And Other Bad Words
i have flossed very regularly since my previous dental cleaning six months ago – at least twice a week, every week. I have never flossed regularly before. I always brush, but I never really flossed because I was lazy.
I had another cleaning today, and for the first time ever my teeth don’t feel funny.
I rate this experience 9/10, will floss again.
COINBUS: a webhost acronym to describe the ‘traditional’ domains: .com, .org, .info, .net, .biz, and .us
It’s all my fault, really. This wouldn’t have been an issue if I had just let Xtina use my computer to print her boarding pass, but in my defense I didn’t know that she was doing that. So I gave her our iPad to use.
When it came time to print, she quite logically asked me how she would do that. I, of course, did not know how — I’ve never tried printing from iPad or smartphone, though I vaguely knew it was possible. The issue just never came up and I hate printers.
I knew that it would require avahi, so I started installing that on our printserver while I hit Google to see what else I would need.
The first hit was a very fine article by Linux Magazine, and it explained pretty much everything. But it’s never that simple, because nothing printed and cups started using 100% of a CPU.
Repeated in the /var/log/cups/error_log a billion times were messages like these:
Request from "192.168.1.32" using invalid Host: field "dandelion.local:631"
That took a little more detective work because I didn’t read the Linux Magazine article carefully enough. The solution was to add an additional directive to the cups config:
--- /backup/snapshots/dandelion.0/etc/cups/cupsd.conf 2015-06-08 08:33:31.000000000 -0400 +++ /etc/cups/cupsd.conf 2015-06-24 19:29:34.410488191 -0400 @@ -1,6 +1,7 @@ LogLevel warn PageLogFormat # Allow remote access +ServerAlias * Port 631 Listen /run/cups/cups.sock # Share local printers on the local network.
Gentoo packages required:
Also download and run airprint-generate after cups is configured and running.
If you have iOS 6+, which is pretty much a given nowadays, make sure you have the correct MIME types available, and add them if not:
echo 'image/urf urf string(0,UNIRAST<00>)' > \
/usr/share/cups/mime/airprint.types
echo 'image/urf application/pdf 100 pdftoraster' > \
/usr/share/cups/mime/airprint.convsAdd the appropriate services to your default runlevel, and start them as well:
# rc-update add cupsd default # rc-update add cups-browsed default # rc-update add avahi-daemon default
Here’s a tale of offshoring gone wrong. This doesn’t qualify as horribly wrong, nor a disaster, but only because very little money was on the line.
I used to work for a small software company with a well-known product that has a long pedigree (it shall remain nameless, but our major competitor was WinRar). I actually miss working there — well, I miss most of it, but I did leave voluntarily. That’s a story for another time.
We had started translating our primary product into many languages, and we wanted to provide localized translations of our website as well. In order to save some cash, management decided that we would outsource and offshore the translation of our company website. Our new president knew of the perfect company to hire, too.
My boss — the VP — and the rest of the engineering and IT team were all a little nervous about dealing with this new company, not only because we didn’t have a great way to verify the work but also because we didn’t have a good relationship with the new president. (Distrust isn’t strong enough a word, but it describes it well enough for this story.) The first couple of sub-projects came back and looked ok, though, so we started to think we were over-worrying the problem.
Our process was to scrape our own english site, determine which pages and what snippets we would translate, and send those items as plain-text to the translators. After a couple of days we would start getting the translated documents back and we would build the site.
We had a few bumps along the way, such as getting plain-text documents with an unspecified code-page — we had asked for, but didn’t initially get, UTF-8, but we eventually had them send us the documents in Word to remove character-translation problems — but the process seemed to be working overall. We ran the the translated documents through Google Translate to make sure the reverse translation (back to English) looked ok, and it did. In retrospect, it was a little too perfect.
So, fast forward a couple of weeks, we get the third or fourth package back. My boss noticed something… odd on one of the pages. It was worth calling the rest of the team into the office to check it out, stat!
If you guessed that it was an artifact from Google Translate’s page – just a straight copy and paste from browser to Word document that picked up a little too much – you’d be correct. Cue immediate back-pedalling from the vendor that “it was just that one document” and “the other translations were done by hand” and by native speakers. Haha, not so much.
Author’s Note: Though this post may seem, at first glance, to be a warning against offshoring, it’s really a warning about hiring executives with too-cozy relationships with vendors. I’ve seen offshore projects go well and go sour, but the nepotism I saw with the above-mentioned new company president were almost always followed by a bitter taste in our mouths.
Lately, it seems like everyone is talking about the minimum wage. Should we raise it? Should it stay where it is? Should we lower it, or even abolish it? This looks like it will be a major question in the upcoming presidential campaign, as the candidates have already staked positions (with some candidates making it part of their platform).
It seems that everyone has a strong opinion on this. We can all agree that the outcome will have real consequences but no-one agrees on what the outcomes will be.
Smart people, with real data to back up their claim, may predict any of the following:
| Scenario | Effect on the Economy |
|---|---|
| Raise The Minimum Wage (Doom Scenario) | Prices rise, employment falls as businesses stop hiring and even trim their workforce to meet payroll costs. Wide-spread unemployment coupled with higher prices wrecks the economy. |
| Raise the Minimum Wage (Sunny Scenario) | Profits rise as minimum wage workers, now with more money in their pockets, go on a spending spree. Lost profits are made up by increased volume. Some people trade 60+ hour work-weeks for more leisure time, which means there are more jobs to go around just as demand picks up – unemployment falls rapidly and wages generally get a bump – but competition keeps prices down. |
| Keep the Minimum Wage the Same (Doom Scenario) | Stalemate: as the spending power of the dollar slowly falls over time, minimum wage workers slide further into poverty. Demand for welfare services and charity slowly rise alongside. The economy stagnates as a permanent class of have-nots emerges. |
| Keep the Minimum Wage the Same (Don’t Rock the Boat Scenario) | Stalemate: the economy keeps chugging along without major disruption. Nobody is happy, but things remain stable. |
| Keep the Minimum Wage the Same (Sunny Scenario) | With the certainty of stable wages, business are better able to plan ahead. Productivity gains translate to better wages as a reward – for those able to best achieve those gains. |
| Lower or Abolish the Minimum Wage (Doom Scenario) | The average worker desperately agrees to more and more work for less and less pay, in a vicious race to the bottom. Oligarchs take over the country and the middle class disappears. |
| Lower or Abolish the Minimum Wage (Sunny Scenario) | Businesses pay dilettante workers (high school kids, mostly) much lower wages, but adults make significantly more; the money saved by paying unproductive workers less are passed on to consumers, so most people see their dollars go further. |
Every choice has at least two contradictory outcomes. They can’t all be right.
Those arguments are almost beside the point, however. What we’re really arguing about is what happens as we approach, but haven’t quite reached, a post-scarcity economy.
(The wikipedia entry doesn’t do justice to the concept of post-scarcity. It’s not exactly Utopia, and it’s not unlimited wealth. It’s the ability to produce enough material wealth, at near-zero cost, to provide a reasonable standard of living to everyone. It’s like Europe without the taxes.)
Across the economy, per-person productivity is rising at logarithmic rates. Consider cars: they used to take days, literally days, to manufacture. In the early 21st century manufacturers produce a technologically-superior car in about two shifts – 16 hours. One factory, with fewer people, can make over 400% more cars than a century ago.
We’re continually figuring out how to improve our business processes to make them more efficient, and using technology to supplant our workforce as well. Self checkout lines at the supermarket easily come to mind. There are now McDonalds restaurants where you order from a kiosk instead of a cashier. We bank online instead of writing checks.
This is clearly what people want. Technology makes our lives easier and more efficient when we don’t have to drive to the bank, or worry that our food order wasn’t understood correctly.
Technology saves us from the most dreary drudge work, like totalling accounting ledgers or weaving fabric by hand.
As mechanisation progresses, and more of our needs are met with fewer people involved, what happens to the rest of the people? That’s really what the minimum wage argument is about – the lessening demand for labor. As productivity rises, meaning we make more stuff for the same amount of labor, demand for labor (a.k.a. workers) decreases over time. The law of supply and demand tells us that lower demand leads to lower prices (wages).
What do we do when we don’t need much of anybody to feed and clothe us? Our population isn’t growing so demand will not rise, and that means you can’t make up the difference in extra productivity with extra demand. What do you do then?
Author’s Note: My intent is to pose ideas and ask questions, letting the reader answer them. I’m purposely taking an apolitical view of the minimum wage in this article; if you can point out bias on my part I will gladly fix it.
My only assertion is that a post-scarcity economy may be looming. I’m not claiming that the sky is falling. Technological change has changed the labor landscape before and people worried about lost jobs, some even lost their jobs, but somehow new work came along.
We have a long history of upheaval caused by technology, with bouts of low employment followed by booms of full employment. Ask any stable-hand or stone axe maker how their employment prospects are nowadays, and then introduce them to your local programmer or aerospace engineer to make them cry.
New technology replaces old. A century ago a computer had barely been dreamed of by a few – thank you Mr. Babbage – but today that’s how I make my living. That’s technological progress.
I believe that an upcoming cycle in the not-so-distant future may be different, in that afterwards we will have entered a post-scarcity economy – and we probably won’t even realize it until after the fact. We’re not going to live in a utopia yet, but that day may come to pass while some of us are still in living memory.
What Does a Fisher Cat Sound Like, from Cape Cod Wildlife Calling
More than just what a fisher cat sounds like, it has video of what a fisher cat looks like, AND audio files of red foxes and raccoons for disambiguation.
You know that big button near the door in the data center, the one labeled “Halon?” That’s French for “exit,” so you push that to unlock the door and get out.
From a slashdot post
Hint: don’t hit the ‘halon’ button unless you like getting a big bill for disaster recovery and cleanup — Editor
Hello!!!!!! Alpha here! This is my first blog post, and until I’m 16, I will refer to myself on this blog, as Alpha. Anyway, I’ll be putting stories up for you guys to read. Here is the first one.
Message Carriers
Bringing The Message
Can four animals come together to save their masters and a entire battalion?
Chapter 1
Jaqe
Jaqe was just a farm pigeon from the French countryside. His life was good, daily feed, and his own roost. Then talk of a war started. Germans. Jaqe wanted nothing to do with it. He was young, and wanted to live a full life. But that all changed. Carrier pigeons were in demand. A antenna was put on top of the pigeon house. A Carrier pigeon outpost was put up in the farmyard. Jaqe watched all his friends enlist. “Why?” he would ask them. They would all say, “I want to serve my country.” Jaqe was a little impressed, and a bit annoyed. They were throwing away their lives. Jaqe watched them from the cafe at the top of the pigeon house. His best friend, a mouse named Hindenburg, told him about his latest invention.
“I can fly like those planes I saw on the pictures.” Hindenburg said. He was plain exited.
“Mice don’t fly, remember your last plane? You ended up in a lake.” Jaqe pointed out.
“That was last week.”
“And you only had a week to make this one, while still coughing up pond water.”
“Great inventors, your thick”
“I try.”
“I’m flying this thing, you’ll see, this one won’t rip.”
“Bet you five corn you crash.”
“Bet you ten I’ll make it to the trees.”
“Deal.”
They shook hands, just as a little robin burst in.
“Jaqe! Hindenburg!” he yelled.
“Michele!” Jaqe said happily.
“Wait, dose your mother know?” Mitchel’s mother scared Jaqe sometimes. Mitchel hesitated, then said, “Yep! Hindenburg, are you going to be flying the new plane today?”
“Yep, and I’m getting ten corn as well.” Hindenburg said said smugly at Jaqe. Jaqe whispered to Mitchel,
“I’m getting five pieces of corn.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
“Time to get ready!” Hindenburg yelled, rushing to his workshop.
“Come on.” Jaqe said with a smile.
“I wonder if he’l land in the muck heap like last month.” They went outside, and Hindenburg came screaming out in a shiny plane. He flew over to the trees, but something blew inside the plane. It spiraled down and crashed into a stump. Hindenburg landed face first in the center of the stump.
“Bulls eye!” someone yelled.
Jaqe flew down to check on Hindenburg. He was just a bit dazed.
“My next one will be better.” he assured them. “Just have to tighten that one valve.
“And add a parachute.” Jaqe added. “And an eject button.”
“Good ideas.” Hindenburg mused. Mitchel nodded, then ran over to the outpost. He had also enlisted, and liked to watch the others. Hindenburg stumbled away from the stump. Jaqe lifted off, and flew back to the caf’e. Hindenburg came up a few minuets later.
“I here their shipping out soon.” he said. Jaqe was startled.
“How soon is soon?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay…..” Jaqe said, running it over in his mind a few times. Then he looked outside.
“It’s getting late, time to turn in.”
“Agreed.” They both went to their homes. Jaqe’s was a nice, roomy place next to the now-almost-empty rooms of his friends. He sighed and fell asleep. He dreamed of his love, a officer for the CPcor. (Carrier Pigeon cor). Then of the war. Of a few other animals. Who talked very differently from him. One was a large dog, another a horse. The third was, wait, a wolf? They all seemed concentrated on a battle. “Jaqe, we need to get that message to the nearest outpost.” said the dog.
“How do you..” he was cut off by someone shaking him. “What?” he said, sitting up. He saw Hindenburg by the bed.
“Come on, you don’t want to miss the send off.” he said, smiling. The send off was over before it began. The trucks carrying the pigeons left. But then, a robin flew up, four chicks behind her.
“Have you seen Mitchel?” she asked.
“No, we thought he was with you… Oh no…” he said, realizing what was happening. He lifted off, flying after the battalion. Hindenburg rushed to his workshop, and got out a newer plane. The valve was tighter, and he could eject if necessary. They flew after the battalion, and into a war.
Chapter 2
Maxwell
Maxwell was a wise cracking, funny New Yorker. If New Yorkers could be German Shepherd/Alsken Malamutes. That was what Maxwell was. He was chosen to be a war dog, and he gladly accepted. He was eager to go to the front lines. Training was hard, but Maxwell pushed. Her erned the nickname, “Iron Max.” He got his handler, Sargent Ratter James. Maxwell liked Ratter. They were a natural team. In no time at all, they were at the front. Maxwell fought fiercely. Avoiding gunfire easily. His best bud besides Ratter was a German Shepard named John. Entertainment was easy to get in the trenches when no battles were going on. Watching Maxwell and John hunt rats was one of them. Maxwell’s fur was so thick, some said you couldn’t get a bullet past it. But no one wanted to test that in case they were wrong. One day, after a battle, every one was tired, and a bit battered. Even the dogs were beat. Maxwell and John chatted. So did their handlers. John’s was Private Charlie Jack. All four were friends. A tight knit group of buddies. As they chatted, Ratter and Charlie talked about girls. Maxwell and John talked about what they would do after the war.
“I’m going to live with Charlie. He tells me about his house and his other dog that he left with his mom.” John said wistfully.
“I’m going to go back to New York. Ratter lives in the next building over to my old family’s. I can’t wait to go home.”
“Me neither.”
“Want to hunt some rats?”
“As long as I get to hunt the little ones.”
“Deal.”
So they hunted rats for the rest of the afternoon. When bedtime came, all four slept near one another. He started dreaming. He saw three other animals. A horse, a pigeon, and, wait on sec, a wolf? “We must save the troops.” the horse said. “I agree.” said the wolf. The pigeon turned to him, “What do you think, Maxwell?” He shot awake to the sound of guns. He scrambled up, and got out of the way. He found a dropped sack with a rope attaching it to another. He got under the rope and started running to the next heavy artillery. They patted him on the head and took the bags, witch contained shells. Maxwell started running everywhere. Helping where ever he could. Ratter said, “Good boy Maxy!” Charlie patted his head. Then everything went wrong. Two bullets whizzed into the trench. One hit Ratter in the chest. The other missed.
“Ratter!” Maxwell and Charlie yelled.
Chapter three
Jeramy
Jeramy had been a British farm horse before the war. He had pulled wagons, and could be ridden. Then the war…… Jeramy went with his master’s son, called Mick. Mick joined the fight on the ground. Riding into battle on Jeramy. Who was about 18hh. His blood bay cote was also intimidating. His best friend was another horse, a French mare named Parie. Her rider was a kind man named Jerry. Parie and Jeramy were more then friends. Mick and Jerry were buds, so it was easier to talk to her. But one night, his whole world flipped. Mick had been talking to Jerry as they rode side by side. Jearmy was just saying, “I’m glad I met you.” Mick was in the middle of a word, when a bullet struck Jerry. Mick whipped out his gun and grabbed hold of Parie. “I’m scared.” she whispered to me.
“Don’t be, Mick and I will keep you safe.”
Gunfire sounded, and Mick fell off. A bullet struck the dirt behind Jeramy. He and Parie took off running. He wanted to go back, but he was too scared. But the next thing they knew, Jeramy fell into a trench. Parie ran away, and a growl sounded behind him.
Chapter 4
Snow
Snow had been helping all along. He took out enemy soldiers before they had a chance to fire on the allies. He even befriend a human. But when they failed to save two men in the forest, Snow began to feel listless. One of the survivors said his name was Mick. Another was named Jarry. Apparently Jerry had been shot, and that had started a fight. Then Mick had fallen off his horse and they had taken off.
“I can’t blame Jeramy and Parie. It was scary.” Snow’s human, Alex Jones, tended to Jerry’s wounds.
“Where is Parie?” Jerry asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Then start looking.” He tried to get up, but clutched his bloody side. Snow provided a crutch. He was tall, sturdy, and firm. It made him ideal for doing this. Snow looked at Alex, a medic. “Snow, you never cease to amaze me, ya big wolf, you.” Mick and Jerry seemed shocked.
“This is a wolf?” they asked.
“He’s bigger then average, but yes.”
“Wow.” the said in unison.
Snow just stood, providing Jerry with a crutch. Jerry then leaned on Alex for support. But a whinny attracted his attention. Snow started running over, and found a horse, and a dog in the trench.
Chapter 5
Jaqe
Mitchel was indeed on the transport. Jaqe flew after them, but a firefight started. The man with a few carrier pigeons was shot. Jaqe tried to open the cage door, but was grabbed. “Take this home, or else we are doomed.” the man said, putting a message in a container and put it on Jaqe. Jaqe nodded. “I will.” he said. Then started flying. But another fight sounded. A frightened whinny, a growl. He dived in, and found a silver wolf standing at the top, heaving like he had run all the way here. A horse was trapped in the trench. A dog was growling at it. The horse was struggling up, and the silver wolf leaped over the horse and landed in front of the dog. All growling ceased. The horse said, “You, you smell like Jerry.” the wolf looked at it. “You mean the Jerry down the rode, the one that got shot?” he asked.
The dog coked his head. “I know that smell. Your a med dog, aren’t you?”
“Med Wolf” the wolf corrected. “My friend is a medic. I help out a lot.”
“Um, hello, yes, you with the fur.” Jaqe called down. He landed on the horses back.
“Yes?” all three of them said. It was a mix of accents. The wolf and dog sounded American, the horse sounded British.
“We have another problem.” Jaqe said, a little self conscious of his French accent.
“We do.” the dog agreed.
“Yha.” the wolf said.
“We most certainly do.” the horse said.
“Then lets get out of here!” Jaqe yelled.
“One thing.” the wolf said, then howled. “Alex will know to come. I smell human blood.”
“Now lets go!” Jaqe yelled. The horse galloped out of the trench. With the pigeon on the horse, flanked by two odd looking dogs, they were the most mismatched bunch in history. When they were out of danger, they all introduced themselves. Jaqe went first. “My name is Jaqe.”
Then the dog. “I’m Maxwell, but you can call me Max.”
Then the horse, “I’m Jeramy.”
Finally, the wolf. “Everyone calls me Snow.” he said with a sigh.
“Nice to meet all of you.” Jeramy. Maxwell grunted a little.
“This place is nothing like the city.”
“You kidding? This place is like home to me.” Snow said with a smile, just noticing a nice large snowdrift. He ran and pounced. Everyone got snow covered. “Let’s get going, we have endangered troops.” Jaqe said. And so they set off. “Wait, Mitchel!” Jaqe yelled. Then the little robin and the mouse in a plane came in. “Phew!” Jaqe said, “Now, we go.”
Chapter six
Maxwell
It was strange. Not having Ratter around. But their was plenty of other things to think of. Food, for one thing. He was considering the horse, but saw a rabbit. He stalked off and filled his belly on Snowshoe. He never found out Snow ate that day, however. But the horse was ruled out as it was still their, unscathed when he got back. Snow seemed respectable. With a air of dignity. The mismatched bunch continued. Mitchel, the robin,and Hindenburg, the mouse patrolled the air. It was not an easy trek. The horse seemed fine, as did Snow. But this was the most snow Maxwell had ever seen. (it’s only a few inches) They found a road. This enabled a gallop. They all ran as fast as they could. But night began to fall. “We must not stop.” Snow said.
“I’m with the talking snowdrift. Lives are at stake.”
“Then we will not stop.” Jeramy said. They continued, then Jeramy started to shiver. “Should we go faster?” he asked.
“Definitely.”
“It’ll get us their faster.”
“Go on ahead if we fall behind.”
Chapter 7
Jeramy
It was warmer, going faster. Until a bullet hit the ground in front of him. He reared. The dogs growled. The robin, Mitchel, landed on the saddle. A man came out, examining his new prizes. A Carrier pigeon, a horse, and two large, thick furred dogs. Then Snow lunged out, and Maxwell lunged for the men in the bushes. Jeramy reared. The men scattered at the horse’s fly hooves and the dog’s teeth. Jeramy ran ahead. The birds clinging to his saddle. The mouse’s plane overhead. The dogs didn’t come after them. All three shed at least three tears. They had risked everything to save them and the Allies. They started coming up on a farm, Jeramy ran into the middle and reared. Jaqe flew inside. Jeramy heaved, and a young girl led him into a stable. She saw how sweaty and cold he was, so she brushed him and gave him a blanket. He ate some hay. But still cried a little for their fallen comrades. Until a burst of cold filled the barn and two figures stood in the door.
Chapter 8
Snow
Snow ran to dodge bullets, but it was little good. He was shot a few times. So was Max. But they made it. Snow, wounded and weak, stumbled along. Max helped him, and he helped Max. That was how they made it to the farm. By leaning on one another. They stumbled into the barnyard just as the girl walked inside. But she turned around to close the door and saw the two. “Papa! Their are two dogs outside!” she said in French. Her Papa came outside. He saw the two also. A very bloody wolf and a very bloody dog. But judging from the way they were leaning on one another, they had not attacked each other. A different man came outside. “Snow!” he yelled, running over to his wolf. He took the two to the barn to clean them up. Snow was relieved to so Jeramy inside. “You made it!” he said.
“How are you alive?” Jeramy asked.
“Long story.” Max said.
“I agree with the city dog.” Snow said.
Afterward
After that daring adventure, the four became a team. Thanks to them, a whole battalion and Maxwell’s handler, Ratter, made it. Parie was found just outside the farm, and for once, Hindenburg’s plane stayed up the entire time. The next adventure of the new “Message Carries” is coming soon.
Notes:
This is a work of fiction based loosely on real events. Any relation to any actual names or events is entirely coincidental. But I am planning to get a mouse named Hindenburg, a horse named Jeramy, a wolf named Snow, and a German Malamute named Maxwell. I’m not shore if I can find a Carrier Pigeon. But if I can, it will be named Jaqe.
I’m not kidding. Anyway, see ya in my next post! I will also be using this blog to publicize my work. Also, the names are spelled the way they are. Thanks for reading!
Back in the good-ole days of Windows NT (circa 1998) I was a member of IT support at a large multi-national corporation. The campus I worked for was about five thousand people large.
Background: Windows 98/98/NT 4.0 had a neat little utility to send pop-up messages to specific machines. It was a front end to the net send built-in command, and messages would appear almost instantaneously on the recipient’s machine in nice little window. (Similar functionality still exists in more recent versions of Windows, but the messenger service no longer starts by default.)
So, one slow day a bunch of us were shooting the shit and getting a little rowdy. I think there were some flying objects and maybe a nerf gun involved. One of the upper-level techs, who shall remain unnamed, fired off a message to someone else: “John, look out behind you”.
Only, he didn’t get the machine name right. He broadcast it to the entire campus. 5000+ machines.
A lesser-known feature of the net send command, and therefore of the messenger utility, was the ability to message an entire workgroup or domain. To do so, you only need to specify the workgroup or domain name in the recipient box. And that’s what he did – he intended John’s machine name but the domain was the default in the box — and he forgot to change it.
Hoo boy, that was some trouble, and being a political organization it nearly took the form of someone’s-getting-fired-type trouble. It took the ‘lizard king’ email storm to finally let it die down completely. I’ll save that story for another day, when I dig the entire email chain out of archives and obfuscate some details.
We wanted — nay, we needed — a new couch. The old one is sporting a dip so deep that only the dog can curl up comfortably. (Oddly enough, come to think of it, it is slightly dog shaped. Why that little…)
We cruised the local furniture stores for months but we had a hard time agreeing on a particular style. Megh kept stopping in the local Lovesac store, though, “just to sit down for a few minutes”. I eventually got the hint that she was interested in their ‘Sactionals‘.
After much hemming and hawing, I was forced to admit that a) the furniture in the showroom is comfortable, and b) the concept — free-floating furniture that you can rearrange into chairs, couches, lounges, beds, etc. — is intriguing.
We don’t currently know anyone that has anything from Lovesac. We even asked all our Facebook friends, but nothing more solid came through than some “I really want one of their fuzzy beanbags!” At $600 for a beanbag, no wonder that it remains in the want-to-have category.
That brings us to the price. Sactionals are an expensive way to get furniture. I figure that compared to a similar-quality couch that doesn’t fly apart, we’re looking at a 30% premium. Not as bad as the beanbags, but that’s still a steep price to pay for the possibility of sitting on a fabric Optimus Prime.
Lovesac’s business model seems to involve putting their showrooms into malls and other places where you might want to take a load off and sit for spell. Paying high mall rents may explain the price — that, and the novelty.
Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this blog post if this remained an expensive pipe-dream. We did indeed take the plunge and buy something.
As mentioned before, Sactional furniture comes as pieces, one of two types: bases and sides. One base and three sides makes a complete chair (or one base and one side for an armless chair); two bases and two to four sides makes a couch; and so on. Every piece also gets a removable, washable cover so you can purchase the color and fabric style you want. You can spend a little more (or a little less) on the covers to upgrade your furniture.
We purchased two bases and three sides, to make a couch with an open end (it seems more inviting that way).
We also purchased the standard cover, which is also one of the cheapest options. We liked the material more than some of the fancier velour- or velvety-type covers.
Your furniture is delivered via FedEx. Everything comes in flat boxes, Ikea-style, with no piece being too large for an able-bodied adult to man-handle into the house.
We didn’t get a tracking number until the same day everything arrived, which was a little annoying. I rushed home when Meghan gave me a heads up, so it wouldn’t sit on the front step all day. At least it wasn’t raining that day.
I got everything moved inside, and drove back to work.
I’m out of work and home before Meghan, so I teased her by sending photos of the of the boxes, one at a time. She can’t stand the fact that I can wait for things.
Total time from ordering to delivery: about a week. If we had ordered fancier (custom) covers we would have had to wait longer.
After dinner we got down to business. After moving the old couch to an empty corner of the house, we unpacked the first box: a base.
The cushion for the base is stuffed inside the base itself, and held in with a pair of wooden planks (well, sticks really). You have to slowly rotate each stake until it comes out. Doing so releases the cushion, which then uncovers the hardware and some instructions telling you how to remove the stakes and cushion without damaging them.
Fortunately for us the process was somewhat intuitive and we didn’t damage anything in our ignorance. We unpacked the other boxes in similar fashion. The covers come in their own box.
The first step was to attach feet and stick on no-scratch pads (which are included). There’s enough pads to adequately cover the “shoes,” which help connect the pieces, as well.
The instructions emphasize that getting the slipcovers on straight is very important, and it is. Getting them on at all was the hardest part of the entire process. The covers fit tightly, and there’s no “give” if you get them on crooked. We had to start over on a couple of pieces because they were obviously wrong, but when you get it right it’s just as obvious.
The pieces don’t clamp together nearly as easily as they seem to in the store. It’s probably because the floor models are taken apart and reassembled frequently, so everything stretches a little. I wouldn’t say they were difficult, but they do require a strong hand.
I was pretty satisfied with the whole assemble-your-furniture experience, but then again I like Ikea, too. I read some other reviews about assembling Sactionals, and we seem to have had one of the better experiences.
Total time, from unpacking to sitting my ass down: about 75 minutes.
I’m only writing this the next day, not enough time to provide an informed opinion about longevity, but the couch feels about as comfortable as the store’s floor model — maybe a little firmer and tighter, but all new furniture does that.
It looks as good in real life as I hoped. The kids have given it their seal of approval as well.
In the picture is our Sactional couch with one of our old pillows and a Wii-mote. On the left side of the picture the wooden beam is part of our old futon, with a similarly-colored cover, facing the other way.
I’ll probably revisit this in a few months with our thoughts on it long term – worth the purchase, worth additional purchases, etc.