My New Air Freshener

I've done it! I've created an air freshener that runs on residual milk from my daughter's sippy cup. I dropped her off yesterday and took her sippy cup to work with the unused milk. I figure milk's mostly water, so I used it to "water" my drooping pothos. I guess it took about 24 hours to cycle through the root system. My office now smells like sour milk. I don't want to toss the pothos but I don't know how much is left in the root system. The plant looks fine, it just smells absolutely awful.

Stinky, yet fascinating.

Starbucks - The Aftermath

In my previous post, I commented about the state of intracorporate relationships at a favorite coffee place of mine. Davesbeer.com was visited by the customer feedback folks at Starbucks:

From: Customer Relations
To: The infamous Dave of DavesBeer.com (edited a bit)
Subject: Starbucks Coffee Company
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004

Dear Mr. Dave:
Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company. I was very disappointed to hear about your experience at our Ohio State University location.

Providing a comfortable, inviting atmosphere to enjoy our premium beverages is an essential component of the Starbucks coffee experience, so I am concerned about your feedback. In order to address your concerns, I shared your comments with the store manager and district manager.

As a customer service gesture and to invite you back into our stores I would like to send you a couple of beverage coupons. If you would reply to this e-mail with your mailing address I will drop the coupons in the mail. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address your concerns. I hope you will give Starbucks another chance to serve you.

Sincerely,
Nikki
Customer Relations Representative

A couple beverage coupons. I was kind of hoping maybe a trip to Washington Corporate HQ to try to convince me they actually cared for their workers.

I guess they just didn't get it. I'm not an idealist; I will be accepting the freebies. It's still a sad situation.

Starbucks - Part 1

I'm one of the few who admits to liking Starbucks. I enjoy their coffee. But the Starbucks on 1782 N. High Street in Columbus is positioned with a lot of sidewalk space surrounding their store. And it's almost always filled with trash. They clean up their immediate legal boundaries, but that's it.

On the back of every manager's business card, however, is their mission statement. One of 6 points is

• Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.

which left me a bit confused. I didn't expect much, but I called the manager at 614-291-5692 (direct line, feel free to call her yourself) and asked about the disgraceful surroundings. It was a terse exchange. She basically gave me the "not my job" thing, it's Columbus' turf. I said Columbus falls short on trash removal around my house too but I just pick it up because I have pride in where I live and it's the right thing to do. She thanked me for the feedback and quickly got off the line (and then probably told her associates of the loon who called).

I don't think a boycott is in order. It wouldn't do any good and I still like the coffee. It's unfortunate walking an extra few steps and picking up an extra bag of trash is viewed as an unreasonable request, especially when it's supposed to be part of the corporate mission statement. The mission. Doesn't that sound urgent? I also don't think the manager's at fault. She's clearly not treating the management of the store as if her next meal depended on its success. This behavior is simply a consequence of the way large business infrastructures treat their grunts. There's no incentive to excel. It's just sad.

This morning, we went to my favorite bagel place in all of Columbus, Spinelli's Deli and then walked to see the artwork created yesterday at Via Colori. The art is created on the street (Park Street, bordering Goodale Park) and most of it in chalk (I believe). The image posted here is one of the many cool "installations". It's by Fawn and Ryan. I asked their permission to post it. Fawn is an animation student at the Columbus College of Art and Design and Ryan is an animator/illustrator in Columbus. You can see some of his work here. Thanks guys, Frankie and I enjoyed your work!

My smart half. She's got a new class she's teaching at osu this semester. It's entitled The Psychology of Extraordinary Beliefs (psy301). An excerpt from the syllabus:

"So how can a person discriminate between bunkum and fact, between valuable innovation and wacky waste of time? Moreover, why do so many people continue to believe in ideas that have no apparent basis in reality? How do people come to believe in extraordinary things?This course is intended to provide answers to such questions and more generally, to provide the skills and knowledge necessary to evaluate extraordinary claims and beliefs. You might find yourself having to question beliefs that you have held as factual for a long time. Some topics that we will cover include alternative medicine, psychic phenomena, hypnosis and the nature of the brain. Many of the topics and controversies that we’ll consider reflect the influence of an uncritical perspective, fallacious reasoning, and flawed research methodology. These are the hallmarks of pseudoscience. In this course, you will learn to distinguish between science and pseudoscience, to evaluate arguments and sources of evidence."

I rant. She's read and smart. Take the class if you have the opportunity.

The Senator theatre is one of the coolest theaters in the world. Someone comes out to announce the film of the evening. It's a very important part of our former hometown, Baltimore. Tonight, opening is a new John Waters Film, A Dirty Shame. Should be a blast. I do miss Baltimore.

Wonder if the Wiseman will show up?

traffic = popularity I must admit, I'm a little obsessed with site traffic. I don't necessarily want a huge amount to this site because it's mostly for family, friends, food enthusiasts and a few readers I might meet someday. If it got huge, like Chocolate and Zucchini, the bandwidth expenses would kill me. However, if Fords Stall received a lot of traffic (go peek, and click on the ads like a nervous jumping bean damn it), I'd be all into it. I pulled this image off the tv last night of the Paula Zahn interview with Ana Marie Cox who publishes Wonkette. It's an ok site. I'm not a political junkie so it doesn't really excite me and I don't think she's that funny. During the interview, it was revealed she gets 400,000 hits per month! That's awesome. I suppose she has some serious marketing force behind it helping the traffic along but it's still pretty impressive. However, don't be too impressed, Drudge gets over 8,000,000 a day! Correction: Drudge gets over 12,000,000 a day (but I account for about a thousand or so myself)!

A reader once asked me about my site traffic. DavesBeer.com doesn't have all that much traffic compared to the big guys out there but I'm happy with it. I'm thrilled actually. It's enough. When I peruse my visitor logs and notice someone's server I recognize, I cherish the visit. Someone came to visit!

When I told him the actual number he gasped: "why, what . . .?".

I know:
• Dooce is a new parent of a 6 month old girl, Leta, she's recently been admitted, lived to tell about it, used to work in LA, lost her job because of her blog, is a web designer, is hilarious and has given me more consolation than my pediatrician regarding parenting;
• Serenaluchang hates her job and is also hilarious;
• The author of Greasy Skillet once considered giving up the whole blog thing. I'm glad he didn't, he's interesting.

I looked forward to reading all of it and will return for more.

I'm (obviously) not a writer. I don't have credentials to evaluate writing and my punctuation stinks, but I enjoy what they and other bloggers write. Some blogs are well-written and some aren't; do you have to be a writer to write? Should untrained writers cease blogging, return to their cubes, take their interval of Prozium and stop writing because they don't express themselves well enough?

If I were an English teacher, I'd be skipping through the streets thinking maybe there really is a god. A god that even likes gay people. People are writing for the fun of it at their own expense (time and money). How much more intellectually-productive could an outlet be? If I wake up in 10 years and realize I've embarrassed myself, so be it. I'll get therapy and deal.

Blogs do not detract from the beauty of the web. If you don't want to read them, they're easy to avoid.

Paul's got an awesome site called Columbus RetroMetro: Real Estate News for Metro Columbus. It's not just real estate though. It's good stuff for Columbus Locals. Lots of photos, updates on city projects, etc. Peruse, you'll like it.

Tonight, I was impatiently waiting at our local computer store to hear the fate of our machine. It's being diagnosed and it's down to: a bad nic card pci slot (the slot itself!), a bad hard drive or IDE controller. I suspect it's dribbling fallout from the lightning strike we had this past May. Who knows. We probably would've saved oodles throwing it out the window and replacing it with an inexpensive new Dell.

Wish the machine luck.

Glad to hear my brother and family weathered the storm with no catastrophic consequences.

I just returned from an absolutely perfect weekend to find my home machine is absolutely dead (thanks to me installing Hello). I could've sworn I was bragging just this weekend about how good XP was. I tried reinstalling several times and gave up for the night. And this post? It's from a linux machine. Pics of Frankie may be delayed a while. I have to
a. try to reinstall the OS and
b. try to install the OS before I get really angry and kill the machine.

Let you know how things go. Got a new silly hobby I'm fooling with. Take a look at it once in a while; it's rough in concept and practice but I think it'll be fun.

Have a good week all.

Hurricanes

We're keeping a close eye on the approaching inclement weather in Florida. Frankie's Uncle Dennis has been taking the necessary precautions to protect his abode. We'll be offline for a few but he and his family will be in our thoughts this weekend.

Other spectacular images can be seen here. Nifty image updates in very high-res can be found just below and to the left of the tornado/hurricane image on the right side of the page.

Simple pleasures. I've been a fan of swing sets and jungle gyms forever. I enjoy the physical activity. It's infinitely more fun than any stationary monotonous routine I could find at a $500/year gym. Even before Frankie, I occassionally found my way to a set of unused swings while walking the dog to give 'em a go. The problem with this, is the perception of others. Doesn't exactly look normal for a 40 year old guy to be climbing around a set of bars and using swings. That's what we've been conditioned to believe anyway.

Well, that's got to be one of the best aspects of having a child to explore with. T, me, the dog and Frankie all had a blast climbing and using the slides at the park located near the Holy Name Roman Catholic Church (not to be confused with the sisters of perpetual guilt). Frankie went down the BIG circular slide frontways and backwards, over and over and over. Mom and I got to climb up behind her while Suzi got to eat the food she dropped. It was a lot of fun. There are a lot of little parks and playgrounds in Columbus that we frequent. We're hoping for a long warm Fall.