Short circuited at Circuit City web store

What sort of an online store has a boneheaded order limit of 8 items?

CircuitCity.com.

Marker maker not so sharp

A manufacturer of permanent markers has placed a guy outside my office for the last two days touting the new "mini" version of their flagship marker product.

How is he promoting the smaller version? With a massive black H2 Hummer.

Normally I couldn't care less about how companies want to spend their money on advertising and how it relates to the environment, but in this case -- since the promotional setup is in my way several times a day -- I make an exception.

With gas at $3 per gallon, shouldn't the company be embarrassed to drive around a Hummer converted to a billboard?

It gets better.

Humming away next to the Hummer is a Honda generator. It's not enough to burn gas in the Hummer I guess. Nor is it enough to emit greenhouse gases out of the car, they need to run a generator as well, and spew exhaust on me passers by. Remember the stories of gasoline lawn mower emissions? Portable generators aren't far behind.

It gets better.

Next to the Honda generator is an electrical outlet on the wall of a building. One would think that if you were parked next to a building, you might have a source of electricity anyway. This particular building has outlets outside and in the patio where the Hummer is parked.

What do they need a generator for you may ask? They need it to run a 50" Pioneer plasma screen playing AC/DC music videos, which you can't even see in the bright sunshine. So not only do they not need a generator because it's performing a useless function, they don't need a generator at all. Of course the music videos have to be turned up significantly to be heard over the generator.

After two days of this I have compiled a list of the impressions I get out of this company's promotion. Is this what they wanted to tell me?

• We don't field test our promotional setups. It doesn't matter if we send out useless equipment that people can't see. We also don't review them after they've been in place.
  
• Our customers are morons. They will -- as any reasonable person would -- associate a big black Hummer and music videos with a good permanent marker.
  
• We spend money not on improving customer service, R&D, or environmental stewardship, but on gas for our big black Hummers.
  
• Our advertising department either ran out of ideas, was suckered into a stupid promotion by an outside ad agency, or is staffed by morons. Probably all three.
• We don't own any extension cords.

The next time I go to write on a CD-ROM and the marker is dry because the cap was left off too long, I'll remember that big black Hummer.

How NOT to design a survey form

I received an online "customer satisfaction" survey done for a business by a third party.

I don't mind filling these out, but in this case I couldn't figure out how to fill out the survey.

See if can easily figure out how you are supposed to fill out this form.

What's even worse is the interface for asking these same styles of questions has been around on pen and paper for decades.