wulrus

I was too curious and broke the seal. Will actually try to use it, probably for the rare full /home backup every 2 or 3 years, since it needs external power and is probably not that fast. I'd date this artifact late 2000s? It might have USB 2, making it fast enough.

Weird though that I'd buy this and forget about it forever. It definitely cost enough to matter to me back then.

I mean at the very beginning, 90s, early 2000s, when he finally got into the crosshairs of the authorities.

SWAT storming his mansion an hour after the first victim shows up at the police station? Brought into custody, decades of jail following conviction? No. Depositions, inconvenient questions, police desperately going through his garbage etc.

Just imagine it were some low-life in his trailer, luring underage girls from the Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Bush, Gates family into his dirty trailer. Would the same happen?

Imagine how the local police would talk about it:

A: I don't believe it - now this dirtbag lured Cheney's granddaughter in!

B: Well, he got it coming now. That family has great lawyers.

A: Oh yes. The best. They gonna deposition him.

B: Gonna deposition him, absolutely. And if he doesn't show up - bad look on him.

A: That'd look BAD. He wouldn't dare.

B: By the way, I just heard back from the law firm that represents the Gates family.

A: He dragged his granddaughter into his trailer last year, didn't he?

B: Yep. You wouldn't believe it: This dirtbag sent his shady wannabe-PI methhead neighbour to sneak into the Gates' garden and shine a flashlight into fucking Bill Gates granddaughter's room and filmed her while she was sleeping!

A: Ha, he won't have much luck with that! I bet they called the law firm right away?

B: They absolutely did, and action followed on the foot! A senior partner drove over there, picked her up and hid her in a hotel.

A: Fantastic, that wannabe-PI clearly bit off more than he could chew that time!

B: Oh yes.

So it has been in the hallway for two weeks after my son brought it home. Today, I decided to put it with his some 30 other sticks, after I tripped about it for the 10th time.

But just about 15 minutes later, I got a call from the playground: Code blue, plane on roof, plane on roof!

So I picked up the stick and rushed over to the playground. Happened to run into the the mom of the child whose plane was on the roof, nodded at her saying "don't worry, I got this" as I passed her. And I got it.

But it turned out: She had no idea what I was talking about or why I had the giant stick, since the children didn't even bother her with the problem; they went right to calling me.

I was a huge fan of Amazon from a usability perspective. Unmatched, I'd say!

But there are obvious reasons against it: Worker exploitation and the political situation.

Got to admit, I'm a "soft-quitter", still got my account and still order there as a last resort.

My latest purchase: Several different types of heavy-duty storage racks.

Method used for shelf type one (4x):

• Amazon for search & comparison
• tried the product on geizhals.de, but to my surprise, it omitted the manufacturer as an option!
• went directly to the manufacturer, who had a very decent paypal checkout integration (obviously, invoice / wire transfer and auto-fill form would be preferable)

Price compared to Amazon: Exactly the same.

Method used for shelf type two (2x):

• Wanted to try the new ChatGPT "Agent" to do a research based on a list of criteria. (I know, it's not European!)
• Quite happy with the results, which included a table with metrics such as "price per storage area". It did not include any Amazon results and showed mostly manufacturer stores
• It had this as the top result: https://juskys.de/products/2er-set-lagerregal-easy-160-x-80-x-40-cm#%3A%7E%3Atext=Mit+bis+zu+640+kg%2Cbelastbar
• I decided to go with a bigger version of that
• Checkout was just slightly quirky, but lost no more than 3 minutes compared to Amazon

This is what ChatGPT Agent generated. Is it a viable shopping method in general? We'll see. In any case, it's not European, and there are huge environmental issues with it. Similar results might be gained from asking online, like in a home community.

I've been on it since things got bad in the US. And in most cases, I found a good replacement. Different Pizza delivery, book order, convenient even, most of the time.

For general products I switched to Otto (Germany) mostly, Thalia for books. And I was able to get the biggest recent order through there (two big screens, screen mount, cables), as well as some smaller ones. Alternate would have been another option.

Cost is significantly higher, often +10 % - +20% for the same product and no free shipping.

But what I miss most is convenience. The whole process at Amazon is just working great, especially for stupid people with bad attention (that might be me). Miss a little detail, and you ordered with advanced payment, adding double the clicks and inputs to do a wire transfer. Or not realise you did that and wonder why the product never ships a few days later. Buy from a marketplace seller who ships through DHL, but can't use a DHL pickup location anyway.

What I always disliked about Amazon was the exploitation of employees. How much does that even save per product? I bet that the people handling my order would be happy with EUR 2 extra split among them, as they certainly handle many orders per hour, and I'd be happy to pay that. Is there really no market for high convenience with fair prices?

I do have 10 minutes extra per day to work through a lacking order flow for a good cause, but it would take lots of resources to catch up to that level of convenience.