Archive for 'grrr' Category
2008.08.22
Outside Lands Music Festival
The ландшафтOutside Lands Music Festival is happening right now in Golden Gate Park. Tonight: Radio Head. Tomorrow: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Sunday: Jack Johnson. Apparently this is a big deal for festivals in San Francisco.
However…
Come on people. It took me almost an hour to get home tonight, in what should normally be a 20 minute commute. On my motorcycle. Cutting lanes. It took my flatmate almost two hours to travel not even 15 miles. There are something like 160,000 people expected in the park over the weekend, an ungodly percentage of those people driving. I direct you to this from the last link above:
Radiohead cares about carbon-neutral touring, and wants to site shows at places with transit; like GGP.
This means the band all you crap drivers are coming to see DOES NOT WANT YOU TO DRIVE. So don’t. Take the bus. Walk. Don’t park on the sidewalks. Don’t get pissy when you can’t find parking. Don’t cut people off because they aren’t going as fast as you think they should. Respect the neighborhoods you are over-burdening with your presence.
I really love that we are having this event in Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco, but for frack’s sake plan ahead. I hope the next two days are better…
3 Comments | Catergorized: audio grrr san francisco2008.08.18
Dear Stinking Rose
Dear Managers and Owners of The Stinking Rose,
I used to love your restaurant. Not just because I love garlic, but because the food was genuinely good and the service friendly and considerate. Yet the last few times I was there, and particularly last night, have left me feeling bitter and a bit betrayed.
I understand that your location is a popular place for tourists to visit but I never felt like I was being treated as anything but a local when I started eating in your establishment many years ago. Now I feel like even the IHOP at Fisherman’s Wharf has better service than you. Scratch that, I know the IHOP has better service. Listen, just because you have tourists doesn’t mean your waitstaff can get away with ignoring tables, getting an order wrong, and being clueless. When someone at our table asks for water, the waiter should not just got fetch a new jug of water and plop it on the table (as if we’re sending him out of his way). Poor the bloody glass of water! Five seconds and we’re happy.
Incidentally, the past several times I was at your restaurant I felt like the goal was to take the order, deliver the food and deliver the check as quickly as possible. I don’t know about the tourists but I happen to enjoy conversations. For the prices you are charging, even with rising fuel costs driving up stock, I shouldn’t EVER feel like I’m being hurried. Ever.
Your kitchen, at least according to your waitstaff, does not know how to cook meat. Asking for rare should not raise eyebrows, nor should asking for a “black and blue” cut. Medium rare should not be the reddest your staff can prepare, especially for the UNGODLY prices you are charging. Yes, your food is far too expensive. When is $20 considered acceptable for a reasonable sized (and a bit dry) pork chop with a spoonful of “caramelized” (read: soaked in some… something) apples and a bit of mashed potatoes that looked like they’d been sitting on a hot plate for half an hour?
Look, I’m not so pissed off that I won’t go back. I’ll go back one more time, sometime in the future, and try you out again. If the food isn’t worth the money, and the waitstaff is a pack of rejects from some suburban TGIF, then I simply won’t go back. I will also let everyone I know not to go, as well.
PS: The one thing that was excellent last night was the hostess. She was smart, efficient and very courteous. She even went the extra step and guided two of our guests to the table when they were lost. That is service. Give that woman a raise.
PPS: Maybe you should give anyone with San Francisco residency a discount if you won’t make efforts to improve service. It’s not a solution (you still need better waitstaff) but it would be something.
1 Comment | Catergorized: food-drink grrr san francisco2008.07.07
Tonight We Vacuum in Hell!
Three weeks ago I meant to vacuum my space in the house. I hadn’t in about a month and the cat hair was getting… thick. But then I spent three weeks on the east coast and the cats had free reign. It is amazing how much they shed in just those three weeks. Normally I never let my cat on the bed (there are historical reasons for this). I got in and went to move the strange pillow at the bottom corner of my bed and realized it was a pile of cat hair. Urgh. The accumulated detritus of cat hair.
Tonight I vacuumed. It took me an hour. I think I might go over it all again tomorrow, just to be sure. And buy a brush for the damn cat. He likes that sort of thing anyways…
2 Comments | Catergorized: grrr life2008.07.07
Laptop AWOL!
I’m back in San Francisco. Arrived late last night. Left backpack with laptop in taxi. Called taxi service. Taxi driver not answering CB or cell phone. Frack. This morning is the same story. On top of everything else, if I don’t get my laptop back I think I will turn from being rather sad to rather angry. Since I have the taxi driver’s car number the taxi driver will be found, too.
Frack!
UPDATE
The driver finally turned on his CB or answered his phone and… turned in my bag! Awesome! Thanks to Frank at dispatch and Mark at their HQ for all their help. I’m so relieved. Guess what I’ll be backing up when I get home. ;)
2008.05.21
McCain’s Iranian Cold War
Senator McCain, I used to think you were a reasonable Republican candidate. I still wouldn’t vote for you, but I thought you had some common sense and that our disagreements were reasonable, unlike the current batch of neo-conservative idiots who seem to be running things. However, the longer the run for President in 2008 goes on, the more I’m seeing just what an poof you are. This is what sealed it for me.
The other day Obama said, “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela — these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, `We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’”
You, Senator, think this is inexperience and irresponsibility because Iran poses at least as significant a threat as the Soviet Union during the Cold War despite the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons (yet). Are you stupid, Senator? Iran is only a threat to us so long as we keep fscking around in the Middle East. You think we shouldn’t talk to them? Tell that to Nixon who got the ball rolling with China, or Reagan who helped end the Cold War. Both of them were Republicans. Yes, there was more than talk involved. Economic incentives in the case of the Chinese and economic destruction (against an already weak economy) through military spending with the USSR.
Talking works, Senator McCain. Not always, but if you don’t start with talking with the one that hates you and instead yell at them, posture, be the bully, then you can expect a fight. Worse, if you throw the first punch you are wrong. It shows you are scared, frightened. It shows that you have not enough confidence in yourself, not enough restraint; you’re immature, not an adult. In school you would have been punished for such bad behavior. I can’t believe that for your all your years you haven’t learned this. It makes me sad. I never expected you to win in 2008 but I had hoped you would redeem -to some small degree- the corruption, debauchery, aggression, irrationality and general stupidity of the Republican party. I guess I was wrong.
5 Comments | Catergorized: grrr political2008.04.10
Free Ti-Butt
I’m very irritated that I didn’t get to see the Olympic Torch. Pro-Tibet, Pro-China, demonstrators everywhere… The people who suffered are people like me who view the Olympics as sporting events for the world, who want to participate in a world event even as a spectator.
No one won this race. We all lost. Thanks a lot, jerks.
Still we were in a generally good mood today at work and came up with this idea for a XXX movie. “The Dolly Llama and Mao Say Tongue star in Free Ti-Butt.” Coming to a protest march near you.
As one co-worker pointed out, the “Tong” in “Mao Tse Tong” is pronounced “dong”. That works for purposes of this film, too.
No Comments | Catergorized: grrr life2008.02.27
iMovie 08 Sucks
I used to use iMovie 06 from Apple to edit movies. Quick, easy to use, loads of awesome effects and transitions… I didn’t use the application often but I always had a good time with it.
Today I am trying to gather together various movie clips at work to make into a master DVD. My computer at work has iMovie 08 and I’ve been looking forward to using it to see where things are better. I expected it to maybe not be easier to use (iMovie 06 is already so simple!) but somehow… Better.
Wrong.
iMovie 08 SUCKS. I cannot figure it out. Where is the timeline? Why can’t I simply change the order of the clips? Where is the ability to export to iDVD? I cannot understand what Apple was thinking. I guess enough people complained so that they have release iMovie 06 as a free download if you already own iMovie 08. This doesn’t fix the problem, but at least it will let me get around it.
I recently bought Final Cut Express as I anticipate doing more video editing. I am extremely nervous they might have fracked that up by emulating their “success” with iMovie 08.
If you’re new to iMovie and have the 08 version on your machine, give yourself a treat and go download the 06 version. You’ll be ecstatic you did.
1 Comment | Catergorized: apple film grrr2008.02.17
Lame Architecture
Why is it that architects these days have “plans” to turn our cities into weird fantasy theme parks? Can’t they design buildings that conform to humanity instead of creatures from another planet? I mean, it’s bad enough that the design for the upcoming Transbay Terminal sucks. Now some firm called Iwamoto Scott (who I won’t link to because their site resizes your window and fucks things up just like their city plans) is fantasizing about making San Francisco look like… What is that? An alien civilization? A garden?
Dezeen has a few more pictures. Frighteningly this design won the History Channel’s San Francisco City of the Future award.
Seriously, if they are planning and hoping to make this into reality I will fight it. I know we have to make drastic changes in how we plan cities in terms of energy self-sufficiency, water usage, population increases, public transportation, recycling, etc, but that’s no reason to turn the look of a city into something so crappy.
2 Comments | Catergorized: grrr san francisco technology2008.02.11
Consumer Darwinism
Working in IT I get to see a lot of strange things on and around peoples desks when I go to help them. What follows isn’t the strangest or funniest thing (by a long shot!) but it did make me roll my eyes just a little bit. See if you can guess why.
What you’re seeing is a bottle of Trader Joe’s vitamins. It’s cranberry concentrate, which I’ve been assured contains tons of vitamin C. What gets me is the brand tag line, “For the Survival of the Fittest.” This is the most ironic thing I’ve seen in quite a while. If you were -evolutionarily speaking, of course- “the fittest” person and most worthy of passing your genes on to improve the species then you wouldn’t need vitamins. You would need vitamins if you were not genetically superior, though. The fittest don’t need help (unless they want it). The less fittest need help (unless they want to die out).
This is yet another fine example of marketers doing what they do best… Creating an image that distorts reality. For truth in advertising the tag line should read, “For the Survival of the Not-Quite-Fittest.”
3 Comments | Catergorized: food-drink grrr photos work2008.02.10
Please Pardon the Outage
Hi. Alas last night my hosting provider crashed. I haven’t heard yet what was the cause but we were down for at least 12 hours. The latest back up was old so I’ve rebuilt the posts (aren’t RSS feeds awesome?) and put comments back in.
In the meantime, we are back, and will posting promptly about something not related to outages. Not that it’s any more exciting (you should have seen me freaking out late last night!) but it’ll be something beside this boring update.
No Comments | Catergorized: grrr site technology
