Category: HA

Buying a watch in 1880 — history you probably didn’t know! | Author Unknown

~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

watchIf you were in the market for a watch in 1880, would you know where to get one? You would go to a store, right?

Well, of course you could do that, but if you wanted one that was cheaper and a bit better than most of the store watches, you went to the train station!


Sound a bit funny?

Well, for about 500 towns across the northern United States , that’s where the best watches were found.

Why were the best watches found at the train station?

The railroad company wasn’t selling the watches, not at all.

The telegraph operator was.

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Railroad Tracks | Author Unknown

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imagesRailroad tracks.

The  US  standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the  US  railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

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I Am Truly The Worst | Peter Mehit

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My daughter is a trainer and wholesale relationship manager for Four Barrel coffee, an independent coffee roaster in San Francisco.  Through my daughter’s work, I’ve learned that there is an extremely passionate world around the constellation of similar roasters such as Blue Bottle, Sight Glass and Intelligencia.  It is a world of cuppings, flavor notes and events that rival the wine world.  This universe has its hipster Robert Parkers, high price tag offerings and barista competitions where winners walk off with $50,000 prizes.

But we’re not going to talk about that world.  Last Saturday night, Dinosaur Coffee, a shop that features Four Barrel’s coffees, had a parody event called the “First Annual World’s Worst Coffee Competition”.  Michelle, the owner, has built a wonderful space that has already become a hit in the neighborhood.  It was the perfect stage for the event.

The official judges rubric evaluated the coffee based on quality (one measure, pleasant to disgusting), the performance of the competitor and originality.  There were seven competitors and the point was to produce the worst possible coffee imaginable.  The audience and judges were not disappointed.

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I Hate Mandatory Comments | Peter Mehit

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I just renewed four domains with GoDaddy.  It was a perfectly forgettable transaction, just the way I want all transactions on the internet to be.  But a day later, a survey arrived.  Begging for just five minutes, I caved in and answered their questions.

The very first question violated my unspoken rule about surveys: Do not make it mandatory to explain why I gave you a rating.

GoDaddy CommentI rated them a 7.  I didn’t really want to go into it.  A 7 says, “You know, you’re just good enough. But I’d better deal you if something better came along.”  I think both GoDaddy and I understand that.  Conversation will only make things worse.  When I discovered the comment was mandatory, I wrote:

I gave you a rating.  Accept it.  I hate mandatory comments. They make me dislike the survey company for doing it, and GoDaddy by extension.

There were a few more questions.  It was really a three minute survey.  I liked them for that.  The final question asked me what GoDaddy could do to improve my customer experience.  Now if they had followed my rule and not forced me to have a comment, I would have ended the survey the way I end all surveys, with white space.  But to not leave a comment after having been forced to leave one, that’s just not symmetrical. So this is what I asked GoDaddy for:

1. Provide winning PowerBall numbers. Any size jackpot will do.
2. Arrange a date with Angelina Jolie. Brad can come.
3. Use ‘No One to Know’ by Path of Least Resistance as your theme song.
4. Get all the idiots in Washington D.C. to remember they’re supposed to be focused on us. You can do it. You lobby.
5. Stop objectifying women in your advertising.
6. Tell people when they rehearse a vine, it defeats the purpose.
7. Magically release all the domain names I really want.
8. Feature my company in your advertising.
9. (It’s Custom Business Planning and Solutions)
10. Get my upstairs neighbor to walk lighter.

I pressed ‘Submit’.  I was greeted with thanks from Blake Irving, CEO of GoDaddy:

GoDaddy Comments 2

 

We’ll see if they are really serious about improving my customer experience.

Lumen Reflective Bicycle | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

The Lumen is the first of its kind: a bicycle designed specifically for city riding with integrated retro-reflection.

This patented innovation returns any light that hits the Lumen’s frame and wheels directly back to the light source. Available single speed or fully geared, in 5 sizes, the Lumen is the world’s first commercially available retro-reflective bicycle. At night, with direct light, the Lumen’s frame and rims glow with dramatic effect. There’s no on/off switch, no batteries required. This integrated illumination helps identify the rider to surrounding road users.

Media Elites Are Creating Twitter Accounts for Their Babies | New York Magazine

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Woman with baby and laptop in bedHarper Estelle Wolfeld-Gosk has 6,282 Twitter followers. She’s 2 weeks old. The daughter of Today show correspondent Jenna Wolfe (58,610 followers) and NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk (12,356 followers), Harper was registered for an account at birth by her moms to “give her a little voice in the loud world of social media,” said Jenna. “Didn’t know if anyone would follow her tweets, but I figured she’d have at least two loyal followers — her mother and me. Turns out, she’s pretty funny. Guess it was all that amniotic fluid.” The tweets are written in the infant’s voice: “First doc appt tdy. Big success,” reads the second one. “Pooped AND pee’d on Dr’s changing table. Everyone laughed. Will have to try that again tmrw at home.”

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