This Article

I agree that there are better ways to run your company, and after working for blockbuster and being both and instore and online customer I would know.

But, I completely disagree that everything mentioned in the article is Blockbusters fault.

First and foremost, they get anywhere from 10 - 200 of any given movie in the middle of the week.  The number of actual movies that they receive at a store is based on statistical analysis of how well the movie did in the theater, if it went to the theater, and how well a specific store rents out all of their movies.  The last thing that Blockbuster does is take a guess, based on averages, as to how long people will keep a movie past the date it is due.

All of the math and the analysis that is done cannot combat the stupidity and unreliability of the average American.  Basically what I am saying, is that when you rent a movie and you don’t return it on time it screws the next guy who wants to rent that movie.  Not only that, but if you are going into Blockbuster after 7:00pm on a Friday or Saturday night, and expect to see a new release movie on the wall, I’m sorry but you’re not going to find it.  There have literally been anywhere from 50 - 300 people in the store from the time it opened until you got there.  Not only that, but the movie has been on the wall since the middle of the week, if you wanted it that bad you should have gone in on Thursday.

The long lines are another thing.  Partly, they are due to the fact that people steal.  People will steal anything they can get away with.  The rule is, if it isn’t bolted to the floor, or over 150lbs it will probably find a way to just walk out the door.  So, in order to not loose millions of dollars due to stolen inventory, blockbuster locks up their movies in order to make them harder to steal.  It takes a while to remove the movies from these cases.

Part of the long line problem is also the upsell.  Employees are instructed to upsell everything from food, drinks, more movies, and rewards subscriptions.  The reason? Because renting movies is not profitable like you would imagine.  Blockbuster historically has had to spend more per movie to get them early from the studios so that they can have them available on the release date for you.  Not only that, but Blockbuster is a for-profit company which requires profitable sales to make money.

Part of the long line problem is also you, the customer.  You know what you are going to need when you get to the front of the line. You will need your movies, your rental card, your ID, and your money.  This isn’t hard.  You just spent a half hour or more browsing movies thinking about which one you want to watch.  Think a step ahead, get your shit together and have it ready. You can literally speed the line up all by yourself.

I don’t work there anymore, I did during highschool.  I also don’t usually go there anymore, and I don’t use their online services either.  i just find it extremely frustrating when stupid people make stupid comments about things they have no idea about.  If you are angry about something, post about, talk about, and share your experience.  YOUR EXPERIENCE, do not assume that you know what is going on, and that you have all the facts unless you too have EXPERIENCED it from both sides.  I will also add, it has been years, things have changed, but the power of human stupidity, conceitedness, and short tempers all mixed together will astound every time.

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I have created a way to search Craig’s List by the thing you are looking for, your zip code and the distance you are willing to travel.

The search will return the top 25 items from the craig’s list areas within your search distance.

http://craigs.treadlite.com

Enjoy!

P.S. I will be supporting the search from here, so please post a comment here if you have one.

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How to Use This Plugin

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

I wanted to show you how to set up your conf.ini file so that you can have the fields you need for your wordpress blog’s write page.

Note: Titles should not have spaces in them.

Radio/Checkbox/Select:

[ItemTitle]

type: {either use “radio”, “select”, or “checkbox”}

value: Yes#No#Maybe#Sometimes#Jumping Dolphins <–separate multiple items with the # sign

default: Jumping Dolphins <–This must be spelled the same as the one above that you want defaulted

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

Textfield:

[ItemTitle]

type: textfield

value: Thanks for all the fish

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

TextArea:

[ItemTitle]

type: textarea

value: text text text, more text

description: Type the description of the custom field here.

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

Updates

I have talked previously about the rc_custom_field_gui plugin and how I modified it to fit the WordPress write page styles, and I added a few other features to it. I posted on the original author’s plugin page about the changes that I made to his plugin, and at last check he had not responded.

I have now updated it again.

Previously, if you made an element that had a value or default of “Yes” or “No” it would not work, because PHP’s parse_ini_file function will parse those as 1&0, respectively. This is good when you are using this as an actual ini file, but this is a sort of hack, so we need to figure something out.

Now, just enter your yes/no values as ‘yes’ or ‘no’ with the quotes. The parse_ini_file function will ignore them as yes/no and the plugin will strip the quotes out, and use the text.

Note: You can use any capitalization of the letters in the words ‘yes’ or ‘no’, it will take care of any of them.

Other updates:

I standardized where the descriptions show, which is under the field element for which they are defined.

I made the checkbox a loop like the radio elements, so now you enter them exactly the same as radio and select elements.

Compatible with WordPress 2.2.3!!

Custom Fields Plugin for Wordpress

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I’m an idiot.

I am working on a project doing some work with latitudes and longitudes, and finding the distances between them. I had a dump from somewhere of all the zip codes in the country with all the city names, etc.

So I hooked up with the Google geolocater service and started hitting their server with requests, to return the lat and long.

I hit it with 50,000 + requests, and they shut me out. Unfortunatly this won’t work, as I need to get the project done. So I started looking through the tubes (the internet is series of tubes you know) and right after I pass a goomba, I find this place…

Its called sourceforge. You have heard of it. Even if you dont realize it. They have everything. Apparently, they have the thing I was trying to create too. I should have known.

The moral is: “If you need all the zip codes, all the cities, and their latitudes and longitudes go here“;

All the latitudes and longitudes you need

Also if you are importing it into mysql, and don’t want to fight the importer of your choice you can download the file: zipssql.zip

It has the sql for creating the table, and inserting all the data, as well as indexing.

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It’s my birthday. Just thought I would share!

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