NerdBeach

Scan And Go Shopping Bypasses The Checkout Line

Shopping – the mere word brings up images of drudgery and frustration (unless it’s a book store or a gadget store, of course!) But the worse part of it all is definitely the checkout line, where one must queue up and wait for a small eternity as price checks are issued for random objects. But Walmart is trying to help the experience by adding technology to the shopping cart, making it much quicker and easier to do the required chore.

Called Scan and Go, the system merges regular shopping with the self-check kiosks (which often still requires a queue to operate, much to shopper’s chagrin). The clever carts are equipped with a combination touch screen and bar code scanner, and the shopper can scan things as they pick them up in the store. When they are finished, the lucky shopper pays and leaves , completely bypassing the bleak and desperate faces waiting in the checkout line.

The system is currently in testing at Houston, Texas, but I hope it rolls out nationwide soon. In the meanwhile, I will keep refining my “best shopping time” charts and tables in order to best cope with the crowds. This is no small feat, since you have to take into account any required resources for the shopping task. Seriously, have you even tried getting customer service at 3 a.m.? It’s not pretty.

Remembering Harry Dean Stanton

It is almost impossible to be a fan of many cult classic movies and not know, or at least not recognize, veteran actor Harry Dean Stanton.  From his humble roots in rural Kentucky, Stanton went on to have a part in many big films popular today. Stanton was always a welcome face for many fans, and he was “that guy” that instantly added a touch of quality to anything he was in. Even film critic Roger Ebert was a fan of his work, as he defined his “Stanton Walsh Rule”:

No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.

From his memorable roles as the singing convict in “Cool Hand Luke” to his lead performance in “Paris, Texas”, Stanton played a variety of characters. But it was his forays into Science Fiction that I remember best, being part of the ill-fated Nostromo crew in “Alien” and Brian in John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York”, for starters.

Through it all, Stanton’s humble beginnings stayed with him and kept him grounded. As he told the Observer in an interview about his life and many roles in film and TV,

In the end, you end up accepting everything in your life – suffering, horror, love, loss, hate – all of it. It’s all a movie anyway.

Even though Harry Dean Stanton died September 15, 2017 at the age of 91, I think a part of me will still half-expect him to show in movies in the future. While that is probably not going to happen, it would certainly be welcome. And that is probably his greatest legacy.

Thank you for entertaining us, Harry Dean Stanton.