentary layers in this haphazard way, we find the
durndest things... There comes a point when you realize that living, one
accumulates a certain amount of "history", and after a time, this accumulation
of this-that-an'th'other becomes substantial. Large parts of it are largely
forgotten, displaced by the ongoing concerns of day-to-day family life, until
times like this when stuff has to be at least cursively assessed as to continued
relevance and importance. Much of it is best just tossed away, but some items
are very hard to do that to. It can be very revealing to discover which...
There's nothing quite like something there's only one
of.
The office is getting
empty-ty-ty-ty... And so is
the rest of the place.
One more day of packing, then comes time to transport the stuff.
Omph! -- ORA books sure are heavy! Must not pack too many
in any given box, that's clear enough. Tomorrow starts the cleaning process,
apart from the windows, some of which I did earlier.
The downstairs entrance lock was jammed again. Felt just like I had stuck
in the wrong key: locked solid. But no, it was the correct key.
Hence I got locked out for a short while this evening, but fortunately I
wasn't alone at home. Sometimes it's just the lock, other times it's deliberate
sabotage by the local kids/youths. We had a window open in one of the bedrooms
today, and of course some of the kids must have thought it'd be great fun
to toss in loads of the (inedible) berries that grow on the bushes around
the house. Which they did with evident gusto. At least it wasn't the rotten
apples all over the yard, that often go flying into the garden lots next
door. No matter, it's soon good riddance to all of this now.
The other day, the news was full of the fact that one of the local newspapers
-- the "other one", run by the social democrats -- had gone belly-up. The
timing was particularly sensitive since the decision came just four days
before payday, so the journalists were seething about the fact that they
will have worked three weeks for free.
In the news the past few days as well is the official decision by the Swedish
Post Office to close all of their public branches by this spring.
After this, there will only be minimalistic stamp and package cubicles in
whatever shops and filling stations that contract to maintain such services.
The end of an era, I guess one could say. The 5000 employees made redundant
are none to happy either.
It's all kind of ironic, because the PO had in later years tried desperately
to compete with the banks by providing banking, investment, savings and insurance
services, along with more mundane retailing of cards, pens and pencils, souvenir
gifts, popular CD music compilations, etc. Now of course the question is
which side can divest themselves of customer interfaces the fastest. So far
it seems neck and neck...
Hardly a competent workman can be found who does not devote
a considerable amount of time to studying just how slowly he can work and
still convince his employer that he is going at a good pace. -- Frederick
W. Taylor
Ok, this about wraps things up from this location. I'm packing down the last,
and will be taking down the desk and the ISDN connectivity now. Roving modem
connectivity is not a problem, but time most assuredly will be during the
next few days.
The weather is warm and sunny, but we're having fierce gusts of wind that
make the balcony and walls shudder. Must be the extreme contrasts in temperature,
air, sea and different regions. Very tiring: keep doors and windows shut
and it gets unbearably hot and stuffy, but open and things fly about, doors
slam, and you can't think.
Hmm, maybe we should have bought another 10 or 20 boxes...?
He who plays with fire will sometimes throw new light on the
situation.
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