Price Scanner Accuracy

It amazes me that with the ubiquitous nature of price scanners that stores are able to keep their computers and shelf tags reconciled. I'll argue that the scanners themselves are 100% accurate, but it is human error that causes the shelf tags not to match what's in the computer either due to a special ending or a mistake ended for the price. Today we were shopping at Target and picked up some candy for our trip to the movies tomorrow. We purchased 5 separate candy items (2 of one of them) and as we're checking out, I caught a mistake on 2 of them...the shelf said 3 for $4 or $1.33 each; I bought two and got charged $1.49 each. The cashier corrected the mistake. Then after we checked out, I looked at my receipt and saw the other 3 items at $0.57 each when the shelf tag said $0.44. My wife let me go over to customer service to get my $0.52 back; it wasn't the money, it was the principle. I told the associate about the issue and maybe it will be corrected, but I doubt it.

So the question is, how many unsuspecting people overpay all the time? Like a good citizen, I dutifully prepared a complaint and faxed it into the San Diego County Agriculture/Weights & Measures department.

While checking the website of San Diego County Agriculture/Weights & Measures, I saw their list of complaints to be quite short which is amazing. Several years ago, a few drug stores and grocery stores were sued for repeated violations of this and now post accuracy guarantees which probably drives the complaints down. I have used these guarantees on a number of occasions. Now if stores had electronic tags everywhere instead of paper ones, this probably wouldn't be an issue. However, the shelves would have to be wired or have everything wireless and put batteries in every tag which would be a waste. Alternatively, if each item was only in one place, it would be significantly easier to keep paper tags in line with what's in the computer because when a price change happens, there would be only one tag to change.

Bee: 1, Scott: 0

Yesterday, my wife and I were walking to lunch (I was carry the car seat with our son in it) when I felt something on my neck. I swatted it off my neck only to discover that it was a bee and it stung me on my hand. As an EMT, I'm taught to scrape off the stinger with a card so that no more venom gets injected. While this is great in theory, it sucks in practice when you're in pain and panicked. I didn't even think and just pulled the stinger out and then picked out the last little piece from my hand. Luckily I'm not allergic (we were actually in an ideal spot if I was as we were 3 minutes from the hospital), but my hand still hurts. I would have been happier if I had managed to kill the bee, but it flew away. At least it can't have another victim.

Fast work by SDGE

I got a letter in the mail the other day saying that SDGE (our local power company) would be replacing a transformer at about 1 pm and to shut off sensitive equipment, etc. I heard the trucks outside around 12:30 pm and shutdown everything, but left my server running as it is on a UPS and has about a 60 minute runtime. The outage said it could last about an hour. Promptly at 1 pm, I heard the refrigerator shutoff. 12 minutes after I heard my UPS start beeping, I heard the refrigerator start up again. In fact, here is the log from my UPS:

Thu Aug 02 13:11:45 PDT 2007  Mains returned. No longer on UPS batteries.
Thu Aug 02 12:59:46 PDT 2007  Running on UPS batteries.

Excellent work! I'm quite impressed with the very short amount of "downtime" (it really isn't downtime as I have a cellular modem and a laptop, so I was still working when the power was off).

Too quick to blame Time Warner

I called Time Warner this morning and we worked on some basic troubleshooting steps I should have done before (restart the cable modem and restart the networking on my server). Low and behold, everything worked again. Why? I have no idea.