Service. Done right.

Mrs. Pinata and I went out for breakfast this week at the best breakfast joint in America's Finest City. It's the kind of place that has a 30 minute wait to get a table for breakfast at 11am on a Monday. The little Pinatas were at school, so we figured we'd go out and have a great breakfast at our favorite spot.

I ordered one of the breakfast specials and Mrs. Pinata ordered one of their famous breakfast scrambles. About 15-20 minutes later, my order - which was served up on a plate the size of an aircraft carrier - showed up at the table. We both picked at it a bit and found it delicious. Perhaps 7-10 minutes after that, my lovely wife's order showed up. The waiter apologized profusely for the delay and assured us that he would take care of us in some way. We were a bit puzzled, as the food on my plate alone was enough for us plus three or four other people, so we were just fine, whether or not her order was present. So, we told him that it was no big deal and went on with our breakfast.

About half an hour later - a great half an hour of good food and great conversation with my wife - the bill shows up. Sure enough, the cost for her order, which was just under half the bill, was deducted from the total. I called the waiter over and told him that it was no big deal - the food was great and the delay really hadn't bothered us all that much. He insisted that we should expect great and timely service at the restaurant and that they had let us down (which they really hadn't).

So, we got our meal for just over half the price we'd expected to pay. Naturally, we tipped him as if we'd paid full freight, and we went from happy customers to raving fans in one meal.

Well done.

Service Shmervice

I'll share this little anecdote: Last Saturday my DSL connection was down for a day. I did all the things I know how to do, rebooting several ways and times and attempting to connect and reconnect in various configurations. My modem said there was a DSL sync but no service. Odd.

I got on the phone and the guy on the other side of the world confirmed that there MIGHT be an outage in ChicagoIllinois. Okay. 8 hours later, I tried to try again. I called back to check on the outage, and the guy in 12 time zones away said that the outage has been mostly fixed, and have I tried rebooting? Calmly, I told him the many things that I had done, and by the way, here's the exact error message. His name was Mark.

Guy asks if I'm running IE7.

I say yes.

He says, well, let's uninstall it.

I say, huh?

He says, uninstall IE7, and we'll try to get it working with IE6.

Me: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. [I literally said that.]

He says it's the only thing that will work.

I say thank you, but I'm not doing that, because that's not the problem.

We say goodbye.

One hour later, my DSL was back up and running.

So So Very Sad!!!!

Oh, what a Drag! My Blackberry suckfest of a phone died! Oh, the humanity! What shall I do!

So demoralizing! The need, the imperative need, the absolute mandate to buy a Treo! The horrors of different technology!

But what of the wheel! The Wheel of Stupidity! Oh how I shall miss the Wheel! So upsetting that I won't have to use the wheel ever again, and instead have a device that actually can be used in a reasonable fashion! How will I ever get over this!

18 glorious months of shitty reception! Poor functionality! Lame synchronisation! Replaced in an instant in favor of glorious Palm software and a delectable touch screen! And accurate synchronization! And it's pretty and shiny! Or should I say SHINEY!

What a tragedy.

Over Too Soon...Wanted More

Postdiction wrap up:

Yes! The Police showed up, and they left the mail at home. Nothing post marked and dropped off for delivery on this night.

They jammed, they changed up the song I didn't want to hear and made it interesting. Stewart and Sting were very much locked in. Andy did his thing. It was loose but tight, which is not contradictory. Sting sounded good and didn't look like he hated it. My only prediction that proved correct was Stewart singing but not being able to hear him. They had Andy singing, too...but we all know that was a lie, and the only fault with the performance was the canned Sting background vocals. (Um, no, those harmonies were not Stew and Andy, but nice try to make it look like it.)

So, right on. Let's get tix and make 'em richer.

PREdictions, and PREthoughts

Shall we gather here to conduct the postmortem for this evening's Police activity?

I'll give a prediction: Stewart will rush, Sting will give him either a disinterested look or a scathing glance of stifled rage, and Andy will be on his side of the stage, serenely awash in the peaceful solitude of a chorus/echo guitar effect. I predict that Stew and Sting will miss at least ONE hit by a minimum of a sixteenth note. They will flam either an ending or an in-song transition. Andy will keep playing. Stewart will throw a stick or break a drumhead. Sting will stare forward and ask people to sing along and go "ee-yo-yo-yo" at some point. Andy will keep playing his guitar. Sting will shout "Cha!" Stewart will have a vocal mic and want to sing, but you won't be able to hear him. Andy will be playing guitar and arpeggiate something. They will not play anything off of Synchronicity (Stewart hates the record). We will hear Message...again.

If it were up to me, they'd open with "Next to You". Then maybe play "One World" or "Omegaman". I hope they don't do a medley, but rather, three well chosen songs that aren't obvious, but burning.

Likely, they'll have one slot and it'll either be one song (Message or Roxanne) or a jarring mashup of three or four tunes.

Do it right, guys. Go out there and burn and surprise us. Show us why we care about you. You don't have to be great tonight...just don't mail it in.

I wanna see Stewart play too fast and make Sting remember how to rock, I wanna see them have a fistfight BEFORE they start playing, so that when they play, we can tell that this MATTERS.

Don't mail it in.
Don't mail it in.
Don't mail it in.

Doesn't have to be great. It has to not suck, and have energy. It has to be played like they've been on tour for 4 1/2 years doing blow and chicks without a day off and with Miles Copeland talking about them being the biggest, best band in the world.

Make Miles proud. Do it right. Be the rock.

Peanut Butter Update/Confirmation

Wild Oats Natural Crunchy: no.

Mandatory Reading

Finished The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright last night. If this isn't a must-read, I don't know what is. It was flat-out phenomenal on a couple different levels.

First of all, it's a history book, and it's exhaustive...on what has to be one of the most complicated histories there could be. The research and work that was put into this book is mind-boggling, and was put together in a cogent, deft manner that is simultaneously dispassionate and extraordinarily urgent.

Second, it's a real page-turner. Not dry like a non-fiction work can sometimes be (and I'm a non-fiction fan), this reads better than any spy novel or epic novel I've ever read. The development and depth of the characters in this book are unbelievable. We all know the ending, and yet Wright manages to cull together about 50 years of obscure (frequently incredibly confidential) history and create a ridiculous page-turner. I couldn't put it down.

And by the way, this book has nothing to do with politics...it's not about that (well, it is, but not today's climate...only politics as it relates to the development of the topic). This book gave me a new, more fully informed understanding of the vastly complicated details of the last 50 years or so.

What I'm saying is that this book should be read by everyone as a mandatory step in getting a drivers license or when you go to the dentist or as a required step in the ingestion of oxygen. It's that important. And no one will complain, because the book is good enough to warrant the attention.