2000oct06. Personally I just don’t see a need for the CueCat at all – I was hoping maybe some CueCat hacker would come up with an alternate one (“scan your buttocks!”) that actually made some sense. I don’t understand how scanning a discarded pack of hot dogs and a can of lima beans is going to reduce the amount of time and effort you spend finding this information at an online grocer. Let’s try an experiment on Webvan (I used to be a WebVan customer but found their selection to be atrocious. It was worth the effort to be able to see the cockamamie cyborg set-up they require their drivers to carry (on one hip, you have your big order tracker computer, and on the other hip, you have your big, big printer – I think there was a third hip in there somewhere (pager? cellphone? four hips?), but shit, you could do all of that with a dash-mounted radio/cb and a clipboard ... I almost had a laughing spasm while signing for my order [semi-witty parenthetical note about how this is yet another example of throwing technology at problems to cause more problems than ever deemed possible inside an aside about throwing technology at problems to cause more problems than ever deemed possible deleted for brevity]). I do not have a CueCat, I am just extrapolating from known data and have afforded the CueCat people the benefit of the doubt about the usability of their product even though I’ve read at least two accounts indicating elsewise but in this case we’re talking about homebrew software so forget I said anything:
Without CueCat:There is a guy who has a website that tallies everything he throws away; he’s placed his (non CueCat) scanner next to the garbage. If I suddenly wanted to do this it would entail (at least) a thirty-foot cable slinking through the floor and termite’s nests, down a wall, etc. I think I'll just remember or even write down what I need to purchase and sometimes, when I’m feeling crazy, just wing it in the grocery store. When did buying groceries become this horrible, horrible experience that people can’t stand? Or is this just another Mt. Geekmore hack ... “I can do it, so I will do it!” Well, at least you can run spreadsheets on your average lima bean consumption per month.
type in “hot dogs” in search field
choose “all beef”
hit “back” because of javascript error
choose “chicken/turkey"
hit “back” because of javascript error
give upWith CueCat:
take soggy, dripping discarded hot dog pack over to computer
flatten UPC on table
scan easily and quickly with CueCat and hacker homebrew softwares
take soggy, dripping discarded hot dog pack back to garbage
get cleaning supplies, clean up drips on floor and computer table
put cleaning supplies back
dig through trash to find lima bean can
clean arms, hands
give up