Towels for Everyone

For those of you who don’t read Nedroid’s Beartato, you really should. He’s a bear, who is also a potato, and he has adventures. Wonderful adventures. Lately, he also has advice for you.

My Wacom tablet sure seems chintzy.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my tablet. It’s a great Intuos 6x11 tablet that does a great job throughout the day. It’s not the functionality of the tablet that’s got me down. It’s the structureness of the tablet.

One of the first things I enjoyed about the tablet when my office first picked it up for me three years ago was how the mouse glided across the surface of the tablet. I attributed a lot of this glide to the felt bottom that graced the underside of the mouse. (Probably not unlike the soft fur on the underside of a real live mouse. Perhaps that is where this idea came from.)

But, after only several months of use, the felt had begun to attract that gunk that my mouse balls and mouse pads have attracted in the past. Only problem? What’s easy to scrape off of a mouse ball or a mouse pad in just a couple passes, is near impossible to remove from felt!

A quick call to Wacom to see what they suggested doing; and I was shocked. Support suggested I purchase those little felt feet you put on your furniture and appliances to keep them from scratching your expensive counter surfaces or hard wood floors. And putting those feet on the underside of my mouse.

Are they kidding? No, I don’t think so. Wacom support basically told me the fix for the bad design of felt on the underside of the mouse was to put $.05 felt circles underneath my $70 mouse. Yep.

So I’ve done that. I no longer get odd scooting. Everything’s smooth. So long as I replace the felt feet every few weeks. I swear I don’t have dirty hands.

Now I’m on the hunt for some contact cement or super glue, however. The slick pad that the mouse glides along over or the pen presses on is now coming loose. Yep. I can’t really believe it.

This $300ish device is basically falling apart, and not from misuse.

I still love the pad. And I’ll fix it and keep it going. But I’m shocked by the lack of structural integrity of this device.

Anyone else have these issues?

Biola, a school in LA I’ve never heard of has probably the best website I’ve ever seen a college have.

Starbucks is bleeding coffee.

Scored myself one of these iced coffees this morning. Presented my free coffee card to the Starbucks representative behind the register and was greeted with a free iced coffee. Sure it came after a little uninspiring banter about how they only have one type of iced coffee rather than the bold or mild versions of regular hot coffee. (Can’t they just ice anything?)

Okay. I just read online and heard on the radio this morning that Starbucks is closing 600 stores due to underperformance. Maybe the folks at their registers should try to upsell the people cashing in on the free brewed coffee.

I didn’t get offered a slice of lemon cake. Or a cookie. Or a CD. Or some wireless internet. Just a slight grimace when I asked what kind of coffee came iced since I’d asked for bold, and was told there was only one kind iced.

What I find shocking, is that I don’t feel immensely inspired to go back to Starbucks to get even my free coffee. Hey Starbucks. I don’t want free coffee. What’s wrong with that?