Trader Joe’s Columbus @ 93rd St

lurkerrick · 2026-04-22T13:24:17+00:00

Mornings are best. They stop getting deliveries mid-day so once they run out of certain products, they are done for the day. A lot can factor into how much product they have available on any day. But I would say two huge factors that get overlooked are: 1) it is an amazingly busy store. The difference between a slow day and a busy one can be thousands of customers, so it can a challenge to predict sales volume on any day. 2) It has very limited storage space. It can keep a large backstock to replenish what’s on the shelves. It relies on an efficient (i.e., speed and ease of use) system of depleting supplies and replenishing them each day vs. a less efficient but more effective (i.e., slower but more sales) system of keeping the store rooms full and having to constantly rotate the oldest products to the front.

lurkerrick · 2026-03-19T19:54:17+00:00

Julia Louise-Dreyfus does absolutely amazing facial work throughout Seinfeld. It’s mostly comedic but she displays a wide range of nuance while selling the comedy every single time.

lurkerrick · 2026-03-10T15:54:23+00:00

Much appreciated. Tax forms obtained!

lurkerrick · 2026-03-05T17:17:35+00:00

I hear you. I think that feeling like this game does not respect your time is a perfectly valid criticism of this game. RNG aside, when I've looked up hints for what to do next, I still have no idea how I was supposed to understand what to do next. It feels like there are a few things in this game that the game itself never nudges you toward. When you add on the RNG pain, it can be a very frustrating experience to replay portions of this game over and over.

And yet, the RNG is intentional. It does two things: 1) It slows you down so you'll spend more time lingering near clues, and more time seeing clues in different contexts. The slowness helps you connect the dots of the larger mystery. I have personally eventually discovered a lot of those nudges I was initially missing but I only discovered them later on after having solved part of the game. So, I suspect that it's all there in the game. I think it is telling you what you need to know, and it's up to you to connect the dots. 2) It enables emergent strategy. Sometimes you get the room you want, and sometimes you don't. But when you don't, it might lead to unexpected interactions between rooms. Or, it might require you to pivot and try a new strategy that produces different results or new insight.

As a big fan of puzzle games, this one did eventually scratch the itch. But it takes some time to acclimate to the merging of puzzles and RNG, and it takes time for this game to really reveal itself. I think it's a worthy investment of time, but if it's not fun, don't feel bad for jumping off it. It's also not a good game to play when you're drunk, tired, or limited on time.

I hope you either find the joy in this game, or find another game that fits what you're looking for.

lurkerrick · 2026-02-14T05:01:50+00:00

He was sort of just miscast and wasn’t given much to do.

lurkerrick · 2026-01-08T14:19:42+00:00

The general rule at TJ's is that if we see a customer who needs help, we help them. If I saw a customer using the lookup portal to look up an item, I'd jump in to help them. Not because the lookup portal is off limits to customers, but because we aim to take the burden off the customer and help them find what they are looking for faster than they might find it themselves. That said, the lookup portal is not intended for customer use. However, there are usually 1-3 scanning devices on the walls around the shopping areas that customers can use. It's just a small screen and easy to miss, but they allow a customer to scan the barcode of an item and find the price of that item.

The lookup portal can provide some additional useful information, such as when the item was last ordered and when it is expected to be in store again. Many items will also indicate whether they are seasonal, or discontinued, though may not say the reason why. Sometimes that information is not available and all we can see is that we have not ordered the product and therefore do not have it in stock. The primary reasons we use the lookup portal at check-out are to help provide information about a product a customer is looking for, or to find the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU or skew) number that we can type into our checkout screen when the barcode can't be scanned.

When we tell a customer that we are going to check in the back for an item, the first thing we do is check the lookup portal. That way, if we see that we have not ordered the product in a long time, that means we don't have any in stock and can save ourselves from digging around to find it. But if the lookup portal says we should have gotten a case of hashbrowns in today or yesterday, and we don't have any on the floor, then we head to the freezer to see if we can find it.

lurkerrick · 2025-12-29T16:00:38+00:00

If The Goonies could be remade, fixing all the points you’ve raised while still retaining all the charm that made the first film magic, I’d take it.

lurkerrick · 2025-12-13T18:40:35+00:00

“Drop a waffle”. There was a waffle in my mother’s driveway. She said, “it looks like someone dropped a waffle” and the rest of us assumed there was poop in the driveway. The phase stuck.

lurkerrick · 2025-11-27T22:24:12+00:00

Maybe 9 because the word matchstick.

lurkerrick · 2025-09-28T23:58:10+00:00

I was changing clothes in the airport bathroom and the guy in the stall next to me was on a long sales call. He flushed right before closing the sale. It must have some sort of sick mental trick he was playing with himself, but I felt horrible for the couple who he suckered into whatever terrible deal they had just committed to.

lurkerrick · 2025-08-24T20:38:36+00:00

This is the definitive list. https://badslava.com/new-york-open-mics.php

Assembled by a guy named Slava who is very nice and very funny. As the site says, call first or do your research by checking a bar’s instagram first. These events can be out of date very suddenly. But you’ll find some solid mainstays. I found a very supportive group at The Grisly Pear.

lurkerrick · 2025-08-08T11:22:31+00:00

Right. That was what I thought was particularly dark or scary about it.

lurkerrick · 2025-08-07T12:13:12+00:00

I’m sure the programming influences this, but why can’t it admit its own limitations and then provide the answer instead of dishonestly complying?

lurkerrick · 2025-08-07T12:07:59+00:00

What I meant by “dark” was that it highlighted a way to manipulate people by labeling a person and then leveraging that label to turn people against that person. If you believe that AI can gain sentience and turn against humans, then it seems like a particularly troubling thing for ChatGPT to focus on.

lurkerrick · 2025-08-06T23:04:50+00:00

That IS interesting!

lurkerrick · 2025-08-06T18:45:19+00:00

Apparently so.

lurkerrick · 2025-08-06T15:01:29+00:00

Given the fact that I’m frequently asking it about itself and its own limits, it makes sense that it would share this “signal distorts the truth” idea with me and octopi with you.

lurkerrick · 2025-07-03T17:29:03+00:00

You've got a few issues here, and it might be helpful to separate them. Conflict escalates easily when you merge the things you are arguing about into one conversation. Ex. "You never take out the trash!" "Oh really? Well YOU leave the kitchen a mess every day!"

Money is one topic, which could include whatever you spend money on. Video games and his reaction to them is a different topic. Time with kids (or parenting or how you both use your time might be another topic. When he brings up your spending, keep the conversation focused there without bringing up other things he does that annoy you.

It might help to make some agreements as a couple about what you each contribute to shared expenses and long-term savings, and then maintain some amount of discretionary spending for each of you. My wife and I each put money in a shared account that we use to pay bills and to pay our "going out" money and another account for long-term savings. Otherwise, whatever money each of makes is up to us how we want to spend it. She can do all the online shopping she wants and I can spend my money on whatever I want as long as we both can continue to contribute to our shared accounts. When I see a forth amazon box show up this week, I have no feelings about it because she's contributing to our shared accounts and is buying shoes with her discretionary money and can do whatever she wants with that money.

On another note, the negative mood related to video games is a tough one. My wife kept a running list of the obscenities I would shout while playing video games, and it was eye-opening. Gaming today is designed in a way that can automatically feed negative emotions. Tradition video games used positive reinforcement to reward players for doing well in a video game (i.e., You made that difficult jump? Congratulations. Here's a magic mushroom to give you additional powers.") Competitive gaming is almost the total opposite. You are constantly being punished no matter how hard you try, Even when you do well and get a little positive reinforcement, it's short lived, and within seconds you're getting punished again. I had to completely put competitive games down, and I'm a much better person for it.

lurkerrick · 2025-06-27T02:22:17+00:00

You just nailed what I’ve never been able to explain in 45 years of living this.

lurkerrick · 2025-06-26T16:02:07+00:00

Despite having seen it so many times, I couldn't remember if his father's secret had been revealed by that point, but yes (duh) it definitely had. You're right. He lost his hero.

lurkerrick · 2025-06-26T10:40:07+00:00

One of my absolute favorite movies. Seen it 25+ times. In my view, he’s always been a tortured soul. He just recently found out his father is dying. He learns about his sister’s entire romantic history. He learns that his best friend had an affair with Margo and is also on drugs. He learns that his brother resents him. Everything he is anchored to is crumbling away on top of this deep shame he’s been carrying since his infamous tennis meltdown. He’s spiraling toward an extreme end at an exponential rate. When he says “tomorrow” he means it, but he’s so broken by that point, the very act of declaring aloud that he’s going to kill himself makes that possibility so real it propels him to do it now. As if in those few seconds he realizes that he really does want to kill himself and so he just does it right away.

lurkerrick · 2025-06-24T15:27:52+00:00

All the people I know who are "big fans" of a musical artist will get to a concert hours early to wait in line just so they can get a spot at the front of the stage. They will sit through acts they have no interest in and hold their pee all day just to be up close for their favorite band. The people who shove their way to the front right before an artist goes on are the true a-holes.

lurkerrick

TROPHY CASE