On eating out.

Posted by admin on July 23, 2011 No comments

Tonight I had dinner at a newly opened Joe’s Crab Shack. Overall, it was an enjoyable meal, and it got me thinking about eating out in general. So, I decided to make a list of what is important to me in patronizing an establishment, in no particular order.

Things that are of interest

Quality of food. If I wanted sloppy, tasteless food, I would just go to McDonald’s.

Cost of food in relation to aforementioned quality of food. I have no problem paying for a high quality meal- within reason. $80 hot dog, I’m looking at you.

Cleanliness of restaurant. Self-explanatory.

Attentiveness of staff. I understand bad days, short staffing, ect. But all things considered, if I consistently get lousy service, I won’t be back. I don’t care how good the food is.

Comfortable seating. Meaning, I don’t want to share my meal with the next table. Thankfully, most places around Buffalo offer enough space, except for one notable restaurant, which isn’t all that good to begin with. I don’t know if it’s part of the whole “experience” or what, but it’s annoying to be crammed next to the loud foreigners* on a day trip from Canada.

Ambiance. If I’m at a bar, I expect it to be noisy. If I’m in a restaurant, I expect the noise level to be low enough to where I can hold a conversation without having to ask people to repeat themselves multiple times.

 

Things I don’t care about

The “experience”. I eat out to have a meal I wouldn’t make at home, and to relax. I don’t have the attention span of a 5-year old with ADHD, and I don’t need to be entertained while I eat. If I wanted entertainment, I would go to dinner theater. Is there even dinner theater in Buffalo? Google says yes! (side note, The Miracle Worker seems like an odd choice for a dinner show, it’s pretty dark isn’t it?)

The buddy server. This relationship is pretty clear cut. I’m here to eat. You’re here to bring food and drinks.  The moment they plop down at the table and make small talk like they’re joining for dinner, I get weirded out. I feel like they’re invading my personal space and it make them look desperate and fake. There is nothing wrong with simple professionalism. The best servers I’ve had managed to be both professional and personal without being so intrusive. Speaking of which…

Marketing. I’m here, aren’t I? That means I’m a sure thing. I don’t need to hear you’re sales spiel EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

Decor. Sure I like a nice looking place, but it just doesn’t matter.

*By which I mean not the pleasant Canadians, but the non-native English speaking people that visit Toronto and come to the U.S. for a day of cheaper shopping.

What a difference a year makes

Posted by admin on July 1, 2011 No comments

Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a little post over at AndroidSPIN on the possibility of T-Mobile going belly up, based on the prediction of 24/7 Wall St. At the time of that writing, I was playing devil’s advocate. Sure T-Mo wasn’t doing great, but I was confident in the magenta underdog. But as we’ve all seen what has come to pass, holy crap they were right! Well, mostly right. Everyone it seems expected Sprint to make the offer;  AT&T being the buyer stunned just about everyone.

Other notables on the extinction list were Blockbuster, which is on the way out, and RadioShack, which seems to still be doing okay. As for the 2012 list, it’s quite possible one or more of the following companies will be gone come this time next year:

  • Sony Pictures
  • A&W
  • Saab
  • American Apparel (I’ll actually be surprised if they’re around)
  • Sears (Doubt it)
  • Sony Ericsson (Not if they stick with Android)
  • Kellogg’s Corn Pops (Say Wha?!?)
  • MySpace
  • Soap Opera Digest
  • Nokia (lolz)

WTFuckery.

Posted by admin on March 28, 2011 No comments

I was going to go off on a whole rant about what a horrible and inappropriate toy this is, but then I figured the video makes that point pretty clear. At least you know what your options are if the store has a run on doctor Barbie, computer engineer Barbie, chef Barbie, dentist Barbie, or even race car driver Barbie.

For extra shits and giggles, or because I’m that bored I went to the doll’s website to check things out. My first response was that this shit cannot be for real. I mean, what normal person wouldn’t think posts like God supports the Breast Milk Baby or Little girls need to learn to breastfeed wasn’t straight from the Onion? Don’t bother clicking the link, their whole argument for why pre-pubescent girls should practice breastfeeding is this:

Little girls need to learn to breastfeed….The Breast Milk Baby lets young girls express their love and affection in the most natural way possible, just like mommy!  … Just put on the fashionable top included with each Breast Milk Baby, bring the baby’s mouth up to the pretty flower, and enjoy the closeness, the loving bond between mother and child.

Won’t little Sally be confused when her breasts never develop into pretty flowers. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a woman breastfeeding her child if possible, but pushing such things on a child is a bit, oh I don’t know…cart before the horse? Maybe they should work on physical and emotional development and maturity first. Maybe even the importance of education, but clearly that falls too far into the forward-thinking side of things.

 

No VD for me, thanks.

Posted by admin on February 14, 2011 1 comment

It’s Valentines Day. Bah Humbug.

I’ve never gotten along much with VD. My earliest memories of the holiday are the grade school valentine exchanges. It was always somewhat the same, an event to make your “mailbox” and then sit back and watch the little envelopes flow in. The latter being true only under certain circumstances however. If the teacher was of an equal opportunity mindset,  everyone had to given a valentine to everyone else. Or, in the free distribution model, you only needed to give valentines to whomever you wanted, a situation where it was made obvious who was and was not popular by the quantity of cards received. I was not in the favored crowd, a fact painfully driven home while Miss or Mister popular next to me was all smiles in a sea of white and red.

Moving into high school, valentine cards were replaced with carnation days. Student could buy flowers for a small fee, to be delivered to the recipient during classes. During carnation day, lectures were frequently interrupted with deliveries as well the commotion of the recipient having to make room on the small desks for their long-stemmed flowers. The reigning popular crowd was easy to spot with their bunches, as were the not-so-popular with the conspicuous lack of floral adornment.

Post high school, it became clear Valentines Day was a holiday for couples. If you were one half of a two-some, great. If not, sucks to be you, lonely loser pants. One year, a couple invited out to dinner with them, possibly because they were feeling sorry for me, but who knows. The dinner was great, until later that night when I got sick and then spent next 48 hours with my head in the toilet, thanks to a particularly nasty case of food poisoning.

I think it was sometime around then that I quit Valentines Day. I was tired of being made to feel alone and left out if I happened to be single, and I was equally tired of companies trying to make me think things had to be done a certain way if I was in a relationship. I don’t want to eat at a packed restaurant that is trying to turn tables as fast as possible, and while flowers are nice, I don’t want anyone to pay double than they would have to on any other day.

So what will I do today? For starters, today will be like every other Monday

The reality of science fiction

Posted by admin on November 26, 2010 No comments

Lately I’ve found myself gravitating towards two genres for my entertainment. In books, I’ve been sticking with history; for A/V it’s been science fiction. On the surface, it may seem an odd combination, but they really do coexist quite well. History is of course the detailing of what has happened in the past. Science fiction details what is possible in the future.  While the argument could be made that some science fiction is just too fantastical to ever happen, let me remind you. Much of our modern technologies and conveniences today would be just as fantastical to our ancestors.

I bring this up as the immersion in history has led me to do some reflecting; no pun intended. The books I have been reading cover various topics and events, but all span events taking place 50-250 years ago. Once I finished a few books, I began to see the bigger picture of humanity,  and I’ve seen the same things over and over again. Discrimination, racism, cruelty, selfishness, egotism, bias, religious extremism, emphasis on material possession, actions that help the rich get richer and the poor stay poor.  All traits I see exist today in one form or another.

Which brings me to the sci-fi. One show that I am a fan is Battlestar Galactica. The plot, which is a simplistic description for these purposes, is of battle between a human race and a fleet of robotic beings. Over the course of the show, the humans learn their war with robots is nothing new, and in fact the human race has had a few life cycles already. The following dialogue from the show sums it up pretty well,  ”All of this that has happened, will happen again.” Gee, where have I experienced that feeling before?

I admit, it’s a pretty depressing thought. I’m not so naive to consider a Utopian society as an attainable goal, but is general harmony too much to ask? Why hurl insults or bombs at that stranger different from you, when all they want to do is live their life in peace? How can we as a civilization better ourselves when we’ve doomed ourselves to repeat the same ideas over and over? What’s the point of it all?

Battlestar Galactica addresses that question with an enigmatic answer; “In a system so complex, something different is bound to happen next time.” I’m not a religious person, but to me that smacks of reincarnation. Yes, we are compelled for one reason or another to repeat the same actions over and over again without the foresight to learn from our past mistakes. Yet, each time doesn’t seem to be quite as bad the last, which still gives us something to strive for.

Here’s hoping.