Ups Fax Order: Fill & Download for Free

Building the new LinkedIn Logo in LEGO bricks for the Mountain View lobby required me to buy a huge number of specific bricks in the same color. I discovered through this process that there are several options, each with limitations & constraints:1) LEGO.com: You can order up to 999 of a single brick from Lego.com. This is useful because you can order any brick in production. Limitations are that you cannot order bricks that are out of production, and fulfillment times are often 10-15 business days for large orders.2) Fax an order to LEGO. The LinkedIn logo required over 5,000 blue 2x8 bricks as the primary component of the construction. For large, detailed orders you can call the LEGO store at 1-800-835-4386, and they will give you a fax number for the order. Unfortunately, fulfillment times here depend on brick type - I ended up waiting 6-7 weeks for some components of the order. Also, LEGO seems to have no concept of shipping notifications or tracking for orders placed this way.3) Local LEGO stores "Pick a Brick". I used both the Valley Fair and Hillsborough stores to acquire bricks at times. You can buy bricks three ways: a small cup for $7.99, a large cup for $14.99, and an entire box for $70. As you can imagine, you are somewhat limited by your ability (or patience) in terms of cramming different brick types into containers. Most clerks will tell you that you can't buy bricks by the box - they are mistaken. Ask to talk to a manager, and they will sell you a box, but only if they have more than one in the back. They are not allowed to sell "the last box."The biggest limitation of this approach is that not only do stores not stock all brick types or colors, they also have no ability to "special order" Pick-a-Brick bricks. They get fulfillment once a week, and have no control over which bricks they receive. The trick is to call ahead, and be flexible with your design to adapt to the bricks they do have.4) Bricklink. I used Bricklink in a few pinches where I needed a small number of a specific brick, particularly bricks that weren't offered on LEGO.com. For example, getting 20-30 small 1x2 tiles to finish off the base edges of the lettering. Bricklink is relatively slow on fulfillment, and it's common to get bricks that are discolored by age or cleaning. This means they may not match other orders of a similar brick. It's also very hard to get large orders of many brick types & colors.Overall, for the LinkedIn in LEGO project I purchased approximately 12,000+ bricks. 8,000 I was able to get over 7-8 weeks from a Fax order to LEGO. I purchased over 4,000 from local LEGO stores, and maybe a few hundred from BrickLink.If you're interested in the final result, feel free to check my blog post on the project here:http://blog.adamnash.com/2011/08/30/building-linkedin-in-lego-bricks/

A question for alphabet users. What do these two words say?Imagine that you work for an import-export firm and see a faxed order form (yes, faxes are still around) for 100 “easers”. You scratch your head and wonder why somebody would place an order for only 100 erasers.Easer (looks like “eraser” misspelled) and Easter, right? Actually, the first word is taser written Chinese-style (horizontal stroke of the t comes first, is blended with the vertical stroke and rounded to join up with the 2nd letter, a.[泰瑟 tàisè / tayseh “taser”, a supposedly nonlethal electroshock weapon: Taser - Wikipedia; image is Public Domain from the US military: Photos]The second word is also written Chinese-style: easier. Many Chinese people write the “dot” on top of the i first, but they turn it into a horizontal line (Chinese writing habit), which leads to very odd results in English.Many Taiwanese people have great difficulty reading alphabetic cursive handwriting (rarely taught in Taiwan’s schools: the situation may be different in China). Some people invent their own Chinese-style cursive by linking letters in odd ways. I’ve also seen examples of printed text with very odd misspellings which I eventually figured out by noticing switched letters: t←→e and i←→TStroke order is minimally important for writing in English. Most people can figure out mistakes like the ones above from context, but when it comes to Chinese, the importance of correct stroke order is orders of magnitude more important. Miswritten characters become unreadable/unguessableNot only does incorrect stroke order affect the legibility of cursive Chinese, it is also important when using character indexes, which arrange characters according to stroke order.[HSPDZ system for arranging stroke order indexes]Below is a stroke order Table of Contents (apologies for the poor image quality) used in a dictionary of ancient Chinese. Such a TOC is almost unusable if you haven’t internalized stroke order.[the 3-stroke section of this TOC is subdivided into: horizontals, verticals, left curves, dots and sharp turns]

I have seen it done once and for good reasons.In this case, I got volunteered to set up the business lunch at a certain restaurant on a day and time. This would be for about 30–40 people and we only had one hour to be served and eat. Then I got the information and set about making the arrangements, after making the call and telling them the size of the party. They then informed me that we would have to select food from one of three menu options for a shorter list of meals to accommodate our request in a timely manner. They then faxed me the menu options and asked could I please let them know ASAP which menu we would be using. By the end of the day, I had the program director’s selection for the menu and let the restaurant know. Next, I would need to have what everyone was ordering faxed to the restaurant on the morning of the lunch so they could have the food prepared when we arrived. Back to the program director so he could get the information as to the meal choices from our guests. I had the job of finding everyone else and having them make a selection before the big day. After making a few more calls to confirm things with the restaurant the big day arrives. I fax over the orders first thing in the morning as they request. Then call to verify the fax was received and everything was ready to go and make sure they knew the time we would be there.We arrive on time and are quickly seated and handed menus. This raised a lot of questions since everyone pre-ordered their meals. The program manager went off and found someone in charge, then came back and informed us that something happened and we would be ordering off of the menus and they assured him it would be served as quickly as possible. About 45 - 50 minutes later still no food and we were finishing up due to the time schedule. So program director asks about the food, is told that they are just finishing up and just about ready to serve. They were then informed to box everyone’s meals up and it better be ready in 15 minutes because we are all leaving, food or no food. They just managed to have the food ready and boxed up just as we were getting up to leave.On the way out the program manager pulled me aside and had me stay with him when he paid the bill. After refusing to pay 20% gratuity for a large party due to no service, the manager of the restaurant came out. There was a long discussion of why we should be paying gratuity for something we never got, their failure to provide a timely meal when I did everything on our end to make sure it happened. That was why I was there and it was to answer those questions. Good thing I noted times and dates on the back of the original fax they sent me and brought it with me. After a long informative argument about who should be paying that 20% gratuity to the wait staff, we made it clear that it was not going to be us. The program manager did agree to be nice and pay the 20% on the drinks since the wait staff did serve those to us.It was a very unhappy rest of the day for all of us since we did not have a chance to eat lunch until after the workday. I’m sure the clients were not happy either. The only good thing for me was the program manager did not blame me in the least for what happenedETA: After a comment, I realized that some people may think the servers did not get paid for their time serving us. This happened in Washington State, a state that requires servers to be paid at least full minimum wage before tips. Also one of the highest minimum wages in the country, even at that time.