August 2008

Ikea: Better than bricks and boards?

August 31, 2008

Yesterday intrepid shopper VickyC led the wayon a half-day safari through Ikea. What an experience! The place, which occupies a large chunk of a large retail campus full of warehouse-size furniture stores perched on the banks of a gigantic freeway running through a vastsuburban plain of look-alike tract houses, was just jammed. So crowded was [...]

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The limits of automatic bill-paying

August 30, 2008

In this morning’s New York Times, Ron Lieber reconsiders an earlier rave he wrote for “Your Money” about automating every penny you pay out. He notes that some people are wary of allowing business entities access to their checking accounts, largely out of concern over potentially costly errors. Others, he reports, have run into serious [...]

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Wow! Major storm hits lovely uptown Phoenix

August 29, 2008

Power is still out for tens of thousands of Phoenix residents. Just now, at 10:30 in the morning, it’s only 92 degrees on my back patio, but humidity is said to be 61 percent. So, I account myself extremely lucky that here the power was down for only an hour or so, and even more [...]

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25 strategies for more affordable living

August 29, 2008

The rumination on ways to maximize Social Security income — and even use early start-up payments as an interest-free loan from the government — led me to consider how I might stay in my home after I retire. The house a little expensive to operate, it’s probably too large for one person, and the neighborhood [...]

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A tiger of a storm

August 29, 2008

Wow! What a storm! I’m writing this on my laptop, since it’s not connected to a power outlet. Internet connection is down. Half the TV and radio stations are off the air: Channels 15, 12, 10, and 8, as far as I can tell, plus NPR and most of the stations on the lower end [...]

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“We Value Your Business”: Reaching a person at a company that doesn’t want to be reached

August 28, 2008

As we saw in yesterday’s encounter with Qwest, many companies—often those with a vested interest in customer service—do not want to deal with the unwashed masses with whom they are forced to do business. They make it as difficult as possible to reach a human being, because they don’t care about their customers and do [...]

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