Products, services, marketing, names
A Mercado Libre order arrived with this “business card” inside. I don’t know if it’s a Latin American aesthetic, but I started noticing illegible business cards and ads when we arrived in Mexico 15 years ago.
Here’s an example from a few years ago.
You just have to wonder.
I got my first 2022 calendar recently, from the fish guy. It’s notable for a number of reasons. First is that I never knew the place actually had a name, since it doesn’t display it anywhere. Regardless, I can barely make out the name on the calendar. And they are definitely not open every day of the year, despite the claim. And interesting to note—though certainly understandable—the foods pictured do not include fish.
It does have moon phases, though, which may prove useful.
Welcome to Uruguay. Please type “www.”
Six years ago I pointed out that some large websites in Uruguay required you to type “www” or they wouldn’t work. ANCAP, the national company for petroleum, alcohol, and Portland cement, still requires you to type “www” in late 2021. Honest: ancap.com.uy. [October 2024: still not corrected!]
However, Riogas, one of the cooking gas companies that has become completely annoying in the last few years by driving noise trucks around in a country where absolutely no one who might want to order gas lacks a phone, has outdone itself with web design.
It was probably 1994 when I first played around with web design, and knew about including “www redirects,” as one had to. But almost since then, web hosts have provided that automatically. But don’t tell Riogas. Honestly, check it out: riogas.com.uy. [October 2024 – corrected! Imagine that.]
But it gets better: do you remember GIFs? Not animated GIFs, but the limited-palette color file format released by Compuserve in 1987? Which you probably stopped using by the late 1990s when PNG came onto the scene?
Ah, but don’t tell Riogas. Not only do they use a GIF as one of their header images, but it’s a doozy: measuring 5,228 by 1,801 pixels, it takes up 8.8 megabytes!
There it is, in all its glory. Even if simply saved in an appropriate format (not GIF!), its size could easily be reduced by 80%.
However, I reduced that image to 1920 pixels wide and saved as jpeg at reasonable quality. It’s perfectly presentable and barely more than 1% of the size. In fact, would load 86X faster than their monster legacy image.
Maybe the genius designers at Riogas will figure that out one day?
I think this is my favorite sign ever. There is literally one letter of it that is completely correct: y.
Queso cacero hongos y más. Homemade cheese mushrooms and more.
Brilliant. I’ve never actually stopped at the stand. I think I need to.
UPDATE: Syd of the Dog Walks: The Keso Kasero is as bland and tasteless as all the others of the genre. She has never had fresh hongos in two or three stops we have made. Y mas is preserved morrones, hongos, too sweet jams, et al.
I ordered something on Mercado Libre. It was shipped from Lascano in Rocha Department, ~230 km away.
Here’s how it played out:
Three days to get 230 km. Ridiculous, right? Well, at least it was on its way to Atlántida, so I could expect delivery on the 28th, no? Wrong. Late afternoon on the 28th I went to the local office, where they retrieved my package and I paid the postage. Why wasn’t it delivered to my home, as directed? We were going to do that tomorrow. This reminds me of getting documents expressed shipped from Europe several years ago. They got to Montevideo in two days. I received them seven days after that. I literally could have walked to Montevideo and back in less time.
On the other hand, today I received a wireless keyboard and mouse I ordered two days ago.
As with so many things in Uruguay, the only consistent aspect is their inconsistency.
Saw this at the feria couple weeks ago. First and only time. Mobile tattoo / barber shop?
I’ll pass.
On this very day a year ago, I did the same thing i did today: finished stacking firewood in the garage. This year the minimum for delivery is 3,500 kg, up from 3,000 last year. Yes, that’s a lot of wood.
A dozen eggs today, 65 pesos (USD 1.47) at our local mini-supermarket. The last I bought at another mini-supermarket they were 95, and at Tienda Inglesa (large supermarket) they’re 120 pesos.
Who knows?
“Tap water is generally safe to drink in Uruguay.”
Yes, if you don’t mind putting in your body whatever shit got caught by those filters before they were changed.
