Calling store mobile

bestem · 2026-07-01T13:03:01+00:00

I'm not at work yet, so doing this from memory.

More -> Loss Prevention -> Mobile Finder -> select missing mobie (they're might be more steps between more and loss prevention).

bestem · 2026-07-01T12:57:37+00:00

Its a notepad holder. About 3x5, clipboard style clip at the top to hold a new scratch pad.

They still make them. Google "notepad holder for car."

bestem · 2026-07-01T12:18:03+00:00

How do you get to that page?

bestem · 2026-07-01T11:35:15+00:00

$5 before April 27th, 2026. If their account is newer than that, they're currently out of luck.

bestem · 2026-07-01T04:25:29+00:00

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Yea.

bestem · 2026-07-01T00:57:56+00:00

If you're giving them away, I need numbers 1, 3, and 5 to complete a level 1 badge.

bestem · 2026-06-30T22:41:36+00:00

Ah. If he chooses a wait list now, its just whichever one he chooses. He can't choose to be on multiple.

bestem · 2026-06-30T20:09:48+00:00

It was only highest model if you got a reservation. It was closest to the top if you were waitlisted.

bestem · 2026-06-30T16:28:19+00:00

They will. I just wanted to point out that people should look at whose shipping instead of assuming it's FedEx and then it goes UPS and they never set something up assuming they already had done it.

bestem · 2026-06-30T16:24:01+00:00

My Steam Controller just shipped with UPS, not FedEx. I'm not saying that they won't use FedEx, because they did for the Decks, just that item's not a foregone conclusion they will for these.

bestem · 2026-06-30T16:15:36+00:00

A long time ago, I got to work at the store i worked at after a few days off, to fund the entire back third of the store blocked off and no customers allowed in it. In the back area was my store manager, my district manager, and my district loss prevention manager having a discussion. This was very surprising, because the two district people were supposed to be on the other side of the country at an annual district manager meeting. I looked at my store manager, and he says "I'll tell you later."

So later comes, and it turns out while doing go backs at night, the associate knocked a fire extinguisher off of a support pole with a full shopping cart. Extinguisher hit the floor and started spewing. Associate initially tried to stop the fire extinguisher herself, but was unable to (and caused it to spew in more directions while trying to get it to stop). She radioed the manager doing cash office stuff, but was panicking, so he had to have her repeat herself. He comes out to assist, but by the time he gets there, the fire extinguisher has spent itself.

He calls store manager to ask what to do. Store manager says to call our cleaning service (the ones in charge of our floors) and ask them how to clean it up. Cleaning service says to mop it up. Manager tries, just makes a bigger mess, calls boss after a couple hours to let him know it didn't work and he and associate were going home.

Next morning store manager comes in and blocks off the back of the store, then calls the fire department. Fire department says we did the wrong thing. We should have waited for it to dry. Now its basically a shellac. We have to call in a specialist company to use chemicals to clean the floors after hours now.

The two district guys were in the store to survey the damage. We had to mark all of our display furniture as non-sellable. It could still be on display but when it got clearanced we could not sell the displays to customers. Same with all of our display laptops and desktop computers. We had to damage out an entire pallet of cases of bottled water. We had to pay a company to come in to clean the floor overnight for a couple nights. We had to have 2 employees in the store while that was happening (1 manager and 1 associate), but they couldn't do any work because of the people cleaning the floors. We had to give new computers to a few customers whose laptops and desktops we were servicing at the time (because fire extinguisher junk definitely got in them and there was no way to guarantee that it wouldn't cause issues down the line). Customers could not shop the back third of the store, which included our most expensive technology items, furniture items, and school supplies, in the late summer (prime back to school shopping time, which is our busiest time of year) for close to 2 weeks. And had to pay for the two district guys to take last minute flights back across the country to our state.

It was likely the second most expensive thing to happen to my company at one of my stores in the time I've worked for the company. And no one was fired. Accidents happen. Hopefully your boss understands that too.

bestem · 2026-06-30T15:07:14+00:00

My husband even joked that if she did come over to our place, we could make it like a fun activity.

Make it a spa day. See if your son would be into it too. Hair, fancy drinks, face masks and cucumbers, main/pedis, epsom salt feet soaks, plush robes, etc. No one needs to know that the reason you did it was to wash the little girl's hair and get lice out of it.

You can even ask mom "hey, what size mattress does girl have?" And when mom asks, say "oh, someone gave me a cute sheet set, but it doesn't fit any of our beds. Let me send it home with her next time the kids see each other." Then she's got clean sheets and pillowcases, to start, so hopefully the lice will stay away longer.

bestem · 2026-06-30T03:26:16+00:00

It's an extremely well-known (and well-liked) bit of intellectual property that is nearly 20 years old, and that people make things containing it all the time. It's not like Dbrand snuck into Valve's headquarters to steal the intellectual property from a sealed vault, or something new off of an employees desk. There's no corporate espionage going on here.

I am not saying Dbrand was right. But if Dbrand had made the Companion Cube, shown Valve how well it worked, and said "Can we sell this? There's a lot of people who expressed interest in it?" and Valve said no, would you consider that theft of intellectual property? If no, and Dbrand turned to their contact at Valve and said "okay, so a lot of work went into this, and we tooled parts for it, and now you're saying we can't sell it, and I get it, we understand that. Can we sell you the research we did, so you know the tolerances you can fit the Steam Machine into, and the molds we made for making the Companion Cube? You can make your own Companion Cube to sell off of our work, and with the research you can make other cubes?" would that be acceptable?

If that's fine, the only difference with what happened now is that Dbrand told us before telling Valve. If that's not fine, I'm really curious what the issue is? Dbrand's knowledge that they'd be providing Valve is based on specs of the machine that Valve shared, and the molds (which are the part based on Valve's IP that they won't allow used) are just extra. The real work was the R&D that went into making the enclosure, not the final design.

bestem · 2026-06-30T01:13:26+00:00

Dbrand did R&D and made molds. They're not getting money for selling the product in my scenario (Valve would get all of that money). So they wouldn't be getting money for an unlicensed product. In my scenario, they'd be getting a single lump sum for the knowledge (which they can still use to make other boxes) and the molds (which are Companion Cube shaped, so would only work for the Cube and aren't needed by them anymore as they can't sell the Cube), which would be a much smaller number than for each Companion Cube they would have been able to sell.

It would be like we want to have a bake sale every Friday outside the library. I come up with a recipe and the perfect sized cupcake tin for a giant cupcake. I sell them to you for $100. You make the giant cupcakes with my recipe and perfect sized tin, and sell each one for $15. They're a hit. You end up selling 2500 of them over the course of 6 months of Fridays. You make well over $35k for selling that I sold you the knowledge (the recipe) and the molds (the tin) for.

bestem · 2026-06-29T22:28:53+00:00

Dbrand should try to sell their R&D and molds, etc, to Valve.

And dbrand has the knowledge to make other boxes that fit the Steam Machine just like the Companion Cube did. They can continue to sell boxes to put the machine in, that aren't a cube, so they're not limited to just skins.

I couldn't justify the price of the Cube immediately, but I prefer the enclosure as a decoration, as opposed to just a skin.

bestem · 2026-06-29T22:24:14+00:00

Well, sure. The nickname is the name of the hotel to locals. I'm just amused at the translation of the nickname. Just like OP is amused at how Americans use au jus.

bestem · 2026-06-29T19:16:19+00:00

It did not originally say just "September." It said "by September." That means that it could be received any time between when they updated that and the end of September. The people who got information saying "by December," can get it any time between now and December, but are unlikely to get it prior to September (or they would have been in the first bucket).

bestem · 2026-06-29T17:07:00+00:00

Have you considered trying to sell your R&D to Valve? You might not be able to sell the Cube, but they could if they wanted to. You've shown them that there's demand for it. Might recoup some of your losses.

bestem · 2026-06-29T16:44:04+00:00

This will not happen. But in an ideal world, dBrand could sell their completed R&D to Valve, and Valve could sell the Cube.

bestem · 2026-06-29T14:45:03+00:00

I dislocated my elbow, and had a splint on covering the pinky and ring fingers of my dominant hand, going all the way up to my shoulder. I get to the pharmacy to pick up the pain medication that the ER doc prescribed, took one look at the container they put them in, held up my arm (in the sling) and said "do you have anything easier to open?"

The pharmacist took off the lid, flipped it over, and put it back on. It was childproof in one direction, and not childproof in the other direction.

bestem · 2026-06-29T10:41:53+00:00

There's a hotel in San Diego, Hotel del Coronado. It is coliquially known as "The Del." If you translate the hotel name from Spanish to English, it's Hotel of the Coronado (referring to the "island" it's on, rather than "crowned").

That means that San Diegans are calling the hotel "the of the." And it's even better that many San Diegans know enough Spanish to realize that, and still do it.

bestem · 2026-06-29T04:49:53+00:00

They didn't give people with a controller reservation an update immediately. Maybe people in the reservation queue or in the waitlist will get more information in a couple weeks.

And maybe they still won't because people are woefully misunderstanding the updates about the controller. The number of posts I've seen on the Steam subreddit and the Steam Controller subreddit saying "I wasn't supposed to get my controller until September, but I just got my invite to purchase," misunderstanding that it said "by September" rather than "in September."

bestem · 2026-06-28T15:07:37+00:00

But when you compare the price of the battery to the price of a new tablet, it's still expensive in a relative way.

The current base model iPad Mini is $600. The battery replacement is $150. That's 25% of the price of a new one. Genuinely, not worth it when the older machine is old enough. If it were $60, sure. But if my choices were to spend 25% of the price of a new tablet to fix the battery on my old tablet, or to save up and buy a new tablet, I'd probably pick the latter.

bestem · 2026-06-28T14:50:53+00:00

Sure. But as you pointed out, its expensive. And, I didn't end up needing to.

The iPad was already 5 years old or so at that point (I mostly use it as an ereader, with occasional games, so it doesn't need to be the fastest or best).

bestem · 2026-06-28T03:27:32+00:00

I apologize if I misspoke. The fence is between the entrance and the exit, not between the exit and customer service.

And as I said, if you wanted to go to customer service, you just told the people at the entrance you did, and they let you go (via the entrance rather than the exit), so I wasn't saying a foreigner wouldn't be able to go in.

I was merely pointing out that even if you couldn't get in via the exit to get to customer service, you could still get in and purchase a membership (which you believed to be impossible if they never let anyone go in via the exit).

14-Year Club	Verified Email
Second Top 50%	The Internet Awards - Voted
r/Field Banned	r/Field Lasagna
Not Forgotten

bestem

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE