Stop & Shop Scanners

Last month, Stop and Shop introduced scanners in 100 of its stores, including the one in our very own New Paltz. I was surprised to find how easy they are to operate. I'm no slouch when it comes to electronics, but I still defer to Shirra when it comes to hooking up the DVD player or getting the computer to interface with our external hard-drive. So if I can get a scanner to work, anyone can.

Scanners save you time because you don't have to wait in line for a cashier. You simply scan an item and put in in your bag. Oh yeah -- make sure to have some shopping bags with you, or else you're just a doofus who likes to waste time and plastic.

Anyway, once you've finished shopping, you simply scan a barcode reader at the self-check-out lane and pay. Voila! You're done. And so far, I've had almost no trouble with the scanners, and everyone I've spoken with has praised them to the sky.

Some people have a complaint about them, however: the cashiers. I spoke last week with one of the more experienced associates, and she told me that she's afraid that scanners are going to take jobs away. She lamented the fate of high school seniors, moms with empty nests, and other people who need an entry-level job. It might only pay a smidge over the minimum wage, but a job at S&S still gives a person health benefits, work experience, and a few bucks towards the rent.

Some shoppers refuse to use the scanners out of a sense of loyalty to their fellow workers. I'm hoping that the company finds an alternate use for its employees. Maybe they could use workers to increase the paltry number of floor walkers, resulting in a better shopping experience that would enrich S&S over its cross-street rival, Shoprite.

53rd Biggest Loser on the Planet

As of this afternoon, I am now the 53rd biggest loser alive. I owe it all to online Boggle for the iPhone.

My brother's great friend Dave showed me a fun app on his iTouch called Wurdle, but after a few weeks, I got tired of it. The funny thing is, it's a much better application than the one I play these days. Wurdle's interface is huge, it uses the up-to-date Scrabble dictionary that I'm familiar with, and it has other niceties that make the game more fun, including better sound effects. Most of all, it doesn't always give you great sets of letters, so sometimes you have to struggle to score a few points.

Shake & Spell, on the other hand, has a tiny interface (I try to come up for air now and then so that I don't damage my surgically enhanced eyes). It uses the most-recent-but-one dictionary, so there are plenty of 'words' that I know from the new Scrabble update, like ZAS, that aren't allowed. But worst of all, it constantly creates blocks of the same common letters: E A T. This means that in about 8 games out of 10, you have to type the same tiny, annoying words. How many times have made these words? ETA EAT TAE TEA ATE ....


The only thing in S&S's favor, really, is that it hooks you up with other live players. Games generally take place with people playing the same board a few minutes apart (if not a few hours or days apart). If you keep enough games going at once, you can almost always turn on your machine to see a few games waiting for you. And with the most recent update, you can add friends and request games with a small group of people that you've come to trust.

Cheating abounds. Until they fix a few things, the game makes it easy for people to generate high scores using online Boggle solvers. But it's easy to recognize the cheaters and to avoid them.

When I first joined S&S, I noticed that there are thousands of players. You immediately get a ranking based on the points you score, and you mainly score by accruing points gained over opponents. If you win 200-199, you get a point. So after a few days, I found that I was ranked about 2500th overall. A few weeks later, I broke into the top 1000. I began to wonder about those people with really high scores. Do they have a life? Since most games are 3 rounds, if they have a win-loss total of 600-400, their winning percentage isn't too high (60%), but they've played 1000 games averaging about 3 minutes; they've spent 50 hours playing Boggle! That's over two full days!

At some point, you cross a line. It's one thing to play a few games now and then. It's another to play really well. But it's entirely different if you play all the time. And it's not like you can do a lot of other things while playing Boggle on a two inch interface. I think I'd rather see a drunk driver than encounter someone driving under the influence of Boggle. You can't brush your teeth while boggling. You can't read. You can't chat on the phone. You can't really do anything except ignore your favorite TV shows.

When I broke into the top 100, I started paying close attention to the time I'd spent on the game. It's getting out of control. And now I'm rated number 53 and gaining fast. My winning percentage is 82.4%. And I'm the 53rd biggest loser on the planet.

Bad Smells

Even I knew that living in the country meant living with a septic tank. Ours is buried in the ground several hundred feet from the house, creating a plateau that might one day allow for a small ice skating rink.

What I didn't know is that having a septic tank involves taking care of a septic tank. In the same way that elementary-schoolers think that hamburgers come from, uh, the supermarket, I sort of assumed that septic tanks took care of themselves and didn't involve participation on my part. Luckily, having a water-treatment facility in the country is a lot easier than having to slaughter your own food, but there is some work involved. OK, it only involves flushing some powder down your toilet twice a year, but still... What I now know and will never forget is the smell of that powder.



It comes in a happy box that seems to radiate health and the great outdoors. Shirra remembered last night that we'd missed our moment to take care of the tank back in January. It was that time of year again. It's easy to remember, since we only have to take care of it on July 1 and then on the first of the year. It's just that we'd never stayed home afterwards.

The directions on the box are pretty simple:

1. Pour contents into toilet.
2. Flush.




There should be two other steps:

3. Hold nose.
4. Stay out of house for 4 hours.

So last night we went to bed with the entire house smelling like a latrine. Happy New Year.

Crunching Sane Hash: Church Shenanigans

How could a person resist?

Before .................................................................................................. After