Good find

Everyone raves about the "two buck chuck" at Trader Joe's. First of all, it's "three buck chuck" at the Trader Joe's by my house. I'm not very impressed with their current offerings of "two buck". Last summer, it was a different label, and it was good. Perhaps it was because it was a Trader Joe's in Chicago and not Tucson.

So I look down their wine isles, and picking out things to try. I was craving a white early this week, and the Chateu Ste. Michelle Riseling fitted the bill nicely. I think I paid $8 for it, and would gladly buy it again.

Today, I was looking at the reds. I picked up a Black Opal Shiraz for $6, and there was a conspicious empty space. I looked at the bin tag, and it said it was for a Kangroo Ridge Merlot. It was priced $3, so I thought it might be worth a try. It's Saturday, and I knew I could wait an hour if I asked someone to look in the back for me. So I stood on my tippie toes, and found a bottle of that merlot hiding behind the Black Opals. I stretched, and carefully snagged the bottle in my long finger tips.

It's a a nice wine. Not terribly strong for a merlot, but has a nice finish. Well worth the effort I spent to acquire said bottle, and the $3 I paid for it.

BD can still bite me!

I never got a person to answer the phone at BD Biosciences.

FedEx was much more helpful, to an extent. FedEx was able to find the status of my package by providing the destination address, the name on the package, and the city where it was shipped from. Sure enough, despite assurances from the FedEx guy, the Saturday guy didn't go to the security office, and logged it as a failed delivery.

"You know all that information, but I can't tell you the tracking number."

"I'd have the damn tracking number if someone answered the phone in San Diego. But they're not. All I have is their confirmation number."

"I can give you a control number. You can pick up the package at the depo by the airport. Bring your University ID if it has a photo on it. They close at 5."

So I drive my ass down there. Oddly enough, it's about 1/4 mile from the DHL depo. I give the control number. Them asking for my ID was an afterthought. It is kind of stupid since the photo on my ID is mostly rubbed off from all the swiping my card undergoes in a week.

So the BD products are sitting in my fridge. I'm going to write a big note to NOT forget it Monday morning.

BD....bite me!

I seem to have a lot of trouble with big scientific supply companies these days.

Today it's BD (Becton Dickson). They started out as the cytometry "gold standard" by having great flow cytometers. But selling half a million dollar machines wasn't enough. So they started buying out scientific suppliers.

The gold standard in centrifuge tubes, Falcon, was bought out by BD. Now, approximately 5% of the tubes are cracked.

Then they bought out Pharmingen, the gold standard in antibody suppliers. If Pharmingen didn't sell it, you most likely couldn't find it. Haven't seen a quality issue yet with their products.

But because of someone dropping the ball, I'm stuck waiting for a FedEx Saturday delivery because these items are needed on Monday. I have a confirmation number, but no tracking number.

Naturally, their phone trees give me messages "we're only open Monday through Friday - go away". So I pretend I'm dumb and clueless, and wait for the system to try and kick me to a real person.

They have an annoying hold thing going on. The music fades in and out. And you're periodically reminded in a loud voice how many are in the queue before you. It's been telling me since I got on that there's one in front of me.

At this rate, I'll take a janitor that can access a computer.