Just need to vent...

I keep wondering whether these sellers all use the same random-letters generating app to name their storefronts.

 

I know...I've noticed many Chinese "stores" are there one day and gone the next....I'm wondering if I should stock up on those wipers, great prices for all three...even if they only last a year.

 

Yeah... been these PRC biz' MO for many years now... because we still buy them.

Partially-develop product at spendthrift, chiseler-std cost and effort. Sell on Amazon to esp American consumers, who tolerate the fewest common-sense regulations enforced to protect us. If there's a real problem, you typically won't hear from US customers unless it's a real maiming showstopper... as we still think in 2026, cheaper means value. If it affects their revenue stream, shipments are halted and storefront taken down literally before your eyes.

If legal action's ever threatened, would only affect Amazon, as these fronts are quick to drop off the face and start up selling almost exactly the same product under another gibberish name elsewhere on Amazon. In many cases there's no way to tell what connection several storefronts selling near-identical products have behind the curtain... so several betas of said product can be tested at the same time, wif known problems... to see if US buyers will actually care enough to demand a refund, that they're not to stds they'd sell to themselves... all wif little risk to the seller. That's what Amazon's become nowadays, field R&D for biz from a regime with zero accountability.

Tbf not all of them are like this -- one in particular I sort of wish would become the model for PRC biz in general on AMZN (never happen, too much greed + ilk for least-content inertia for them), is Anker*. They only make tech products but all of my interactions with genuine problems brought to them, have resulted in fair, swift, and painless resolution -- which is all I effing ask from a company hawking goods >$100 on Amazon. They indeed still aren't tested to the same stds as competitor products from a company like JVC or Phillips, so not perfect. But Anker at least offsets the risk with deep cuts to pricing, which does boost value for non-showstopper problems (have done this wif their earbuds and chargers, and do evolve them w/o ludicrous, post-covid profit bloat)

But the fly-by-night, hoodwinking 'Jill Deaaaa's and 'Pincuttee's and 'Plumeet's are the rule, not the exception... and as long as they can't be punished for selling garbage that lasts months at best, will never be the exception

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* would also like to acknowledge Batoca, which makes my cordless orbital buffer for car waxing. Excellent design, execution, battery life, features -- got it nearly flawless, esp for the price. If you need a driveway weekend wash-&-wax buffer, get that one. Also comes in its own cordura tote bag to boot (wif an extra battery!) -- don't want to set your microfibre buffer bonnet down on any surface, when it could be protected in a free bag

 

Having to repeatedly discourage the same garter snake from hiding in my intended mowing path.

Apparently I do not know how to say "no, sweet pea, that's exactly where I'm going on the next pass" in Parseltongue.

I suppose it's traumatized for life now that I've chased it away so many times.

 

There are three solutions.

1. Go over two rows to around the snake. When you get to the row the snake is at in the end, there isn't any high grass left for it to flee to.
2. Stop mowing.
3. Replace grass with astroturf, gravel, etc.

 

Sister-in-law's (gopher, not garter) snakes come slithering out from the corn on occasion & asks yours truly to deal with it. LOL



.

 

For whatever reason, whenever I've startled a snake out of the lawn onto the sidewalk, it seems to engage in this really inefficient (for locomotion anyway) exaggerated side-to-side undulation. A lot of work but very slow forward progress. Almost looks like a physics demonstration of a standing wave.

So I've always assumed it's some kind of display meant for me (hey tall animal! Look down here! I'm definitely a SNAKE!). It works well.

But I've just got done looking through a whole page of snake defensive behaviors and displays that never mentioned that one.

So is that not it? Is it, like, really that difficult for a snake to travel on hard concrete?

 

If the concrete is very smooth, it could be a problem, or it's panicked and mistakes concrete for sand. Crawling with belly scales alone is less efficient and slower, so snakes will prefer to push off stuff for motion. From your description, it sounds like the snake was trying to move in a loose substrate. They push down and away to form a ridge of dirt, sand, etc. to push away from.

Or it isn't a snake.
Slender glass lizard - Wikipedia
These might be in your area. Legless lizards don't have the belly scales snakes use for movement. So they flounder on flat surfaces.

 

Huh. That could've been it, actually. If I saw something like that protesting my mowing, I might easily call it a snake.

That could also explain it not understanding my pidgin Parseltongue.