The Purge

Thought this was an interesting sign someone had in their office. 

PURGE the things that no longer bring PURPOSE!

Yikes! I wonder who or what got purged from this person’s life recently. 

Yet, perhaps it is a good lesson against hoarding and just accumulating junk (things and certain people) along the way of life. 

When things have a deeply negative impact on your life (or they’re just dead weight), perhaps it is time to consider letting go.

I’m not talking about relationships of commitment (e.g. family), which have a stronger and timeless bond in my mind, but of those that earn their right into your life by virtue of being ongoing positive, productive forces. 

There is no blessing in gluttony or hoarding–stay trim and fit, travel light and with what is truly meaningful and necessary. 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Selling CRAP

I just thought this was an interesting acronym that Amazon uses for selling unprofitable knick knacks.

They call it:

CRAP

It stands for:

Can’t Realize A Profit. 

Sometimes, you see people buying stuff, lots of stuff, and it’s not important–often, it’s all a lot of junk. 

But they like to shop–bordering on shopsholics’ compulsion. 

Maybe they don’t even have a lot of money for this stuff.

However, just the act of buying it–of having some control in their lives and some freedom of the purse–makes them feel good and buy and hoard more and more things. 

Likely it ends up in Goodwill, recyclables, the attic, or the trash. 

Is it crap?

Well you can’t make realize a profit on it. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Messed Up By Norton Clean

So I got this message on my computer that it’s time to run Norton Clean.

Oy, what a mistake. 

This tool is not ready for prime time. 

It’s supposed to optimize memory and clean up duplicate and residual files.

But in my experience, it swept up more good files than junk files. 

And I ended up having to pull my files back from the trash and manually restore them to their file structure. 

What a pain in the you know what!

Artificial intelligence–not way the I see this utility/tool. 

If you don’t pay attention, you can lose a lot of important information. 

Yes, it gives you a chance to review the files, but then what do you really need this cleaning tool to begin with. 

Maybe you have a different experience, I can only speak for myself. 

But a little human intelligence goes a long way to sift through the wheat from the chaff–that’s what your files really need anyway. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Sears Couldn’t Sell An Appliance Let Alone A Rolex

So I was amazed at the depths to which Sears will go to try to save their horrible brand.

The Wall Street Journal (21 July 2013) described how Sears online has started a marketplace where they are now hosting the selling of high-end goods at their low-end department store site.

Sears which normally sells kitchen appliances, tools, and crappy clothing is now trying to market $33,000 Rolex watches and $4,400 Chanel handbags.

Good luck to that after their failed 2005 merger of Sears and Kmart–as if combining two lousy companies make one good one.

Since 2005, the company revenue has steadily declined about 25% from $53 billion to $39.9 billion and they lost $4 billion in 2011-2012. Yeah, that today’s Sears!

My own horrible experience with Sears:

I went online to order a range, and Sears botched the order over and over again and kept me holding endlessly throughout the miserable process and at each stage asking for my feedback and apparently doing nothing with it.

Problem #1: It started out pretty simply–I asked for some guidance comparing a couple of models, chose one, and they entered my order. However, when I looked over the order, they had entered the incorrect delivery date–when I wasn’t available. So I contacted Sears back to correct the mistake, but they couldn’t get their system to reflect the correct date–it would only show the original incorrect date–and this is a multi-billion dollar company? But I shut an eye when a supervisor finally assures me that it will arrive on the correct date.

Problem #2: The next day or so, I get a call from a Sears customer service representative who asks me whether I am the Andy located in XYZ (some G-d forsaken location)–ah, no! Well, they explain that’s where they have my order shipping to. They can’t explain how that happened, but promise Sears will fix it.

Problem #3: This time, I get a call from the Sear’s installation company. They are demanding that they will not come out to do the install unless I pay them a required inspection fee. But I explain that my order from Sear expressly states that shipping and installation are FREE. Sorry, they tell me free is not free, and if I have a problem, here’s a number to their national whatever line.

Three strikes, Sears is out–I contact them to review what had happened and to cancel this order. They refuse to cancel it–again, I think to myself this is a multi-billion dollar company? Over and over again this goes on, until finally they agree to cancel the order and refund my money.

All this nonsense literally wasted hours of my time.

Sears is no longer that brilliant mail order catalog of the early 20th century; now they are a dumpster diving junk company trying to sell brand stuff, but they are laggards to the brilliant Amazon and eBay retailers–and soon Sears will be out of business headed to the big retail trash bin of history.

The Rolex watches and Chanel bags are just another Sears circus sideshow. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)