My Sunday
We came home from dinner with rfunk's family to a cool house. It seems we have run out of fuel oil. Couldn't it have lasted just a few more weeks?
I put on a sweater, flung a shawl around my shoulders, and went back to obsessively researching both kneeling chairs and exercise ball chairs, which I had been doing on and off over the weekend. It was a confusing exercise. There are maybe a dozen kneeling chair models (priced from $100 to $500), and perhaps half that number of ball chairs ($75 to $200). That's quite an investment, and while some sellers offer free shipping, none that I could find offer free shipping on returns. The Kneelsit is the only kneeling chair that offers a range of adjustment in the distance between the seat and the shin pad, which as a short person is the level of adjustability I need to feel comfortable I wouldn't have to send it back. I just couldn't see spending the $500 for it.
While some reviews of exercise ball chairs on Amazon mention some problems with the casters occasionally breaking, the average of the reviews are consistently higher than the reviews for the kneeling chairs, and the prices tend to be lower. In the end I decided on a Gaiam BalanceBall chair for $80.
I completed my order on Amazon, and announced my decision (finally!) to rfunk.
He laughed. "You didn't see what I just posted, did you? Today is not a good day to buy from Amazon."
And so I learned about "Amazon Fail." Amazon had apparently removed sales ranking from books deemed to have "adult" content--including GLBT titles, effectively removing those titles from general search results. Oh, man. I hung my head, canceled my order from Amazon, and bought the same chair on eBay.
I guess "Amazon Fail" reached critical mass Sunday evening, becoming an internet firestorm fed largely by Twitter and various blogs. It seems likely to me that the delisting was the result of an external troll on Amazon that flagged the books as objectionable and used Amazon's automated system against them. I feel sorry for the poor Amazon PR department that had their peaceful Easter weekend interrupted to deal with the mess. They have issued a press release (I even heard it on NPR this morning!), stating that the problem was a glitch in the ratings system, and is being corrected.
Oy. The whole thing seemed very reminiscent of LJ's strikethrough debacle.
At any rate, we pulled out all the blankets and comforters, and were very comfy warm all night. The temperature in the house was down around 57 degrees F this morning. My hot shower created extra steam in the bathroom, making it look a bit like a sauna. We are close enough to warmer weather that we should be fine with electric space heaters, but I should go ahead and order more fuel to be delivered.
I put on a sweater, flung a shawl around my shoulders, and went back to obsessively researching both kneeling chairs and exercise ball chairs, which I had been doing on and off over the weekend. It was a confusing exercise. There are maybe a dozen kneeling chair models (priced from $100 to $500), and perhaps half that number of ball chairs ($75 to $200). That's quite an investment, and while some sellers offer free shipping, none that I could find offer free shipping on returns. The Kneelsit is the only kneeling chair that offers a range of adjustment in the distance between the seat and the shin pad, which as a short person is the level of adjustability I need to feel comfortable I wouldn't have to send it back. I just couldn't see spending the $500 for it.
While some reviews of exercise ball chairs on Amazon mention some problems with the casters occasionally breaking, the average of the reviews are consistently higher than the reviews for the kneeling chairs, and the prices tend to be lower. In the end I decided on a Gaiam BalanceBall chair for $80.
I completed my order on Amazon, and announced my decision (finally!) to rfunk.
He laughed. "You didn't see what I just posted, did you? Today is not a good day to buy from Amazon."
And so I learned about "Amazon Fail." Amazon had apparently removed sales ranking from books deemed to have "adult" content--including GLBT titles, effectively removing those titles from general search results. Oh, man. I hung my head, canceled my order from Amazon, and bought the same chair on eBay.
I guess "Amazon Fail" reached critical mass Sunday evening, becoming an internet firestorm fed largely by Twitter and various blogs. It seems likely to me that the delisting was the result of an external troll on Amazon that flagged the books as objectionable and used Amazon's automated system against them. I feel sorry for the poor Amazon PR department that had their peaceful Easter weekend interrupted to deal with the mess. They have issued a press release (I even heard it on NPR this morning!), stating that the problem was a glitch in the ratings system, and is being corrected.
Oy. The whole thing seemed very reminiscent of LJ's strikethrough debacle.
At any rate, we pulled out all the blankets and comforters, and were very comfy warm all night. The temperature in the house was down around 57 degrees F this morning. My hot shower created extra steam in the bathroom, making it look a bit like a sauna. We are close enough to warmer weather that we should be fine with electric space heaters, but I should go ahead and order more fuel to be delivered.