arghyle

I really like FreshDirect. It, as you probably know, is a grocery delivery service in NYC. They have a nice web site, a huge selection, and very good food. I find that shopping through them saves me some money and, more importantly, a lot of time.

For the most part the service is incredibly good at getting you want you ordered. Considering that a $100 grocery order could easily have over 30 items from a number of different departments, it’s impressive that FreshDirect is as accurate as they are. In fact in my last 20 (or so) orders I can only recall two problems. Both of these were a single missing item. FD makes it very easy to go to their site and report the problem. On each occasion I got a response in well under and hour and was credited for the item that same day. The customer service, in my experience, is fantastic.

Last week my order was missing a pomegranate. I ordered three and received two. Disappointing, but the site was running a two-for-$5 deal so I would expect that the vast majority of people were ordering two and my request for a third was easy to overlook. Anyway I reported the issue and it was resolved in hours. Or was it?

I got back my purchase price of $2.50, seemingly fair compensation as that is what I paid for the piece of fruit. But upon further reflection, I’m not so sure. Here is a run-down of a reimbursement model that is more comprehensive than FreshDirect’s 1:1 system. It assumes that I needed that item and now have to get one locally.

• Item in question: $2.50
• Difference in price from at a local grocer: $0.50
• Transportation to and from local grocer, including shopping/checkout time: $3.00
• Time spend emailing Fresh Direct, looking through empty boxes again, etc.: $0.25
• Pain and suffering: n/a
• Total: $6.25

So while I very much appreciate FreshDirect’s commitment to customer service and the shipment of accurate orders, I think there are different ways to look at their reimbursement system. What on the surface seems very fair gets complicated upon further inspection. That missing pomegranate doesn’t just leave me without a piece of fruit. And that $2.50 completely fails to take into account the underlying value of FreshDirect’s deliver system and their above-average quality produce. In fact it could be said that FreshDirect is implicitly putting themselves at the same level as any Manhattan grocery–that is to say at the sorry state of a D’Agostino’s or Food Emporium.

But is $6.25 a fair price for them to pay me for a pomegranate? After all, most people wouldn’t consider buying one, even this king of fruit, at anything near that price. It might seem like it harshly penalizes FD for an innocent, infrequent, and inevitable error. That may not be completely untrue, but the fact remains that I have to spend a significant amount of time to right the situation and that $3.00 figure is a very conservative time given how much I value my time after work. Even if I was going to my local grocery for another reason (and why would I after ordering from Fresh Direct?) I would still have to bare the burden of the price discrepancy between Fresh Direct and Whole Foods (another purveyor of POM brand pomegranates). The other sums (time spent emailing and searching through boxes) might seem trifling, but the point is that a missing pomegranate is more than just a piece of fruit.

Let’s get this out of the way–I work on the internet and I consider myself a power user. I make no claims as to the efficiency of my methods, they are just what works for me.

A problem that has been plaguing me for some time now is running Firefox with multiple tabs open. Given my workload and the number of ideas floating around in my head this may range anywhere from 20-90 tabs… it’s not something I’m proud of but it’s just how things turn out. To me tabs are a staging area for work, a To Do list, a To Read list, and an account of what I’m interested in on a given day. I don’t really like bookmarks–I’ve basically given up on Del.icio.us and while I do still drag bookmarks to my desktop they tend to accumulate into a huge mess, finding their way into folders which are dropped in other folders as the pile grows.

This shouldn’t be a problem since I am good about taking the time to manage and cull my tabs. It’s just that when I get to busy to address some of them the number of open ones opens. So if I don’t have the time to do some reading then the stack grows. My problem happens when Firefox crashes, something that has been occurring more and more lately.

I used to think it was my old computer, but about a year ago I upgraded to a quad-core system with 4GB of RAM. It runs Windows Vista, but is otherwise a very capable machine. Quad-core, 4GB, 10K RPM hard drive, P45 chipset… should be able to handle a few webpages right? Not exactly.

For me crashes happen every day, multiple times a day, but only in Firefox (3.5.3), my main browser. I also run Google Chrome, which practically never crashes and is also open all the time (though rarely with more than 8 tabs). The problem with crashing with 80 tabs open, aside from the frustration, is that it takes at least 5 minutes to get everything loaded again, sometimes more, during which all my system’s network bandwidth is being consumed by the browser. Sessions are logged out and occasionally work is lost.

The question I have is why? It’s not the computer, even if Firefox is eating up 25% of the processor and 1GB of RAM, it’s not that bad. It could be my OS, it could be Firefox. Or maybe a combination of the two. It’s very hard to say.

I have examined my browser extensions, which can be a major source of instability. The active ones include: FireFTP, MenuEditor, Session Manager, and Tabs Mix Plus, all of which are up-to-date. I’ve removed a few that I found to impact stability (including Google Gears), but the crashes have continued. And they are rarely violent, surprising crashes, instead Firefox just seems to slow down, blip in and out, and then die. I get the crash manager, and then I can restore my session, and in a few minutes I’m back.

So far I have just figured that Firefox is the issue. The browser has had memory leakage issues in the past and it seems like they continue in one form or another. Running all those pages, include most of which has some sort of Flash and rich media on them, just takes a toll, the performance degrades, and a restart is needed, just like with a Windows computer after a week or two. This isn’t exactly scientific but it seems to sums things up.

I need to investigate running my workload on Ubuntu and OS X, so I can see if the OS is the issue. If not, then I’ll know it’s Firefox. Or maybe today’s computer just can’t run 80 tabs at once consistently and I need to wait for some sort of future technology, a neural net processor or something like that.

Got any fixes or ideas? Post them below.

A cat, named Minnie, which I am rather allergic too.

Netflix description:

Nineteen-year-old Johnny (Vincent Spano) is a charismatic but ruthless gangster, running the mob’s drug trade in Alphabet City — New York’s toughest neighborhood, on the lower East Side of Manhattan.

(oh wait, there’s more)

But when Johnny’s bosses order him to torch the building where both his mother and sister live, Johnny refuses. Now a marked man, he must find a way to protect his family and get out of Alphabet City before the mob takes him out … for good!

Brilliant.

After using Google’s Picasa for a while, I’ve decided to (finally) start using Flickr. I’ve loved the site since day one, but I haven’t used it much for sharing photos. I’ve preferred Picasa’s integration into my Google contacts for very selective photosharing, and while that is still the case Flickr is just too good not to use. It’s great for photos that are OK for public consumption (like cat photos) where I think Picasa is still the way to go for more private stuff (family gatherings, etc) just because so few people that I share images with are on Flickr while many of them have Gmail accounts. I’m still avoiding putting too many images on Facebook, because I (like most people) have too many non-friend contacts to make it a good place for photosharing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/salcangeloso/

Ping me if you know me. (Good litmus test–do you have my phone number).

btw- That is my gf’s new cat. Most of my Flickr photos at the moment are of her (the cat).

Sorry for the lack of activity around here. I’ve been really busy at work and Geek.com has really been getting a huge chunk of my attention. I’ve also noticed that my RSS burden has been increased over the last few months rather significantly, so I’m reading a lot more online which is great, but also very time consuming. It’s time for some optimization there.

I have been trying to get outside, away from the computer, more as well. It’s a struggle, but it seems prudent, especially given the season.

View the fruits of my labor:

http://friendfeed.com/salcan?format=atom

http://www.geek.com/users/SalCan/

Here it is- a tour of NYC’s finest coffee establishments. No it’s not by me (I wish I had the patience to collect my thoughts on the matter) but I just stumbled on a great virtual tour collected over at Man Seeking Coffee. In this case, I’m just the curator.

I’ll be reading through most of his blog this week, and I thought some of the posts were too good not too link to. Additionally I’ve been meaning to put something together along these lines,  and these select posts do the jobs nicely. It’s also interesting that these articles are from a non-New York’s perspective so he doesn’t have the issues that locals might encounter (favoring places within walking distance of your apartment/place of work, preferring certain baristas, skipping certain locations because you don’t hang out in that area, etc). Finally, I agree with a lot of what he has to say, otherwise I would just make my own list without the links…

MSC’s reviews of my favorite spots:

• Abraço Espresso – Amazing place. My go-to place for espresso and pour-over drip coffee. Also has good food and cortados. As MSC points out, it’s small and often very busy.
• Gimme Coffee – I’m a big fan of the Mott Street location. My favorite spot in Soho/NoLiTa.
• Ninth Street Espresso – Their cafe at 9th and C was the first coffee place in NYC that I really loved. They’ve expanded since then, but they still do a great job.
• Cafe Grumpy – I haven’t been to the Brooklyn location yet, but the one in Chelsea is excellent. Definitely the best in the neighborhood.

MSC’s reviews of Sal-approved spots (all are good-to-very good):

• La Colombe (Church Street) – A nice spot, though a bit out of the way. A good place to stop for a macchiato. They have a new Soho location though, so I probably won’t make it down here too much any more.
• Kaffe 1668 – An up-and-coming spot that I’ve been to only a few times. Has potential to be one of NYC’s best, despite the less-than-ideal location. They have WiFi, two Clovers, and two beautiful Synesso Cyncra espresso machines.
• Joe the Art of Coffee – I like the Waverly location, though it’s insane on the weekends. Always has top-notch pastries.

MSC’s reviews of solid NYC spots not my picks though (OK-to-good places that I like, but won’t go out of my way to stop at):

• Think Coffee – A good spot, but it tends to be overrated. The Mercer street location is deep in the heart of NYU.
• Everyman Espresso – An awkward space, but the espresso is pretty good.
• Mudd Coffee – Good stuff, but not my favorite. The truck can be very convenient if you are in the area.

Notable, and could be very good, but I need to research more:

• Grey Dog
• Jack’s Stir Brew
• OST Cafe
• Blue Spoon – New and not open on Sundays. I’m thinking it will be good, but no Kaffe 1668.
• National Cafe and Espresso Bar – just opened on Rivington next to Freeman’s Alley. I went once and had a great time. Barista is super cool and the espressos were solid.
• El Beit
• Simon Sips – I’ve only been once, but I had a good experience. I got a deal on some Counter Culture coffee beans too.

Ones MSC skipped that come to mind (I am sure that I’m leaving some out). Not particularly notable:

• Aroma Coffee -  on Houston St.
• Porto Rico Roasters in Essex Street Market
• Oren’s
• Bean’s – in the East Village