Just need to vent...

Aldi checkers here tend to be better trained and more efficient than Walmart checkers---assuming you can find a line with a checker at Walmart.
Half the time when I attempt self-checkout at Walmart, the credit card reader malfunctions and declines my card for no reason.

 

When I was a cashier, the card reader would decline the cards of people who were rude to me.

But with self-checkout, there's just so much to go wrong. And the checkout staff are trained to know what's wrong; we, as customers, are not.

 

I survey the lines and choose:

• line with fewest articles in the carts
• line with fewest female customers and a female checkout clerk (shopping never stops)

Bob Wilson

 

I really don't mind waiting in line for a real checkout. They're professionals- much better at it than I am. I like seeing pros do their thing and get paid for it. I can cope with six minutes of having nothing to do while I wait my turn.

Hey, back to ventilation!

More parking lot drama. A local big box has marked off a bunch of car parking spaces for special drivers. Elderly, parents of toddlers, veterans, elderly veteran parents and so forth.

Now, the method they used to mark these spaces caused a lot of controversy. You see, they put up metal signs on 7' posts. The posts were set in 5-gallon pails full of concrete.

This makes the sign, signpost and anchor portable. The store management put the bucket-and-sign contraptions at the heads of the parking spaces they intended to designate for different groups of shoppers. Any English-literate driver arriving in a space would clearly see the sign and note the reservation.

In doing so, they raised the ire of many shoppers who had previously enjoyed the ability to pull through their parking spaces to arrive nose-out at the next row over.

So management slid all the buckets to the sides of the spaces. But now they don't correctly indicate which of two possibible spaces the parking reservation is meant for.

I've only seen one dispute so far, but I reckon that's one more than they had before.

 

I'm agnostic on parking spots.
I've said in the past that most of the "special needs" parking spaces should be in the most remote portions of the parking lot since so many of the health problems in America are cause by food and sloth.
HOWEVER (comma!)
I have used vet parking spaces in the past following strong encouragement from the people in my orbit probably because I usually park in the hinterlands and walk. I also have family members who have legitimate need of whatever they call "Special Needs" spots these days, so it is what it is.
Some DAV spots are cropping up along with Gold Star reserved spaces, and LEO-reserved spots are also more abundant and even lit at night with a blue light.
My favorite is the 'Stork' parking spots that you see in some stores.
I wonder if this will spark a 'made-for-TicToc' moment in the future featuring a dude 'identifying as' (pretending to be) pregnant.

There are LEO enforced fines in America for parking in what is legally (if insensitively called) a Handicap Parking Spot.
In my beloved home state of Indiana it is an actual Class C misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail and/or up to $500 fine, and the law says: "Any person who parks a motor vehicle which does not have displayed a placard of a person with a physical disability..."
So....they are not mucking about with those spots!
The ticket is $200 locally plus fines and fees, and $180 if you are authorized to park in a handicap spot but you "forgot to display the placard." I may or may not have been reliably informed that you get one freebie for forgetting to display, but they LOVE to write tickets for people who park without permission because it's a no-contest, easy peasy way to get $200 for the city.
Second offenders come back to their car not being in the spot, and also pay for a tow and impound.

Vet, DAV, LEO, Stork, and other 'special' parking spots are only enforced by social pressure - so far.

 

Fortunately, out here in the middle of nowhere, I don't have to deal much with self checkouts. Sam's Club has members+ hours starting at 8 a.m. and no one is shopping that early. They always have a checkstand with a human checker open and the person supervising the self checkouts is usually bored so she scans people through even at the self-serve. The longest line I've been in in two years at Sam's was one person in front of me.

Smith's opens at 6 a.m. with only self checkouts open but again the attendants usually wind up scanning things for us. If you so desire they will call one of the stockers to come up and open a regular checkstand as the needs of the business or the desire of the customer dictates it.

CVS and Target seem to always have coverage at the front of the store in addition to the self checkouts.

The real key is to hit stores early in the middle of the week when the tourists aren't around. We don't really have enough locals to pay for the big stores but the big time tourism business keeps them here.

 

And of those, as many areas of the country as I have visited. I have only seen the handicapped. I live in a community near Ft Bragg and Pope AFB so we have lots of military and lots of DMV license plates but no parking spots designated for those folks specifically.

Chose your minority group.....and politicians will pander to them.

And I've never seen a handicapped space violation enforced.

 

LOL. Of course, those bankers would love you to pay the minimum and carry the balance for the next millennium. I don't even look at the payment amount option on my card, they are all set with auto-pay full balance. In fact, I usually pay the balance in full before the monthly bill is generated so I carry a zero balance on the statement most of the time.

 

My parents once had a mortgage where the payment coupon for each month would include a choice of amounts to pay, and one was the 30-year amortizing rate, and one was less than that, and one only covered the interest, and if I remember right, one was less than that.

 

Monthly bill payment is things of the past for me. I don't get any bills (credit card or else) in the mail anymore. Everything is paid online. With the automatic payment option, I don't have to do anything, but checking the balance and clicking the payment takes only a few seconds of my time, so I usually make payment as soon as the credit card notification comes to my phone for the balance due notice that is usually before the monthly bill is generated.

 

Anybody been to parts.toyota.com today, newly redirected to autoparts.toyota.com ?

As far as I can tell, you can do keyword searches of parts. You can scroll directly through a list of all parts in the car, arbitrarily cut off after 2000 of them, on 200 pages of ten each. Or, you can get to one of six major divisions (body, electrical, engine-fuel, engine accessories, drive-chassis, interior styling). You need to use the hamburger menu, and then Parts. The autoparts.toyota.com web site does not know you want auto parts until you say Parts on the hamburger menu.

You can then scroll through all the parts in that division (if there aren't more than 2000 of them). If you click a part, you can see the diagrams on which it appears. I do not see any way you can independently find a diagram, or list the parts you see on that diagram. If anybody finds a way, please post.

In the Engine-Fuel division, there are supposedly 209 parts you can scroll through. There's also a Category drop-down at the left, where you can select a category like Camshaft & Valve (15). You will then see a list with the heading Camshaft & Valve at the top, that has gone back to listing the first 2000 of all parts in the car, instead of the 15 you expected in Camshaft & Valve. No, wait, these might be the first 2000 of all parts in all cars, because they mostly say "may not fit your selected vehicle", as if the site remembers which vehicle you selected to get in, but doesn't actually think it should be showing you parts for that vehicle.

If you do a keyword search for, say, Lifter, you'll get a link for a lifter, valve. You can click it and get one of the 35 different-size part numbers for a Gen 2 valve lifter. I don't see any way of finding the other 34. Apparently they figure if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all.

Just like that, I'm going to have to stop giving anybody help on finding parts around here (and I am guessing that probably every post I've ever made here with a parts.toyota diagram link is now, or soon will be, showing a broken-image icon). I might have to ditch the car and get one from a maker with a working parts site. This is that obscene of a botch.

 

oh yeah, this is bad!

I checked it out for myself, I described my own Prius and looked at the 6 sections- when I hit parts/interior styling, it matches to my car- finds 1 of 1 parts, a nut to hold the steering wheel on. Very stylish!

When I go to Parts/Electrical, I get a list of "exact fit" for my car. Seems legit.

But when I click on the Drive-Chassis (and other) categories I get 2000 "! May not fit your vehicle" warnings.

Adding: no hamburger menu for me, the "parts" link is available on every page. FWIW I'm using a desktop browser.

Also can't see any category selector to the left or anywhere.

 

The new site just went online a few hours ago. While it's trash right now, I'd hold off on making a permanent opinion until next Monday to give them a week to make sure their whole database is fully online.

But for venting, one of my Toyota dealerships just lost my patronage for good(they used to be my main one). I drove up to them to get the part numbers for the basic stuff for the gen5 because parts.toyota.com still didn't have anything. Answer: "We don't give out part numbers anymore for anything." Me: "Even though every part number is (eventually) available online through an official Toyota website?" Them: "Sorry, it's what my boss ordered us to say."

Well, if they don't want to do something simple like that, I guess I can go and find a dealership that isn't out to scam every last dime out of their victims-I-mean-customers. Which I did, and got all the part numbers I asked for and more.

 

I'm willing to give a body the benefit of doubt, but I doubt "oh, so they just went live first and planned to migrate the database later?" counts as much of a benefit.

I mean, this is not even some kind of OLTP workload where they can't move the final data over until the last of our sessions on the old system expire, or they might miss the last few of our user-submitted car parts. It's a static freakin' parts catalog!

But mostly I am venting about how many ways the new searching facilities are worse than the old ones. I am doubtful that putting more parts in the database will improve the app design.

 

Elements of it seem better. I'm finding it much easier to move between part diagrams than the old site. The overall layout also seems to be better once you adjust to it(let's be honest, the old site wasn't something to be proud of either). What I'm often seeing happen is poor results on the first attempt or a 404 error. If I try again or simply reload the page, I get something useful. That suggests there are errors in the system that they're working on. I've also been noticing it's been getting better over the last hour or so. While it's been a frustrating couple hours since I was trying to get an order in today, I'm getting the feeling this new version is going to be an improvement. I'm already moving through it faster than the old site, and I was pretty good on that one.

 

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