Argh.
So I wanted to buy a specific title for a friend (The Soul of a New Machine, in fact) who would be in town in just 2 days. Not wanting to pay 2-day Amazon shipping, I went online to Borders and “reserved” the book at a local Borders outlet.
When I went to pickup the book, there was nobody at the customer service desk. While waiting for someone to show up there, I went over to the Search terminal to see if they had a copy of the DVD Triumph of the Nerds. Searching for ‘triumph of the nerds’ returned over 13,000 hits (even when narrowed to Movies & TV). Searching for the whole phrase returned 0 hits. When the customer service person finally arrived (I had to go to the cashier and ask to have someone sent there), and told me that the book I had reserved would be at the cashier station, I asked him to help me with the search. He tried without success and asked me whether I was sure the item was still available for sale. (It is.) I then asked if he could direct me to the section where I might find other books on the history of computers and technology. He needed an example title to answer the question, so I suggested Insanely Great. He did some unsuccessful searches and asked me whether I was sure the item was still available for sale. (It’s in its second printing.)
I went home and ordered all the items from Amazon. I’ll have to wait a couple days to get them, but (a) the search function found every item as a top hit on the first search attempt, and (b) I am paying less, even without considering sales tax.
Borders is fcuked, and probably so are the other big box stores. From now on it’s my neighborhood independent bookstore when possible, and Amazon otherwise.
#1 by Jeff on November 30, 2010 - 5:06 am
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Have you read the Eudeamonic Pie? Ten years ago my boss lent me his copy (paper based) and I loved it. It’s about a bunch of physics grad students from some Cal school (can’t remember which) who tried to write a program that would use physics to predict where a roulette ball would land — then they tried to stuff it in a shoe. Of course this was before we had compilers so they talk about the early days of trying to debug code on hardware. Maybe this is a cult favorite around you, but I’m in Chicago, so I’d never heard of it until my boss mentioned it.
By the way, I’m surprised you’ve never mentioned the sony reader. I’ve had the PRS-505 for over two years now (I bought it for “cheap” when it was the previous years model). My wife and I fought over who got to use it the entire six months we were traveling around latin america so I recently got her the newer pocket addition refurbished on woot. Problem solved — no more fighting =) The UI is a bit awkward, but as long as you just plan on using it to read books it works great — no wasted space for a keyboard like the kindle…