Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

The Final Christmas Retail Verdict: Uh Oh!

Posted: December 28, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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Well the Christmas Shopping season is done and now the “unload product before I have to declare it as inventory on taxes” season is with us.

I’ve now had the full season to judge who is telling you the truth on the economy and surprise, surprise, it ain’t Joe Biden folks.

During the Trump years the Christmas volume was insane. 10 hour days, 6 to 7 day (optional) work weeks and the need for so many people that no matter how many people were crossing en masse south of the border it wasn’t enough to fill our needs. You actually had temp agencies with offices inside our warehouses in order to manage the flow of people we needed.

This Christmas, all of that was a memory. We had three or four really busy days and one client had a big last minute sale that kept us busy enough to not send home folks but the season overall was pretty dead. On the plus side this meant everything got out on time and on schedule so those who could still afford to buy Christmas gifts had no worry getting them before the days of Christmas began.

And a slow Christmas season means a slow returns season. Most people returning gifts usually don’t get them sent till yesterday or today so we might start seeing them sometime next week. But odds are the return volume will be as anemic as the shipping volume was.

That’s going to mean layoffs even with the lower staff volumes, and if it’s happening here it’s happening everywhere else in the country.

I submit and suggest this is why we are seeing the level of um… interesting… tactics and rhetoric coming from the left, the media and the courts and states they control. I have stated publicly that I think the Trump haters can’t be won over but we’re reaching the “even a flatworm knows to turn away from pain” levels generating fear that we might see a margin beyond the credible level of theft. 

Of course given what the media has considered “credible” these days there might not be such a phrase.

I think we have been cursed to live in interesting times, but if that’s the case it’s been a curse we’ve brought onto ourselves as a society.


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Ending the indignity of self-checkout

Posted: December 26, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper


If you choose self-checkout, you may be considered a glutton for punishment.

With each selection, the automated voice gets more exasperated with your mistakes.

You need to place all the items in the bagging area.

Didn’t you get that necessity the first time? Or the second time? Now it’s the sixth time!

Have you checked all the items? Are you really trying to steal something?
Your card cannot be read. Please try again.

Would you like to add 57 cents to give money to people who aren’t jerks like you?

The card reader failed!

I’ve never liked shopping, and I guess it seemed that self-checkout would be faster the first time I used it. It probably is.

But self-checkout is a way to get me to do all the work that a real person has done for years.

But Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal wrote recently about a system that ends the frustration and the embarrassment of self-checkout.

At a clothing store called Uniqlo, the company has simplified the process using old rather than new technology: radio frequency identification readers or RFID tags.

“I picked one of the dozen self-checkout machines, followed the instructions on the screen, and placed my clothing in the box. The machine did the rest of the work. I confirmed the number of scanned items, tapped to pay, and grabbed my receipt. And that was it,” Cohen wrote.

The key to the whole operation was RFID tags and their declining cost. As the technology became more precise and less costly, retailers could afford to buy RFID chips in bulk and deploy them in novel ways: predicting demand, adjusting production, optimizing distribution, preventing theft—and reinventing self-checkout.

Uniqlo said the new self-checkout system cuts waiting times in half—and the longer it’s been in a market, the more customers prefer it.

Putting RFID cards on some products, such as tomatoes and bananas, may be difficult. But stores have found ways to counter such products’ lack of bar codes.

The only further change would be a way to silence the ever-present school marm who anticipates and notes every conceivable mistake you make!

Senator Tuberville is 100% correct to be concerned that the DoD is spending taxpayer money, in violation of the law, to allow women birthing people to travel across state lines to pursue an abortion.

Sadly, he recently caved from RINO pressure on this point. If you don’t know history you’d think it was only the eeeevil Republicans that stopped nominations. And you’d be wrong.

What about Democrat Senator Tammy Duckworth, blocking over 1,000 promotions in 2020? Why is that conveniently left out of every article?

Or the curious case of Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill blocking General Susan Helms, an Obama nominee, from her fourth star? General Helms was a female astronaut and selected to be the vice commander of Air Force Space Command. Senator McCaskill didn’t like that General Helms overturned a sexual assault charge on an appeal, so she simply blocked the general until she retired.

Now, personally I think Susan Helms made the right call and overturned a case that was lacking evidence. But Senator McCaskill was on a “believe all women claiming sexual assault” intifada, so that was never going to fly. Susan Helms was more than qualified to lead Space Command, but politics got in the way. That is Senator McCaskill’s right to do so. My issue is that if I search for “senator blocked nomination,” every link on Google is about Tuberville. Even adding “Democrat” and “2013” to my search doesn’t bring up McCaskill’s blocked nomination. I just happen to remember it at the time, and was able to dig it back up.

I don’t want to hear anymore about Senator’s “playing politics” with military nominations until I see references to Claire McCaskill and Tammy Duckworth at the end of those articles.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

In the Commonwealth of Marxachusetts Christmas has become one of the most vulgar swear words.  Towns and other localities go to extreme lengths to refrain from using a word that political left has deemed to be the most offensive word ever uttered.  It is so reminiscent of the lengths the wizarding community in Harry Potter went to to avoid naming Lord Voldemort.  Stores go to the same extreme level in all of their ‘holiday’ advertising. Store clerks are forbidden from wishing their customers the hated Merry Christmas.  I am sure it is the same all over this country, except in the reddest of red enclaves.

Banning the name of the Holiday That Must Not Be Named is not enough anymore.  Christmas trees have proved to be too offensive for fragile and pathetic progressives: Town Cuts Tree Lighting From Holiday Celebration To Appease Those ‘Offended’ By The Tradition (themix.net)

The town of Durham, New Hampshire finally submitted to the politically correct police this year by agreeing to remove the tree lighting from their annual holiday celebration. The decision was announced after the town received complaints about the tree lighting tradition.

CBS reported that the event which was previously known as the Annual Tree Lighting Ceremony will now be called Frost Fest. And the tree lighting at the center of the celebration will no longer be part of it.

While Santa will attend the event, he will not be in a town firetruck as he has in the past. In addition, the wreaths that traditionally adorned lamp posts on Main Street will not be put up this year.

Town Council member Sally Tobias explained that these changes were made after someone complained that they are “offended” by the Christmas themes in the ceremony.

“There was another private citizen that came forward and said that he had always had a problem with the Christmas tree, as he called it,” Tobias said.

Two whinny individuals complain and every single person who enjoys Christmas traditions is punished, how inclusive.

These delicate anf pitiable progressives can’t even stomach the name Jesus when they do go through the motions of carrying out traditional Christmas activities: Parents Furious When School Changes Christmas Carol Lyrics To Be ‘More Inclusive’ (themix.net)

Parents and staff at a London primary school are upset after the headmaster changed the lyrics to a popular Christmas carol “in the name of inclusion and political correctness,” according to a watchdog group.

Zakia Khatun, the headteacher of Whitehall Primary School in East London, told students they were not to sing “Lord” in “Away in a Manger,” and replaced it with “little baby” so “all pupils” could participate in an annual Nativity Tuesday.

The mythical separation of church and state is used as the primary justification for waging this war on Christmas.  The separation of church and state does not exist anywhere in the Constitution, nor is it part of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.  That clause only prevents the Federal Government from establishing an official state religion through laws passed using the formal legislative process.  Selling religious candy at army bases is not the same: Military exchange to stop selling ‘Jesus’ Scripture Candy after secular group complains | U.S. News (christianpost.com)

The Army & Air Force Exchange Service said it will stop selling Jesus-themed candy in response to a complaint filed by a secular legal organization warning that selling the treats at commissary and exchange stores is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. 

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation announced Friday that it received a response to a letter it sent recently to the AAFES objecting to the sale of “Jesus Candy” at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

AAFES is the retailor found on U.S. Army and Air Force installations worldwide. 

The Establishment Clause most definitely does not apply to the states.  It did not when the Bill of Rights was ratified.  It was not extended to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.  The Supreme Court concocted the entire incorporation doctrine in direct violation of both the 1st and 14th Amendments.  Only tyrannical and fragile progressives would ban school bus drivers from wearing Christmas themed clothing, decorating buses, and playing Christmas carols: Pennsylvania School District Does Damage Control After Memo to Bus Drivers Goes Viral (townhall.com)

A Pennsylvania school is attempting to do damage control after issuing a memo instructing bus drivers to remove Christmas decorations from their vehicles, stop wearing anything related to the holiday, and avoid playing Christmas music. 

“If you have decorated your bus with anything specific to the Christmas Holiday or any other decorations relating to a specific religion, please remove them immediately,” read the Dec. 15 memo from the Transportation Supervisor at the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District. “In addition, employees are instructed not to wear clothing related to Christmas or any other religious holiday.”

District offices and bus drivers are also “to refrain from playing Christmas music” or any music connected to a particular religion. 

Libs of TikTok pointed out the district took a different attitude toward “Pride Month.”