Month: October 2009

Toys R Us is finally offering layaway?

D'Arque Bishop

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/moms/6674382.html

NEW YORK — Toys R Us Inc. is introducing a layaway program for larger-ticket items such as bikes and cribs ahead of the holiday season, the company said Monday.

The largest U.S. toy retailer said the program is effective immediately in stores nationwide. Customers can put a variety of items on hold and make a series of payments until the item is paid in full.

Layaway programs are financing agreements in which retailers — without charging interest — hold merchandise for customers until they have finished paying in installments.
Popular during the Great Depression, layaway had become largely a thing of the past before the recession hit. But Sears expanded its program for the holidays last year, and due to its popularity Sears and Kmart introduced an online option this year.

Retailers who have introduced the programs see them as a way to keep customers buying in a time of tight credit and other economic problems. Toys R Us CEO Gerald Storch said his company’s customers were requesting a layaway program.

There’s currently no online layaway at Toys R Us, though there might be in the future, the company said. The Wayne, N.J.-based company said the program is likely to keep going after the holidays, though terms may change.

I’m finding this amusing, simply because I used to work for Toys R Us from 1993 to 1995, and back then it seemed there was no chance in hell the company would ever have layaway. That didn’t stop people from constantly asking if we did have it, though. However, as the store director back then once told a customer who asked why we didn’t have it: “We would need a store two and a half times as big.” I had discussed it with Jennifer while at lunch yesterday, and while she tried to say that people would be trying to get their stuff out and out of the store as quickly as possible before Christmas, I had to point out that the warehouse areas of the store were typically jam-packed with merchandise during the entire Christmas season, even if it’s constantly being sold and replenished. The one saving grace I see here is that the items have to be picked up by December 6th, probably to make room for the big influx of season merchandise. I’ll be interested to see how this pans out.

And now, the Worldwide San Antonio/Austin Tour…

D'Arque Bishop

The four of us at River City Grille in Marble Falls.Well, this has been an interesting week. My mom, her sister Norma, Jennifer, and I went on a road trip to the San Antonio and Austin areas for a few days for vacation. I got to see a lot of areas I had never been to before, and all in all we had a great time. While I did post quite a bit about the trip on my Twitter, I figured I would go ahead and post a recap of the trip here…
Read more “And now, the Worldwide San Antonio/Austin Tour…”

Rarely have I heard of a bigger epic failure in IT circles…

D'Arque Bishop

As many people have undoubtedly already read, Sidekick users are in a whole heap of trouble right about now. For those who aren’t familiar with the Sidekick (also known as the Hiptop), it’s a “smartphone” that acts differently from other smartphones. In essence, other than the phone application, it’s a thin client, where everything (including the address book and applications) is hosted on Danger’s servers instead of on the phone itself. An official posting on T-Mobile’s forums states that all data is lost, even though they’re trying to recover what they can.

As for what happened, well… from the rumors I’ve seen, it appears a SAN upgrade went seriously awry and caused the entire array to get hosed. One would think that they would have backups of this data; hell, my own personal “datacenter” is relatively small scale, yet I have daily backups to tape. Also, I have MK Online on a workable and tested backup system. I’m guessing that the backup system they were using wasn’t being kept up-to-date or even monitored. For something as mission critical as that, not having working and tested backups is absolutely inexcusable.

So, what’s happening right now? T-Mobile is stressing to users to not power off or reboot their devices under any circumstances, or else they will lose all of the data on them. Given how bleak the situation looks, I’d say the best thing the Sidekick users could be doing right now is copying all of their address books to paper as quickly as humanly possible. I have at least one friend who is (or now was) a loyal Sidekick user, so this must come as another huge blow alongside all of the other crap she has had to go to.

For me, I had honestly considered a Sidekick a LONG time ago, before moving to my employer’s wireless plan (which is with AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T). Even then, the thought of having EVERYTHING server-side and nothing stored locally unnerved me. I’ve always been a big believer in hosting my own stuff, from email to blogging. Right now the only real exception is Twitter, and I don’t exactly consider that “mission critical” (like any of this stuff is). :-) That way, I can make sure everything is backed up on my own terms, and if something goes wrong, the only person I can blame is myself. Needless to say, I’m glad I didn’t go with the Sidekick now.

So, to all you Sidekick users… you have my utter sympathies. I would wish you luck with your Sidekick, but I’m willing to bet most of you will likely be switching platforms now… and I’m willing to bet that this will be the final nail in the coffin for the Sidekick.

The Canabalt Run…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Last night, I accompanied Jennifer to DSW so she could buy shoes for our trip this week. While she shopped, I took some time and played a new game I had gotten for my iPhone recently: Canabalt.

Canabalt has something of an interesting premise: you play a character who is escaping from some kind of city-wide attack, jumping from building to building as you run, and avoiding obstacles along the way. The game is deceptively simple, as the only real control in the game is to tap the screen, which causes your character to jump. How long you hold the tap down for controls how high/far your character jumps. As he runs, he has to avoid boxes (which merely slow him down) dropped weapon turrets (which turn him into “a fine mist” when he hits them), and correctly judge the correct power of each jump on the fly. I’ve lost several times when I’ve hit the jump button too hard on reflex, realizing too late that my character was supposed to be jumping through a window and instead smacking against the wall above the window.

The graphics are relatively simple 8-bit-type graphics in black and white, but still impressive. As I’ve played I pay little attention to the environment as a whole, merely concentrating on getting my character past obstacles, determining whether a building is about the collapse (such buildings are riddled with cracks), and making sure I judge each jump correctly. In the background, though, you can see a wrecked city, with alien(?) walkers walking back and forth, using either a projected energy weapon or a spotlight. Every so often, a plane flies overhead close to the action, but in my experience it’s not possible to die by hitting one of the planes.

If you ever feel like bragging about the distance you’ve run before losing, the game offers you the option to automatically post about it on Twitter. I’m not one to brag, or else I would have tried this functionality by now. It might also have something to do with the fact that I’m pretty sure my scores are pretty lame compared to others out there…

I’ve been playing Canabalt for a week or two now, and it’s currently my favorite “time-waster” game, for when I have a few minutes to kill. It costs $2.99 over at the iTunes Store, which to me was well worth it. Don’t take my word for it, though; the developer (Semi-Secret Software) actually developed a free Flash-based version before porting it to the iPhone/iPod Touch. You can play it at its website, located here.