Awesome Chick Fil-A #1 mod

During our last vacation we stopped in Atlanta on the drive up to Indiana and had a bit to eat at Chick Fil-A. As usual at almost any place that you eat, they place the most idiotic shit on your table to get you to buy more product. This is really apparent at places like Chili's, Applebee's, Outback Steakhouse, etc. Here is a picture of the piece of advertisement on out table that I modded.




I just wanted to tell these guys how I feel about crap being on our table while we are trying to eat. I am really surprised that places to eat still do this crap. Restaurants in other countries do not do this kind of needless advertising on the tables of where you eat. It's a waste of space, resources and time. Other than that, the sandwiches were delicious.

Asteroid Impact Simulation

Very cool simulation and great soundtrack!

ShowBiz Pizza band, still rockin?

If you are familiar with ShowBiz Pizza then you are definitely familiar with the animatronic band that played there. Many times in my youth, I was subjected to watching the robot gorilla sing some silly songs that you really could care less about. The cool thing was that they are robots. I thought that these things would be sitting at the bottom of a landfill or that they maybe turned them into Kia's. After coming across an article on the Laughing Squid website that said that people actually buy and restore these animatronic works of art and program them to perform music of all sorts.





Who would have thought that people would keep these things up and running? By the way, if you are in a different part of the country than me, I think they are called Chuck-E Cheese. Grab a beer and enjoy the show!

Text to speech is fun!

I dropped some knowledge on my co-workers by showing them the AT+T labs Text to Speech page. It will say pretty much anything that you can phonetically spell. We have entirely too much fun with this. Try it out.

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php

Buy.com flat out sucks

I made the mistake of using a different website to purchase a set of VModa Vibe ear buds two months ago. Immediately I knew that I had made a mistake in using this website when I logged into the site the day after I had paid for the merchandise and my order was not able to be located. I contacted the customer support and they were not able to locate my order either but my credit card was indeed charged. Two days later, I sent another email to customer support with the transaction number and I received a reply that stated that I had made the purchase through buy.com but it was through a third party seller. I told them that I knew that the purchase was through a third party seller, kind of like Amazon.com. Hmmmm. They were still not able to locate my order. I explained to the (buy.com) customer service that even though the purchase was with a third party seller, I made the purchase THROUGH buy.com and they should easily be able to display and track my order. A week later, I received an email from the third party seller stating that the order has been received but not shipped. I needed the ear buds seven days after I ordered them but this was not going to happen. I tried to cancel the order through buy.com but they mysteriously couldn't find my order yet again. I then contacted the third party seller and cancelled the order directly. I received an email from the seller stating that the order was cancelled and to have a nice day. Five days later I received the ear buds from the seller and the old credit card was charged yet again. I FINALLY got the second charge taken off and just kept the ear buds. Now, the ear buds are shorting out. To return the ear buds to VModa, I need a receipt of purchase to send them back and no one seems to want to acknowledge that I bought the ear buds either the seller or buy.com. What is the moral of the story? Stick to Amazon, Newegg or whatever your familiar website is to make your purchases. Thanks buy.com for wasting hours of my life that I will never get back.

The Hoover Dam

NBA Summer League, Las Vegas NV

I have just recently returned from a two week adventure in Las Vegas, NV. The NBA Summer League took place there from July 10th to the 21st. I don't care what anyone says, twelve days in a row in Las Vegas is too many. The "norm" for most of the visitors that I have encountered in Las Vegas is that they are staying two to five days. This was my second work trip to Vegas and my fifth trip overall. Let me start by pointing out that I worked thirteen straight days without a break. With that said, let me turn my attention to the work that I was doing. I was the courtside engineer for the stats crew. I sat through thirty five games, three or four at a time, back to back with only ten minutes between games. All in all, it wasn't a bad experience but it made some of the people that I worked with, as well as myself, a little testy towards the end of the day. Everyone made it home and are on speaking terms now, so that is all that really counts. Sorry guys! With that said, I would like to do a review of some things that I noticed in at the NBA Summer League, Las Vegas. Let call this section of the blog: Cool vs. Not Cool.

Firstly.


Drinking with friends and making new friends while drinking is cool. See picture to the left.












Drinking so much that you pass out at 2:00 p.m. at the NBA Summer League is not cool. This guy sat directly behind us at the scoring table and slept for a full hour and a half before security kindly asked him to leave. He had an L.A. Clippers jersey on, no offense Clippers.











Secondly-


Eating peanuts and throwing the shells on the floor at a Roadhouse of some sort is cool. If the management is cool with it, then so am I.
















Being a fat and lazy PR guy that sits at the table and eats a bag of peanuts, 3 hot dogs and some nachos and then throwing the peanut shells on the floor is not cool. This PR guy that works for the Portland Trailblazers didn't see the problem with this. Lazy and not cool. See evidence below.


























Thirdly-


Going out in Vegas is pretty common and most people that go there do this. The guys always want to look good and smell good, of course. That's cool.
















Wearing so much Drakkar Noir that when I have to sit next to you, for hours at time, makes my eyes water is not cool. Hey guy, Drakkar Noir went out with the nineties, switch it up. This guy wore so much of that crap that I had to get up and put drops in my eyes twice during a two hour game. Not cool. Hey, we get it. You are going out right after you get done with this gig. Bring the bottle with you in the car and put it on when you get to the place. Check your head gear guy.











Other than that, everyone else was cool. Good event people. I did actually get to visit the Hoover Dam or Hoover Darn as some say. I will post those pics soon.