I got cut off and it is raining...

Posting from the Car Again

Cool Couples in the Podcast-o-sphere

Recently I have started listening to podcasts instead of books on CD to reduce the cost of driving. Books on CD can get to be pretty expensive if you listen to them all of the time. But with podcasts, I can get more than enough content to get me through my commutes (even on days like today when I have to drive out to Buffalo) for free. I still like books on CD, in fact I will talk about Audible.com soon too.

I have found two podcasts that I really like. These are really good commuting podcasts because they are similar to good morning talk shows but without the annoying commercials and bizarre gimmicks. Just good drive talk. Check out The Dawn and Drew Show as well as Keith and the Girl.

Perkins Restaurant Sucks

This post is originally from Sheep Guarding Llama but I was so absolutely disgusted with the treatment that I received from Carrie Giambra at Perkins on Jefferson Road in Rochester (Henrietta) that I decided to post a copy of the message here so that more people would see it.

...Our lunch at Perkins went so poorly that we have decided never to return. The general manager made it quite clear that she wasn't interested in having any vegetarians as customers there so we will please her greatly by avoiding her deteriorating restaurant chain. After a lifetime of frequenting the Perkins chain (there used to be one here in Geneseo for those of you who don't remember.) I think I know that I am able to make substitutions on the menu. Traditionally Perkins has been a very friendly place interested in customer service. But, according to the manager, there are no longer any menu item changes allowed - even if it would mean higher profit margins for the company - because their corporate inventory control system is so pathetic that it can't track inventory as well as Burget King's was able to ten years ago. Nice to see that there has been progress. Supposedly, according to the unpleasent manager, they cannot give us bread or eggs instead of meat on a breakfast item because the inventory system will report the meat anyway (who wrote that software?) and they will be out of sync and that is more important that happy or returning customers. Interesting philosophy. It was extrememly frustrating because the new Perkins menu has added meat to almost every menu item so that there is no way for a vegetarian to order anything. Not even a salad or breakfast. At Denny's there is only a few non-meat items but they willing make substitutions all of the time without hesitation. Well, obviously Perkins doesn't want me to be a customer there and I am more than willing to appease them. Fortunately, we received a "survey" with our bill so I went online and let corporate know what I thought of Carrie Giambra, their rude, unprofessional manager. I plan to call them and talk to them as well to make sure that they understand just how upset I am that they treated us like that. I have never been treated so rudely in a restaurant (okay, actually Tom Wahl's once treated me worse back in 1993 and I didn't eat their again until they got bought out by Bill Grays, now they are a really nice place.) I never thought that I would be happy that Denny's bought out Perkins in this area but boy am I glad now. They are half the price and twice as nice (oh, that was insulting, I mean ten times as nice.) Denny's now has a bigger menu and plenty of stuff that I actually want to eat. I had to get a belgian waffle at Perkins because it was the only thing without meat.

Audioblogger is Back

Audioblogger News

Believe it or not, Audioblogger is back! I have no idea what happened to them for the past two weeks but their phone number has changed and the new one is apparently working. I have been trying to post since Josh's wedding on May 28th and have had no luck. I was on Audioblogger's site today sending help and suggestion emails (which, of course, they never answer) when I just happened to notice that they snuck a phone number change by us without any notification whatsoever. They don't even have a note on the site telling us that the number has changed. So I gave the new number a try and voila, we are back in action.

Tony will be excited to know that he can do his audio posting again now that he has seen his own podcast feed on ipodder.

AudioBlogger Apparently Gone

It appears that AudioBlogger.com is out of business. They have been down for more than a week, are not answering emails and have no information on their website whatsoever. One can only assume that they have gone out of business and that their website hasn't been turned off yet. I wish that Blogger would tell us something since they work together (or did.)

Blogger Redeeming Themselves

Ok, after my last rant, Blogger managed to come through and recover my last post even though it said that it failed and didn't initially put it on the blog. So, I guess that I will keep using it for the time being. I do like the convenience. Now, if AudioBlogger could just be up every other day or something.

Audioblogger Down and Blogger Issues

I had an entire post written up that took me like fifteen minutes and then Blogger lost it. AARRGGHH. This software is NOT very well written. C'mon Google, you have a million programmers, this is not a good representative software site for you. Not only that, but the associates AudioBlogger site has been down for five days now at least. Five days is a long time to have a service down. Especially if AudBlog wants to sell services to people at ridiculously high prices, they had better showcase that they are able to keep their telephones up and running and at least answer people when they email in for support. I love Blogger and AudioBlogger but both services are so glitchy that I am almost forced to switch to something else just so that I don't throw my computer out of the window. It is just way too easy to do this another way to put up with this kind of service. The bottom line is that I only use these services for my second tier blogs and keep SGL hosted on my own servers so that I never have issues like this. I am tired of losing everything that I put into these blogs. Yes, I should make a local copy before posting but I never remember that until the instant I hit the submit button. Why doesn't Blogger at least make a copy show up with the "now posting" page? Wouldn't that be simple? Thought so.

Audioblogger Down

Apparently, Audioblogger.com is out of commission. I don't know what is wrong but I did a quick search on Technorati and immediately I found other people are having the same problem! So I am unable to provide my usual "on the road" updates while I am out of town. Sorry gang.

Work this Week

I am working in Syracuse this week at Wegman's Liverpool, DeWitt and Onondaga stores. I am planning on staying out at Min's parent's house for the week since I am working out in Syracuse.

No Audio Updates

Sorry but I have been trying to audio posts for the last four days but AudioBlogger has been having an issue and I can't get through to them. So, no audio posts. I know that everyone is very sad. So, it looks like I might have to look into a different solution. I really liked the telephone system that they had but it is awfully unreliable. When it works, it is awesome. But it only works about half of the time.

SGL updates have been behind because of the new dog and my laptop dying. But you won't find out about the laptop until I manage to update SGL.

Later everyone.