Yesterday I discovered one of those banking paradoxes. If you have a check and you want to get the money the same day, but I don’t want to turn the whole amount into cash, then you still shouldn’t go for “deposit check” operation. The thing is that depositing the check to an account takes two to three days, because check needs to be cleared. However, you can cash the check and then deposit cash to the account. Both of these operations are imeediate.
Puzzled.
I’ve been ordering stuff from Amazon.co.uk rather frequently. I never had any problems with any of the products or deliveries. Until my last order. For some reason it just didn’t come. And because it was a DataPost delivery, it couldn’t have been tracked either.
So, when all the dates for estimated delivery passed, I emailed back to Amazon asking them if they have any information about that order. They told me that they haven’t, but if the order won’t arrive in the next few days (they gave me a specific date), then I should just let them know and they would resend it free of charge.
The date they mentioned came and went but the order still wasn’t here. So I waited for another couple of days and asked Amazon again. They emailed me back and said that they will place a replacement order within the same day. A few minutes later they confirmed that the replacement order has been placed, and just wanted to know if I still want all of the items, since one of the DVDs that I had on the list changed status from “In Stock” to “Usually ships within the next 4-6 business days”. I said that I don’t mind about more delay and would rather just get all of the things that I ordered.
And that was it. Two weeks later the re-placement order came in. And now let me state the obvious: I am a really satisfied happy customer. My respects and thanks go to Amazon for handling the situation the best way they could.
P.S.: A few days after the replacement order arrived, the original order came too. Very much delayed, but it came through as well. Because I am a greedy bastard, and because those DVDs are just so good, and because Christmas is almost upon us, I won’t be sending one of this orders back. I’ll keep both of them. But I will for sure order more, a lot more from Amazon. Thank you, and an early Merry Chrismas.
I just came back from the movies where I enjoyed an action comedy “Tropic Thunder“. To be honest, initially I didn’t want to see this movie. Silly poster, one of my most unfavourite actors and directos Ben Stiller, and a few other minor factors were all pointing to towards “You can safely ignore this movie” sign. But then I’ve heard a few good reviews and changed my mind.
Gladly, the film turned out to be pretty good. I think that make-up artists, good cast, and participation of one of the Cohen brothers in the screenplay writing saved this flick. Ben Stiller wasn’t as bad as he usually is. Jack Black was pretty good. Especially in that short little scene where he was tied up to the tree. Tom Cruise was a surprise – both acting-wise and make-up-wise. Robert Downey Jr. was really good. He was as good as his make-up. Extra make-up point goes for the Japanese-like looking gangster, shooting automatic weapon in the purple haze. That was aesthetically refreshing.
There is plenty of good action in this film, with gun fights, explosions, helicopters, and so on and so forth. As for the humor – it’s an interesting mix, between the low-level silly Ben Stiller kind of jokes and smart parody and satire Cohen-brothers style. Done really well.
Overall, 7 out of 10 for good entertainment.
I went to see “Burn After Reading” a couple of weeks ago. I had a feeling that it should be rather good, because it was directed by Cohen brothers, who directed, produced, and wrote screenplays for quite a few good movies (“No Country for Old Men”, “O Brother, Where Art Though?”, “The Big Lebowski”, “Fargo”, “The Hudsucker Proxy”, and more). Also, the cast for this film was interesting – George Clooney, John Malkovich, Brad Pitt, and a few other names you know. And, of course, there was a cool trailer.
The film was excellent, but it wasn’t quite what I expected. I thought (based on the trailer) it would some sort of comedy action, with a bit of crime. And it sort of was. But. I don’t even know how describe it. It was funny but very sad film. Or a very sad film, which was funny. I guess that just doesn’t make any sense, but that what it was.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. Especially with all the good acting, interesting story telling, camera work, and even more good acting. An 8 out of 10 and strongly recommended.
I came across a brief blog post titled “Social Networking – Do you do it?“. While the context of the question in that post was more along the lines of “Do you use social networking to promote your products and servers, and drive more traffic towards your site?“, it got me thinking. And, as usual, in a somewhat different direction.
If we are to ask “Social Networking – Do you do do it?” to a large Internet crowd, what sort of responses would we get? I guess, the majority will be somewhere in between “No” and “What’s social networking?“. I think that the majority of people on the Web have no idea of what social networking is, where to find it, and if they are using it already or if they should use it at all. And I also think that the majority of Web population do use social networking, either for their personal or business purposes.
Examples from the top of my head include LiveJournal.com – the most popular blogging platform in Russia, Flickr – one of the most popular image sharing services, YouTube – the most popular video sharing service, Odnoklassniki.ru – the most popular (in Russia) social network for people to find and communicate with their class mates, and a few other, similar services. A huge chunk of their userbase have no idea that these services are a part of social networking. “Oh, no, I don’t do no social networking. I use this web site to communicate with some of my friends and share blah blah blah“.
And I’m not sure if we need to push the term “social networking” any further. We are humans. That what humans do – social networks. Give us a communication tool and we’ll start networking with it. Then, instead of asking us if we use the tool for social networks, just ask us how we use it. Yeah.