Blog of Josh Hall

You can’t control others.

You can influence.  You can lead by example.  You can threaten.  You can scare.  You can encourage.  You can explain your point of view.  You can layout the logic and consequences of actions.  You can suck it up and walk away when they still don’t do what you say because they don’t have to.  Plan accordingly.

I had a dream where I was in a weird sci-fi building made up of a whole bunch of rooms linked together.  The rooms were about 8 feet tall, 10 feet wide, and about 20 feet long, but the corners were all rounded, much more like a stretched out bubble.  Everything was like a dark metal or bluish grey.  some rooms had benches in the middle of them.  Others had these 6 foot tall panels extended from the floors.  They were about 4 feet wide and 1 inch thick and their color matched the rest of the room.

I was following someone, maybe 2 people, through these corridor rooms until we came to a room that had 2 of these panels in the middle of it, angled at a V with maybe a foot space in between them.  The people who were leading me told me to stay in the room as they went into the next room.  They went in the other room to start the simulation system, that would project or recreate the past in this room in 3D space.  The panels existed as places for the viewer to hide behind, so as to not interrupt the people being watched.  As they started they simulation up, the room changed to be an outdoor scene, possible the back yard of my childhood home.  As the simulation became more and more real, 2 individuals began to appear on the same side of the panels as me, and they were looking right at me.  They were 2 men, in dark shiny suites, thin short black hair.  The one in front was shorter than the one in the back.  Both men were in their 40s.

Normal behavior for these simulations would call for the viewer to just hide behind the panels and observe, but what I realized was this was actually a simulation of these 2 men watching that same simulation before me.  By me interrupting them, they became aware of my existence and started to come after me.  I began panicking, yelling for the people who started the simulation for help.  They spoke over a loud speaker to me that I needed to subdue the men before they were able to attack me.

The subtext was these men were after me, and had watched simulations of my childhood, but now that I had caught them, I not only revealed who they were, but I also delivered me right to them.

There’s certainly some weird time travel at play; having an interactive role in the past, but I like the concept.

Honestly, I’ve never been impressed with Lowe’s.  I grew up on 84 lumber, and now Home Depot is closest.  Anyway…

In my LEGO storage efforts, I found Stanley cases to be awesome.  I’ve found a couple different models of these portable containers to be just what I needed.  In my online searching, I found a particular case that would be perfect for my needs, the Stanley 014006R.  I set out to find it online and found it at Lowes.com.  Infact, as of this writing, you can still find it here.  It said it was in stock at my Waterfront store.  As I passed by the next day, I stopped in, but didn’t see it on the shelves.  All I found were the 014026R, which I already had, and did not give me the flexibility that I was looking for.  I was in a hurry, so I just left instead of speaking with an associate.

So I got online at home and ordered with a “ship to store” option to save on shipping.  About 3 hours later, I got an email that said my order was ready for pick up back at the waterfront.  I thought, “Oh, I must have missed them, or they had them in the back room and just pulled from stock.”

So I stopped in the next day to pick up my order.  When the lady behind the counter brought me my order, it was just 3 *26R models.  STRIKE 1.  I explained the possible confusion to her, and she looked at me like I just magically grew an umbrella from my forehead.  She had to call her manager.

A few minutes later, when the manager (whose name was Josh, as if this situation wasn’t confusing enough), came up, he saw that I could pull up *06R on my phone, so I wasn’t just mistaken.  He then saw that when he put in that model number in their system, it “redirected” to *26R.  He wasn’t sure what to do for me, and I wanted to know how I could get the correct case.  He told me to go home and order it online again, but this time chose ship to my house.  STRIKE 2.  How does that guarantee me I’m going to get what I want?  I foresee me getting exactly what I don’t want and then having to deal with someone over the phone instead of in person.  That’s a terrible answer, Josh, I’m disappointed.  He called someone internal number to try to get an answer on how I could get the right product.  He was placed on hold for a while, which gave him the out he wanted, I’m sure.  He took my number and said he’d give me a call when he got an answer.  It was about 4pm when I left the store.

Around 10pm, I sent an email through Lowe’s.com, having given up on Josh getting back to me at this point.  The next day, Josh did call me back. He got on the phone with someone from “corporate” and found out they’ve apparently tried to remove this item from their online offering before, but they haven’t been able to remove it.  That’s all he could do for me.  That’s fine, Josh, your job is done here.  I got an email response from customer care that morning, and when I replied saying Josh said it was discontinued, Adrienne S replied with –

“I sincerely apologize that the product you wanted has been discontinued.  I would like to research this further to see what options we do have.  I will follow up with you within 1 business day to provide additional information.”

That was May 18th.  On June 11th, I got a generic email asking me about how my online order was, and asked for my opinion.  STRIKE 3.  I had moved on and forgot all about it.  I filled out their little survey to reflect my sentiments.  I also replied to Adrienne S again, asking her what customer service says they’ll contact you within 1 business day and doesn’t follow up.  STRIKE 4.  She then replied with 4 links to other products, 1 of them being the *26R organizer.  STRIKE 5.  For all the hassle, poor information, LIES, and frustration I’ve been through, they can just send me a couple links and expect me to buy from they again?  STRIKE 6.   I’ve had restaurants comp my meals because they didn’t refill my drink quickly enough.  Really, I think the situation warrants a discount or something.  Heck, send me a free *26 model if that’s your solution.  I replied to Adrienne with my thoughts on the matter.  she replied with a 10% off code.  I’m pretty sure I get 20% off coupons in the mail.  Strike 7.

I sent the code to Deirdre and Jordan, who just bought a house, so I told them to make sure they use it on a big purchase.

You can still pull up the *06R on their site.  http://www.lowes.com/pd_238895-82673-014006R_0__?storeId=10151&Ntt=238895&UserSearch=238895&productId=3027237&N=0&catalogId=10051&langId=-1 STRIKE 8.

All that to say, Thanks to Larry over at DIYAnswerGuy.com, I went to Jegs and found their product to give me the storage solution I was looking for.  The “locking” mechanism is useless, it feels a little cheaper than Stanley products, and I had to pay shipping, but it works.

And just to be icing on the cake – It’s a Tuesday at 1:45pm, and I just went to Lowes.com and I was greeted with a page that says it’s down for scheduled maintenance.  Really?  STRIKE 9.  You plan an outage to your website during the day?  What kind of establishment are you running there?  Heck, why do you need downtime at all these days?  Ridiculous.

You are never in control.

You think the 26 year old Olympic swimmer who had a heart attack thought he was in control of his health?  The sooner you stop trying to control your outside effectors, and accept your inability to control them, the less impact those effectors will have on your mental state.  Your job is to live, not worry.

1. There’s no playing until the clock stops.  The clock at the end of the game just expires if the leader has possession, and I’ve seen games where there’s like 20 seconds left and all the players and coaches are already celebrating on the field.  It’s unsportsmanlike.
2. There’s wasted real time.  Change your lines.  Get set up.  measure the ball distance.  Everyone get in a big pile.  Now everyone get up.  All that time adds up to really long boring games.
3. There are too many people on the field and on teams.  Pretty much every other sport, an average fan would be able to rattle off close to all of the players on a team.  I don’t see the same thing with football teams.  There are just random people that are on the sidelines that never get playing time but are there anyway.
4. A player’s role is too specialized.  No wonder there are too many people, there are so many different positions!  I look at people like Cordell Stewart, who played like 3 different positions, as an example of how much of a joke the value of different positions are.  Just have the same people on the field do different jobs.  I mean, the kicker barely does anything!
5. It’s way too popular.  It’s basically a religion.  I don’t think it got popular because it’s good – I think it got popular because it was popular!  It just feeds itself.  peer pressure and all that.
6. IT’S SO SLOW.  DO something!  I mean, I know the quoted speech about football being a game of inches, but man, why’d they make the field so big then?
7. Why is everyone wearing tights?  I mean, for as much armor they put on their torso and head, you’d think they’d want something more on their legs.  Especially in a sport with a man nicknamed “the refrigerator”, putting him in tights just makes the sport look ridiculous.  It makes sumo wrestlers look beautiful.
8. It’s boring.  There’s never an intense break away or way to turn everything around, or if there is, it’s short lived.  It’s all structured plays, carried out, reset, then try again.  The defense is always on the defense and they have to stay behind the line until someone says go, then MAYBE they’ll get touch the ball.  Think about it, the object of the defense is to STOP THE GAME.  BORING.
9. The sport tries to compete against itself.  there was the whole NFL vs AFL thing in the mid 1900’s, but now there’s arena football trying to say it is a better sport since it addresses the shortfalls of regular football like a smaller field and blah blah blah.  What is the saturation point of football in this country?!?
10. It’s called football.  Soccer had that name first.

Give frequently.

There is no “giving season”.   Forget National Day of Giving.  The time is now and the time is always.  Don’t just send a check once a year to your favorite charity.  Don’t JUST send a check once a year!  Volunteer!  Interact with people.  Spread the word.  If you think writing a check for $1200 on Christmas is a big gift, an even bigger gift is to give that same charity $100 each month.  Stability is at the core of the biggest obstacles, and sometimes blessings, of charities.