Customer: I have to go in extra early tomorrow at work.
Barista: Oh yeah? That sucks.
Customer: Yeah, my boss needs me to. Can I have another Americano. A tall?
Barista: Well, it’s almost 10:00 p.m., are you sure you want another?
Customer: Yeah, that’s fine.
Barista: How are you going to sleep after drinking all this caffeine?
Customer: That’s what Jack Daniels is for!
It is 7:00 p.m. and the crowd has finally died down. All who is left is a pair of students studying in the far left corner. Two tables over from them, is a couple silently playing checkers. They’ve been there for a few hours already and won’t leave until I close shop at 10:00 p.m. I wonder how checkers could keep them captivated for so long. Over in the lounge area sits one of my regulars reading the The New York Times. He comes in every night after he gets off work and orders a large black coffee. No sugar, no cream, just straight up java juice. We call guys like him coffee purists.
Outside, at the table on the right of the front door sits two smokers, chatting away as they puff those darn cigarettes. They appear to be amused.
I dim the lights and begin pacing behind the counter. Feeling restless, I log online, check my e-mail, Myspace account, AOL chat buddies (no one is signed on) and then I turn the darn thing off. I look up and see a muscle man walking in with his entourage of a Ed Hardy clad chick and his wing man - another juice junkie.
He orders an ice coffee with a shot of espresso.
“I want a medium in a large cup…”
“Uh, I don’t understand…you want a medium coffee in a large cup?”
“Yeah, but fill it up to the top in the large..”
I didn’t care to argue with the guy. If you are going to be that cheap, it’s not worth getting into a heated debate over coffee sizes. The guy obviously wanted a large ice coffee but only wanted to pay for the medium price. Man, I know the economy is bad but do you gotta nickel and dime an independent coffee shop?
“I’ll have 3 of those..thanks!”
I guess so. I replied, “Look, I know what you are trying to do, buddy.”
He flexed his already bulging biceps. I bit my tongue and gave him what he wanted. Maybe one day, he’ll put all those nickel and dimes to good use.
The following e-mail was sent by Gates in 2003 discussing issues he was having with microsoft.com and the Microsoft Windows program. The e-mail was used orginally in an anit-trust suit against the company and recently was republished by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
—- Original Message —-
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame
I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.
Let me give you my experience from yesterday.
I decided to download (Moviemaker) and buy the Digital Plus pack … so I went to Microsoft.com. They have a download place so I went there.
The first 5 times I used the site it timed out while trying to bring up the download page. Then after an 8 second delay I got it to come up.
This site is so slow it is unusable.
It wasn’t in the top 5 so I expanded the other 45.
These 45 names are totally confusing. These names make stuff like: C:\Documents and Settings\billg\My Documents\My Pictures seem clear.
They are not filtered by the system … and so many of the things are strange.
I tried scoping to Media stuff. Still no moviemaker. I typed in movie. Nothing. I typed in movie maker. Nothing.
So I gave up and sent mail to Amir saying - where is this Moviemaker download? Does it exist?
So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated.
They told me to go to the main page search button and type movie maker (not moviemaker!).
I tried that. The site was pathetically slow but after 6 seconds of waiting up it came.
I thought for sure now I would see a button to just go do the download.
In fact it is more like a puzzle that you get to solve. It told me to go to Windows Update and do a bunch of incantations.
This struck me as completely odd. Why should I have to go somewhere else and do a scan to download moviemaker?
So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.
Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?
Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.
This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.
So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.
What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.
Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?
So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.
So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.
So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.
What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.
So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.
At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.
So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.
The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.
So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.
It is not there.
What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.
Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.
But that is just the start of the crap. Later I have listed things like Windows XP Hotfix see Q329048 for more information. What is Q329048? Why are these series of patches listed here? Some of the patches just things like Q810655 instead of saying see Q329048 for more information.
What an absolute mess.
Moviemaker is just not there at all.
So I give up on Moviemaker and decide to download the Digital Plus Package.
I get told I need to go enter a bunch of information about myself.
I enter it all in and because it decides I have mistyped something I have to try again. Of course it has cleared out most of what I typed.
I try (typing) the right stuff in 5 times and it just keeps clearing things out for me to type them in again.
So after more than an hour of craziness and making my programs list garbage and being scared and seeing that Microsoft.com is a terrible website I haven’t run Moviemaker and I haven’t got the plus package.
The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind. I thought we had reached a low with Windows Network places or the messages I get when I try to use 802.11. (don’t you just love that root certificate message?)
When I really get to use the stuff I am sure I will have more feedback.
Died yesterday of a heart attack, George Carlin, 71, leaves with everlasting genius humor. Well not so genius to authority. He was arrested and jailed for Seven Dirty Words he said during a comic routine in front of an audience. Interesting….do you wanna know those 7 words? Here you go:
George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words
The big seven words you weren’t allowed to broadcast were: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits.
And my other favorite joke by Carlin was his take on Starbucks and their customers. Starbucks hosts a coffee shop where people order coffee - but to their specific, complicated, needs.
The Starbucks New Rules for 2006 Starbucks:
New Rule: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the
asshole.
If you walk into a Starbucks and order a “decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra
dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,” ooh, you’re a huge asshole.
I never liked cops until I worked at Brew Urban Cafe partly due to ignorance on my part. You see, my only interactions with them was when I was in college driving home on the highway. Oh those flashing lights, I remember seeing in my rear view mirror. Those darn lights put me in panic mode and I detested cops for being cops. They pulled me over for speeding more times than I want to admit. Then they gave me some lecture that I really didn’t want to hear as I was young and rebellious and had places to go. I don’t know why I was in such a hurry at the time nor why I thought they were against me and I WAS justified in going 30 miles over the speed limit. That’s what I thought at the time and no one was going to cramp my style, speed racer style.
10 years fast forward, and I’ve slowed down quite a bit. Now, I go only about 10 miles over the speed limit during highway driving. You know, the standard speed everyone does even cops on their days off.
At Brew Urban Cafe, an indie coffee shop where I work, attracts all walks of life - from the billionaire CEO to starving brooding artists, to sassy Cougars and yes, of course cops, lots of cops. I’ll tell you, cops have been the coolest customers. They always have a great story to tell, a joke to crack and they without a doubt leave generous tips. In a way, we understand each other. We are both in the service industry and work with the public. We have to deal with people’s attitudes on a regular basis but cops risk their lives and see things in society that you don’t even want to deal with. They have the right to become jaded, I don’t.
When you work with the public you learn quickly that people, even intelligent people, can act utterly stupid and ridiculous. So, I asked my cop friend who comes in on Saturday nights while he’s on his over night shift, what’s it like dealing with the public from a cop’s perspective.
“Well, people call in for all sorts of complaints from triple homicides to noises on the roof. We have to respond to all of the calls.”
“Really? As in what?”
“I had someone call in to complain that their roommate was snoring. I had to go to take care of the situation. Of course, we have priorities over calls say if there was a shooting and a complaint about a cat stuck in a tree, we go to the shooting first.”
“And then you head over to the place where the cat is stuck in the tree?”
“Yep, we have to. We provide a service to the community. It’s our job.”
“Wait, can’t you guys turn down calls? Say, listen that’s just stupid..I’m not coming by your house cause your roommate snores?”
“No, we have to go.”
“You realize, if I get a customer who is acting out of line I can refuse service to them but you are telling me you guys have to provide service no matter what. Man, that sucks.”
And in having dealt with the public during the majority of my career, I can only imagine what idiotic complaints the police stations receive on a daily basis. I would love to work there for a week just to experience first hand what goes down. Oh, it’s official police business - woman x has lost her socks and needs police assistance to find them. Or better yet, my sister’s phone won’t stop ringing, I need you to get down here! Riiiggght.
I may not be a fan of Bush and I question those who elected him not once but TWICE however, that was the voice of the American people and majority ruled in his favor. Today, is Sunday. And we may as well have a good laugh to kick off the week. Enjoy!
French lanvander
reminsce of provence
aix en provence
david prendait sa flute
pendant la fete de la musique
nous etions triste…tout ensemble
pendant cet ete la
il etais fou comme moi
mais plus intellectuel
il voulais travailller a la biblioteque
et greg
ksvoverof
il m’aimait
comme un fou
il venais vivre avec moi a paris
et je l’ai quitte
pourqoui
il n’etait pas le mec pour moi.
j’aimerais le revoir
juste pour dire bonsoir
