Some Blog Site

Today’s post is going to be several thousand words long, assuming I get to convert each photo into the standard word count.

We had our last big snowfall of the season this last weekend, so we took some photographs as it was picturesque.

Our backyard.

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I registered as a member at the Home Depot website. Which means that I get their emails. Which means I am a target of their marketing.

So they sent me this email:

And I doubt that it was “handpicked”.

My guess it was an algorithm that determined which items they would like to sell, and then they sent me and everyone else in my area those items.

They were not picked especially for me. Nor were they picked by hand. The items were picked by computer for a group of people.

I don’t know why it bothers me that they say that. I ignore those emails anyway. The only emails that get my attention are the 10% or 15% off for this week emails. I add things to my Home Depot shopping list and wait for the coupon. Then I go buy them when they are discounted via the coupon. Emails with random (to me) items that you want to sell are not going to catch my attention.

After mulling it over for a few minutes now, I think I do know why it bothers me – they are misusing the word “handpicked”. It has a specific definition, which they are ignoring to further their marketing purposes. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. But now it’s the marketer who cried handpicked. By the time someone who actually handpicks things tries to use it, it will be meaningless to the public and they won’t care about handpicked anymore.

So, please, use “handpicked” correctly. Save it for when it is true.

And don’t get me started on mass email that contain the phrase “personally invite” or “personal invitation”.

For no reason at all, here are some balloons that my kids drew some faces on.

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Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• It doesn’t matter how old you are – anything imaginary outside your bed can be magically shielded by a simple bedsheet.
• Your house is clean, with no fruit flies. You bring in fruit and let it sit. Fruit flies appear. Magic, or does every piece of fruit you buy contain fruit fly eggs?
• It’s more fun to imagine that, for all the newly-formed local minor-league and rec teams that end in FC, the FC stands for Fight Club rather than soccer.
• Why did they settle on GOAT to mean Greatest Of All Time rather than BOAT for Best Of All Time? How about COAT or MOAT?
• I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing a weighted red handkerchief to meetings at work. Then if someone says or claims something I think is wrong, I could toss it in their direction. Challenging things in such a manner would certainly liven up things, or maybe I’ve just been watching too much football.

This is not a discussion about how some people say thy are “babysitting” their kids whenever they have to stay home with them for some reason.

Rather, today I am asking the question “What is the difference between parenting and babysitting?”

I was thinking about it the other day, and the answer I came up with is purpose.

Other people may say things like love or pay or familial relationship, but those I think are incidental to the question.

The question is not “how do you tell the difference?” or “what are things that one done versus the other?” It’s hard to explain the question, so I’ll continue explaining the answer.

Some parents just babysit their kids, they don’t actually raise them because they as parents don’t have a purpose for their kids. Babysitters usually have a purpose, and that purpose is to keep the kids physically safe. That’s all anyone expects of babysitters. And that’s all some parents do. Which is better than nothing, I suppose. But let me encourage parents to aim higher than that.

As the saying goes, if you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time. Unless you don’t pull the trigger. Plus how do you hit nothing? But I digress…

What is your aim for your kids? Maybe it’s college, maybe it’s starting pitcher, maybe it’s just to be happy.

If you don’t have a goal, a purpose, in raising your kids, then who knows how they’ll turn out? I say a parent should have goals. Plural. You’ll notice the examples I gave ranged from academic to physical to emotional. Think of those aspects, plus spiritual. Because if your kids are following God, the other things will be easier.

What if the kids don’t like your goals? Then discuss with them what they want as an alternative goal. Maybe start with vague goals and refine them as the kids grow. I think this is one of those areas where just about anything is better than nothing.

Pray for them. Pray for your children. And pray for yourself, to set the right goals and push your kids in the right direction.

I had pulled pork for dinner. With BBQ sauce and coleslaw and baked beans and potato salad and all that you’re supposed to have with it. And cornbread.

You can get pulled pork or pulled chicken. Since I like symmetry, I tried to think what would be the opposite of pulled pork.

The opposite of pull is push, so is there a pushed food?

I would say yes – the hot dog.

As far as meat goes, I can’t disagree that a hot dog is the opposite of pulled pork.

Note: to sound more technical, you can use the term extruded rather than pushed. Doesn’t really sound appetizing either way though.

I suppose spaghetti and other noodles are also extruded, although with pasta it doesn’t seem so bad. Pasta is fun to watch being made. Maybe pasta could be called “pushed dough” or “pushed wheat”?

There are some inefficiencies with the process of obtaining items from the deli department of the grocery store. I highlighted one of them in a previous post, and I’m sure many of you could provide other examples.

But today, we are going to solve many of them. With an improvement to the ubiquitous Take-A-Number system.

Today, I propose to you the deli Take-An-Order system.

It’s actually my wife’s idea, which is odd because she’s the one who doesn’t mind talking to people and she doesn’t avoid confrontation, both opposite of me. But I wholeheartedly endorse her idea here.

The Take-An-Order system is a combination of take-a-number and self-check-out. Except that instead of checking out your order, you are putting it in. The deli would have a kiosk or two with a touchscreen, very familiar to most deli customers these days. Enter your order and the system would give you a number, like some fast-food restaurants do. Plus they could give you an estimated time of fulfillment. Or, even better, you could enter your cell phone # and the system could text you when your order is ready, leaving you free to do the rest of your shopping in the meantime.

What about hooligans who would try to mess things up by entering a bunch of bogus orders, causing confusion and unnecessary work? Simple, require a swipe of a loyalty card or credit card before letting the user input the order.

What about people who pay cash and don’t have a loyalty card? Simple, there will still be deli workers behind the counters, so they could take in-person orders too. That will help those people who want personal interaction from their deli.

Other benefits of this system include increased efficiency of the workers. Think about how many times they go back and forth from the customer to the food supply to the slicing machines back to the customer. And that customer has 3 or 4 items he wants, so the deli worker has to make those rounds multiple times per customer. How much quicker would things get done if the worker had the whole order at once, could line up all the items, and make one trip to the slicing machine?

Even further, how many times does the worker get a style of meat, cut off some slices, and put it back – only to have another customer order the same thing and have to get it back out again? The Take-An-Order system could aggregate the orders, so all the honey ham orders from all customers within a 15-minute window could be cut at the same time, then all the roast beefs, etc.

For customer satisfaction, the thickness of the cut would be consistent. The order interface would have objective thickness options, such as 1/8″, instead of vague “thin” or “medium”.

And for our family, I know we get approximately the same items every week or so. How much more convenient would it be if I swiped my loyalty card and my most recent orders were displayed and I could just tap on them to order them again?

Imagine that scenario: I walk up to a deli kiosk with no wait. I swipe my card, tap a couple of things, and go on my way. I walk around the store, usefully shopping while my order is filled, and receive a text that my order is complete and I can pick it up at my convenience. Deli utopia, I say!

Overachieving grocery stores could have the completed deli orders routed to the check-out aisles, so customers don’t even have to go back to the deli. As they swipe their loyalty cards during checkout, their deli items are rung up and placed in their bags.

The current system, in the words of Sir Topham Hatt, causes confusion and delay. It could be so much better.