Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Yesterday was Amazon Prime Day. Time to get my shopping on, right? Here's the main thing I bought:



They were on sale so I bought two. Woohoo, Amazon Prime Day!

A few months ago someone left a pair of pool noodles in our HOA's swimming pool. Y'know, pool noodles, those tube-shaped foam floats that are 4-5 feet long and a few inches in diameter. I don't know about others using the pool, but Hawk and I have certainly enjoyed grabbing a noodle to float around after exercising in the water during our many afternoons in the pool this summer.

The floats are wearing out, though. One noodle has broken into two pieces, and with both of them the closed cell foam is starting to degrade so that they don't float as well anymore. We figured we'd do a solid for the community and buy a few new noodles ourselves to leave out for everyone's enjoyment.

That brings me to the second half of the title of this post. There have been lots of funny pictures/stories on social media lately of people being scammed by buying miniature versions of things online. Like, a woman buys a skirt, cheap, and what arrives barely fits on her cat. Or buys a desk, cheap, and what arrives is a dollhouse-sized desk only a few inches across.

"Always check the size first," I chuckle to myself every time, "And don't believe a price that's too good to be true."

Now with that context I'll bet you can guess what happened next...



Yup, Hawk ordered a set of pool noodles at a fantastic price. It was, like, $6 for a set of 6. I thought they'd cost about $5 apiece. What a bargain! And what arrived were... pool noodles that are only 1 foot long instead of the 4-5 foot size we'd expected. These pool noodles are the length of... actual noodles! I've bought boxes of lasagna noodles bigger than this. 🤣

The good news is that these should be easy to return, since we bought them on Amazon. I still wonder, though... why does this product even exist? I can't think of why anyone would want pool noodles— and they are specifically labeled as pool noodles— this small. They're not useful for anything. I wonder if they're sold primarily to scam un-careful shoppers? Though that doesn't make much sense as long as returns are cheap and easy for the buyer.

Update: It turns out the noodles are NOT returnable. THAT is how this scammer makes money!

Yesterday afternoon I ordered an item on Amazon. Fast shipping with a delivery date/time this morning was offered for free through Prime. As there seemed to be no point to waiting longer, and in some cases literally paying to wait longer, I took the free-fast delivery. Indeed the package arrived at my doorstep this morning at 8am... just 14 hours after I completed the order last night.

This leaves me wondering why. Why did Amazon offer such fast shipping on this item?

I know that likely a big part of the answer is not "why" by how. How it got here fast is apparently that it came from nearby. The shipping records don't indicate where the Amazon warehouse was, but an email notification at 2:27am said that it had left the warehouse, and a shipping record timestamp at 4:51am said it had arrived at the carrier's facility ~10 miles away from me.

But still, there seems to have been some intentionality on Amazon's part to expediting this shipping. Nearly everything I've gotten delivered by Amazon (I mean specifically via their in-house delivery service) for the past several years has arrived between 6-8pm. Basically we're near the end of the drivers' route. But this time the delivery left the carrier facility at 6:33am— which is about when 8pm arrivals go out on a truck, too— and landed on my doorstep at 8am. Apparently this order was given priority.

This wasn't a big order, BTW. It wasn't like, "Oooh, this guy's buying thousands of dollars of stuff, let's treat him right!" I ordered a small item that cost under $30 all-in. And ironically I didn't even care if this one came fast. It's a consumable item I use regularly. I ordered the refill 2-3 weeks before my current supply runs out— because, in the past, it's occasionally taken 7-10 days to ship. Except this time, when I was in no rush, it's like Amazon moved heaven and earth to deliver in 14 hours.

Hawk and I have bought a new bed mattress. Our old one, really not even that old at just over 8 years now, developed a sag in one side and needed to be replaced.

First store: Good mattress, but it's $3,000

We began our mattress shopping on a whim. The weekend before last we were out getting lunch on Sunday (this is after coming home Saturday night from our aborted Bassi Falls trip) and said, "Hey, there's a mattress store across the street, let's stop there and look around." We stopped in, and with the help of a reasonably knowledge store manager immediately picked a short-list of mattresses to try. All were at least close to what we wanted. One, a particular Stearns & Foster model, was on the money. Speaking of money, there was good news and bad news. Good news: it wasn't the most expensive mattress in the store. Bad news: it was still $3,000 for queen size.

Checking online: Seemingly credible options from $600

During the week I spent a bit of time shopping online. On Amazon I found seemingly credible options from $600. That's obviously way cheaper than $3000. The thing is we can afford $3k if that's what it takes for the right mattress, but the $2,400 difference is real money to us. We're not that well off! Moreover, when there's a 5-to-1 price range even after crossing off the cheapest and priciest products it demands careful shopping to understand what differences lie beneath such disparate prices.

I scoured through product listings on Amazon and cross-referenced them with manufacturers' sites and third-party reviews sites. The first difference I found was, basically, foam mattresses vs. coil or coil-and-foam hybrid mattresses. We knew from trying a foam mattress at the first store that we both hate their feel. Alas, they are less expensive. But knowing they're also the wrong thing for us made it easier to cross off the cheapest products.

The next thing I checked was the price of name-brand mattresses online. Are brick-and-mortar stores like the one we visited gouging with huge markups? Actually they're not. The big name manufacturers regulate the pricing so you see the same price online as in stores.

That still left a bunch of lesser-known brands of coil based mattresses priced well below $3,000, like half or less. The challenge there is that we're both sensitive enough to what we need in a mattress that we're unwilling to buy without testing it first. So back to other brick-and-mortar shops we went.

Second store: Similar mattresses, snotty salesguy

This past Saturday we tried another local store after lunch. There are basically 2 chains that run basically all the standalone mattress stores nowadays. We went to the one that's not the one we checked the previous weekend. For being a different brand store, the selection was pretty similar. That kind of makes sense as most of their selection is the same handful of big-name brands. Pricing was the same.

We were more serious about buying a mattress on Saturday than the weekend before— we decided we would "Buy It Now" for the right product at a fair price— so we asked more questions of the salesguy who helped us. At first he was helpful, then he seemed to be avoiding us, then he started negging us. Negging, as in giving snide or critical answers to reasonable questions we asked, clearly implying with his words and intonation that we were foolish for asking.

Fuck. That. Shit.

We left.

Third Store's a Charm!

Having effectively visited dozens of area mattress stores by sampling one each of the two chains I next looked for independent stores. I found one 5 miles away, so we went there next. It had lesser-known brand name mattresses at lower prices. But they were on display so we could test them. We found one that provided all the firm support we need in a mattress, at a price less than half the $3k mattress we liked at the first store. And, the store owner who helped us was knowledgeable and patient with answering all of our questions. We not only bought a mattress from him but started eyeing a replacement bed frame and a new dining room set, too!

Last weekend when I was searching for replacement parts for my electric shaver I found an interesting alternative to replacing some of the bits: a whole new shaver for $20! That was less than half the $47 for the replacement bits, let alone the $125 cost of buying a whole new shaver in a 12 year old design. (The more modern ones cost even more.) And, to boot, this shaver is small, a good size for travel.



How small is small? Well, you can see it above in my hand. It's, like, barely 3 inches tall and less than 3/4 inch thick. It's not just American small, it's Japanese small. It's actually imported from Japan with most of the packaging printed in Japanese.

Obviously I bought one. I mean, it's obvious because I'm holding it. 😅 I figured, "Hey, for $20 I'll try it." If the replacement screen and blades I bought don't improve my 10 year old shaver, I could switch to this until I'm ready to invest in another more-expensive shaver. And this could be a good travel shaver. I could leave it in my bag so I don't have to remember to pack my shaver when I travel.

Why have a second shaver just for travel? Because having two sets of things is a technique that makes frequent travel easy. For years I've had two sets of my regular toiletries: hair brush, hair products, toothbrush, toothpaste. I keep the travel set with my bag. It's way easier than having to grab all sorts of things from the bathroom every time. I've never had two shavers, though. The main reason is I never wanted to spend another $75, $125, or more. But for $20? I'll try it.

How is it? I tried my first shave with it today. It shaves reasonably close when I have a light stubble. It's definitely good for everyday shaving or for fixing a 5 o'clock shadow. Reviews online said it's not so good with longer stubble. Maybe I'll give that a try this weekend. And there's no whisker trimmer on it, so it's not good for keeping sideburns sharp. That alone limits its use to maybe at most a 2-night trip for me. But like I said, I'll try it out. Worst case I'm out $20 plus tax.

Recently I noticed that my electric shaver hasn't been giving me as close of a shave as I expect. It's missing a lot of hairs even when I work it over the same spot on my face or neck a few times. It worked way better when it was new. That means it's time to throw it out and buy another one, right? Wrong! Key parts on electric shavers are replaceable!

There are two parts that can be replaced on many electric shavers, the blades and the screen. The screen is the mesh cover up at the top. Underneath it are the blades. The blades are the cutting tool, and they oscillate back and forth rapidly via the electric motor. They naturally dull over time and don't cut as closely. The screen covers the blades so they don't touch your skin. When the screen wears down it can result in the blades getting too close, causing skin abrasion, or not getting close enough, causing less effective trimming.

I looked up the model number on Amazon. The first thing I saw is that I can buy a new one of the same model for $125. That seemed like waaay more than I paid years ago. Out of curiosity I clicked through the link... and on the product page Amazon helpfully told me, "You last purchased this item in 2013." Wow, 10 years!

I searched my 2013 orders and found that I originally bought this shaver for $75. First of all, wow, I thought I spent way less than that. I usually buy an inexpensive shaver because I don't need fancy features. Though ISTR choosing the Panasonic even though it was more expensive than certain other brands because I'd had a good experience with a previous Panasonic after poor experiences with 2-3 other major brands. Second, $125 today vs. $75 ten years ago doesn't seem so bad considering inflation. But OTOH, third, this is now a 12 year old model.... Shouldn't it be cheaper now? Well, it kinda is... the newest models are $150 all the way up to $400. 😳

It took some careful shopping but I did find replacement bits. Amazon helpfully remarked above the product image of a blade replacement "Purchased Aug 2017". The manufacturer suggests replacing blades every 1-2 years, not 4-6. Well, here I am now. And I'm replacing the screen for the first time in 10 years AFAIR. I found a blades-and-screen combo for $47.

I paused for a moment before ordering. On the one hand, $47 seems like a lot of money to spend renewing a 10-year-old, $75 item. OTOH, it's less than one-third the cost of the cheapest new, current generation technology. And it seems quite likely it'll rejuvenate my old shaver well enough that I'll be satisfied with it for at least another few years. I bought it.

Now the only problem is the parts have to ship from England. 😂 They'll take 2 weeks to arrive.

It's about 5pm and I've gotten back to my hotel. I checked out this morning but left my suitcase with the bell desk so I wouldn't have to lug it through the conference. Yeah, I could have gone straight to the airport from the show if I'd taken it, instead of trudging on foot almost a mile back to my hotel, but the waits for taxis, Lyft, and Uber from the conference hotel are crazy. It's actually somewhat quiet back here at the Resorts World... but only somewhat, as people are streaming in for National Finals Rodeo (NFR), one of the biggest events of the year in Vegas.

I worked the show all day today, 10am-4pm. I actually arrived at the booth at 9:45 when almost nobody else was there. The few who were noticed that I was early, though, and thanked me. One of my teammates didn't even show up at all today. Trade show discipline has sadly never been a priority at this company. Though maybe that's changing now with new people in the marketing events team. ...Until they all turn over again in 6 months, then who knows what comes next. 🙄

I dressed up as the Jenkins the Butler again today, after lunch. I'd done it earlier this week on Monday evening. Overall recognition of the character was poor. It's not quite the best demographic here at this show. I got a colleague to join me on making a round through several other vendors' booths this afternoon. The idea was we'd have some fun and stir up some trouble. ...Trouble by challenging competitors with a living mascot, that is. Sadly the competitors' booths didn't have many technical people in them, so few people were aware of the prank we were playing.

I did score an interview with a roving AWS re:Invent TV crew. I told them I'd just come back from the Rap Battle booth, and spat fire on a few verses live for them. The interview loved it and did a mic drop for me on camera.

I'll post more about the Jenkins cosplay soon.

True to plan, I'm back at the airport 16 hours after getting home last night. As crazy as this fast turnaround seems it's not too bad. I planned ahead before my previous trip so that I could dump my suitcase from the first trip and repack quickly for the next. That plan was in case the turn was even tighter, e.g. if my Sunday night flight was late or something else went wrong. Instead nothing went wrong (yay?) so I had more time than planned. I used that time to wash and dry laundry last night and catch up on work email/Slack this morning.

So, here I am at the airport. It actually seems busier today, judging by lines at check-in and security, than at the same time yesterday— and yesterday was reportedly the busiest travel day since 2019!

This trip I'm headed to Las Vegas for work. The AWS re:Invent trade show is this week. I'm working my company's booth. That means over the next 3.5 days I'll talk to about 500 people about what my company's products do. Five of those 500 will actually care; the other 495 will just want a free t-shirt.

How's it going so far? It's not trending well. I'm not even to Vegas yet and already my flight's delayed.