Our Geek Life

Martin’s Food’s E-Suite Doesn’t Get It

Posted by shegeek at February 18th, 2010 | 6 Comments »

Acting Corporately, Not Locally

One of the most important things in business is knowing your customer. If you don’t know your customer, you can’t possibly meet your customer’s needs and expectations. And if you’re new to the market, it’s even more important to study that market before you dive in head first. Unless of course you’re Martin’s Food Markets.

Richmond, Virginia is what I would call the biggest small town you’ll ever encounter. We are used to things being the way they are and we don’t like changes much. The announcement of the sale of Ukrop’s to Martin’s Food Markets, which is part of Netherlands-based Royal Ahold NV, brought on what has been characterized as the “Ukropalypse” by locals.  While some folks seem lukewarm about the change or simply don’t care, others have mourned the loss of yet another Richmond business being sold.  Concerns have been voiced about the Ukrop’s involvement in the local community.  Initially those concerns were allayed by Bobby Ukrop’s statement that the family would remain involved locally.  Unfortunately, the Ukrop’s can’t guarantee that the stores will remain supportive.

This week, at a time when the Girl Scouts have already placed their orders for cookies, Martin’s advised that the Girl Scouts were no longer allowed to sell cookies in front of the stores which still carry the Ukrop’s name.  It has been reported that up to half of the sales of Girl Scout cookies in this area are made from those store locations.  The troops can’t cancel the orders.  But the chain has said, “Oh sorry. It’s against our long-standing corporate policy to allow sidewalk booths.” (more…)

The Year of Addition by Subtraction

Posted by shegeek at January 2nd, 2010 | No Comments »

Resolutions-schmezalutions

I do not believe in New Year’s resolutions. I haven’t had any for as long as I can remember. This year is no different.

Resolutions usually fail because people think they need something major like a new year in order to make changes in their lives.  If you aren’t resolved and committed to the change it doesn’t matter that it’s a new year. You will likely fail.  I also believe that incremental changes are often the best way to make changes. You just sort of sneak in the changes over time so that you don’t realize you’re changing and don’t fight the changes.

As far as the Geek Household, we are always adjusting and tweaking things on our gadgets, our computers, our vehicles and even in our lives.  We periodically stop and take a look around at the landscape and say, “Hey, Hon, don’t you think this would look better over here?”  We view our lives as iterative and we are always working to make our lives better.
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That would be 2011. Seriously.

Posted by shegeek at December 31st, 2009 | No Comments »

So let’s get this out of the way.

A decade is ten years.  So any ten consecutive years can be a decade. This makes the decade known as the 80’s possible. W00T!

But when we’re talking about decades in terms of the calendar, we need to start with this one simple fact: There was 1 BC and 1 AD, but there never was a year 0 in between the two.  The decades in terms of the calendar era (the year numbering system used on the calendar) began in 1 AD and (wait for it) ran until 10 AD.  The second decade began in 11 AD and ran until 20 AD.  And so on and so on and…

So if you’ve done the simple math any 1st grader could manage you realized very quickly that all this bruhaha on every show on television right now about 2009 being the end of the decade is pure idiocy.  Seriously.  Some math-challenged individuals saw fit to call 2009 the end of the decade because they were short of material or needed ratings or needed to find some sort of significance to another day passing by that is arbitrarily the end of a duration of time known as the calendar year.  It irritated the hell out of me in 1999 when everyone was calling 200o the beginning of the new millennium. Um, no. The new millennium started in 2001.

Ten years later I was suffering through broadcast after broadcast full of blabbering about the end of the decade when I saw this from Martin Polley:

Aha! So I’m not alone!

But we’re right. Seriously.  You do the math.