I am in awe of how random and wrong this was:

J: Alexa, play the song “I spent my last ten dollars on birth control and beer”.

A: Here’s Rake and Ramblin’ Man, by Don Williams, on Amazon Music.

J: Alexa, play the song “I spent my last ten dollars” by “Two Nice Girls”.

A: I Spent My Last $10.00 (On Birth Control & Beer), by Two Nice Girls, on Amazon Music.

(to be clear, this was not mis-heard; the voice history in the app shows that every word was clearly understood, and she still ended up with a completely wrong song)

Sunday, 6:40 PM

Amazon: “Unfortunately, USPS ran into an issue when attempting your delivery.”

J: “Yeah, the issue was they didn’t attempt to deliver.”

A: “They will try again.”

J: “…when the package actually gets loaded onto a delivery truck.”

It’s not like I really needed hinoki saké cups tonight, or tomorrow night, or any time before Covidiocy eases up and my sister comes out to visit, but I continue to find it adorable that Amazon pretends that USPS has predictable delivery dates that are compatible with Prime.

Related,

The giant case of Carnation half-n-half single-serving tubs arrived, and I can’t blame Amazon for the fact that a non-zero percentage of them are dried out. There’s no sign of rough handling, and the expiration date is a good four months out, but out of the first ~25 tubs I pulled out of the box, 3 were either completely or partially dried out. My guess is very small punctures or slight sealing failures, since the interior of the box doesn’t look like an AirBnB that got used for a porn video.

And I’ve settled on calling them Calfs, as an appropriate replacement for Mini-Moos.

Full disclosure: the one and only time I bought Mini Moos on Amazon, the case arrived with maybe a week to spare before the expiration date. Never tried that again.

Monday, 2:15 PM

Bullshit:

As far as Amazon is concerned, this is a completed successful delivery.

I fully expect it to be delivered today, but if it didn’t show up, for any reason, it’d be at least another 48 hours before I could start playing phone tag with USPS and twiddle my thumbs waiting for an offshore Amazon rep to follow the script and credit my account.

Monday, 5:45 PM

As expected, the package was delivered today into my locked mailbox. Also as expected, Amazon still shows it as “held for pickup” at the post office. Sometime tomorrow, I expect they’ll either update that to claim I picked it up, or rewrite the update history to show that it was always delivered to me today.

I received two packages today. The first was a lightly-padded envelope shipped UPS, containing a nozzle, so small that it took me a while to find it. I honestly thought the envelope was empty at first.

The second was a large cardboard box containing a few token air pillows for padding, along with three Bluray discs and a cast iron griddle. Only one of the Bluray cases was damaged by the five pounds of cast iron bouncing around in the box, but it looks like the actual discs survived the experience.

Amusing Note

Shady web sites that redirect you to malware are still using the “your Flash Player is out of date” con. And it probably still works about as well as it ever did.

This Just In

Remember the “insurrection” that Trump supposedly incited with his speech, that was used to take down Parler despite being coordinated on Twitter and Facebook? Y’know, the one where police opened the doors to let protesters into the building before killing an unarmed woman who wasn’t threatening anyone? The one where they found pipe bombs that the FBI just revealed were planted the night before?

Stream No Evil

The Disney+ streaming service is protecting children from Disney movies. Another way to protect them is to cancel Disney+ and go back to buying DVDs. And, y’know, parent instead of leaving them alone with a remote and a megacorp deciding what they should watch.

Amazon “recommendation” roundup

I’ve got a lot of mice and laptop stands around the house, but I’ve never really thought of them as “decor”.

FYI, police are not generally well-disposed toward people who carry spiked “keychains”, which are in any case more of an urban-defense thing than “hunting & fishing” accessories. And how many people actually need to color-coordinate their stabby-sticks with their wardrobe?

“They are gardeners and carpenters. They are not tomato-men.”

While there are occasions where I would agree that pom-poms constitute appropriate apparel for women, I don’t think I should be the one buying them, even as gifts. It’s really more of a gift for me.

I can at least understand how they ended up here.

This one strikes pretty close to home, because I was just about to run out of the stuff, and Gevalia seems to still be struggling to deal with Covid-induced coffee distribution issues. There are people trying to scalp their K-cups on a number of sites, and pretty much every local store that carries them hasn’t restocked in months. I’ve had to redo my monthly subscription several times as the different SKUs come and go. I wasn’t sure that I’d be getting any this month at all until yesterday morning, and it wouldn’t be the first time that Amazon marked something as “shipped” that wasn’t really, really on the way.

Fingers jittery and crossed.

Update: 1 out of 3 is bad

My Gevalia k-cup order arrived, but while the box was the correct size, it was suspiciously light. Opening it revealed that my 3-pack had been reduced to a 1-pack. Sadly, the amount I was charged was not reduced to match. Amazon does not offer a “hey, you sent the wrong stuff” button, just a “return or replace” button. Not even a “hey you shipped me a box of lightbulbs in just a padded envelope” button, which also happened today, although those at least work.

Update: Yes, we have no more coffee

Since the only option Amazon offered me was to return the undersized coffee shipment, I did so, selecting the “missing or broken parts” reason, with details in the comment. Their new system determined that it’s not worth it for them to have me mail them back, so they’re refunding my money but letting me keep the partial shipment.

The only ones in-stock at Amazon are $20 for 6 k-cups, so I have about two weeks to find another source for the stuff.

Ah, coffee!

Found an Amazon marketplace dealer whose price for 3 6-packs was only moderately extortionate, and which became reasonable when I factored in the cost of the 12-pack I got to keep out of the return. Hopefully with the remarkably-sudden nationwide discovery that lockdowns are bad, supplies will stabilize in time for next month’s shipment.

Dear Amazon

Do I use PLA, PETG, or ABS to print a patio, lawn, and garden?

The Last American President

…and if I’d meant “previous”, I’d have said “previous”.

People who’ve won an honest victory do not coordinate efforts to silence their defeated opponent and anyone even loosely associated with him. People who’ve spent the last four years lying and cheating in an attempt to overturn an election do.

Nothing Trump has said or done in four years justifies the way he’s being treated now. This is just revenge porn.

Unicorn Chaser: The Return of Sukabu

When I have more than a dozen packages arriving today, all marked as gifts, all delivered to cities hundreds of miles from my billing address, it seems quite pointless to pop up a constant stream of notifications telling me that they’re on the road, then that they’re 10 miles from target, then delivered, and finally interrupting me with Yet Another Notification to ask me to rate each delivery.

I don’t know, I’m not there! Even if it weren’t 2020, it’s unlikely that I could offer delivery feedback on gifts sent all over the country.

I honestly would prefer this to the current state of politics:

I’m not sure about your choice of takoyaki as a breakfast food, though:

Unrelated, “why we can’t have nice things”