shane @shane@dads.cool

I, an old, have failed to thread properly

45 minutes later this thing has crossed the bay and is in your driveway. The weird news is, while they got two treadmills, and consciously chose to confirm that they weren’t wasting their or your time and space and energy, the original vendor has still only charged you for one. Upshot: Everything *might* have worked out perfectly. Will you know? Never. Never ever. It could land at your house and you get billed any time. It’s almost worse than having to deny a credit charge and refuse delivery.

And she tells you that computer system that keeps sending you text messages? They don’t use that, don’t even know what it is. But your treadmill (singular) is due that night in Oakland and so you should receive a call the next day. Three days later, you speak to another really pleasant fellow who says “HEY WE HAVE TWO TREADMILLS AND THAT SOUNDS CRAZY, DID YOU JUST WANT ONE” and you calmly thank him for assuming the reasonable thing and calling.

So you sit. You wait. You get text messages from the ether telling you the freight contractor will be there tomorrow, which you know better than to believe because that’s not what freight companies do. No, freight companies do what they want. Of course, in this case, they do not show up, on three occasions. And yeah, you start to wonder. So you call them. An hour and forty minutes later, someone picks up, and damn if she isn’t really pleasant.

Nothing can be done. Now your best course of action, as third layer of Support will inform you, is to simply refuse delivery on the second treadmill. It will be returned to them, you’ll be refunded, and ultimately yes it’s a hassle, but no real harm done. Will I be refunded the shipping costs which have of course already been incurred when they attempt to deliver, you are inclined to ask. Of course. Yes. Don’t worry, sir.

The next thing that happens is you spend a ludicrous amount of time learning all of the above. The first person tells you nothing can be done, nothing at all. When you insist on escalating, because you’re clearly an old, the next person will be much nicer, and even give you “incident ticket” numbers to reference on your future calls, and ohhhhh haha yes there will be more. You are told that the wheels are in motion to stop this with the back office folks who can actually get something done.

The really interesting part is that if you fail to register your “remorse” about the awful thing that you clearly did to yourself within this 30 minute window, literally all ships set sail immediately. Your credit card is charged, the deployment of warehouse monkeys is long past, and even the contracted freight company knows to expect your gigantic, rather expensive item. Many computer systems are involved. All of them talk to each other, but — and this is important — *only once*.

I have had a bad experience with a treadmill, which is to say I attempted to purchase a treadmill online to fight off my “getting fat” problem, and that purchase failed with some version of your typical “jeesh, computers are seriously kinda hard please try again” messages. I tried again, and the second attempt succeeded. As you can guess, I received two emails about successful purchases 40 minutes later. The twist? The “remorse” cancellation window, as this vendor calls it, is 30 minutes.

my mom told me she heard there have been zero covid cases traced to air travel. if that's true, why don't we just put everyone on planes

“He died doing what he loved. The coffee maker episode from ‘Jessie’.” Look folks my family isn’t perfect or even the least bit sensitive but we know a solid fuckin joke when we see one

🎵 Colma, California I know, I know, it’s serioouuuus 🎵

made eye contact with a man at tj’s today

same yogurts our wives like

different bottles of liquor, but we both have our regulars

same new pockets of body fat

same work-at-home shorts

new stains on shorts from the frozen chicken burritos we both like to eat for lunch while we watch more 30 Rock and internally scold ourselves for letting another day pass without giving My Dinner With Andre another shot (this is how I discover he’s left handed)

we could be friends if not for the shared shame

This topic has pretty much always fascinated me, I guess what’s interesting is that the “layperson” for lack of a better term is becoming aware of stuff like this at an alarming rate and industry still doesn’t know how to cope with that.

On the same topic: home automation is a fascinating example of how ill-prepared the world is for programming to be part of daily life. You think you know how to use a motion sensor? You’re about to find out what the fact that a computer does exactly what you tell it to do really means.

As a key example, god bless home automation but holy shit can it get out of control fast

Permission to send notifications is officially way too broad. I need to know at first request what they’re for because managing them afterward is exhausting. Active approval only. Please. For everything.

I know this is largely an age thing, but probably also location: did anyone else go to an elementary school that had corporal punishment? Ours was what seems pretty typical, the “hack” with a paddle. Inch-thick board with a handle and several half-inch holes scattered about the body. Prominently hung beside the door of the principal’s office, so you could see it taken down, missing, or put back. Some kids got it with some frequency, the rest just feared it.

The major voting hazard this year is people wearing holes through the ballot from trying too hard to make sure the damn oval is filled in

The fly on Mike Pence’s head is the Bill Clinton sax performance on Arsenio in 1992, in that people are latching on to it as a signifier like anyone who would be that fucking stupid was not already that fucking stupid.

Some journalists go their whole lives without the opportunity to write a headline like this and call me sentimental but that's a damn shame