Pure Twaddle

I lie in bed awake unable to sleep,
and in my conscience deep,
I dream of Montana and hitch-hiking,
out West with a pair of skis,
forming creases on my shoulder while
the snow digs deeper into my psyche
Yes, I am ready for you
Thou urge to flee what feels so comfortable
And what again bothers me

Popularity: 5% [?]

A thought process which occurred to me in the sixth hour of data-entry at my temp job:

1. Wouldn’t a book called Meditations On Data Entry by Tai Ping be hilarious?
2. Wouldn’t another book called How to File by Al Fibette be even funnier?
3. I’m on a role. How about Preparing Printed Works by Cole Aiting?
4. I could make millions off of this series of office-related humour bo…
5. Damn; hit enter instead of tab-enter. Have to redo that entry.
6. Jesus, I need to get out of here.

But I’ve got a job!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Wired has a good article and video on Zappo’s new inventory management system, which is completely automated by networked Roomba-robots from Kiva Systems. This seems to be the future for modern mail-order retail as errors, theft, and accidents are reduced to nearly zero. It’s even self-sorting! Certainly a cool system for industrial organization geeks.

I just wish the popular online t-shirt company (which rhymes with Bread-mess) I worked at this summer had a similar system. Their warehouse work-flow went as follows (all done manually):

1. Receive pallets at warehouse 1
2. Disassemble pallets into boxes
3. Open boxes to check style and size.
4. Reseal boxes
5. Sort boxes by style and size
6. Move boxes one block away to warehouse 2 by van
7. Resort boxes by style and size again
8. Place boxes on the shelves
9. Remove boxes from shelves
10. Open boxes and put shirts on shelves
11. GOTO 1

All the robots in the world couldn’t help this system, which tended to collapse under heavy workloads.
—-
Update 01/29: Here’s the video

Popularity: 19% [?]