Eight Feet Deep

My check­ing out at Wal-Mart this after­noon must have set a new per­sonal worst. I fig­ure that it took me an aver­age of 1.3 min­utes to self-scan each of the 13 items I purchased.

The usual Wal-Mart self-scan prob­lems reared their ugly head. I couldn’t get items to scan, no way, no how. I tried enter­ing the bar code and it failed to reg­is­ter the item each time. The machine told me to take the item out of the bag and put it on the scan­ner. I called the self-scan assis­tance per­son about four times.

“I hate you, you @#&%*&#&%@!!”

I see more prob­lems with Wal-Mart self-scan machines than at any other retailer that uses them. I don’t know what causes the prob­lems. It seems like — for one thing — the lit­tle glass cover over the scan­ner usu­ally looks smudged and smeared, as if it needs clean­ing. Whether that causes items not to reg­is­ter, I don’t know because I am not tech­ni­cally savvy about those machines or almost any other type of machinery.

But I do know I expe­ri­ence prob­lems prac­ti­cally every time I use Wal-Mart’s self-scan. I also hear oth­ers com­plain. Go to “Google” and type in “Wal-Mart” “self-scan check­out” and see what kind of com­plaints you will see.

Why not go to a reg­u­lar cashier and check out? Why it is for the exact rea­son I use self-scan machines in the first place. Usu­ally there are long lines. If the cashier needs assis­tance with an item there is no telling how long it will take him or her to get it. If there is a com­puter prob­lem of any kind with the reg­is­ter, it is like a Level I national emer­gency. And there are indi­vid­ual com­plaints that make me veer toward the U-Scan rather than the cashier.

Wal-Mart should, by now, real­ize their self-scan machines are for the most part, junk. The com­pany should do some­thing about it. Because one of these days, sure as shootin’, some­one who already has had the Mother of all bad days is going to try to check out at the Wal-Mart self-scan and encounter major prob­lems that make him (prob­a­bly but could be her) berserk and he is going to take a ham­mer or shovel or some tool he was about to pur­chase and start wal­lop­ing the machine until it turns into some­thing unrec­og­niz­able. The shop­per will, of course, be arrested and taken to jail.

Such inci­dents ulti­mately wind up on the news and one has to think Wal-Mart is going to end up the bad guy with such an inci­dent. That can’t be good, unless Wal-Mart thinks any pub­lic­ity is good pub­lic­ity. Per­son­ally, I don’t think a com­pany that has become as huge as it is did so by employ­ing such a phi­los­o­phy. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

 Paul from Tokyo, my IT con­sul­tant extra­or­di­naire, tried to teach me about tags over the week­end but my feet started swelling and it freaked me out so I didn’t learn a whole lot. Ah Paul, it might be awhile before I can snatch the peb­ble from your hand. Nonethe­less, those red (for now at least) words which are of unequal size on the right side­bar are the tags I am talk­ing about. Give them a poke and see where they take you. Neat huh?

 A prod­uct of a cou­ple of middle-aged col­lege friends on a week­end, one in Japan one in Beau­mont, Texas. Much zany fun.

 Just a short thought. If I had more time today I would look up the ori­gin of the say­ing: “He/she woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

 I haven’t ever fig­ured this one out though hav­ing gone through rela­tion­ships which require 1) a bed and 2) a side of a bed, or if it is a really com­fort­able rela­tion­ship 3) a bed, a side of a bed and a side of fries, I know what it means to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It means a lot of unpleasantness.

 This morn­ing I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed exactly. I sleep by myself so the only prob­lem with wak­ing up on the wrong side of the bed is hav­ing to decide whether I want to roll back over to get up and go to the bath­room or get up and walk around the bed to go to the bath­room. Because that’s usu­ally what I do when I wake up. I know, I know, too much information.

 This morn­ing I woke up irri­tated and it wouldn’t mat­ter what side of the bed from which I exited the bed.

 About 5 a.m. I woke up and couldn’t sleep. Prob­a­bly some time about 6:45 a.m. I drifted off into light slum­ber when all of a sud­den, that phone ring from my T-Mobile — you know that sweet, sickening, bell-like tune, that makes you want to do a Qua­si­modo – sang out: “De De De De De, De De De De De, Come answer me. F**k you let me be.”

 So I get up. I look at the screen and see no famil­iar name but I see famil­iar num­bers, which are ones ema­nat­ing from my part-time job’s home office in Dal­las. I answer the phone and it goes: “Screec­c­c­ch­hhh, Squaaaaaannkkk, Deetleleteletlee.” I think: “Why is my office send­ing my cell phone a fax at 6:57 a.m.?” Actu­ally, the bet­ter ques­tion is why is my office send­ing my cell phone a fax at all? I don’t have a fax at home.

 I tried to call my boss’ num­ber. His voice mail said it was Fri­day and he was in the office. The last part might be true, but I know good and well today is Mon­day. I try call­ing his boss. She didn’t say what day it was on her voice mail but she was on voice mail, so… I hung up.

 I got back in bed and “De de de de de De de de de de.” And I thrust my right thumb harshly down upon the lit­tle red tele­phone with the sign of the beast, or what­ever that is, above it.

 Back to bed where I had decided to alarm myself at 8:30 instead of 8. If I am a lit­tle late to my office, it’s the main office’s fault for fax­ing my cell phone. I fall asleep about 8:10 and my dying-cow alarm knocks me out of bed, ready­ing me to either birth or bury what­ever calf that might be on hand. Thank good­ness, like always at least not for some 25 years, no cows.

 Not long after arriv­ing at work our monthly, regional tele­con­fer­ence began. At the end where Q & A are bandied about, I asked my boss who or why tried to fax my cell phone. He said we would talk about it after the con­fer­ence. It turned out to be no big deal. The main office was try­ing to fax my col­league who works out of her home. The unan­tic­i­pated rings really didn’t aggra­vate me. I  guess maybe if the mis­take had been made by some­one I despised for some rea­son that ticked me off I would have been really pissed.

 But there was no one to really get angry with so I am instead just left a lit­tle tired after the whole ordeal. I can’t help but won­der what the reac­tion would have been with a bed-partner? Sheesh. Recall­ing some of the femme fire­balls who at one time staked their claim to a side of my bed, chances are the sit­u­a­tion would not have been as mel­low as I now feel look­ing back on the episode.

 Maybe that whole “wak­ing up on the wrong side of the bed” relates to sleep­ing with some­one, as in a rela­tion­ship. I got to look that whole thing up as it will nag at me like an old girl­friend. But I think I should first take a nap.

Oh and PS, New­ton whipped/spanked/beat (sound­ing a lit­tle too S & M here?) Corrigan-Camden Fri­day night by a score of 40–21

Look at them. A page of jum­bled let­ters, num­bers and spe­cial char­ac­ters I have writ­ten down on sev­eral dif­fer­ent pages . It’s all for the sake of com­puter security.

I have about 15 dif­fer­ent pass­words for work-related sites, or should I say, my part-time work-related sites. Then I  prob­a­bly have another 25 or 30 more pass­words for per­sonal use or for my other line of work.

Now, I must admit that con­trary to all the warn­ings, I do some­times use the same pass­words to access dif­fer­ent pages. I am warned over and over not to do that. But have mercy on a poor soul as me who does good to remem­ber the gro­cery list.

I would almost be will­ing to bet that my num­ber of pass­words are even lower than many other com­puter users. But there are still too many pass­words that fly out in front of me, leav­ing me dazed and confused.

Per­haps some­one out there in the com­put­er­sphere is work­ing  on a way to min­i­mize pass­words. I mean, some sites can remem­ber your pass­word and login name. And then some sites say they can but don’t really do it, like my Ver­i­zon Wire­less account. Maybe we should get Sally Struthers to do a TV com­mer­cial ask­ing for bucks for devel­op­ing a password-free world like she did seek­ing help for all those impov­er­ished for­eign children.

Please we need to limit pass­words before peo­ple go stark rav­ing mad. Time is run­ning out!