packaging

i hate many things. of course shopping is one. another thing i hate so much is the packaging that they use for electronic products.

u got to a store. buy a new gadget, pay for it, and the first thing you want to do either in the car or as soon as you reach home is to rip off the packaging and reach in and feel it.

there is no time to search for  a scissors and of course there is no point in being patient and opening that thing carefully. the main motive is to get to the gadget. so of course, you end up choosing the first thing that comes to your hand and most times it is a knife.

and when you do that this is what happens. here are some samples.

• victim story #1
• victim story #2

when trying to understand why they do such packaging, i came across this interesting and informative article.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70874

the main reason seems to be theft prevention. there are a whole bunch of other reasons. there is also an award called the “oyster award” for the worst packaging.

whatever may be the reason, i am going to still hate that stupid packages. if i can’t get to a gadget within 10 seconds of purchasing a package and leaving the store, that packaging sucks.

ivananywhere

http://news.therecord.com/Business/article/236315

it makes me wonder if i would have quit my “work from home” job had i had a gadget like this ?

for those who did not know, i got frustrated working from home and quit an earlier job i had. the frustrating part was that i liked the job a lot. it has been more than a year since i quit.

i got the “oohs” and “aahs” and “you idiot” from some friends who said that it would be stupid to give up such an opportunity.

would you want to work from home permanently ? what are your thoughts on that. i would like to know what others think of working from home.

environment?

even though i am terribly allergic to shopping, i had to quite a bit of shopping this weekend because of the baby.

i went to the local ikea, finished buying some stuff and the clerk billed me for the stuff and started doing something else.  he did not do the bagging. i asked him for some bags and he said “we stopped giving out plastic bags. they now cost 10 cents a bag. do you need a few?”. i said “no thanks” and put all my stuff into a waste bucket i had purchased and walked out. i felt really happy that ikea started charging for bags.

i then went to the local fry’s market (kroger is called fry’s in this part of the country) and they had a big recycling bin for old plastic bags. and they also had some thicker reusable grocery bags for sale. 10 for 10 bucks or something like that. i felt even happier. even though in reality all these companies are just trying to reduce their operating costs (and probably don’t really care about the environment), it is a good thing thing that they are forcing people to not use plastic bags.  i then went to toys’r'us and they shoved some small towels i bought into a giant bag, even after telling them i do not need a bag. i am sure they will change soon.

after getting stuck in the disastrous mumbai floods  which was pretty much caused by plastic bags, my younger brother now always takes some bags with him when he goes to the grocery store. maybe i should do the same too. we anyways reuse the store plastic bags as trash bags @ home, but i am sure it would be a good thing to just avoid them altogether.

i also found out today that most cities do not let folks add the plastic bags to the recycle garbage bins. that seems to be pretty stupid. why would they not want to recycle the plastic bags ?

allergic to shopping – literally

i hate shopping. i hate malls, big box stores, warehouses and grocery stores. every one of them. i used to feel weird after staying in a store for 10 minutes. never could understand the phenomenon.

a couple of months back i had a persistent throat pain and went to my doctor  and he tried all sorts of things. he ran allergy profiles, blood tests etc.., etc… and said it was either heartburn or some allergy.  it eventually went away and i forgot all about it and never knew the real reason.

i think i know the  real reason. i am allergic to shopping. more specifically, i am allergic to the butt freezing cold temperature they maintain in the malls and stores. after the baby, i had to spend a lot of time shopping in various stored this weekend and guess what. i got my throat irritation back.  my doctor seems to agree with the same.

yep. i now have a valid reason to cut short shopping those long boring shopping trips and speed things up. one simple beautiful reason – “i am allergic to shopping”.

7145 miles non-stop

this little bird called the shorebird made a flight of 7145 miles non-stop from alaska to new-zealand. and without any food and water. nature is just truly amazing.

of course man can fly longer than this – almost 19,014 miles non-stop. but, there is no point in making a comparison.

climbing a mountain just because it is there

look at what this guy did. he installed 145 different operating systems on a single pc. he just probably has a lot of time on his mind.

here is the link –> 145 operating sytems on a single pc