Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Is nothing simple?

I've spent all day today and much of last Thursday and Friday placing orders for field equipment for my course this summer. Of course nothing has been easy; a disturbingly large number of items are out of stock, most websites appear designed solely to frustrate potential customers, nobody can give me solid shipping cost estimates, and everything is further complicated because these are international orders (e.g., I still haven't found a reasonably priced supplier for ethyl acetate [insect killing fluid] that will ship to Canada).

The most enjoyable part of the day? When one company's website lost my shopping cart after I'd placed 45 items in it.

And I thought spending money was supposed to be fun ...

[update 7/15/05: Everything is ordered, has shipped, and at least half of the items are already in Canada. Yay!]

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