Cody’s News — Moving, and a Community Meeting

I’ve missed Cody’s on Telegraph enormously — not only for its convenience to campus, but its selection. Their 4th St store is convenient — I can usually find a space in their lot as long as its not a time when 4th St in general is very busy — but their selection is much reduced.

Now they’ve announced that they’re moving to smaller but more convenient space, and are holding a community meeting to ask what people need. From their newsletter:

We are very excited to let you know that Cody’s Books will move to the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Allston Way (2201 Shattuck Avenue, in the former Eddie Bauer space) in late March. This isn’t a move that we fully anticipated, but our Fourth Street rent skyrocketed…

Cody’s on Shattuck will be more intimate than our Fourth Street store. The upside in losing a bit of space is that we can focus on our strengths….

We’d love to hear from you about what matters to you at Cody’s. You’re invited to an open community meeting on Wednesday, February 27 at 7:00 PM at our Fourth Street store.

Reference Manager 11 Update – Still Doesn’t Work; Do Not Buy!

I spent half a day on the phone with Reference Manager’s help people who had me try everything they could think of. They couldn’t figure out what was going on so they just kept having me try things — most of which I had already tried on my own.

The last guy said he would take this to the team meeting and get back to me — and never did. [When are customer service operations going to learn that the deafening silence with which they follow up on their "promises" to customers is even more annoying than the initial problem? I would expect a follow-up, an apology for their inability to solve the problem, and an offer of a refund.]

So now I’m trying to get my money back, since this whole exercise in upgrading has been a pointless waste of time. The money is minor compard to the time I’ve spent on this — but damned if I’m going to let them just shrug their shoulders and give up without so much as an apology.

The moral: DO NOT upgrade RM10 to RM11 — the improvement was going to be minor, and it has turned into a pointless time sink.

UPDATE 2/24/08: I spent 2 hours on the phone with their most experienced tech support person and he can’t get it to work, either. He has no control over refunds, but told me to tell Sales that I worked with him. Sales says return it to Amazon — but of course Amazon won’t take back used software. In short, software companies don’t seem to have to stand behind their product. You buy it, you’ve got it. And, since this company Thomson Scientific has bought out the major competitors — EndNote and ProCite — they have monopoly power and I can’t take my business to the competition.

It’s not the money, it’s the idiocy of it — they’ve spent probably 5 hours on the phone with me, worth much more than the $100 the software cost. Not to mention the value of my time. (Yes, I should have bailed on this long ago, but it’s the classic debugging problem — let’s try ONE MORE thing.)

Meerkats

Relaxed attention

Originally uploaded by NVH

For other Meerkat Manor fans out there — I went to visit the Oakland Zoo’s meerkats.  More on my Flickr site.

Hmmmm

The bookstore in the student union building has re-labeled the area that used to be called “faculty publications.”  It’s now “bargain books.”  I hope they changed the inventory along with the sign.

Superbowl Alternative: Puppy Bowl (with Kitten Halftime)

For those looking to an alternative to Superbowl fever tomorrow — here’s the NYTimes description of Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. It is more interesting than you might think, unless you’re so cold-hearted as to be unmoved by puppies and kittens.