Thursday, January 24, 2008Cutting a 2nd Trip ShortFor only the second time in my life, I changed flights and flew home two days early. The first time was nearly 20 years earlier when my mother died. This was also the first time since I married that I traveled without my husband. This eight-day trip consisted of stays in Vegas, San Jose, and LA. I was in LA (Hollywood, actually) on the fifth day of this eight-day trip, and was to spend another three days in LA at a business conference. Having been to two previous versions of the same conference, my main goal was seeing a couple of very close friends and doing some networking with colleagues. While at the Renaissance, I spent some time with friends, ate two meals with colleagues, had a few close friends visit me in my suite, then abruptly decided to just pack it up and head home early. Sometimes traveling isn't that fun, and I certainly didn't enjoy traveling as much without my husband by my side. Next up: Another business trip to Vegas, then one to Atlantic City, followed by NAB in Vegas in April. That's all the farther in the future I want to think about travels right now. Well, except for the cruise in December with family. THAT, I'm really looking forward to! :D sunshine Sunday, January 6, 2008Are You Too Busy to Blog?Obviously, I am! Or perhaps I just haven't made it a priority. Still, it's hard to believe that over eight months went by without a single entry. And that 2007 only yielded two posts? Puleeze! Even worse, I have no excuse that's good enough to justify not taking one minute a day, or week, or month to say something here. I'll just admit that I'm a lame blogger. :( sunshine Friday, April 27, 2007Should you always tip?The American Heritage dictionary defines a tip or gratuity as A favor or gift, usually in the form of money, given in return for service. What happens when the service is so poor, during, say, a business lunch, that it is actually distracting and disturbing to your business meeting. Should you still feel obligated to tip? What if you had to ask the waiter for *everything* three times? Every coffee refill, napkins, etc. What if he served you the wrong thing? What if he basically ignored your table completely and you had to flag him down for everything? What if he promised a discount when seating you, yet said he couldn't give one when presenting the check? This happened to us today, during a business lunch (with one of the TV station representatives) and for the first time ever we all collectively agreed not to tip the waiter at all. We are all very generous tippers, too, usually 25-30%. The waiter even followed us out to the parking lot yelling at us to find somewhere else to "eat for free". The manager wasn't in, but he hasn't heard the last from any of us. Last time I checked, a $52 lunch for three people is far from free. :( sunshine
Friday, March 9, 2007Timewarner Cable @#$%#$s!!!Yes, we love the speed of our highspeed internet connection -- but, my goodness, I think they either employ the dumbest people in their billing department or else they make them act really stupid just to make their customers feel brilliant. We've set up automatic draft to pay our TWC bill each month, and that wonderful billing department:
We did aother bandwidth upgrade recently, and somehow that made them stop the automated billing again!!! I cannot WAIT for more high-speed internet choices here!!! :( sunshine
Tuesday, October 17, 2006Restaurant Reviews With An Axe To GrindSeveral of us are administrators who approve restaurant reviews, and occasionally we come across reviews that are so hilarious, so out there, that we just have to chuckle a little bit. Below is the type of review we don't approve for publication, because it appears to us to be an ex-employee with an axe to grind... While we know there's no such thing as a perfect restaurant, we believe that if the things this reviewer wrote were true, he'd/she'd be reporting them to authorities instead of posting them to a web site. Below is his/her review, with identifying information removed:
I worked at -------------- Restaurant for the past few years and I honestly do not reccomend the dining experience to anyone.
Not only am I an inside source to this establishment, but I am quite the angry former employee and will stop at nothing to let the truth and horrors be told. I can also assure you that if you could see the things that go on behind the scenes, you wouldn't either. The waitstaff honestly doesn't care about you, and would often go days at a time without cleaning certain areas of the restaurant. If you do happen to go to eat there, just take a look under the tables close to the walls. This is where the things no one felt like cleaning up are kicked. Your table tops probably aren't that clean either, the majority of the time soap isn't even added to the water to clean them with. I have dealt with many customers complaining of hairs in their food. Who gets seated first is not based on who arrives first, but the decision is made based on horrible, discriminative factors such as weight and/or race. Obese customers are treated with an utter lack of respect and if a party stays for more than an hour or so, the servers begin to ignore the party entirely. Disgusting things happen in the kitchen to utensils, cups, and other such items. If something falls on the floor (such as a plate or even food) and the owner didn't see it, many servers just pick it up and go on their merry way, giving you food that has fallen on the floor which is never clean to begin with. The owners are angry, hateful people that would tell you absolutely anything just to get more of your money. The foods placed on the buffet are often days old and are rarely very fresh. The selection of food isn't all that amazing either and there are plenty of other places that offer a much wider selection. The noise is always immensely loud because there are usually large, unruly, drunken parties in the back room. Also, your young children will not be treated with respect. If you ask for a certain juice to fill his/her cup with, you will more than likely receive just a soda or some other kind of beverage that you didn't request becase it was more convenient to the server to fill it with that than your preferred liquid. You certainly do NOT want to place your small child into one of the high chairs offered because they are rarely sterilized properly. Many tourists don't realize how bad this restaurant truly is or only choose to dine here due to the many decades it has been in business, but I can vouch that there are many other restaurants that offer much better service and better food. Please don't eat at this restaurant. It really isn't worth your time or money. Wow! Now let me get this straight...
I guess my question is... :) sunshine
Sunday, October 8, 2006Wonder whose idea this was?We got back from a business conference in LA, where we shot some great social and networking videos, as well as documented the speaker presentations each day. Well a couple of days ago I received a special fed-ex (chilled!) that contatined imported French champagne (the bottle was even dipped in chocolate!) and exquisite chocolate-dipped extra-large California strawberries! What a treat! I thought that was so cool that I even took photos before we started enjoying the treats. I have an idea whose idea this was, and many thanks go to her. :) sunshine
Saturday, September 9, 2006Where'd the Year Go?Goodness! How did it get to be September already? The party at Googleplex I mentioned previously turned out to be superb! I'll dig up the photos and video from it when I get a moment. Besides the Silicon Valley conference early this year, we also headed back to Vegas in May (this time dragging along my sis!) for Traffic West, although I have to say we didn't attend very many sessions, lol. I've never believed it's a good idea to have an industry conference in Vegas -- too many distractions, hahaha. Headed to southern California this month -- and wondering what flight restrictions we'll run into this time! :) sunshine Sunday, January 22, 2006Goals ~ Gazillion Projects ~ Google PartyIt's just unbelievable that the first month of 2006 is almost gone, or in the terms of the tourism industry that propels Myrtle Beach -- consumed, lol. We're looking forward to many things in 2006, but one of the highlights has to be next week's sure-to-be-exciting party at Googleplex. We've already personally met several Google guys and gals, but this will be our first trip to their famous corporate headquarters. It's the kick-off get-together for TRAFFIC Silicon Valley, a Direct Navigation industry conference. We're pretty excited and trying to get tons of stuff done before flying out next week. One small change we made for 2006 was our decision on our weekly meetings. Instead of our Monday morning meetings in the office, we decided to have breakfast out each Monday. Typically these meetings cement our schedules and goals for the week, month, year and decade. Yada yada, it beats a meeting in the office and having to clean up afterwards! Just wish more breakfast places around here had wireless connections. Stuff we've got planned for 2006 is exciting for us - I just wish we had clones that could help with all the projects we have going on. Even hiring tons of contract labor takes only a small dent out of our time, because we still have to define project goals, oversee their implementation, and approve all completed work submitted to us. Maybe hiring a general manager to oversee contract labor should've been one of 2006's goals. Oh well, maybe it'll happen even though it's not on our official list. :) The great part is, we enjoy what we do so much, it rarely feels like "work".
The kitties were sweethearts and I really miss them. I woke up this morning with Precious (one of my orange tabbys) sleeping with his head against my face and his soft paws around my neck, like he was hugging me. It was so adorable and helped me stop missing the kitties for just a little while. And, we're looking forward to seeing Aunt Nancy next week in Northern California. We're going to have tons of fun in the short time we'll get to see each other, like we always do! We also plan on spending time with her & Denny in Vegas in early May. We always have more fun in Vegas when Aunt Nance and Denny are there, too! :) sunshine |
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One the home front, we found what we believe to be good families for two beautiful kittens this week, from people surfing the 