A Couple of Assorted Rants

I was at the grocery store today, one of the 2 in town, both of which are Kroger. Anyway, Kroger like every other damn grocery store has their own discount card. I have a strict policy of not bothering with those discount cards for several reasons. Most stores have cashiers who will use their own card if you don't have one, so it is not like I am losing out on savings. Today the original bill was like $24 and with the discount card it was $19. That is a pretty hefty bump in the prices if you don't use the discount card. I don't use them because everywhere I go is a different grocery and this is the first time I have lived some place that only has one chain of stores. I also hate to carry around the little card and don't want more crap in the mail. I could give out false information but I don't want to carry the card. What infuriates me is that if you don't use the card the store makes a lot more money on you. If you do use the card the store does still make a lot more money because they sell the data they collect. A couple of years ago when I was taking courses on data mining, the going rate for the checkout data was $10,000 per gigabyte. That is crazy, especially since the data is skewed.

My other rant is the reason I was at the grocery today. I am supposed to be in NO on Monday for work. I am interviewing some new people to run the test lab in NO. My boss approved of the schedule with my old boss last week, but he did not tell me until this morning. That would be after I asked him this morning if he had talked to my old boss. He said he had and he had written a note to talk to me about it but forgot it. A little while later I asked him when was the Delta Council meeting next week and he told me it was Tuesday morning.....that would be useful when you have me in NO for work on Monday. I guess that means a late night drive back from NO on Monday night. But it gets better, around 3:30 this afternoon my boss decides to tell me that a few weeks ago he made plans for a vendor to come visit he and I on Tuesday afternoon as well. This sort of information is useful....do not keep it to yourself! Because I will be out of town all weekend and not back until after 10:00 on Monday I had to get my grocery shopping out of the way for at least the early part of next week.....ARGH!

Thesis update: Working page 51 this afternoon. This section is nanocomposite nonwoven formation......oh boy!