Man, it's barely half way through friday (yeah I know its midway through the afternoon, but I started late, so I'll be finishing late) and I can't even stand to look at the computer screen anymore. I'm just getting snowed under by requests from managers from all directions, as well as still slipping behind schedule with the prototyping I'm supposed to be doing.
I could really go a beer right now. It doesn't make me work better, but it does help numb frustration.
And I also just remembered that I haven't been updating my timesheet all week. Crap.
Friday, 7 February 2014
American entertainment
In past posts, I'd written about Ninja Warrior (Sasuke), the physical challenge game show from Japan. I'd watched most of their episodes through SBS2 to the point where SBS had caught up to the latest show. Kind of the downside of SBS overdosing us on it. Doing 1, sometimes 2, episodes a day means that they exhausted 29 seasons within a few months. I still think about the show and scan the tv guide for it though, as many of the competitors just have normal day jobs, and I find it an encouragement that I could achieve a similar fitness if I get off my butt.
Anyway, it relisted on tv again in the past month and it wasn't flagged as repeats, so I tuned in thinking that we had a new season. It turns out that SBS has learned and is now just broadcasting a couple of episodes a week, but starting from the beginning again.
The reason why it isn't flagged as a repeat, is because they are showing the American edited version of the Japanese telecast.
This is bad because the American networks know how to milk everything and leave it tasteless:
Anyway, it relisted on tv again in the past month and it wasn't flagged as repeats, so I tuned in thinking that we had a new season. It turns out that SBS has learned and is now just broadcasting a couple of episodes a week, but starting from the beginning again.
The reason why it isn't flagged as a repeat, is because they are showing the American edited version of the Japanese telecast.
This is bad because the American networks know how to milk everything and leave it tasteless:
- Regular pauses in the original show to have an American presenter rattle on about hype
- Constantly going through top 20 lists. Top 20 competitors, characteristics, fails, costumes, etc
- Doing a short segment covering just the female competitors that seems more gratuitous, rather than giving any respect to what they achieved
- Even more editing, so that we actually get slightly less of the original content
OfficeWorks and printing
I got myself into a bit of grief the past couple of weeks. We're changing the curriculum for our sunday school program at church, and I've been madly trying to finalise the details before this sunday, as that when the sunday school program begins in earnest.
We only just finalised the material a few weeks ago, and I'd been in touch over the phone with a girl in our church who works at a printing company. Almost 2 weeks ago, I sent off the material to her to get printing going, but then after a week of silence, I found out I was using the wrong email address as she'd changed to a new one a short while ago. So now I was down to 6 working days left before classes start, and I have nothing printed.
So in frantic searching to at least get printing done for the first few months, I had called OfficeWorks and asked how long it would take if I submitted online. Now I had been given a warning, as there was a review on YellowPages about the printing service of the OfficeWorks near my workplace. But the staff at OfficeWorks said that if I submitted that night (Friday 31st Jan), they'd have it done by the saturday afternoon as things were quiet.
Sweet!!
So my order was submitted and I had fully expected to collect monday afternoon. Well monday morning I called, as the online document tracking service even tells you if your order is in the process of being printed. And my online tracking said that it hadn't even started.
Well they now said that the friday night guy wasn't from the printing department and didn't know what he was talking about. As apparently there were 36 jobs in front of mine. Hence the earliest may be thursday.
Dude... not happy Jan.
They've got a whole department dedicated to printing documents and photos, and when I passed on Monday to get my other order, the three guys in that section were milling around reading, rather than sweating over a commercial printer spraying out paper. If I had access to a binding machine, it would have been cheaper for me to do this on my home printer.
Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I get a message saying its done. They're only just 500m down the street, so I was going to go late in the afternoon. Just before I leave, I get a call from one of the printing guys 90minutes after the original message:
"No it isn't ready. I clicked the wrong button. I meant to click the 'in progress' status. And by the way, our machine broke and can't do the binding option you wanted. We can only do a more expensive binding option."
Ouch. In one way, I'm glad I hadn't rushed down straight away to collect the order, as its hot out and a 500m walk each way in the sun, would not be nice.
Wednesday afternoon, another call:
"It's done, and we won't charge you for the more expensive binding."
Which I'm glad they clarified that, as I didn't really feel like being railroaded into paying even more. Ok, so thursday morning on my way to work, I wander in to collect. It's done by this weekend which is what I really needed, so all is good.
The staff are young and not really customer service orientated. I get a cheerful greeting from the only guy at the checkout as I guess its quiet and he hasn't had to deal with any difficult customers yet. But the printing section was a whole different story. The staff behind the counter seemed kinda busy and they weren't even making eye contact with the people in the queue, let alone even the customer they were serving at the time.
There were no smiles or pleasantries from the people in this section. Seems like printing is perhaps not the department to be in. I got my stuff and didn't have to go back through the checkout, so I'm done and satisfied now.
Ultimately, I think sometimes the smaller print shops can be better and similar in competitive pricing. I've now found out about one near one of my train changeover stops. They're doing the rest of my less time-critical printing. So far its going well.
We only just finalised the material a few weeks ago, and I'd been in touch over the phone with a girl in our church who works at a printing company. Almost 2 weeks ago, I sent off the material to her to get printing going, but then after a week of silence, I found out I was using the wrong email address as she'd changed to a new one a short while ago. So now I was down to 6 working days left before classes start, and I have nothing printed.
So in frantic searching to at least get printing done for the first few months, I had called OfficeWorks and asked how long it would take if I submitted online. Now I had been given a warning, as there was a review on YellowPages about the printing service of the OfficeWorks near my workplace. But the staff at OfficeWorks said that if I submitted that night (Friday 31st Jan), they'd have it done by the saturday afternoon as things were quiet.
Sweet!!
So my order was submitted and I had fully expected to collect monday afternoon. Well monday morning I called, as the online document tracking service even tells you if your order is in the process of being printed. And my online tracking said that it hadn't even started.
Well they now said that the friday night guy wasn't from the printing department and didn't know what he was talking about. As apparently there were 36 jobs in front of mine. Hence the earliest may be thursday.
Dude... not happy Jan.
They've got a whole department dedicated to printing documents and photos, and when I passed on Monday to get my other order, the three guys in that section were milling around reading, rather than sweating over a commercial printer spraying out paper. If I had access to a binding machine, it would have been cheaper for me to do this on my home printer.
Anyway, Tuesday afternoon I get a message saying its done. They're only just 500m down the street, so I was going to go late in the afternoon. Just before I leave, I get a call from one of the printing guys 90minutes after the original message:
"No it isn't ready. I clicked the wrong button. I meant to click the 'in progress' status. And by the way, our machine broke and can't do the binding option you wanted. We can only do a more expensive binding option."
Ouch. In one way, I'm glad I hadn't rushed down straight away to collect the order, as its hot out and a 500m walk each way in the sun, would not be nice.
Wednesday afternoon, another call:
"It's done, and we won't charge you for the more expensive binding."
Which I'm glad they clarified that, as I didn't really feel like being railroaded into paying even more. Ok, so thursday morning on my way to work, I wander in to collect. It's done by this weekend which is what I really needed, so all is good.
The staff are young and not really customer service orientated. I get a cheerful greeting from the only guy at the checkout as I guess its quiet and he hasn't had to deal with any difficult customers yet. But the printing section was a whole different story. The staff behind the counter seemed kinda busy and they weren't even making eye contact with the people in the queue, let alone even the customer they were serving at the time.
There were no smiles or pleasantries from the people in this section. Seems like printing is perhaps not the department to be in. I got my stuff and didn't have to go back through the checkout, so I'm done and satisfied now.
Ultimately, I think sometimes the smaller print shops can be better and similar in competitive pricing. I've now found out about one near one of my train changeover stops. They're doing the rest of my less time-critical printing. So far its going well.
Dr Life
Last year I was wandering through a bookstore and came across an eye catching book by Dr Jeffrey Life. The thing that made the book eye catching was the cover, which featured a shirtless 72 year old man with the body of a professional body builder.
I'm always into wanting to stay fit, although I don't have the discipline to carry it out. So I decided to flip through and find out what he was offering in terms of getting fit.
Dr Life's story is interesting as he claims that his fitness pursuit started at the age of 64. He includes a photo of himself at, presumably, 64 to see that it wasn't a case of already being of good fitness, but that he was more of the stereotypical 64 year old american male.
The bulk of his fitness is through careful diet and serious daily exercise, but the bit that threw me off was that he also resorted to hormone replacement therapy and testosterone injections. His main motivations were due to aging, the male body naturally loses testosterone and that results in making it harder maintain large muscle mass.
Dr Life was not just about being fit, but being a body builder. I pretty much gave up at that point on reading any more of his book. But the underlying part of discipline and effort is still solid, so I need to start eyeing my pull-up bar again...
I'm always into wanting to stay fit, although I don't have the discipline to carry it out. So I decided to flip through and find out what he was offering in terms of getting fit.
Dr Life's story is interesting as he claims that his fitness pursuit started at the age of 64. He includes a photo of himself at, presumably, 64 to see that it wasn't a case of already being of good fitness, but that he was more of the stereotypical 64 year old american male.
The bulk of his fitness is through careful diet and serious daily exercise, but the bit that threw me off was that he also resorted to hormone replacement therapy and testosterone injections. His main motivations were due to aging, the male body naturally loses testosterone and that results in making it harder maintain large muscle mass.
Dr Life was not just about being fit, but being a body builder. I pretty much gave up at that point on reading any more of his book. But the underlying part of discipline and effort is still solid, so I need to start eyeing my pull-up bar again...
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Is it really love?
Ok, so McDonalds has a promotion on nationwide for this whole "Amore Deal", and I was curious as to how it works, and whether this sort of thing can recoup the cost of:
The timeslot is not announced, and apparently will change each day.
They also don't announce what will happen if there is no winner that day.
Now the prize pool is not worth $528,000. The "valued worth" of the vehicles are the full recommended retail of the vehicles by Suzuki, which also includes a provided margin for the dealership. However in truth the vehicles are actually worth less as McDonalds sources these directly from the Subaru national distributor. Dealership yards are only involved as collection points, but don't come from the dealership's own stock.
But fair enough, there is website administration costs, staff to chase down and handle vehicles, television and internet advertising costs, distribution of material and updated menus to restaurants, training of staff, software updates for the registers, and probably more things I can't think of. Additionally they may have to pay for independent auditing for approval by the ACCC.
Lets say the full cost to McDonalds is $1,000,000. That may be slightly conservative.
Can they recoup that cost? They most likely wouldn't be wanting to turn a profit from the whole venture, but just try to get more people into the restaurants to develop a greater market share and cultivate the habit of eating there in a larger number of people. That would pay off in the long run.
So the approved menu items to get an entry code start at $10, with options to further add cost by upsizing or picking more premium menu items. But lets assume that each meal sold is $10 and 15% goes to the McDonalds corporation.
So they need additional sales (not conversions of existing regular sales) to recoup cost and achieve their goal of increasing market share.
So at $1.50 per sale, that means 666,667 additional meal sales over the month of February, or 23,810 per day.
There are 900 stores across Australia, as reported by McDonalds themselves, so they need 27 Amore meal sales per store per day, without a drop in their regular sales.
Does that seem unachievable?
Most McDonalds operate 24 hours, with the exception of the ones within mall food courts. Even if the outlets were averaged out of operate 13 hours a day, then they just need 2 people an hour. That's 2 people an hour who either make an added trip to McDonalds, or normally wouldn't go but want to have a shot at getting a car. Even if I was under with my estimate of total cost to the company, I think that the potential to cover their cost is still very reasonable.
Would sales die each day after the car was won? Apparently no. You wouldn't know if you missed out, as McDonalds won't announce the details of the winner for at least 3 business days, as they seek to contact and verify the eligibility of the winner, including sighting the related ticket. So it is quite likely that the announcement that the prize for the day has been won, will only come the following day, if not several days after.
There will be 28 fortunate people across Australia with a new car that only cost them $10 by the end of the month. But the real winner will be McDonalds who won't be out of pocket, but would have potentially trained Australians to eat McDonalds 666,667 more times each month.
If there's love, then its the board of directors loving the sound of money.
- advertising
- menu changes
- administering and providing the prizes (listed as $528,736.00 total)
The timeslot is not announced, and apparently will change each day.
They also don't announce what will happen if there is no winner that day.
Now the prize pool is not worth $528,000. The "valued worth" of the vehicles are the full recommended retail of the vehicles by Suzuki, which also includes a provided margin for the dealership. However in truth the vehicles are actually worth less as McDonalds sources these directly from the Subaru national distributor. Dealership yards are only involved as collection points, but don't come from the dealership's own stock.
- So the 24 base model Suzuki Swift GL probably have an actual wholesale value to McDonalds of $11,000 each. They may actually even be provided for less, as Suzuki is getting free publicity out of this as well.
- There are 4 Suzuki S-Cross GLX (which is one tier up from base model for the S-Cross). These would have a higher wholesale worth in the region of $25,000 each.
But fair enough, there is website administration costs, staff to chase down and handle vehicles, television and internet advertising costs, distribution of material and updated menus to restaurants, training of staff, software updates for the registers, and probably more things I can't think of. Additionally they may have to pay for independent auditing for approval by the ACCC.
Lets say the full cost to McDonalds is $1,000,000. That may be slightly conservative.
Can they recoup that cost? They most likely wouldn't be wanting to turn a profit from the whole venture, but just try to get more people into the restaurants to develop a greater market share and cultivate the habit of eating there in a larger number of people. That would pay off in the long run.
So the approved menu items to get an entry code start at $10, with options to further add cost by upsizing or picking more premium menu items. But lets assume that each meal sold is $10 and 15% goes to the McDonalds corporation.
So they need additional sales (not conversions of existing regular sales) to recoup cost and achieve their goal of increasing market share.
So at $1.50 per sale, that means 666,667 additional meal sales over the month of February, or 23,810 per day.
There are 900 stores across Australia, as reported by McDonalds themselves, so they need 27 Amore meal sales per store per day, without a drop in their regular sales.
Does that seem unachievable?
Most McDonalds operate 24 hours, with the exception of the ones within mall food courts. Even if the outlets were averaged out of operate 13 hours a day, then they just need 2 people an hour. That's 2 people an hour who either make an added trip to McDonalds, or normally wouldn't go but want to have a shot at getting a car. Even if I was under with my estimate of total cost to the company, I think that the potential to cover their cost is still very reasonable.
Would sales die each day after the car was won? Apparently no. You wouldn't know if you missed out, as McDonalds won't announce the details of the winner for at least 3 business days, as they seek to contact and verify the eligibility of the winner, including sighting the related ticket. So it is quite likely that the announcement that the prize for the day has been won, will only come the following day, if not several days after.
There will be 28 fortunate people across Australia with a new car that only cost them $10 by the end of the month. But the real winner will be McDonalds who won't be out of pocket, but would have potentially trained Australians to eat McDonalds 666,667 more times each month.
If there's love, then its the board of directors loving the sound of money.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Sombre thoughts because its only mid-week.
I started thinking about general scams this morning, and as I pondered ideas on how criminals in scams could be traced or caught, it eventually led to bigger problems.
Any solution to counter crime, winds up with measures that the general population don't like, and the reason for this is because the measures have to applied across everyone, as any person could be a criminal. So everyone is impacted because of a minority.
For example: the security tags now on clothes. Now your clothing item already has one or two very small holes before you've even gotten it home, and its an additional wait at the checkout while the tags are removed.
But this is minor when we look at serious problems. Take a country which is experiencing serious anarchy or militant activity. The presence of security checkpoints at a number of places means that going to markets, hotels, government offices, crossing into safe zones, all slow down what should be a easy and quick trip.
The application of civilian ID cards, tracking devices, detailed surveillance and phone tapping, all help detect possible threats and trouble, but also mean that a malicious government could use it for their own purpose, such as ethnic cleansing or factional bias.
It makes me see all my 1st world problems for the petty issues they are, when I see that much of the trauma and heartache in the world stems from the corruption and self serving that exists in all of us, but because it isn't always restrained, then it causes loss and suffering around.
God tells us of the sin that exists in every person:
Maybe you believe, maybe you don't. But ponder why people are the cause of much of the suffering to each other, and see if that does not illustrate a world that has turned its back on its creator.
Any solution to counter crime, winds up with measures that the general population don't like, and the reason for this is because the measures have to applied across everyone, as any person could be a criminal. So everyone is impacted because of a minority.
For example: the security tags now on clothes. Now your clothing item already has one or two very small holes before you've even gotten it home, and its an additional wait at the checkout while the tags are removed.
But this is minor when we look at serious problems. Take a country which is experiencing serious anarchy or militant activity. The presence of security checkpoints at a number of places means that going to markets, hotels, government offices, crossing into safe zones, all slow down what should be a easy and quick trip.
The application of civilian ID cards, tracking devices, detailed surveillance and phone tapping, all help detect possible threats and trouble, but also mean that a malicious government could use it for their own purpose, such as ethnic cleansing or factional bias.
It makes me see all my 1st world problems for the petty issues they are, when I see that much of the trauma and heartache in the world stems from the corruption and self serving that exists in all of us, but because it isn't always restrained, then it causes loss and suffering around.
God tells us of the sin that exists in every person:
"None is righteous, no, not one;
no one understands; no one seeks for God." Romans 3:11
Maybe you believe, maybe you don't. But ponder why people are the cause of much of the suffering to each other, and see if that does not illustrate a world that has turned its back on its creator.
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Bad calories are bad.
At the office we have one of those commercial fridges available for the staff to use. All our lunches, snacks, milk for tea and coffee, etc all get put into there as a convenience for employees.
I think most larger offices tend to also run social clubs. Clubs which organise social activities to keep employee morale up and to try and reduce staff attrition. To fund the activities of the social club, then the sale of snacks and soda is one of the main sources of revenue, otherwise they'd have to have a monthly fee for the social club members.
In our case, we have the snacks. Part of that is a large shoebox which is filled with those kids sized mars bars and the like, and this sits prominently in the fridge. Quite often, including just a few minutes ago, I saw the usual battle of people who wrestle with the afternoon calorie craving and stand in front of the fridge staring at the chocolates while they try to weigh up between a guilty conscience and gratuitous snacking.
The most recent case involved our CTO, and this time it seems his conscience won.
Good effort!
I think most larger offices tend to also run social clubs. Clubs which organise social activities to keep employee morale up and to try and reduce staff attrition. To fund the activities of the social club, then the sale of snacks and soda is one of the main sources of revenue, otherwise they'd have to have a monthly fee for the social club members.
In our case, we have the snacks. Part of that is a large shoebox which is filled with those kids sized mars bars and the like, and this sits prominently in the fridge. Quite often, including just a few minutes ago, I saw the usual battle of people who wrestle with the afternoon calorie craving and stand in front of the fridge staring at the chocolates while they try to weigh up between a guilty conscience and gratuitous snacking.
The most recent case involved our CTO, and this time it seems his conscience won.
Good effort!
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