nuclear_wizard

I've had good experiences with ABF Freight, but it might not work for everyone. They drop off the back of a trailer at your place, let you load up, then you call them to pick up the trailer and tell them where it's going. They charge by the square foot of the trailer that you use, so there's some more savings there. They provide bulkheads that you use to seal off "your section" of stuff in the trailer, and they'll fill the rest with other stuff going to the same place.

Biggest downsides are that you need to have the space to put a 30+ foot long trailer (usually street parking unless your driveway is long and straight) for at least 2 days, and I would recommend that you have storage on the other side for your stuff even if you don't yet have a place because the one time that I had to pay their trailer storage fee, it was quite pricey. Also you gotta be flexible on delivery (don't pack anything you can't survive a month without) because occasionally, their drivers get rerouted or delayed.

In my experience, it's easier to deal with local movers completely separately from the shipping service. The one time I was on a time crunch and hired an "all-in-one" service, all they did was get local guys giving them the cheapest quote anyways.

When the movers showed up, they claimed they hadn't been told about "all the extra stuff" and quoted me literally double the price to pack it up. My wife and I had padded every number we gave to the moving company (e.g., room was 12' x 15' and we'd just say 15' x 15' and full of stuff) beforehand to avoid this, but they still tried to gouge us. I was able to negotiate them down by about 30%, but I was going to be on a plane in less than 24 hours; so they had me over a barrel. They would have been perfectly fine leaving me high and dry if I didn't shell out the cash either. It's an industry with a lot of predatory practices.

Meanwhile, every time I've just hired local guys on both sides and dealt with shipping separately, it's been cheaper (still not cheap), and I sleep better at night knowing that way less money is going into the pockets of middlemen.

Fuck 'em. This far into Meta's descent into a capitalist surveillance platform, they should know what kind of company they work for. They only find it to be a problem if they aren't "finding meaning" in the "interesting technical challenges" of turning people into data points.

Or Mina the Hollower...

Literally read a Texas Monthly article asking What's Wrong with Downtown Dallas today: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/whats-wrong-with-downtown-dallas/

I grew up in one of the (many) suburbs of Dallas in the late 90's early 00's and the problem I had with it is it's the most extreme form of gentrification I've ever witnessed. You can probably estimate an individual's annual salary within about $20k based on their zip code. The city is so concerned with seeming like a good place to visit, they don't seem to care if it's a good place to live.

I do it once in a while for stuff I'm excited about. Not really to "get it first," but more to have an experience I can remember and hype myself up about it.

In high school, I worked at Walmart, and I got a pretty nice (I think 10%) employee discount on everything including electronics, so when I heard we were getting a shipment of Xbox 360's that night, I decided to wait for it. Some friends joined me while I waited and everyone else waiting was very friendly. We all talked about what we were excited to play and how cool the features were (at the time). They just told us to hang out around the electronics section, so as people showed up we all kind of knew who had been waiting. Around 11:30 they told us to form up a line and a guy who showed up about 15 minutes earlier tried to get in towards the front. I had never seen a group Walmart customers work together before, but everyone ran the guy off haha.

I did it for the original Switch because the day after I had a flight between the US and Korea, so I figured playing the new Zelda would be a good way to eat through the time. I had a preorder so that kind of killed the excitement around the uncertainty of getting it, but it was still a good time.

I most recently did it for the Switch 2. It was actually pretty difficult to find any local stores selling it without a preorder, and none were doing midnight releases. The only place I could find was Staples that was selling them at opening the day of release. I knew they wouldn't have very many in stock, but I figured I would wake up early, go to the store and if the line looked short enough, I'd camp out until opening. I got to the store at like 3:30 am and there was one guy there... Was cool to get to hang out, talk games, drink coffee, and watch the sun rise.