Friday, October 30, 2009

3D Printing


I have seen a FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) machine before and I was totally intrigued. After hearing about www.makerbot.com from Twit.tv from floss weekly. They explained their open sourced project and selling kits. But what really got my eye is that the RepRap project, that is the grandfather project of makerbot made version 2 called mendel. their first version put me off as I just never liked the problems it had, jamming, costly, hard to build. Now that a new version came out earlier this month, I looked at it and thought, yes this can be something I can build and use.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Customer Relations...

oh boy where to start...
I think everyone knows the peril brick and mortar stores are facing as online retailers are snapping up business. Everyone knows the advantages of brick and mortar though. being able to see the product, making sure you have the right one and works for you need.
So today being the very nice weathered day it was i went to the garage to take the motorcycle for a spin. yet the faint oder of gasoline had me wondering what might have a leak. only to my dismay it wasn't the gas can i had hoped. To my surprise it was from the motorcycle main fuel line. so i got a screwdriver to close the stopcock on the gas tank. only to have a bit of gas gush from the screw. great i thought, there's the problem. so a bit later i went to the last parts place we have here to order a part and maybe get a few things to further a local business relationship with said shop. only to my dismay after them looking up the part to tell me that it would be much cheaper to buy this part online through their website they also use to sell parts. so i inquire what the difference would be if i just bought the part right now. so i get the run around of being told that the reason they make it cheaper so they don't have to serve people at the counter... then he starts to really push me saying just go home and order it... i couldn't believe what i was hearing... knowing there is no way to argue about this i said thank you and put the other stuff i was going to by on the shelf, and left. now that they have shooed me away as a customer, I'm going to buy from some other website that actually specializes in such a sale. they obviously didn't want my business when i came to them, and besides i saved almost $12. not only did they lose me as a customer, they lost my respect to recommend them to others.