It seems impossible to avoid these kinds of issues… Something basic has failed once again. I understand that logistics are challenging, but in this case, it seems the logistical base should have been in order. Hundreds of photos of hundreds of children, along with a record of name, number in the album, team, coach, group photo, team logo, landscape or portrait. This must have been thought through.
The problem: The football cards of Alan’s team are unfortunately not all perfect. A mistake slipped in. One of Alan’s teammates does have their own card, but with the wrong photo of another boy. Such a shame, especially for the boy himself and his parents.
An (empty) album costs 7 euros, and for every 6 cards, you pay 1.50 euros. The album holds nearly 200 cards, so with plenty of trading, you can manage with exactly 34 packs. That will cost (34 x 1.50) + 7 = 58 euros. It’s an expensive album, especially if your child is pictured incorrectly in it, for his team mates it is a shame that a friend’s card isn’t accurate.
A quick fix would be to print a few new corrected cards. That seems like the cheapest solution to me. Perhaps they’ll do nothing; ‘better luck next time’ is even cheaper. We’ll see how this unfolds.
Sometimes you see a police officer on the street. It always makes an impression, especially on children. If there’s really something going on, extra officers are often quickly dispatched. If it gets really out of hand, sometimes the army also gets involved. Fortunately, this almost never happens.
It feels like we have started over. The first few years where home PC’s got popular were weird. Things were clunky, and very fluid. Some games and programs required a bit more memory, of a bit of a better graphics card, and I would take out and update my graphics card, or get some extra memory, and open the PC and put the memory in the slots available on the motherboard. It was just how it was. CD’s got popular? Simply get a CD reader and plug it in. Zip-disks got popular? Get a SCSI extension for your PC, plug it in on your motherboard, connect your new zip-disk to the new SCSI port and hope for the best. A hard-disk? Get the really expensive 20MB HD and plug it in. Format and partition the HD and after a couple of hours everything was ready to go. USB connections? Get an extension, plug it in, and you are ready to use whatever you got.
The last comment on this blog is from September last year. A certain Ricky posted a comment on my 
Step 1: Acquire an asset for yourself.
Friday, after work I pass by the supermarket near my office. I go to this supermarket a lot, so I work my standard route and get everything we need. I stand in line to pay and take everything home. That was the idea, buy paying was not so easy. Payment declined. Insufficient funds. Another card did work, so I loaded everything into the car. After loading everything I decided to check the bank app to see why I could not pay, and I got quite a scare. There was nothing left on our account. Everything was spend in Marceille, in France. Our entire account, with nearly 1500 euro was all spend in a single day.
More and more time is spend online. Your social circles are formed online with people that feel similar to yourself. Where our social circles used to be centered around the town or city where you live, right now they can be everywhere. The same way that your physical friends can influence you, you can now also be influenced by the options and views of your online friends. Friends that you might have never met, but with whom you can spend lots of time.
Artificial intelligence is a thing we keep hearing more and more about, but what are we really talking about? Is it really something smart and intelligent. It is certainly smart, but sadly the intelligent part still needs to be created.
It is getting ridiculous!