Friday, October 10, 2008

Regarding yesterday's rant about the problem with meatspace clothing stores, I remembered one more thing they need to do: admit that sizes don't mean much of anything anymore. Serious clothes shoppers know that sizes vary widely, sometimes even within the same store and sometimes even within the same clothing line. If clothing retailers want to increase satisfaction they need to start telling people more exactly what they're getting in terms of size. For example, when I buy a short-sleeved shirt such as a polo shirt, I measure a minimum of 3 dimensions to determine if it's going to come close to fitting me. When I buy a dress shirt, I measure a minimum of 6 dimensions. This is hard for clothing vendors to provide in meatspace because there isn't enough room on the tag, but clothing stores have been pushing me to the web anyhow, right? Once I get to their store on the web, I expect to see things they can't offer me in meatspace but which are possible or easy on the web, such as shop-by-size and multiple measurements per item that mean more to me than XS, S, M, etc. American Apparel is a good example of a vendor that provides more measurements online (they provide chest and waist measurements for shirts), but they don't go far enough. Of course accurate measurements requires consistency in production, but I feel that they need that no matter what if they're going to keep their customers. The world's problem of clothes not fitting properly is due to (a) a lack of data, (b) a lack of inexpensive customization options, and (c) a lack of education—teaching people what it means for clothes to fit properly (yes, male generations that followed mine, I'm looking primarily at you). (a) can be solved simply by gathering and distributing the data. (b) can perhaps be solved by exploiting—I mean using—inexpensive labor in Asia. I'm not sure if (c) can be solved.—Mozy still hasn't resolved the problem I reported on September 29. They gave me a few things to try and I tried them but they still didn't fix the problem. We've been going back and forth since then. This is the longest I think it has taken them to resolve an issue—11 days now and counting. Right now I'm waiting for their Mac developer (only 1?) to investigate the bug they found using my logfiles. I think I've said in the past that people need to have more than one backup solution simply because no single backup solution is completely infallible. Here's my proof. I currently use Mozy for offsite and Time Machine for onsite. So my Mozy backup is down right now, but Time Machine is still working. With VMware 2.0, I now also have AutoProtect enabled, which regularly takes snapshots of my Vista VM—an additional layer of protection for those VMs. CTS survey review. Helped student VD with how to send messages to all students. Helped student JY with Apple Mail configuration, Entourage configuration, iPod Touch wireless configuration. It took a long time because there are old instructions for Apple Mail and Entourage setup online and I happened to find the old instructions rather than the new ones. Scanned childhood photos for Joel. Web updates: board of advisors for Sue A, class profile for Scott E. Very late lunch: salmon burger, fries from the cafeteria. Used—to the penny --the remainder of my prepay card balance—weird! Content capture and delivery working team work. Chatted with students KS and PF on the bus ride home. Dinner at home with Patrick: Chinese food delivery from a place new to us. It took 90 minutes and didn't taste all that great. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 16 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Edited photos. Backpopulated some journal entries. I'll be all caught up in a day or so.