ThinkingSkull.com

According to CNN.com: “Restaurant chains Bennigan’s… (has) filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and will shut their doors.” It’s about time, too.

As more than a few of my acquaintances recall the very last time we went to the not-so popular Flair-filled restaurant, food listed on the menu was unavailable, the food that did make it out of the kitchen was cold, and the containers were non-existent to take what little might have been salvaged in a microwave. Management’s solution to our complaint? They fired the waitress to save their own a$$. The restaurant’s name itself was even lampooned as “Shenanigan’s” in the movie Waiting.

Seriously, no one running that hole had the first clue about taking care of your first priority: the customers. Don’t have something on the menu? Let us know before we order it, or make us a deal on something else. And how hard is it to buy take-home boxes?

So raise a glass of to the demise of Bennigan’s… it’s about damn time.

In roughly the same time it took me to get from San Francisco back to Jacksonville, Florida, two trunks full of books and memories arrived in J-ville by bus. But they didn’t start off that way.

Here’s the storage unit in California before we started. Sadly, neither the fridge nor the washer and dryer are mine; everything else, however, was.
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If a train station is a place where a train stops, what’s a workstation?

I understand the need for social networking. I know what drives it. I’ve worked for companies instrumental in creating the thinking behind what makes it work. I also understand the desire to try and network everyone you know into one pipeline; otherwise, I wouldn’t have to use Meebo.com to coordinate IMs over six messaging networks and port my blogs onto both Live Journal and Blogger so people I know who never look anyplace else don’t have to look very far. If I can’t get them to all join me, I’ll use whatever is out there to join all of them (even if I have to use a “social network aggregator” to do it).

Then… there’s Facebook. Words I’d use to describe it include restrictive, confining, and pointless. It’s the new America Online (the old AOL where you either were or weren’t a member). In fact, it’s worse. Anonymity is discouraged in a network that mines your data (aka “targeted adversing”) and insists that you spend hours or days trying to accurately index how you know each and every person. It’s like your own, personal “Six Degrees of Separation,” so maybe the goal is to make Kevin Bacon your friend so that you technically know everybody.

Actually, AOL at least had its benefits when it was a closed network. Exclusive content, specials, premieres, and chat areas. Not that I’m a MySpace apologist, but the pure flexibility resulting in the perceived ugliness that constitutes the bulk of those pages is somehow freeing, although I understand MySpace is now buying and selling people through their virtual slave trade. Does anyone else notice that “social networks” have become so socially boring (read: pointless) that they have to invent “apps” to give members something to occupy their time with and create fake interaction? It used to be “Thanks for the Add! Your ears are now hanging on my wall as part of my collection of organic once-living memorabilia!” Now it’s attack your buddy, rate their hotness, and sell me your women (how much for the leetle girl, eh?)

Here’s an idea. Start a blog (they’re free pretty much everywhere), then tell me about it. I’ll add you to my aggregator using your RSS feed (yep, you’ll have one). Now, if you have anything to say, I’ll know about it. If it’s more important or urgent than that, email me. Or IM me. Heck, you could even pick up the phone. But please, for love of all that’s holy and for fear of your own mortality, I don’t want play “war,” buy or sell your tainted soul, or assign a number to your picture that distinguishes your worth among the masses based solely upon whether or not you were having a good hair day the last time you renewed your driver’s license.

New business office, new business name, and my new desk on the third floor has a very clear view of the southern-most exit into Jacksonville, Florida, the hospital across the way, and the undersized lake separating the building properties. In fact, the overpass has the letters “Jacksonville” set into the overpass itself, but you can’t quite see that from here. It’s very nice, but if there’s ever a freeway pileup or a really cool thunderstorm, this view’s gonna be AWESOME!

My day job is working in support, specifically e-commerce. If you think explaining how to make the Internet work over the phone to people who can’t set the clock on their DVD players is hard, try explaining collecting money and paying tax rates through an online store to small business owners with no financial or computer experience.

But nothing makes me madder than when Internet providers (AT&T, Comcast, Brighthouse) refuse to admit that an outage is even occurring. Both automated and human-staffed support want you to go through a check list (which you’ve already done) of the same crap before they’ll tap their Indian co-worker on the shoulder and ask, “Hey, is anyone else calling in about losing their connection in Jacksonville, Florida?” To put it in layman’s terms, it’s like having the utility company on the phone telling you how to take apart the sink because the water has stopped… THEN remember that a water main broke down the street.

The reason why is simple: I’m a problem solver, and it’s programmed in to work back to a solution. No Internet? Restart and reboot. Still nothing? Check cables, check for software issues. Still not it? Run diagnostics. If that isn’t helping, start looking for failing hardware. Router? Modem? Motherboard? I know they don’t want to tell us that the one thing we’re paying for is the one thing they don’t have (my gosh, what if they want a refund?!), but PLEASE just tell us the connections are down… we can worry about compensation when I get back from checking my email at Starbucks.

Oh, and for the record, I challenge anyone to prove to me that “Jethro” is a native Indian name.

Apparently this isn’t as rare a phenomenon as I’d thought, but it’s still cute and gave me an excuse to film my cat, Cinders, showing off as usual. For everyone who’s met her already or hasn’t, here’s a quick glimpse of her show biz prowess.