13 things your waiter won't tell you

Read this story from the Consumerist.

It's a story originally published on the Readers' Digest.

Here are five of my favorites:

3. When customers' dissatisfaction devolves into personal attacks, adulterating food or drink is a convenient way for servers to exact covert vengeance. Waiters can and do spit in people's food.

8. Splitting entrées is okay, but don't ask for water, lemon, and sugar so you can make your own lemonade. What's next, grapes so you can press your own wine?

9. If you find a waiter you like, always ask to be seated in his or her section. Tell all your friends so they'll start asking for that server as well. You've just made that waiter look indispensable to the owner. The server will be grateful and take good care of you.

10. If you can't afford to leave a tip, you can't afford to eat in the restaurant. Servers could be giving 20 to 40 percent to the busboys, bartenders, maître d', or hostess.

13. Never, ever come in 15 minutes before closing time. The cooks are tired and will cook your dinner right away. So while you're chitchatting over salads, your entrées will be languishing under the heat lamp while the dishwasher is spraying industrial-strength, carcinogenic cleaning solvents in their immediate vicinity.

Check out the new super Pii Pii brothers game from ThinkGeek for Wii

Thanks for Fatwallet, the English version of this fun game will be on sale soon. In the mean time, you can always play the Japanese (very little) version.

Tonight's Show Jay Leno jokes

From last night:

It's been reported that prescription drugs including anti-depressant were found in our drinking water. Today, a City official said that citizens do not have to worry about it. How can we worry about it? We're drinking the water.

President Bush said that the country is not in a recession, for him and the board member of Halliburton. With the gas price going to 4 dollars per gallon, the guy can't afford buy the gas to drive to the job he's about to loose and can't stay for too long in the house he can't afford to live in any more. This is tri-factor recession.

SAT for presidential candidates?

Heard this on NPR. It's a joke, but so funny when GW is the current president who for sure will fail every single one of these.

"The presidency of the United States, arguably the most important job on planet Earth, may be the only non-entry level position anywhere that requires no specific training or demonstrated competence."

"The Presidential Knowledge and Fitness Assessment (PKFA) would consist of several sections. Part I: 500 questions on grammar, spelling, literature, social studies, mathematics, and science. Part II: a complex personality profile. Part III: a polygraph exam. Thus would we eliminate those with limited language skills that reflect impaired thinking, critical ignorance of world history, economics, and the workings of science, abundant self-importance, uncompromising arrogance, and fundamental inclinations toward torture or deceit."

"For too long we have accepted the notion that politics is a dirty business capable of making the strangest bedfellows. Whoever's in the bed, it's time we changed the sheets."

Oh, the author is Gary Earl Ross, a writer and a professor at UB's Educational Opportunity Center.

The world according to Americans

Waiting for Vista

While waiting for Vista, here's another Windows joke from Joes4all.net.

No, Windows is not a virus. Here's what viruses do:
1. They replicate quickly. ... Okay, Windows does that.
2. Viruses use up valuable system resources, slowing down the system as they do so. ... Okay, Windows does that.
3. Viruses will, from time to time, trash your hard disk. ... Okay, Windows does that too.
4. Viruses are usually carried, unknown to the user, along with valuable programs and systems. ... Sigh.. Windows does that, too.
5. Viruses will occasionally make the user suspect their system is too slow (see 2) and the user will buy new hardware. ... Yup, Windows does that, too.



Until now it seems Windows is a virus but there are fundamental differences: Viruses are well supported by their authors, are running on most systems, their program code is fast, compact and efficient and they tend to become more sophisticated as they mature.

So Windows is not a virus. ... It's a bug.