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I have to wonder at Home Depot’s logic for shipping things.

I had an order I placed online, and it was under their $45 threshold for free shipping, so I added a couple of small items that I was planning on getting eventually anyway. So the total was just over $45, and it was 5 items.

Guess what they did – they put the 5 items into 4 different shipments.

I would have expected that free shipping is made profitable by running things together – bundle a bunch of packages together for economies of scale and reducing overhead.

But not for this order. They made it about as inefficient as possible, at least from my view.

And no, it’s not like they ended up arriving together. The delivery guy came to our house 4 separate times for these 4 packages for the single order I placed. It’s slightly annoying to me, it’s probably more annoying to the delivery guy, because he drove to our house 3 days in a row to deliver a fairly small package each time.

I’d have been happier if everything arrived at once. In fact, I’ve noticed that Amazon gives me that option sometimes – deliver in as few packages as possible. That’s an option I like.

My guess is that Home Depot has focused on using the efficiencies on their side, rather than the customer’s side. Maybe they shipped each items from the closest warehouse that stocks that item, and in my case that happened to be 4 different warehouse that worked out to 4 different delivery dates to me.

Some Wife’s iPhone 6 was having trouble charging. It would connect just fine, but it either wouldn’t charge or it would lose its charge very quickly. We had a Saturday afternoon without the kids, so we went to the phone store.

“Hello, how can I help you?”
“Her phone’s not charging, can you check it?”
“No, you’ll have to go to the Apple store for that.”
“Okay, thanks.”

We drove over to the Apple store, which is in the middle of the fancy mall a few miles from the phone store.

Never having been to the Apple store before, I had higher expectations based on what I’ve heard (or at least seen in ads).

We were greeted pretty quickly, but since we were there for diagnosing a problem, we were directed to a line which seemed like it wrapped halfway around the inside of the store. I bet if we had said we wanted to buy something, we would have been helped right away.

After waiting in the line for a while, we made it to the front, where we were asked again what our problem was and we were directed to a waiting table, of which there were a few.

While we waited at the table, we wondered how many other waiting areas we would have to go through before we were actually helped.

After waiting at the table for another long while, we were helped by some guy (no, not me, this guy is lowercase). He asked us what the problem was, we explained that we plug it in to charge and it connects but doesn’t charge, and he wanted to check it out on his fancy shmancy equipment – a cord he knows works well. So he plugged in her phone and said he’d be back in 5 minutes to see how it was.

After those 5 minutes more, during which the phone went from about 10% charged to 8% charged, he came back and thought maybe the charging port was clogged with lint. I had that problem a few months back with my phone, and I knew that debris in the charge port causes the cord not to connect to the phone (i.e. the phone doesn’t display the lightning bolt next to the battery symbol). But I figured it’s best to let him work through the process he needs to follow.

He cleaned the port, making sure to save the lint on a piece of tape so we can see that he accomplished something. Then he plugged in the phone and we waited a few more minutes, during which the phone lost some more charge.

He came back, noted the lost charge, and concluded that her iPhone 6 was broken in that the charging circuitry must be bad. He offered to fix it for $299, but at that price we might as well get a refurbished phone that’s right around that price, and if we were interested in that he could send over a sales agent.

“Why not?” we thought. “$299 is as decent a price as anywhere else, and we’re here already.”

So we had him send her over.

She came over, and the prices she starting talking about were 4 digits long. Then she came down, but the prices were still more than the last car I bought. Yes it functions, I just drove it yesterday to work and back.

“No thanks.”

Well, her phone was at 5% and was not charging. This was our one opportunity to go phone shopping and be able to discuss it in person. Normally one of us either stays home with the kids, or has to stick with the younger kids in the store so no damages occur and so we never get to discuss things.

We went back to the phone store. Their prices weren’t as bad as the Apple store, because they had a wider range of phones. But the salesman was helpful in that he mentioned that if we waited two weeks until Apple announced their next phone, all the prices of these existing phones would drop by $100 each.

Or, as another money-saving option, we could sign up for their TV service and that would knock the price down further.

“So I could pay $600 per year for TV in order to save $400 off the phone bill?”
“Well, yes.”
“No thanks.”

I think I didn’t get the numbers exactly right in this post, but the concept is correct – I would have to expend more money overall. The point isn’t the phone bill itself, but my expenses in general, Mr. Salesman.

We left, and Some Wife’s phone died completely before I could save her contacts list.

On the way back to the house, she called her mom (using my phone) and she (her mom) realized that she had an old iPhone 5 that she kept after she upgraded. We figured that would be an acceptable temporary measure until we agreed on what her new phone should be.

Upon arriving at their house, I plugged in the dead phone. I forget why. But oddly enough it started charging. We found the old iPhone 5 and charged it. We successfully reset that phone so that it was under our AppleId, so we had two functioning phones when we left there.

Her iPhone 6 has been working ever since. The battery loses charge faster than it used to, but she has a phone charger in the minivan so it hasn’t been a major problem. And Alpha is happy because he got to upgrade his iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5 (grandma’s old phone to him) and now it will run some apps that he couldn’t before.

Moral of the story: I plan on not visiting an Apple store ever again. When her iPhone 6 does die, we’ll get a used phone from somewhere else.

Sometimes people say “We’re all the same inside” to remind others that all people are human and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.

While I appreciate the intent, I do find fault with the statement. For instance, roughly half the population is born with some different internal organs than the other half of the population. And even then, many people are different inside.

One woman might be different from another because she had knee-replacement surgery and now has artificial knees. That makes her different inside from most people.

Or one man might be different inside from another because he had his appendix removed so he’s missing an organ. That makes him different inside from most people.

“No,” you may say, “not physically the same, but emotionally and stuff. Everyone has the same non-physical needs.”

Then I have the same objection. I know some people who are natural optimists and others who are natural pessimists. Or morning people versus those who stay up late. Everyone is different – different hopes and dreams, different likes and dislikes, and so on.

“But Shakespeare!” you may object. To which I must assume you are referencing the line “if you prick us, do we not bleed?”

And my answer is that there are multiple blood types – we do not all bleed the same stuff. It’s close though.

We’re similar inside, but not all the same.

I’ve heard or read about the term “herd immunity” with regard to vaccinations. The concept is that once enough people (a large enough percentage) are vaccinated against a certain disease, then that disease can’t spread freely because there aren’t enough hosts. It kind of dies out naturally because there is no place hospitable. Any new member of the community is then safe from the disease just because no one else will have the disease.

I’m trying figure out the opposite effect. What if everyone is infected with something and any new members of the community are not safe? Plague? Epidemic? That’s how I feel about social media.

I’m not on Facechat, but enough people who know me are on Facechat, so anyone can still learn about me through Facechat. Same thing for Instabook and Snapgram.

How can I avoid appearing on social media when everyone around me is infected? It’s nearly impossible unless I avoid people.

I just finished reading a compilation of short stories by a certain author who is listed as O. Henry. No, actually, The Gift of the Magi was not one of the 68 stories in this particular compilation.

I found I liked his writing style better than I had anticipated. I had to break up reading the book over a couple weeks though, because reading too many short stories in one sitting got tedious.

Here are my favorites in this collection (simply called “Selected Stories” and compiled by Guy Davenport, but with O. Henry listed as the author of course):

There were some other good stories too, but those are they that stood out.

He had three main settings that he liked to use: New York City, Texas, and the South. A nice variety. And for some reason he seemed fond of Ann Arbor, Michigan – he mentioned it in more than one story.

He wrote his stories shortly after the time when Little House on the Prairie was set, but his stories seem more modern. Probably because they included more cities and trains and even cars.

Also interesting to note is that O. Henry to the Civil war is like us to the Vietnam war – about 40 years after. But everyone was familiar with it and everyone knew someone who had been in the war as a lot of them were still alive. So he wrote about slaves somewhat. Of course they were now freed, but their roles in his stories reflected how their lives were back then – still mostly servant-type roles. And he used several different terms to describe them, some of which are quaint and others of which would not go over well today.

O. Henry seemed sympathetic to the working-class girls and unfavorable toward the factory owners who paid them so little. And he really did not like national bank examiners.

A number of his stories focused on children finding their long-lost parents or vice-versa, so that got a little formulaic after a while – well of course this lady is going to be his daughter he thought died years ago.

But for the most part the stories were engaging enough that they were interesting to read even though you know how they’ll turn out.

We had spring once. It was about 70 degrees and sunny for a day or two.

That was last week.

Now we have ice and snow. Not sure how the plants are going to like it, but this is how they look.

Some tulips:

These should be daffodils soon.

Well, they’re daffodils now, just not quite blooming yet. I meant they should be blooming soon.

And a Japanese maple tree.

I think this one is my favorite, for the coated-in-ice photos.

There are some things that everyone just knows, like tetanus is caused by rusty metal and planes can fly because of the Bernoulli principle. And of course everyone knows that the wisdom of crowds means that a bunch of people who agree on a topic must be right.

Not so fast though.

I learned something recently about the supposed wisdom of crowds. The book that started all this – by James Surowiecki – highlighted that phrase but the concept is a little more nuanced. Crowds are not wise because they are a large group of people, rather, crowds are wise because (or more correctly, if) the individuals bring unique information.

Consensus is useful if all parties have arrived at the conclusion independently, using their own methods and data sets. If everyone looks at the same data, you don’t have a wise crowd – you have a crowd of average intelligence.