automated security

[jazzfish]

About this time last year I threw money at the publishers of Atomic Robo in exchange for a complete eight-volume hardback run of the comic. I did this in the hope that it would arrive in time to be uilos's Xmas present. As you can probably guess from the fact that I'm writing this now, they missed their projected delivery date of November by, oh, seven months and counting.

I don't know what most of the circumstances were, but printing a gazillion colour hardbacks is not trivial at the best of times. I expect they just massively underestimated the scale and the effort involved. And also created their time budget "assuming everything goes smoothly" and then were surprised when everything didn't.

Today's Kickstarter update included the following gem:

On the yet brighter side: your damn books finally got out of damn customs! Apparently when everything is labeled "ATOMIC" it throws up some red flags and you get extra scrutiny. WOW THAT WASN'T A TREMENDOUSLY FRUSTRATING WASTE OF TIME OR ANYTHING HAHA LAUGH WITH ME HAHA.

I'm reminded of the time a couple of years ago when I bought a wargame from a guy online. I paid him via PayPal, and in the Comments section I made a note of the name of the game I was paying him for. Turns out that if you send payment through PayPal and put "Cuba Libre!" in the Comments, your payment gets flagged for Further Review and held for several days.

Moral: automated systems have no sense of either proportion or humour.

Comments

[novel_machinist]

I hope you get it soon!

[jazzfish]

At this point it'll be a pleasant surprise whenever it *does* get here...

[reedrover]

I totally agree. I also note that Canada has contaminated your spelling.

[jazzfish]

*g* It's partly that and partly a reversion to form. I've always been partial to grey over gray and adding U to words was a fun affectation for a bit when I was in junior high.

You'll never convince me that prison-before-you're-convicted is spelt "gaol", though.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

This is all sorts of wonderful

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

They spell jail gaol??

[jazzfish]

:) :)

Re gaol for jail: apparently it's archaic, phased out sometime in the early twentieth century. I think I first encountered it in the Dr Doolittle books and could *not* figure out what a "gaol-house" might be. And there's Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Gaol" ("And each man kills the thing he loves / By each let this be heard").

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Wow, I didn't realize customs could be that much of a hold-up!