Wish This!

RantWoman would have been perfectly happy to be a successful and satisfied consumer. RantWoman would have been thrilled by the thought of online shopping shaving hours of bus travel out of her life and freeing her to spend more time fishing for holiday festivities with RantMom, Little Sister, Irrepressible Nephew, and Brother-in-Law. RantWoman apparently cannot go anywhere without technological calamity, moral crisis, and better yet both.

RantWoman like many other red-blooded shoppers succumbed to this morning's email invitation from Amazon to

1. Help Amazon market...

2. Tell the world exactly which loot one would most like to own

3. Add an item to one's Amazon wish list and enter a sweepstakes for the chance to win a $2500 gift card.

RantWoman had in mind:

1. Sign on to her amazon.com account.

2. Find the wish list page.

3. Find the form field to paste in a url

4. Fish the links for a couple things already on her mind off this blog.
--Hope the links form in a way that convey needed size information.

--Did RantWoman mention that, besides being taller and longer-limbed than is average for her gender, she is "generously proportioned," "naturally built," or an assortment of other terms for "not bloody likely to be happy with just Small, Medium, or Large?" RantWoman is used to this reality, matter-of-fact, long past dithering in useless embarrassment. RantWoman just wants to store and convey the needed information as efficiently as possible.

--RantWoman has lots of friends and family feeling financially pinched. RantWoman hears expectations that she will help them gift her with holiday beneficence and RantWoman feels obliged to be VERY firm about what expenditures of time and money will most delight her.

5. Paste in a url. Only provide the url. Do not provide any more information about RantWoman's daily computer peregrinations. Just paste in a url, that's all.

6. Sign off and go about her day.

Does anyone anywhere in this list see a "give us this daily our daily quote of occasions for ranting" item?

RantWoman is about to arrive at step 6, with no urls added to her wish list and more ranting than she thinks desirable! In particular:

--Both the email and the sign-in to RantWoman's Amazon.com account want RantWoman to install a toolbar OR put something on RantWoman's bookmarks toolbar. Ix-nay! No Way! RantWoman is really happy thank you very much with the steps she outlined above. RantWoman needs to STAY ON TASK, not wander off and shop at every temptation. RantWoman does not WANT a one-click wish list. RantWoman has plenty of STUFF already. RantWoman does NOT mind having to go through a extra few steps to add items to her wish list because the extra steps help keep RantWoman from spending every second succumbing to temptation.

--In fact, does Amazon let its employees wander off in the middle of their shifts for a bout of online shopping? RantWoman is asking partly because she was recently reading an item about brutal pace and heat exhaustion last summer and burning out temp workers for only a few permanent positions at an Amazon warehouse in PA. All of this summoned images of overstressed officeworkers from the overlord class stealing a few precious seconds from jobs they are terrified of losing to shop online so Santa's sweatshop can spring into action. This does not necessarily sound festive on either side.
RantWoman is all for efficiency, promptness and commercial exchange. IN RantWoman mindspace though National Buy Nothing Day and go off an have experiences instead of stuff compete pretty fiercely with online shopping!

Part of Henry Ford's genius was realizing that his employees needed to be able to use and afford his products. What about Amazon??? RantWoman REALLY does not want to be giving anyone any electronic company store ideas, but RantWoman, on behalf of the other 99% feels obliged to ask such questions. Frankly, if RantWoman were employing anyone other than RantWoman, she would be extremely peeved to have the shopping scene intrude so insidiously into her employees' time! Arrrgh. RantWoman would also want her employees to believe in her firm's products but for the moment RantWoman needs to stop thinking and deal with other things already ensconced on her to-do list!

Oh Wait, the to-do list includes "outcomes" at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing, also known as a community technology center. The Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing is not bloody likely to let our customers install Amazon's wish list on our toolbars and if the customers do that, there is software that is SUPPOSED to obliterate such changes.

RantWoman is darn sure plenty of Friendly Neighborhood Center... customers, many of whom do not have computers at home, might also like a chance to put things on the Amazon wish lists, enter the blooming sweepstakes, and share their hearts' holiday desires with all their kith and kin! Who knew, the rant of the day was going to turn out to be topical here too!

--RantWoman has her own computer and DOES want to be able to find items she is interested in again. RantWoman THINKS she probably knows how to navigate to the right locations on a toolbar with her screen reader. On the off chance that RantWoman is wrong, RantWoman emphatically does NOT need to be spending an additional increment of time figuring out the right functionality on her screen reader. RantWoman mentions this toolbar reluctance also because she did not find any way of adding items to her wish ist without installing one of the options. Growl!

--Next RantWoman found the entry from her blog as filing cabinet model of information accretion. RantWoman even THOUGHT she found the right link for a multi-colored high-visibility vest. RantWoman's ISP thought otherwise and served RantWoman up another whole screen of search results repetitive of the things RantWoman already waded through with her screen reader once. BIG raspberries to ISP for this intrusion! RantWoman had to listen to and scroll around the new page again and try a couple different clicks with additional screens full of stuff for her screen reader to chew through before FINALLY hitting the url for an item that was going to do for the wish list:
http://www.viccouniforms.com/Berne-Hi-Visibility-Mesh-Multi-Color-Vest-HVV046.html
Note, no option RantWoman found to include size in the link. Sigh.

--RantWoman actually might rather fantasize about other items of high-visibility clothing but RantWoman REALLY needs to tend to the circuses already in queue and does NOT need any more ranting just now. Plus Amazon's sweepstakes runs for awhile and MAYBE RantWoman will figure out how to interact better another time. Growl!

Or maybe RantWoman will pursue one of two shop in person options:

--Recently RantWoman was admiring someone else's reflector wear and learned it could be had at a store in SODO. RantWoman is wondering whether RantMom could be induced to take a two-bus trip about this. RantWoman is wondering this partly because she is fretting on behalf of RantMom over night-time visibility when we go about after our evening Symphony trips. RantMom is pretty allergic to online shopping and really likes both hanging with her kid and putting her hands on actual merchandise. Hanging with the kid AND getting the right merchandise is pretty close to RantMom's idea of heaven.

--OR RantWoman can take one of her multi-hop shopping trips up Aurora on the 358, get some supplies at Seattle Fabrics and have some reflectivity-themed experiences preaching the gospel of better visibility with RantMom and the rest of the Rant family.

Good thing RantWoman likes the Kindle she got awhile ago for reading on the bus though.