Lunch Failure

I was scheduled to go to lunch with my friend today. He got busy and had to reschedule it. So I asked Momoko if she wanted to go out. Of course she did. Then she asked the kids to come along too. Since this will be the last time we go out before Kit Kat leaves to spend Christmas with her dad, we let Kit Kat decide on where to go. She wanted soup from Olive Garden.

Now our Olive Garden always has very poor service. I don't expect much when I go there. They continued their weak service today. Couldn't get any breadsticks until after the entire meal was done. I asked for butter to go with the breadsticks. Needed to ask a few times before I could get some. There were a lot of other failures - no lemon for the water, having to ask multiple times for water refills, long delays for the soup.

A manager came by and asked how our lunch was. I told him it was basically a failure. I gave him a few examples where the poor service pretty much ruined the lunch. The manager was apologetic. He agreed to comp one of the meals (take it off the bill). I thought that was at least an attempt to recover from the big time fail.

When my bill came, I saw that no meals were comped. I asked to speak with the manager. He said he comped my bill. Then I asked him to show me where. He then said that I must have received the wrong bill. When he came back with another bill, it was still wrong. The manager apologized and went back to take care of it.

In any other restaurant, I would have thought I was getting punked. You know, it was some type of candid camera to see how I would react to a setup. By I was in Olive Garden. I knew this was just their sorry service as usual. The only reason we even return is that the family loves some of their food.

Pumpkin Surprise

Earlier this week, Little Kat was running late for school. I thought he might miss his bus. Luckily Momoko was leaving for work at the same time. She gave Little Kat a ride to the bus stop. Disaster averted. I got up normal time, went downstairs to my study, and started work.

I got a text from Momoko. It said that she found a pumpkin under my car. What??? I do recall there were a bunch of pumpkins on the curb across the street. I looked outside and those pumpkins were gone. I went outside and sure enough, under my car, was a small pumpkin.

At first I thought it might be some kids fooling around. However Momoko later said that the pumpkins from across the street had somehow rolled out into the road. Since Little Kat was running late, I guess they could not stop to remove the pumpkin under my car themselves.

Secret Setting

My initial impression of my new iPhone 5 phone was not good. When I am at home, I like to connect the phone to the world using the wireless Internet connection in my house. That technique incurs no extra cost from our cell phone provider. With my previous iPhone, that was not a problem. The iPhone 5 kept switching over to LTE or 4g mode. That uses up my previous data bandwidth from the cell phone company.

In the first month alone, I racked up a $15 charge for going over my monthly limit. And the month was not over. I blamed the iPhone and our cell phone provider. This was a double fail since they ended up charging us more per month anyway because I got the iPhone 5.

My plan was to call up our cell phone provider and complain. I was prepared to return the darn iPhone 5 if necessary. They would not like that as we signed me up for a 2 year contract. The only difficulty is that the phones are in Momoko's name. I don't really have any direct relationship with the cell phone company. Arguing in such a position is always trickier than if I was the actual customer.

I was thinking that I might end up buying an iPad that only has the capability to run off the house wireless connection. The iPad 2, which is the previous generation iPad, costs $399. And Target was having a special this week where you could get a $50 gift card if you buy one. I told Momoko about my plan. She told me to try out her iPad 2 first.

Momoko turned off the cellular data option on her iPad 2 to ensure I would not use up her cellular bandwidth. Wait a minute. If Momoko could do that with her iPad, could I do that with my iPhone 5? Yes! Now my iPhone only uses the house wireless network. No more charges for going over my 4g monthly limit. Thank you Momoko. You saved the day. I should have known to go to Momoko with this first. She is the Apple Corporation enthusiast in the house.

Failure with Fries

Momoko promised the kids that she would take them to the movies if they hung the Christmas lights outside. Well the kids held up their end of the bargain. So today they planned to go to the movies. They like to catch the early show because it is cheap. And there are less crowds to fight in parking lot and theater. Their show started at 10:20am. So they planned to leave for breakfast at an evil 9:00am.

After a tough week with my college class and work, there was no way I was waking up Saturday morning before 9:00am. I stayed in bed all morning. I did wake up for lunch and was very hungry. When I came downstairs, I found a bunch of Arbys fries on the kitchen floor along with some other trash. I immediately left a voice mail for Momoko, telling her they had better come home after the movie to explain who caused this mess.

I figured it might have beeb Little Kat. He often puts trash in the wrong place. Normally I can just call down the kids, figure out who failed, and have the guilty party clean up the mess. However I was irked that somebody tossed some fries on the floor and took off to have fun at the movies. When the family came home, Kit Kat said she put the fries in a bag, put that bag in another bag, and then deposited the double bagged fries in the trash. She said the fries must have fallen out of the trash can.

Now we have a trash can which requires you to push a pedal with your foot to open. Or you could lift up the top with your hand. Either way, you need to be standing directly in front of the trash can to put something in there. I was not buying the story that Kit Kat lifted up the lid and did not notice the fries falling down right underneath her feet. Suspicious at best.

Amazon Kindle Gold Mine

Now that I have the Kindle Program on my computer, I am downloading free titles like crazy. Got 25 free books on my computer now. Read 4 of them so far. The last one I read was The Test. Some rich guy is about to die. He realizes that he had the wrong priorities in life. All of his kids suffered. So he sets up a will that makes his children pass "the test" to earn their sizable inheritance.

One son wants to run for president of the USA. He needs that money bad. Another son wants nothing to do with the money. There is a drug addicted daughter who needs money for her and her friends to enjoy high price drugs. And there is an illegitimate child, who herself is wearlty and does not want any of the inheritance. There is also a stepdaughter who saw daddy through his illness to the end.

Oh that was such a great book. I forgot to mention that I also read some old shor stories from Donald Westlake. I love that author. One of them was a science fiction one that was not to my liking. The other, The Risk Profession, was old but was the classic Donald Westlake that I love.

Did I tell you that all these books are free? I love free. The good thing is that Amazon is not doing this for charity. They are getting me hooked so I will move to paying for some books. I will surely do that. But I don't plan to buy any electronic copies of books. I am going to buy the real thing - some printed books.

Amazon Kindle and the Test

I have come to realize that everyone in the family except me has electronic book readers except me. I bought Little Kat an Amazon Kindle reader this past year so he could have many books in one device while traveling. Momoko has her iPads, which feature an iBooks app from Apple. Kit Kat used to have an Amazon Kindle reader. She just upgraded to an Amazon Kindle Fire, which is a tablet that can server as a reader.

Now I prefer printed books over electronic copies. Still I feel like I was just left out. I started to research my options. At first I thought I might buy the cheapest Kindle reader like Little Kat has. But I found I don't like its screen. It is just too dark. The Apple iPads are too expensive. I was contemplating getting a Kindle Fire like Kit Kat. Then I figured there must be a better way.

There is a much better way. I found I could download a free Amazon Kindle reader program on my personal computer. Woo hoo. And if you search hard enough, you can find electronic books on Amazon for free. Immediately I downloaded a title from Tucker Max, a raunchy author whose style I love. Then for grins I read a book by a gay guy who has dating advice for the average girl. Sure. That one did not apply to me. The read was interesting.

Next I downloaded a free book on getting free books. Found a nifty web site that highlights good free books from Amazon. Then I finally downloaded The Test by Patricia Gussin. To tell the truth, I had never heard about her before. But I loved her book. Maybe I will buy some printed copies of her other books. More on The Test in a future blog post.

Working on the Truck

One of the tires on my truck was a little low on air. Normally I have an air compressor that I use for such tasks. But my last one broke. I did replace it, and tested it out on the truck. Now I bought an extremely cheap air compressor. I wanted to see whether a cheap one could do the job.

The first sign that I bought the wrong air compressor was when I read the warning that came with the compressor. It said you should wash your hands after use because it might cause cancer and sterility. WTF? That is reason enough to throw the darn thing out. But I wanted to see if it could do the job.

I used my tire pressure gauge to see that the passenger side front tire had only 14 pounds of pressure in it. Oh no. It is supposed to have around 35 pounds. So I hooked the air compressor up to the cigarette lighter. The thing automatically starts pumping out air. Another sign of a cheap model. It did not have a separate on/off switch.

The air compressor had its own gauge. However after a long time it only registered 20 pounds of pressure. I just kept letting the thing go. It got really hot. My final reading showed an air pressure of 23 pounds. Just not enough. I might have to go to the gas station and forget about buying a compressor.