Rants

This is going to be a discussion that might bump up against the limits of acceptable meta as far as blogging is concerned. I am not all that interested in being yet another blog about blogging or site design. This is mostly because my world really doesn't have much to do with blogging or site design beyond having a blog and having designed the site. And Meta Is Murder.
This post is about forums. Specifically, this post is about web forums and the communities that I've found around them over the last several years.
If you love forums, or even just like forums, even if just a little bit, may I suggest not reading this? Just because I don't like them doesn't mean you should do something that will probably just make you angry.
I will try to keep the meta to a minimum. The forum bashing, that I'll make no promises about.

The new thing happening on Facebook is their pushing their "automatic Friend Finder." And honestly, I find that their method is overly aggressive and borders on offensive.
I know that a lot of services have a feature where an address book, instant messaging roster and other services' roster and search for people who are also using the service in question, but please don't lie to people saying I found most of my friends this way. And yet, Natalie gets a banner stating that I used the service they're pushing (to mind my non-Facebook contact data) to find "many of my friends." Me? ORLY? I don't think so.
As I've said before, I do not normally add people, even people I think I know well enough to add, until I get a request from the person. It's really the only way I won't feel guilty about the amount of quality of the noise I sometimes tend to post.

I titled the last post , and honestly, I talked about the spaghetti monster map, not about Social Media. So, the title wasn't honest. And the content was clearly on the side of snoring-at-the-keyboard boring.

Really, social media has not changed my life. Not that much, if at all. I still sit in loft here at the house working everyday. I am sitting here alone. I am answering questions via phone, work's instant messging system and e-mail. I do usually have an app or two running on one of the machines that monitors some of the social networking sites where there are people I actually might follow, and Linux apps exist to present the activity/update/life stream.
And watching, normally just out of the corner of my eye is pretty much all I do. I don't interact. I don't participate in any of that Social Network's games. And I most certainly don't let those games or apps or whatever have posting rights to my activity stream. That way leads madness.
Yes, I'm boring.

Tonight we went back to the Max & Erma's on Virginia Beach Blvd for the first time in about three years. And I don't think I will ever be going back.

When we first moved to Virginia Beach, we spent a lot of time in the area of Pembroke Mall. This was mostly because we didn't know the area, and there were things to do up that way. One of the restaurants we thought were good at that time was Max & Erma's. It wasn't overly complicated. It had a decent menu. It wasn't a bad place to bring the kids. But the feeling didn't last.

Over a period of a couple of visits, we couldn't help but notice a steady decline in the quality of the service. The place was always clean and I can't think of a problem with the wait staff, but other things were problems. Most of the problems we were having were that it was taking longer and longer for the orders to come out. And parts of orders were starting to be forgotten. And with small kids, that was starting to be a serious issue. I couldn't help but notice that not only was I waiting a long time for food to arrive, but I was also waiting so long for the check and then my card that Natalie started taking the boys out to the car while I would sit there alone for 20 minutes or so at a time.

Eventually, I just decided we were never going to go there again. And that was three years ago.

(This isn't the only restaurant I feel this way about and the story is almost the same for those, too.)

 

Tonight, Natalie really wanted to go give Max & Erma's another try. She had a coupon. She was tired after doing a whole day's work at school and then straightening up the garage so we could fit a "new" freezer we had acquired. I decided that maybe three years was long enough, and maybe Max & Erma's would be better now.

I expected the worst, but hoped for the best. I was left disappointed.

I sent an update to the social networking sites I when we put the order in for our meals. Nothing complicated. The kids ordered kid food-a cheeseburger and corn dogs. Natalie ordered a burger and I ordered a really simple chicken dish. I didn't think it was anything all that complicated. Not at all.

All the while I was pinging along on my phone. Jake was finishing his homework. Sam was playing on his DS. Natalie and I were talking. And then it started to feel like it was taking a long time. The place really wasn't that busy.

According to my Plurk timeline, we placed our order at 18:40. The waiter, Will (who was really doing a good job) apologized at 19:20 about the food being late. That really got my attention. At least that was an improvement over the last time I was there. That time they didn't even bother to talk to us between ordering and delivery (and I lost track of time with my tempter). Will did a good job.

The food did arrive at 19:25.

Did I mention that it was a kid's cheeseburger, corndog bites, adult burger and a easy chicken dish? The whole thing should have taken less than 10 minutes to cook. We hadn't ordered any starters when we sat down, because we were worried that was what killed the pacing the last time we were there (and the cookie order just completely screwed that night 3 years ago).

At the point that the food arrived, I was looking at my feed on Twitter. 43 minutes.

Yes, 43 minutes.

I asked the waiter if there was a problem in the kitchen. I didn't actually expect him to say yes.

I filled the manager in on the fact that we had a series of bad experiences at that location three years ago. And that this visit was really their last chance at convincing me that the Max & Erma's brand was worth attention, time or business.

We did get an explanation about what the problem was in the kitchen. It was the kid's cheeseburger. Seems that earlier in the week the kitchen had run out of kid sized hamburger patties. While waiting for the order, the kitchen had been hand modifying adult hamburgers to fit the kid's buns. Seems the cook tonight didn't know that, and the manager had to cook Jake's burger himself because no one in the kitchen could understand what they had been doing all week (and I assume all night).

I thanked the manager (I'm sorry I don't remember his name. He was very nice, understanding and I would say professional). And I explained to him that this was exactly the same kind of problem we saw with the restaurant three years ago, and I didn't think I was ever going to go back.

We ended up skipping desert (made up to the boys at Cold Stone Creamery). We did get 25% knocked off the bill, and coupons for free stuff there for another trip. Natalie took the coupons. I don't think I will ever be going back to that location. I may be soured on the brand enough that I don't think I will be setting foot in another Max & Erma's for a good long time.

I did tip the waiter, Will, on the full amount of the check. He worked really hard and it seems caused a bit of a problem in the kitchen trying to get us our food. I appreciated the effort.

I also appreciated what the manager was trying to do.

Max & Erma's-I don't care what your website says. You're not "a better place to eat."

 

I have been meaning to post something for the last several days. Everyone is away, and I really didn't think I would have had any trouble posting about some of the tools that I have been trying to use at home and work to try to keep better track of where I am spending my time, and potentially wasting it. This isn't that post. This is about a few of the things where I know I have been wasting my time. I tried watching TV again this week. For the most part, I did not find anything worth watching. I understand that we are into the summer rerun season, but being I really didn't watch any of it the first time around, there should have been something compelling or at least interesting. Nada. I did watch a couple of movies via Netflix. I tend to intentionally weirder titles when Natalie's not here. Mostly this is done to not have to deal with only having 4 movies at a time from Netflix and there being things that she wants to watch in queue behind oddball things that I just happen to pull out of thin air using some really obscure movies selection process that I do not think even I understand completely enough to understand how it works. The two movies that made it through that selection were "Sex and Death 101" and "Chaos Theory". Neither were what I expected them to be. Both were actually better as the quirky character stories they were. But I'm not really in the mood to write reviews, so lets move along. I also spent some time dealing with the question of if I want to spend any more time in any of the available Massively Multiplayer Online Games. I really have not gotten into anything since Myst Online was canceled. And I still do not really know how I feel about the recent announcement that Myst Online may be coming back in another form via Cyanworlds's MORE project--Myst Online: Restoration Experiment. I don't know yet. I'm still thinking about what this means. When MORE starts, it is going to be a very different game from what was hosted by GameTap. At this point, we know that there will not be any new content from Cyan, initially or possibly ever. I understand this. The question is how quickly can the community develop content for the game? How much of that content will be compelling? How much of that will tell its stories? I have done some thinking about why MOUL did not meet my expectations. I have also been looking at a few other games trying to see if they do things any better. MOUL did not meet my expectations because it couldn't. It just flat out couldn't. It was a combination of the state of the community, the state of Cyan and the methodology of presentation. And there is more. Some of these issues I did not realize until I did start into other games. A while back I tried Matrix Online. The experiment was a failure. While I knew people who were playing, I unfortunately picked a time when they were either not able or willing to get into MxO and introduce me to the community. And this is a community where one either needs to decide to play alone or get an introduction. That may not be true, but it is my experience. There were some things I did like about MxO. The very flexible skill system was something I think more games should have. That skill system allowed anyone who felt like investing the time to build a single character down any and all of the available paths. And that made it impossible to build an unplayable character, or completely dead ended a character due to a bad choice on build out. And I liked the setting of the Matrix movies. It is just a shame that the community seemed to have reached a point where it setteled. And the game itself has not seemed to evolve. As a new character, I should have entered the game and quickly found myself involved in the current state of the game, not where it was 2 years ago. With the community seemingly stagnated, I had no interest in continuing past the demo. I did pickup GuildWars, but that just doesn't feel compelling. All of the missions just feel way too cookiecutter. And I have some issues with how the community feels distracted. I guess this has to do with the fact that most of the game occurs away from the noob areas. I also am a little bothered that at level 20 a player either stops or moves into the dedicated PVP environment. I also recently tried EverQuest II (EQ2). People at work play it. People at work seem a little addicted to it. I really just don't feel like I'm getting into it. The noob area is fine, but the missions are obviously cookie cutter. I haven't had much experience with the community, as the people I know cannot get their existing characters into the noob area. I also find that character creation a bit too complicated. I think there may be too many races and classes and they are put together in difficult to understand ways. And having started 4 different characters, there just doesn't seem to be much along the lines of trying to get players into the history or story of the setting. Considering there really isn't an external frame of reference, this is an issue for me. The question I still need to answer is what AM I looking for? I really want a compelling story. I also want to know that the story is potentially going to be different for each character, or at least have more than just a succeed and failed outcomes. It would be nice if the various missions had decision points in them that allow characters to experience one of several potential outcomes, some successful, so not so much. I would also to see that extend into the main branch of the game. And in a PvP environment, should one be appropriate to the setting, have dynamically generated missions that put players against one another. Let me explain that one a bit. Let's assume that we are in a game with groups or factions that are enemies. And that there are places in the game where these groups have to interact with one another. As players from one side take missions or quests in this area, have players from the other side be offered missions and quests to counter, interfere or just plain be the spanner thrown into the gearbox of the mission for the opposing players. I would also like to see sets or arcs of missions and quests where there is real staged conflict between members of opposing factions. I would see this as better than a bunch of cookie cutter missions that absolutely everyone playing the game gets to play later. As you can see, I am having a hard time finding a game that matches how I want to play. I guess I'll stop here, for now.