Get outta town

Originally we hadn’t planned on going anywhere in particular this long weekend, but a few days ago the decision was made to head to Kamloops. If nothing else the weather ought to be better than it is here, and if not, summer storms in Kamloops often mean thunder and lightning, which is always fun.

Oh yeah — after a month on craigslist, and despite dropping the asking price by $300, my car still hasn’t sold. At this rate I might be lucky to sell it for half of what I paid for it two years ago. I know cars depreciate but seriously… it’s upsetting.

Now is not the time

Part of earning a decent salary is the decision of what to do with any savings I may be able to put together. Being a guy who’s pretty selective in the kinds of tech toys he gets — still no cell phone, no PVR, no Blu-Ray, and an iMac that’s three years old — any frivolous purchases aren’t done on a whim. As documented in this blog, it took me a year to finally commit to buying an HDTV, and it wasn’t until last month that I bought a new digital camera that could actually take photos suitable for prints. Lately I find myself contemplating a portable media player or “PMP” in nerdspeak. Basically a PMP is an iPod with video… which is what regular sized iPods have become. Not being a total Apple fanboy, though, I’m not terribly interested in a new iPod when there are far better devices available for a smaller price tag.

The thing is, I don’t need another tech toy. My Wii sits in its box, still unpacked since moving. Of the half-dozen DS games I own, I only play perhaps two. And now that my commute has been trimmed to twenty minutes, a video player isn’t going to prove all that useful. Of course, with a wedding coming up, spending money on something dumb like a PMP isn’t exactly a good idea.

So where am I going with all this? Nowhere. Instead, please enjoy this photo of my pretend girlfriend Mandy Moore.

Video of the Year

With another weekend of crummy weather, there’s not much to write about today. Saturday was spent doing chores; today was my future mother-in-law’s birthday, which we celebrated with that side of the family by ordering food from KFC. I believe it’s been roughly seven years since I ate anything from The Colonel, and it’s been four hours since downing a couple pieces of chicken Animal-15 without any intestinal repercussions. I might make it through this with minimal discomfort.

Anyhow, please enjoy what I believe is the music video of the year. It’s sexy, it’s Shakira, and the song is catchy. I smell this year’s summer hit.

Harsh or Reasonable?

So today was the first day of summer, and it was the wettest day of the week. I know technically it’s only just started, but the rain is lingering like a fart in the car. The one really sunny day this week, to celebrate my colleague’s birthday we headed to some joint called Chill Winston in Gastown. It’s a nice place but our server was just awful. The dozen of us that arrived were split between two tables, each served by a different girl. One table had their second round of drinks AND their meals eaten about five minutes before we even saw our food. Our table even had to ask for the bill twice. This led to the discussion of leaving a tip, and it’s a point on which quite a few people (including my lady friend) disagree.

I feel a tip is like a bonus; if the server does the minimum expected (get the orders right, refill drinks regularly, ask if we need anything before and during the meal, bring the bill promptly) he or she will get a 10 to 15 percent tip. If the service is faster or more attentive, I might tip a little more than that, or at least guarantees the full 15 percent.

However, if the service is painfully slow, we get ignored or forgotten, the orders are largely incorrect, and we have to ask for the bill more than once, I feel the tip should be much less than 10 percent. In the case of the meal I just described, I would not have left any tip. Again, I believe the tip is a reward for doing a job well; if the job is done poorly, I’m not rewarding it. That might be harsh when the bill is ninety dollars split among six people, but that’s just how I see it. The only caveat is that — as I’ve been reminded by my lady friend — servers are supposed to share their tip with the bartender if the customers order drinks. So in this case, where most of our party did have a drink, how likely is it that the server would share her weak-ass tip (I believe in the end we left a $10 tip) with the drinkmaker? Probably very unlikely, which is a shame, because the bartender really played no part in the bad service.

So there you have it. I’m a grinch when it comes to dining service. I expect a minimum level of service, which is really just the lowest denomination of service when you think about it, when dining out. And unless those conditions are met, I don’t agree with tipping.

Friday Night Lite

Last night was the Lions’ preseason home game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders, which I attended with colleague Rene and my ladyfriend. It was a pretty dull game, which is to be expected when most of the players running up and down the field are the guys who don’t have a chance in hell at cracking the regular season lineups. The announced crowd was just over 25,000 although probably five or six thousand of that didn’t actually show up. It’s still amazing to see numbers like that for a Lions game — growing up, my cousin and I have gone to at least one game per year since 1994, and in the nineties crowds were usually around 12,000 per game. I guess that was bound to happen when the Lions were actually really bad. Gwen Stefani was also in concert last night, which made traffic downtown an absolute nightmare. It also didn’t help that I’d forgotten how to drive properly and started floating in and out of lanes without looking.

Please Stop.

When I get off the train every morning, I pass by two lineups at two different shops. One is at Starbucks; one is at Tim Horton’s.

I’ve bought and consumed coffee from both stores. Generally I like the girly, sweetened, caramel flavoured coffees. I figure if I’m going to pay four dollars for something that is only worth about eighty cents, it should be something I don’t have the inclination to make at home. Both Tim Horton’s and Starbucks offer these kind of coffees, be they Caramel Macchiatos or Cafe Mochas. I can honestly say that Tim Horton’s drip-brewed coffee is on par with the type you would find on a hotplate at a gas station in Lytton. Starbucks coffee, on the other hand, is actually pleasant to drink.

Tim Horton’s won’t even let customers have the choice to sweeten or add creamer to their own coffee. For some reason it’s culturally “cute” to ask for a “double double”, which really just means “please try to add some sugar and milk to my lukewarm cup of ass so that I don’t spit it out on the sidewalk.” What if two sugars and two creams isn’t enough? What if I want to add two sugars and one cream, taste it, then add more? Well, then I’d have to get back in the queue and wait for someone in a gaudy greige polo shirt to adjust my ass-water accordingly. It’s a huge disservice to the consumer, who actually shouldn’t be consuming the almost-coffee that Tim Horton’s sells. And Tim’s rethermalized donuts are another issue entirely.

Starbucks, despite its moderately high prices and reputation for being a snob hangout, prepares special coffees properly: espresso added to steamed milk. They also let the customer season their drink to his or her own preference. And as I’ve pointed out, their coffee actually tastes good.

Now buying coffee from anywhere has its drawbacks. Starbucks is polluting the planet with hundreds of thousands of paper cups every month. Most coffee at Starbucks is not free trade — but unlike Timmy’s, at least it’s available. But the lineups at Tim Horton’s indicates that the only reason people go there is because of the flimsy attachment of Canadian Culture to their company. Somehow Tim Horton’s makes people feel proud to be Canadian. Let me say this: if Canadian Culture is represented by a quasi-consumable pot of brown bear piss called “coffee”, no one should be proud of it.