Tag Archives: iew

No Chips in Rancho Any More

(Not real. Imagen 4.)

I have not lived in the Inland Empire as long as my in laws have, but I recognize the gravity of this announcement all the same. From KTLA:

“A Frito-Lay manufacturing plant in Rancho Cucamonga has stopped production after more than 50 years in operation, and potentially hundreds of workers are now looking for new jobs.

“On Monday, a spokesperson for PepsiCo Foods U.S., the parent company of Frito-Lay, confirmed that manufacturing operations at the Rancho Cucamonga facility have ended.”

The facility will not close entirely. Warehouse and distribution/fleet/transportation operations will continue.

In (hopefully) happier news, we are less than two hours away from the Graber announcement.

I Predict Thrifty Ice Cream Will Survive

(CC BY-SA 4.0)

Don’t worry about unintended consequences of Rite Aid’s troubles.

The bankruptcy court will sell, and someone will buy, the Thrifty ice cream brand and continue to produce it. It’s a popular brand and therefore a valuable asset, and the creditors will want to get money for it.

After all, someone bought Twinkies. Multiple times.

Maybe Rite Aid just needs content-proposal-analysis marketing and writing services. Then again, Bredemarket does B2B/B2G identity/biometrics and technology, not B2C ice cream and cough syrup.

Graber Olive House…Re-opening?

From Debra Dorst-Porada’s Instagram:

“THE GRABER FAMILY CORDIALLY INVITES YOU TO A NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING ΤΟ LEARN ABOUT THE RE-OPENING & FUTURE PLANS FOR THE GRABER OLIVE HOUSE

“TUESDAY JUNE 10TH, 5:30PM TO 6:30PM GRABER OLIVE HOUSE “CASA DEL OLIVO” 315 E 4TH STREET, ONTARIO CA 91764 LIGHT REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED. NO RSVP REQUIRED.

“ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE EMAIL THE GRABER FAMILY AT: THEGRABEROLIVEHOUSE@GMAIL.COM”

Ontario: When Enforcement IS Enforcement

For those who missed my prior post on the topic, the city of Ontario announced mandatory weekly car removal from the street to allow street sweeping.

If your side of the street is scheduled for sweeping, and your car is still on the street, you would get a ticket.

After Ontario revealed the signs, it stated that the fines wouldn’t be enforced until the first full week of May.

So beginning in early May, I religiously ensured my car was off my side of the street by Wednesday noon.

Until Ontario restated that the fines wouldn’t be enforced until the first full week of JUNE.

Who does Ontario think it is? The Transportation Security Administration?

But I kept on moving my car through the end of May, every single week.

After a month of enforcement delay, Wednesday June 4 rolled around. And I reminded myself that I REALLY needed to move my car that morning before noon to avoid a ticket from the city.

You can guess what happened next.

I remembered to move my car…at 2:30 in the afternoon.

And found a $50 ticket that was left at 12:57 in the afternoon.

On the day that it REALLY counted.

I immediately tried to pay my fine online, but the (handwritten) ticket hadn’t been entered into the payment system yet.

I’ve been advised that it may take as long as a month to record the ticket in the payment system.

Sadly, I’m not counting on the system to forget about it.

Even though I have a REAL ID.

TSA PreCheck at Staples Via CLEAR (and IDEMIA)

I was wandering around my local (Upland, California) Staples on a Saturday afternoon. If I had arrived on a weekday, I could have applied for TSA PreCheck.

Only weekday hours, at least at the Staples on Mountain in Upland.

(No, I didn’t apply for TSA PreCheck in 2017 when MorphoTrak became part of MorphoTrust  (when IDEMIA was formed) and I became eligible for a corporate discount. I didn’t predict a pandemic. Oops.)

Now that IDEMIA is not the only game in town for TSA PreCheck, the competitors are trying to grab market share. Thus the alliance between CLEAR (and IDEMIA) and Staples.

Start at the kiosk.

It appears that you start enrollment at the kiosk, and then complete the process with a “Staples Travel Specialist.”

Incidentally, this Staples is in the same shopping center as an IDEMIA IdentoGO location.

Wednesday is a Fine Day

For people at Ontario International Airport and other airports throughout the United States, May 7 is REAL ID Sort of Enforcement Day.

For people on certain sides of streets in Ontario, California, today is another type of enforcement day.

For months, we have been told that if your car is parked on the street during street sweeping day, enforcement and fines will begin during the first full week of May.

But will the city truly enforce it?

One Product You Cannot Get at Amazon Fresh

I went back to the Upland Amazon Fresh at noon, primarily to see how Amazon incorporates technology into its services.

Amazon Fresh supports the Dash Carts I discussed in a previous post. (The Whole Foods I visited this morning does not.) These let you scan your items as you take them from the shelves, speeding your checkout.

Dash Cart in the wild.

Another device speeds your checkout by weighing your produce before checkout. Looks like you have to manually input the item number, though.

Weigh now and check out later.

This device appeared to be for returns, but I wasn’t really sure.

QR code for…something.

As I wandered through the store, I was impressed with the variety of groceries offered.

But I was unable to find one item in Amazon Fresh—something that is readily available at the Dollar Tree next door.

The missing item?

Books.

Remember when Amazon was only a book seller?

Amazon One Biometrics Worked. Maybe.

Because of the long line at the Upland Amazon Fresh, I didn’t want to wait around to activate my new Amazon One account. So I went to the Whole Foods on the other side of town. Then the fun began.

I had previously designated a payment card to use with Amazon One (Card #1). When I went to check out and provided my palm, I was asked to insert this card.

The reader said there was a problem with this card, so I inserted a different card (Card #2) and the payment processed on that card.

After my purchase I went back to my Amazon One app…which still showed Card #1 as my purchase card.

Not sure what’s going on.