Or, How We Designed a Golf Club That Looks Like a Dining Room Table and Plays Like a Buick. You can get almost anything custom made on the Web Just don't let Pat & Mike do the ordering. One day, we're sitting around, unable to rest our elbows on the dining room table because we didn't happen to have one, and minding our own business because, after all, whose business should we mind? Rupert Murdoch's? We don't think so! Anyway, our business was doing so well that we decided to play golf. Unfortunately, neither of us had any golf clubs. As we started for the local golf store, we suddenly remembered the World Wide Web. Actually, we read a sign that we had put up on the door to our garage which said: Hey! Before you go, don't forget the World Wide Web!
Built-to-order furniture from more than a dozen manufacturers Faster than John Madden could say "Pow," we were back surfing on the Web. Almost instantaneously, we landed on a website (www.furniture.com) that let us browse the dining table designs of more than a dozen furniture companies, any one of which would manufacture a table to our specifications and deliver it to our door. We picked a design, plugged in the measurements, and we were about to submit the order when we spotted an ad banner that said: SAVE A FORTUNE ON A NEW CAR! CLICK HERE! Unable to resist either the lure of a fortune or the command to "Click Here," we soon found ourselves on a new website from General Motors (www.gm.com).
But, before we could finish, an amazing thing happened. Our computer got hit by a surge, throwing us off the Internet. By the time we picked ourselves up, and re-booted our computer, our just-in-time manufacturing enthusiasm had been dampened. A few days later a package arrived. It's hard to describe exactly what was in it. Suffice it to say that the thing looked like the product of some unholy union between a Buick Roadster and an Ethan Allen table with a titanium shaft. But, we're not complaining. Whatever it is, it's already knocked six strokes off our game!
To hear Pat & Mike's World Wide Web Radio Show, visit
patandmike.com. The show is broadcast live every Saturday and features The Last Word by our own E Business editor.
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