100 Item Challenge (Tradecraft)

I recently read the ebook Smarter Inventory Drives Sales. It was a standard inventory approach with a lot of complex terminology to describe simple things, but one thing stood out. Inventory accuracy reality and perception were vastly different. The article quoted an Auburn University study in which back in 2005, before many retailers had an online presence, most thought their inventory accuracy was far higher than it actually was:

Nearly all retailers truly believed that they were at 95% plus Inventory Accuracy, and why wouldn't they? Online customer visibility was in its infancy and the term omnichannel was barely invented.

Why mention online sales? It's a painful process to sell online only to give back money because a product doesn't exist on the shelf. Stores upped their inventory game tremendously when they began selling online. My store is in that situation a little bit with our Magic singles, Our singles inventory is weak, because we have weak tools and weak processes. The metrics associated with failure are hard. We regularly bribe customers when our inventory is off. Although we're at 99.4% positive feedback, we were told we couldn't sell internationally because the standard is 99.5%. Rather than the soft metrics of back peddling with a brick and mortar customer, when you're out online, it results in bad feedback and less sales in a more direct manner.

For those of us, like me, who don't do significant online sales, we're back in that pre 2005 study territory, thinking we have a high degree of accuracy (95%+) when in reality, the study finds, accuracy is much lower:

Accuracy is somewhere in the 65-75% range. A few still cling to the decade old belief that they have 85% or higher exact match Inventory Accuracy.

This means the value of a retail store should be considered lower by at least a third. If you were to buy a store or put yours up for sale, the assumption of inventory value would immediately start at 65% of whatever you think is there. I think adding even a modest online component may increase the value of the business, if for no other reason than it denotes a higher inventory accuracy of around a third. This assumes this is all understood by a buyer or broker. In any case, if I were buying a business, I would assume 35% of the stores stated inventory is smoke and mirrors.

Rather than claim high accuracy, test this yourself. Do an actual inventory with no excuses. Don't do a regular inventory, do a random check. There are a lot of excuses when you get down to business on why things are wrong. You may have known they were wrong in the back of your mind, like many things in a store that are out of place. It's just a database after all, why sweat accuracy? But remember, you pay taxes based on the accuracy of that data and customer satisfaction is tied to product availability.

Inventory 100 random items. Do a spot inventory. The way I did this was dumping my inventory from my POS to an Excel spreadsheet. In the column next to each item, generate a random number and copy that cell down through your entire inventory. This is the only way to really check, as a standard inventory process is too subjective. Here's an article on how to generate that random number. Now sort your inventory based on the random number column and inventory the first 100 items.

What did I get? Well, how do we measure? If we measure missing items, it's one number. If we measure incorrect entries, it's another. Both were pretty close for me at 85%. I was certainly in the camp claiming 95%+ accuracy before doing this. I already had what I thought was a robust inventory process in place, but I reiterated the need to get this work done to managers and staff and put a monthly 100 random item check reminder on my personal calendar.

This measurement of progress should help improve performance. Doing a regular inventory is clearly not good enough. Give it a try and let us know what you found. There's no shame in admitting you have a problem if you're going to fix it.

A Warm Welcome Please For

 Colonel St. Jean, 

the new commander of the Grey Patriote Brigade, part of the Origawn Republic Army (or Rebel army depending on your POV).

Download Tekken 6 Full Version For Pc

Download Tekken 6 Full Version For pc

Tekken 6 Full Review

Welcome to Tekken 6 is one of the best fighting game especially for fighting lovers that has been developed  and published by Bandai Namco Games.This game was released on 26th November 2007.

Screenshot

System Requirements of Tekken 6 For Windows PC

• Operating System: Windows XP/Vista/ Windows 7 ( 64 Bit )
• CPU: Intel Pentium 4 or later.
• Setup Size: 700 MB
• RAM: 1GB
• Hard Disk Space: 1GB

Storium Theory: Limiting Your Limitations

Today, I'd like to write a bit about something that I think we all do as narrators from time to time: Limiting the options that players have for writing about a situation.

Limits are good. Limits, at their base, are a way of ensuring that the scene has focus. When we set up a challenge at all, we are putting limits on the scene in general - limits of saying "the scene is now about this problem, and it needs to be addressed." We're defining what the actual problem is, and to some extent unavoidably defining the sort of things that can be done to address the problem.

But it's important to recognize when we take these definitions too far.

I've been playing a roleplaying game outside of Storium recently, using some pre-prepared scenarios that I found, and I've been struck by something in reading those scenarios: Oftentimes, they focus extensively on what definitely won't work. They spend a lot of time discussing why the players should absolutely not try a particular tactic with a situation, and how many brick walls can be thrown in their way should they dare to attempt such a thing. They're not quite set up to allow only one path forward, but they dwell a lot on why solutions A, B, C, D, E, and F are all terrible ideas that will only increase the scenario's difficulty. They show the walls, not the paths forward.

I've noticed a similar mindset subtly sneaking into Storium games at times. In our challenge setups or narration, we can sometimes spend time focusing on what won't work - on the walls set up in the way of particular solutions. Maybe we show the player characters trying a solution and discovering it won't work in the opening narration. Maybe we just describe something as impossible on the card or in the outcomes or in the narration.

Sometimes, this is fine. Sometimes, this is appropriate.

But it is definitely something we should question.

Storium works best, I have found, when players have enough information to focus their writing without limiting their ideas. That is: The problem is well-defined, but the solutions are left as open as possible given the problem at hand.

If the problem is a powerful wizard who the heroes need to get past to get to their goal, the solutions could potentially involve all sorts of things - maybe the heroes manage to fight the wizard and drive him away, maybe they evade his attacks and race beyond him into the fortress. Sometimes, limiting those options is perfectly appropriate...but it's important to be careful just how far you take the limitations. For instance, it might be appropriate to say that the party has to fight the wizard, because he's set up a magical barrier over the exit or because it's just too dangerous with him raining magic around the area. But further defining that the wizard is absolutely invulnerable to non-magical attacks himself is probably going to take it too far - it'll most likely make players of non-magical characters struggle a bit to figure out how to participate in the fight. Or, alternately, it might be appropriate to say that the wizard can't be killed and the characters need to escape - the wizard is just too powerful and his defenses too strong. But it'd take it too far to say that his attacks are unstoppable and his defenses are so strong he can't even be shaken by the characters at all, most likely, because again, it seriously limits what players can write and the ideas they can come up with for the scene. Some characters might have things they can realistically write to make just running away interesting, but others might really need to be able to provide some cover for the others or manage to disrupt the wizard for just a moment (or at least, attempt to do so and get turned aside, if they're playing a Weakness).

Similarly, consider an investigation. Maybe you're asking players to find information on a criminal gang that has troubled the area. That's fine. But if you go to the extent of saying that the other gangs in the area definitely won't share their information, or that police contacts are totally mystified and have no knowledge of the gang at all, well, that's probably going to cause people some trouble. You're limiting the ways that players can write the scene, and that's likely to make it tougher for them to come up with ideas.

Remember: Storium is about helping people write. The things that you put in your narration should encourage writing, not oppose it.

That's not to say that you should totally avoid limitations. Yes, there are times that they fit the story. If it's expressly established that the gang is totally new to the area, for instance, it makes sense that the heroes might not be able to trust contacts that would be working from existing knowledge...but how are the heroes able to get the information? Word the challenge in such a way that you reveal the possibilities rather than set up the walls. And don't just give one option! Show a wider field of openings, something that lets the players still have room to get creative on their own.

And remember to ask yourself: What is this challenge actually about?

In the case of the gang, for instance: Is the question really about who the heroes are able to go to for the information they need? Or is it just about what they are able to find out? If the latter...does it really matter whether they are able to use their contacts with the police? Or is the question just about whether they find information about the gang in the first place?

I want to be clear: Sometimes it does matter how the players are able to accomplish something. Sometimes that can be a problem you need to address as narrator. Sometimes it can cause trouble for a plot if players are allowed to do things a certain way, even if that way fulfills the overall concept of the challenge. That's very true.

But not all the time.

Not even the number of times we as narrators think it is true.

So...when you're setting a challenge up, take a good look over the card and narration associated with it. Look over what you've written, and ask yourself:

• Have I set up any limitations here I didn't intend to? Are there places where I suggest something is impossible where I didn't mean to?
• Have I set up limitations that I intended to...but that on second thought, really don't matter? Are there places where I have put limits that will make my players struggle to write, rather than providing useful focus?

If the answer to any of those questions is "yes," think about what you can do to open things up for the players. You still want the challenge to be focused...but focused and limited are two very different things.

Movie Reviews: Mission Impossible: Fallout, Ant-Man And The Wasp, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, The Incredibles 2, Breathe, Midnight Sun

See all of my movie reviews.

Mission Impossible: Fallout - A very good, but not great, entry in this franchise.

MI's plots are generally unimportant: a bunch of people want to kill a bunch of people, MI agents are the only ones who can stop them, but there are traitors in the CIA who are secretly working against them together with the bad guys. Lots of tropes: cool gadgets, deceptively getting suspects to talk, impersonating bad guys using fake masks, plans gone awry, Tom Cruise dangling off of something high, and last second triumphs.

This movie has a few things going for it that its competition franchises (MCU, DCU, James Bond, Fast and Furious, Transformers, Jurassic Park) don't. One is Tom Cruise, who is a great actor and action hero ONLY when he isn't carrying the entire movie. MI has a nice cast of characters that provide relief from endless shots of Tom running, dangling, and jumping. Another is that they manage to keep coming up with tense situations and action sequences that are at least plausible and thus captivating. And that Tom  does his own stunts and the CGI is minimal, which makes the action sequences more engaging and less like watching cool effects on a computer. Tom doing things while skydiving is really Tom Cruise skydiving, which is pretty cool. Mostly, it's that they take some time to give Tom, at least, some real personality, so that he makes different choices based on conflicting targets of loyalty.

The last one is important, and while MI:F includes this, it doesn't include it nearly enough. They keep trying to muscle in more action sequences and less character time. This may make Marvel fans happy but only makes the movie less engaging and more exhausting. The movie too often jumped from action sequence to action sequence without a breath, which left me just a bit numb. I'm sure there are people who like this; who would complain, in fact, if there were more character sequences. So it's just my opinion. These people also tend to overlook little problems, like how certain people deceive other people when these deceivers are under careful, continuous observation, how certain people could possibly know to be in certain places at certain times to meet certain other people when these other people are doing things purely randomly, and and how certain people would surely have to go through a number of checks before getting to where they got to. I guess I am not supposed to notice those things.

Anyway, I enjoyed it. Not as much as 1 or 4, but more then 5 (I didn't see 2 or 3).

Ant-Man and the Wasp - Marvel, yippee. I never actually made it through Ant-Man because it was formulaic and boring. Perhaps the only thing going for it was that at least the fate of the universe wasn't at stake, which was a nice change.

I'm kind of at a loss as to why I found this one more enjoyable. Not exactly a good movie, but better. The ending was poorly executed, and really the science doesn't make any sense. I'm happy that the fate of the world isn't at stake - just one woman. And I'm happy that the main "bad guy" is someone who has a compelling motivation and who isn't bad at all, just trying to survive.

I guess dispensing with a lot of the back-story helped, as did allowing us to see all of the many ways that shrinking/expanding can be used in a fight. Its lack of ambition made it feel less pretentious and thus easier to accept. It felt like a pretty good television episode. So it was okay.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom - The first one (Jurassic Park) was a classic; the last one (Jurassic World) was okay, but the characters were so flat as to make it feel like a Marvel movie. This one is about the same as the last one, but the plot is dumber and even less original. They need to either let the dinosaurs die or rescue them to some other island, and by the way, someone wants to steal some of the dinosaurs and by the way, someone wants to sell them as military weapons (somehow). It sounds familiar because it is.

Same kinds of bad guys doing the same kinds of bad things; yadda yadda. The characters from the last movie are a little different, but just as flat. It's hard to care.

The Incredibles 2 - The first was a great movie, marrying Disney with superheroes with some actual adult themes that didn't talk down to kids. This one is even more so. It starts exactly where the last one left off, only they have to deal with the consequences of the damage caused to the city after they stop the first bad guy (exactly like Captain America: Civil War). In order to solve their PR problem, they decide that Elastigirl (rather than the less PR-worthy Mr Incredible) be sent out to do some careful superhero work, which leaves Mr Incredible alone at home with the kids and their new baby of wildly unknown superpowers.

Cue a little male resentment and a touch of 1950s role reversal comedy, but really not too much. Elastigirl really is a superhero as well as a mom, and she does it well, and Mr Incredible proves that every stay-at-home parent is a superhero in his or her own way. Of course, eventually everything has to come to a head.

The plot is good and thought-provoking, but still full of humor and great action. Of course, it's beautifully rendered and well voiced. A worthy sequel to the original.

Breathe - The true story of a British flyboy who becomes paralyzed by polio while in Kenya in the 1950s. He is ready to die, but his wife won't let him and he goes on to travel home, leave the hospital (which never happened back then) and eventually design the first wheelchair with a respirator. His work (and his good friend the engineer) went on to improve the life of thousands of people in similar condition.

It's wrapped up in beautiful scenery and costuming and a true-life love story. It was interesting to watch, although I guess they glossed over some of the less palatable parts of taking care of a paralyzed person. Meanwhile, some parts of the movie went on longer than they should have, such as the entire last half hour where he decides he has finally lived long enough; these parts could have been shorter. I loved and was even surprised by, the scenes in Spain.

Worth watching, although I wouldn't go out of my way to see it.

Midnight Sun - This is a pretty terrible movie from nearly every perspective. It is about a girl with xeroderma pigmentosum.

In real life, this is a non-curable condition whose sufferers tend to sunburn or blister after small exposures to sunlight and who are therefore extremely vulnerable to skin cancer. People with this condition are visibly distinguishable as such, having typically found out about their condition the hard way. They may have special glass in their house windows, but they can go out in daylight with a lot of clothing and extra caution.

In movie life, the girl has movie-perfect skin and never goes outside during daylight. Furthermore, the moment she is exposed to a few seconds of sunlight she develops a brain condition that begins causing her death.

If that wasn't enough of a problem, just let the anemic characters and the predictable, manipulative, and poorly scripted and acted plot do the rest. And, of course, she is going to "hide" her condition from the first (and last) boy she goes out with, because we never get enough of that kind of thing from sitcoms.