Life is Funny

Nagravision 3 (Nagra3) has recently hit BEV and Dishnet. This is causing a stir in the satellite FTA arena. Apparently currently FTA receivers cannot decode this latest encryption algorithm.

Now, I myself, pay for my BEV subscription every month, so I am not affected.

However, those satellite FTA people who have been using Viewsat and Coolsat receivers that previously decoded Nagra 2 (Nagravision 2) since 2005, now are running around wondering what they are going to do..

The truth is, that these temporary viewsat and coolsat binary firmware fixes (bin file), are exactly that — temporary. How could you feel confident watching TV for a couple days, and then having to download a new fix for your receiver?

I don’t understand why people would invest so much time and effort into trying to get a fix. Isn’t your time worth something?

Now they claim that people are already out there trying to get a hack for nagra 3. Everyday they are checking all the fta forums, hoping and waiting.

Now I do agree the cost of having a satellite subscription is probably 2X as expensive as it should be. Mostly because I read somewhere that over 2 million people illegally decode satellite signals (atleast under the old nagravision encryption scheme) at any given time.

Well perhaps if satellite providers were to charge 50% of what the current retail rate is now, for TV subscription, and they would give everyone 100% of the full channel offering, that includes pay-per-view and the porn channels… Guess what? I hardly doubt 2 million people would bother to try and obtain satellite TV illegally.

That would be more money in their pocket. Less worry about devising new encryption schemes. Less time policing people, taking them to court, etc.

It’s similar to the argument “legalize marijuiana” — if it was legal, there would be less crime, and you could tax it.

Well if indeed over 2 million people are waiting for a nagra 3 fix for their FTA satellite receiver bin files, why not take this time to talk to these people and win them over somehow?

Sounds like a lot of business ready and ripe for the BEV and DN (dishnet) marketing team to sell them on the idea while their receivers are down.

If any of you are avid keno players, you may stare at the result screen and see patterns emerging. The number 56 may come up 3 draws in a row. Sounds like a good bet to play 56 over the next 5 draws, because the chance of the number coming up again is high.

WRONG.

Casinos, lottery corporations, and the like, have spent expensive money from people like www.gtech.com to ensure that their number picking server is choosing unbiased and unpredictable numbers through true RNG (Random Number Generation).

Yes, patterns will materialize with KENO. But guess what? They are random patterns. To the human eye and brain, we’ll associate random patterns with logical patterns. We’ll figure that the computer must be locked into some mode that is generating patterns and if we could only figure out the pattern and the frequency, we’ll dominate Keno.

Not true. Well, actually a correction. It was TRUE in the earlier days of Keno. You can read news articles from many years back, where random number generation was based on the time cycles of the computer when it was switched on, and everytime the computer was switched off and turned back on again, the same random number sequences would produce predictive random numbers.

But that was identified, and corrected, and is no longer present in today’s society.

Similarily, cooked potato chips may have a burned or bruised marking on them. If you sift through 5,000 bags of chips and examine each one, you may eventually find one that has the marking of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, or even a NIKE symbol.

Does this mean that you’ve found something sacred? No, it just means that if you look at randomness often enough, eventually random patterns will emerge, and as humans we can identify them. But all you are really doing is identifying something totally random that happened to produce a pattern.

So when you are losing your shirt over the long term playing KENO, keep in mind you are competing with a random machine. Randomly, you WILL win. However, randomly you WILL lose too. Keno is suppose to be an entertaining game, for FUN, with the chance of winning a random prize.

If you feel that if you play the game enough, and try to beat the system — well the long term odds will get you to lose money, and the keno operators will eventually profit from your failed investments.

I still play KENO, but with a very different attitude now. I’ll throw a couple bucks at the system, but no longer will I try and capture patterns. I’ve analyzed it enough and done research. I think its funny when I sit in a public gambling establishment and hear people freak out and exclaim “wow! Look! See!! 56 came up again! Make sure you put that number on the ticket.”

In true random number theory, 56 can come up 30 times in a row. But then again, it can stop coming up for the next 30 times. There is no rhyme, reason, or pattern to why KENO numbers come up.

If you’d like to read a little more about the history of KENO, I recommend this website

Sorry if I’ve burst your bubble where you had hoped to one day dominate Keno patterns. It isn’t possible. But don’t you feel better being well informed?

Ok, back to the trailer last night, I showed up at 11pm.

Started the generator. Lights flicked on. Walked into the trailer, and BLAM! I see a massive amount of large black flies everywhere.

Now, I just drove a whole hour to get to the trailer. I could have turned around and went home.. but instead, I decided to deal with the problem.  I move towards the flies, and they all immediately take off from the walls and start buzzing around in a large swarm.

One fly isn’t scarey. But having 70 of them swarming around.. all of a sudden you’re quickly out numbered and you know its going to be next to impossible to kill them in mid flight.

Then I get an idea… These flies were sleeping in the dark on the walls when I first walked into the trailer. What IF I turn out the lights?  Sure enough, they all fly to the nearest wall and sit there.

AHA! The flies can’t see in the dark, and they can’t fly in the dark.

Perfect. I pull out my headlamp and switch it onto the red LED portion and begin my killing spree.  I kill one after the other… What a mess.. it is working, but ewww, its gross to have several dozen dead flies stuck to the walls, windows, etc.

The carcasses are dropping to the floor..

I flick back on the light, 6 more flies show up. I turn the lights back off, and kill them. Turn the lights back on, it’s safe for about 10 seconds, then 3 more flies show up. I repeat the process..

So for the next 45 minutes, I kill 3 or 4 flies, turn lights on, more flies show up… I turn the lights back off… kill those ones.. and repeat.. again, and again.

I’m finally done. No more flies exist.

I better check the washroom now. I open the door, and there are 25 flies inside this tiny little room, all stuck to the walls, they see the light and look at me, ready to take off… I immediately slam the door shut.

Will it ever end?

I sit for 15 minutes… rest… and then the lights go off again. Another 25 flies met their maker.

Now I suspect something is either really dead around here.. OR flushing out the RV toilet holding tank last week is what brought every fly in the forest here.. Either way, I really don’t care what the reason is… I’m just pissed off at having to deal with such a stupid scenario.

I ask: How many of you have had to kill 72 flies in one night by hand?

Eventually, due to exhaustion, its time for bed. Atleast now I can sleep knowing that only the odd fly exists..

Wake up in the morning, and guess what surprise awaits me?

No, not breakfast in bed. Not a hot coffee…

MORE FLIES!! There is like 17 more flies in the trailer. I kill about 12 of them, and then give up…

No one should have to kill 89 flies in less than 24 hours..

This is just crazy.

I did a lot of internet searches and found how to build an organic fly trap, and may do that.. but really though.. a trap is a preventative measure. When you’re already overrun by hundreds of flies, it’s too late for a trap.. the trap should have been built BEFORE the flies got here.

If I write another blog post after this one, then you know I survived the flies… If you never hear from me again, then you know I was the world’s first fly victim who never lived through it.

In our neighborhood, I’ve noticed someone keeps tipping the mailboxes over. I understand, doing it once or twice as a prank might be funny when you’re a teenager.

But who ever is doing it, does it religiously, like 2 or 3 times every week.

How fried must your brain be on drugs  when tipping over a mailbox becomes funny the 15th or 20th time?

Now there are two distinct things that bother me about this repeated prank:

1. It looks bad in our nice neighborhood to see a mailbox deliberately tipped over all the time. It’s a form of vandalism no matter how you look at it.

MORE IMPORTANTLY:

2. Some employee has to come by every morning and lift it back up again. So while you take 10 seconds to giggle about it, you’re really cause extra stress and work for someone..

There are other ways to get a laugh without causing this type of trouble.

So again, I ask:

Tipping over a mailbox. How much fun can that really be?

The concept of a Graduated Drivers Licensing Program for new drivers, is that it puts extra restrictions and limitations on them during the probationary period.

I agree with that.

If the new driver violates these additional restrictions, they get their license suspended, and their graduated licensing program starts again.

I totally disagree with that..

How is suspending someone from learning how to drive, improve their driving behavior?  The longer you sit idle without driving, the better chance you have of not getting enough practice.

For instance, let’s say you were teaching a 5 year old how to say the alphabet A, B, C

After much repetition, the 5 year old forgets a letter, and you say “I’m sorry. Until you learn to get the alphabet right, you are going to have to suffer the consequences. You are suspended from repeating the alphabet for 3 months. Once your suspension is over, we’ll try the alphabet again.”

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?

Well that is exactly how Graduated Drivers Licensing Programs work. While the government feels happy that they are keeping these drivers off the road, they are just escalating the problem by interrupting the learning path of new drivers.

So what should we do when a new driver gets a ticket?

Well, hurt them where it counts. Give them a fine, give them a single day in jail. But do not take away their driving privileges for 3 months. It is counter productive and stupid.

Its unfair to the new driver. It’s unfair to existing drivers on the road who constantly have to dodge new drivers who are back on the road, all nervous, after being suspended for 3 months.

But ahh, there is one benefit, and the government likes this part. When you suspend a new driver, you issue him fines that he must pay. Then you impose “reinstatement fees”, and new “drivers license replacement fees”, and other associated taxes and costs.

Well if money is an issue, forget the suspension, and just charge the person, and either give them a full day in jail (which is enough to irritate anyone), or send them to 2 or 3 days of mandatory classes. Eventually these kids will get the message and be more cautious on the road.

Today I ordered pizza from what looked like an authentic Greek restaurant. Normally Greek Restaurants are second best to true Italian pizza outlets.

I paid $30 for two medium “special” pizzas.

Here’s my review.

On first look, the pizza did not look like it had fresh toppings. You can kind of tell when mushrooms are old and wrinkly before they are cooked.  The onions were thickly cut, putting more flavor concentration on them than anything else.  The ham and salami was more “greyish brown” looking, instead of red or pink.

Biting into the pizza, it became quite clear that they were using either low-fat skim mozzerella, or to be exact, it tasted like processed pre-sliced mozzarella cheese, like Kraft, etc. But that cheese doesn’t melt very nicely, and is not an equal substitute to real mozzarella.

We we have old toppings, and cheap processed cheese that melts horribly.

One bite into the crust, and it has the same taste and texture of dry, overtoasted bread. You can tell that this pizza crust must have had old yeast in it, or it wasn’t allowed to rise properly. In addition, there wasn’t enough moisture in it, and I think he must have run out of flour, and used bread crumbs too.

The pizza sauce didn’t taste right either. I peel back the toppings and take a look. It appears that he smeared tomato paste all over the pizza, and then added some powered spice ontop of it. That isn’t how you make pizza sauce!!!

This guy has no right making pizza. Now we did also get a few other food items from him, some pork cordon bleu (strange for Greek restaurant) and a Bacon Cheeseburger.

Wait a minute, the more I talk about it, the more I realize… This place that serves all kinds of things from different cuisines probably is a jack of all trades and master of none. No wonder the food was bad..

The cook was a 68 year old man, who looks like he lost his enthusiasm and knack for cooking. The restaurant probably doesn’t do well, so he serves sub standard product.

Dinner cost me $53 tonight for 3 adults, and it was the worst meal ever. I’ve eaten frozen store bought pizza from a Microwave that tasted better than this expensive slop. 

I must admit, the greek salad that came was amazingly good.  I suppose thats one of his signature dishes that he always gets right, even with his eyes closed.

But once pizza comes from a local private restaurant (not a franchise), is there really any point in complaining? Obviously this is the regular way that they serve product, so the only lesson learned is to avoid trying them again.

You know those black “brick” power adapters… Our cell phone chargers have them, our computer peripherals have them. Any cordless device we have, that needs recharging, has them.

If you go through your house, it is not uncommon to have 20 of these power adapters plugged in..

All of them down convert 120 volt AC electricity to something like 5 or 10 volt DC electricity.

The problem is that the adapter gives off the wasted energy as heat. (Feel one that is plugged in, you will see how warm it is).

Why don’t they have two wall outlet plugs. One that is normally shaped for 120 volts AC, and then maybe a weird round or square one, that is 12 volts DC ?  This way all your automobile accessories at 12 volts would work with it, and all your cordless power drills could recharge on it, etc, etc ? Down converting from 12 volt DC to 9 volt DC wouldn’t use a lot of wasted energy?

Sometimes I think the world is brain dead. Albert Einstein would be laughing at us today, because simple things that could be easily rectified exist with no fix in today’s world.

Why are we so mentally challenged that we cannot address the very problems that plague us?

Ok, I was at a Casino tonight. At 8pm they were drawing for a prize of two (2) Vespa Scooters, worth $12,000 U.S. Dollars.

Someone won the prize.

They asked the winner: “Will you take the two Vespas with a retail value of $12,000 or will you take $5,000 cash instead”

Without hestitating, she said “I’ll take the $5,000 in cash”

Ok, look. If you’re THAT brain dead, then give me the Vespa scooters. If they are worth $12,000 U.S. retail, surely I could unload them for $9,000 and still be $4,000 ahead of the measily $5,000 you took.

WHY ARE PEOPLE THIS STUPID?

…and most of all…

WHY DO STUPID PEOPLE WIN?

I remember a radio contest when I was a teenager. The deal was that every Monday they would draw a random date, and if you were born on that date, and the 5th caller to call in, you would win $20,000 cash.

Everyday I listened, I was so excited.

One morning, they called my birthday, January 3rd!  I frantically began dialing the radio station phone number.  It rang 4 or 5 times, and the person picked up and said “hi, you’re caller #4, sorry” and then hung up.

I frantically started hitting redial…

Then on the radio I heard “Hi! You’re caller #5! What is your birthday?”

The monotone caller said ”its January 3, 1960″

The radio host said “congratulations! You just won $20,000 how do you feel about that?”

<the caller paused>

In a monotone voice said “uh, yeah, uh, thats good.”

The radio show host then said “well how do you plan to spend the money?”

<the caller paused>

Again, another dreary, depressed monotone voice said “uh, probably pay some bills”.

That’s it.

Here I was, on the edge of going insane over the possibilities of having $20,000 and here is this monotone depressed guy who wins the money, and could care less.

In sheer curiosity, the radio host goes “What do you do for a living?”

<another pause>

“I’m an electrician” the caller says in the most boring monotone voice possible. There you have it. He already makes $90K or more per year, so $20,000 to him is just a bag of peanuts.  To a young teenager like me, its a change of life.

So they paid him, I lost, and I could never understand why it worked out that way, its not fair.

Now back to my original story of greed or stupidity…

If you won 2 Vespa Scooters at a retail value of $12,000. Would you accept only $5,000 cash, or would you take the scooters and try and sell them yourself?

Before I explain why, let me tell you this one simple fact.

90% of the people who get their first tattoo, end up getting a 2nd, then a 3rd, then a 4th… By the time they are on their 5th tattoo, they usually begin thinking that 1 of the 5 tattoos already on their body isn’t quite as important anymore and they begin wishing they didn’t get it that particular tattoo.

So the 6th thing they do, is either look for a tattoo to be modified, or erased.  But erasing leaves scar tissue and isn’t as easy as it sounds.

When someone gets a tattoo, very rarely do they think about it for 2 years ahead of time, and then make the decision to do it. Like any “major” purchase in our lives, we usually get the idea one day, we entertain the thought. We talk about it with friends and family and we fantasize about it over 2 or 3 months. Eventually we can’t get it out of our mind anymore, and we give in and get it done.

Once the tattoo is done, we’re proud of it. We want to show it off to everyone. We eagerly run up to people and say “hey! Did you see my tattoo yet?”  When you look in the mirror, you admire yourself. Wow, I’m a different person now! I have this tattoo I wanted so bad.  I am the new and improved me.\

You find opportunities to show off the tattoo in public. You try and watch people’s eyes dart down to the tattoo and you smile when you catch them looking at it. Having a tattoo is a big deal for yourself, and how everyone perceives you.

Everything is great!

AND THEN THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS! WAIT A MINUTE! I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT THAT!

1) You didn’t think that the band name you loved so much became unpopular in everyone’s eyes. What’s that, you were in the 80’s and had Minnie Vanelli, or Michael Jackson tattoos that people laugh at today?  This could happen with ANY band, at any time in the future. Remember the Bay City Rollers and other bands now that no one talks about very much?

2) You didn’t think that your 5 year relationship or marriage would come back to haunt you 10 years later everytime you look in the mirror. Oh darn, time to get that name off my body, because the new person in my life hates it.

3) Oh, its so cool to have the vines or barbed wire around the upper arm.  But now too many people are doing it, and now you feel like nothing but a silly follower. The uniqueness of your tattoo is so lame, that you might as well have tattooed the phrase “I’m another loser with a stupid tattoo”

4) Ahh, the chinese symbols. That’s the new thing. Want to know why it is lasting so long? Because there are so many symbols, it gives you the feeling that your tattoo is different. This will work as long as we keep inking ourselves with chinese symbols to the point that we all have them. Then one day we’ll wake up and realize that we look like a bunch of chinese teenagers ran around and sprayed graffiti on all of us… You are so “owned” now, its not funny.

5) How about tattoos of cartoon characters or video game characters? How about getting the Mario brothers tattooed on your neck?  How about donkey kong? Sure, these are old classics, but you don’t look too cool 10 years after the games aren’t played anymore.

It’s quite simple:

NEVER get a tattoo that is cool today, and may not be cool in 5 or 10 years when things change. Put some real thought into this.. 

NEVER get a tattoo that seems to be popular with everyone (like barbed wire / vines above the bicep). Eventually too many people will get it, and you’ll look like a stupid follower when the fad wears off

NEVER get a tattoo of a person’s name. There are plenty of ways to remember of honor someone without having their name inked on your body. Find a more creative way to show that you care..  You will have a few dozen people in your life  be important to you and lost at one point or another. Does this mean that you will tattoo 36 people on your body?  What happens if you only tattoo 3 and if you don’t tattoo the 4th name, you look like you didn’t care about that 4th person? It starts a stupid vicious cycle.

NEVER get a tattoo if you think you are going to stop at one tattoo or two.  THAT RARELY happens, and your not something special. Even those of us who feel special, they still fall victim to the same thing that everyone else does..

NEVER get a tattoo on a body part that cannot be hidden when wearing dress clothes for a job interview, a wedding, etc.  Tattoos should be able to be displayed when you want to do that — and hidden when you also want to do that.  Putting them on your neck, hands, face, because you’re brave and all attitude today will quickly change when no one wants to hire you anymore, or your socially an outcast in your retirement years.  Don’t put yourself in this position. A tattoo should not be seen as more important that living a healthy and fruitful life in society.  (And if you don’t care about society, then don’t be a part of it. Move off to the middle of the forest somewhere, or a remote island and be happy there. )

The whole concept of Tattoos brings a lot of discussion to the table. Some of these these points you may see value in, other ones, you may simply not care.

But the point is — if you ever think about getting a tattoo of something, and it plays on your mind for 2 or 3 months, and you give in and do it, then you’re selling yourself out.

A major change to your body should never happen quickly, or spur of the moment, because no matter what I say, you’ll eventually have regrets later on in life. Maybe you don’t see it today, but I bet you will eventually.

Good luck to you.

This has happened to all of us..

You buy some electronic gadget or equipment, a CD Player, a TV, a stereo, an iPod..

You use it during the warranty period with no problem whatsoever. Then after the warranty runs out, its usually only 1 year later, the thing breaks.

So I started wondering today.. Is it possible for a hardware manufacturer to design something on the circuit board to fail after so many uses?

Sure they could.. Even if the item doesn’t have the date set, it could be like this….

1. On the circuit board, it has a counter, and a tiny bit of flash memory. Everytime the device is turned on and used for more than 15 minutes, it increments the flash counter by 1.

In the worst case scenario, a device may be used 5 separate times per day, for 15 minutes or more each time.  Times that by 2 years…  (5 uses per day x 730 days = 5,110 uses)

So when the flash memory counter gets to 5,110, refuse to run.  This way, in 2 years time (but not to the exact day, because everyone uses their device differently) — FAIL and stop working.

This way you are guaranteed that all devices you send out, will automatically have a certain lifetime age. Which will cause the person to be back in the marketplace looking for a replacement.

Now if all manufacturers followed suit, the manufacturers get richer, and the public gets poorer.

I can’t believe I’m the only one with this hair brained scheme. I just bet it has been implemented, tried, and tested out there…

Oh, one more thing. If the customer sends the unit in for repair, charge them the standard $400 repair fee, and reset the flash memory counter to 0, to make the device work, and give them another 5,110 uses..

Who knows, I might be on to something here.

I am not the original author of this piece. It was forwarded to me in one of those internet chain letters. Therefore I cannot ask permission nor give credit to the original author.

But it is really funny. So funny, that it’s worth a repost.

Review these 14 simple tests before deciding whether you are really ready or not to be a parent.

Test 4 - Dressing Small Children
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out.
Time Allowed: 5 minutes.

Test 5 - Cars
1. Forget the BMW. Buy a practical 5-door wagon.
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4. Take a box of chocolate cookies; mash them into the back seat.
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Test 6 - Going For a Walk
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11. Stop, inspect everything and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you’ve had enough, and please stop it already until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14. Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Test 7
Repeat everything you say at least 5 times.

Test 8 - Grocery Shopping
1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9 - Feeding a 1 year-old
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor.

Test 10 - TV
1. Learn the names of every character from the Wiggles, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years.

Test 11 - Mess
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon. How does that look?

Test 12 - Long Trips with Toddlers
1. Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mommy’ repeatedly.
Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mommy.
Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet.
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Test 13 - Conversations
1. Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirtsleeve while playing the Mommy tape listed above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

You are now ready to have children. GOOD LUCK!!

Today I had a little verbal altercation with a customer.

Our normal policy is to give 30 days on our invoices, and after that they become past due, and the customer risks having their account suspended.

This particular customer has been with us for 8 years, so we let him go to the 60 day mark.  At that point we contacted him about the arrears, and he told us that the person who pays the bills is gone until next month, and that payment would be made then.

We patiently wait a month, and then 9 days after the person was to return, we send them an email reminder about the amount due. We also mention that we’ve been patient to this point, but we cannot wait any longer.

Well that’s it, the customer is now pissed off.  They tell us that if we are not interested in doing business with them, that they’ll find someone else who will.

I have only two questions:

#1 What business will they be going to that does not expect to collect payments on invoices that are 3 months old?  Are we the only one that thinks that a customer should pay a 3 month old invoice?

#2 Are we out of line for wanting to collect payment and being upfront on it when its 3 months old? Are we the only one in the industry who does that?  I figure that if we cater to our customers, and give them what they want, isn’t it fair to expect a payment in return?

Do I have this all wrong? As a business, are we suppose to give to our customers, whatever they want for free?  Or are we suppose to ask “pretty please, with sugar on top, can you pay your 3 month past due invoice?”

Why must we beg for money that is owed to us?

I understand that sometimes people fall on hard times, or they have employees that have temporarily left the office, but this is not the case here. They were a month overdue the first time, we said nothing. Then they were 2 months overdue, and they said “wait another month until the person returns”. I did that too..

Now its the 3rd month, and we’re asking for payment, and we get back “If you are no longer interested in our business, we’ll find someone else who is..”

What kind of pig headed comment is that to make? I cannot stand customers who owe money and get offensive about it.

A long time ago, I spent quite a few years in my youth as a Security Officer (aka Security Guard).

There are a few people employed in that profession that take their security job seriously and do very well at it. However, more often than not, there is a lot of politicial mind games played between co-workers. When “nothing” is happening — no emergencies to take care of, the life of a security guard can be pretty boring.

I remember one time I got on the bad side of management, and my entire 8 hour shift was spent standing infront of a broken door. As the public would walk up to the door, I’d have to say, sorry, the door is broken.

I wasn’t allowed a stool, or a chair, and I had to stand for 8 hours straight with only a 30 minute break. I asked them why we couldn’t just put a sign on the door, with a chair or pilon infront, and they said “just incase someone can’t read”..

I remember another time on midnight shift, there was a guard, we’ll call him Henry. He would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. This isn’t something you’d expect from a security officer.

On his patrol of this large industrial place at night, he’d unscrew the odd lightbulb from the many washrooms and put them in a bag. He’d dig up freshly planted flowers and plants from the gardens and put them in his trunk.

He’d take pens and pencils off of people’s desks. He’d steal sandwiches from refrigerators. He’d take entire cases of beer from the storage rooms. He’d take coffee grinds, sugar, and cups home.

He’d take, take, take… and he’d do it every night. The problem is, no one wanted to report him, everyone just turned a blind eye figgering that he would get caught on his own. Well this happened over the course of a year, and I never did see him get caught.

I remember getting trained once at a new location. They told me to be there at 6pm to meet another security guard and he’d give me a walk through of the place after it closed. After an hour of training, it was my job to work the next 8 hours alone.

As we walked through the place, he’d say things like:

“Ok, first of all, when you are on patrol, you are suppose to walk through the underground parking lots.. But there is no sheet to sign down there, so they won’t know if you did it or not. I never do”

Then he says, before we go, I always bring 2 or 3 different pens, different blue inks from different pens write differently. When we have to sign the books in different locations, I’ll walk through the place once, and sign my name 8 times with different pens, so it looks like I was actually here at different times.

He then told me where the best place to sleep was… “This couch over here is the most comfortable”

He’d tell me which walk in refrigerator in the commercial kitchen wasn’t locked, where I could grab a bite to eat if I wanted to… He explained where there was a TV, and how to work an entire 8 hour shift while doing practically nothing.

On another job site, we were issued wooden stick batons. It was an empty factory with empty offices. These young security guards always liked playing with their batons, twirling them in the air, catching them, etc.

Rumor had it that the reason we were watching the place is that the client that had previously leased it, and moved away, and it sat dormant too long, so they were planning on tearing the entire building down soon, and we were there to stop the homeless from coming into the building before destruction day.

So the security guards would take their batons and smash holes in the drywall and a couple of the glass windows separating the offices. In a couple days, the walls looked like swiss cheese.

One of the supervisors came to do a random check on one of the employees one day (usually once every 3 or 4 days a supervisor would randomly show up)..

It turned out that the building was NOT going to be demolished. It was simply vacant for a period while a new tenant who’s lease was expiring at his old location, was moving to this location that we were guarding. The story got mixed up, and all this wreckless damage that happened by the security guards had to be paid for by the security company which cost a minimum of $5,000 to repair!

I saw a lot in my day as a security guard, and this is only some of it!

Oh this is a favourite one for me…

How to get rich, while making customers sick. “BAD Buffet Tricks and Secrets”. It could be a book that would probably fly off the shelves. Well actually, maybe a lot of buffet owners already know these things, so it would be nothing new to them.

What I can’t understand, is why buffet food in cheap divey places is allowed to be surved. The ingredients were fine before they were prepared. It’s not like there was a chicken walking around somewhere that had a bad taste disease before it got shipped off to the restaurant, was it?  Was the tomato spoiled when it was picked off the plant?

How is it that they can take these ingredients, do what they do to them (over cook them, poorly season them, let them sit for 6 or 8 hours steady, etc) and totally ruin the food?

The buffet kitchen must be a garbage factory. Good food comes in the shipping/receiving door, it’s processed, and turned into foul, cheap tasting food, riddled with toxins and bacteria and served, all for the low price of $12 for dinner.

So I’m going to poke a little fun here, but you will have to wonder if any of these suggestions are actually true?

HOW TO GET RICH WHILE MAKING CUSTOMERS SICK

This is a satire comedy routine for entertainment only..
DO NOT FOLLOW ANY OF THESE SUGGESTIONS!

Suggestions for the restaurant owner who wants to run a buffet for profit and doesn’t care about making his customers sick.

1. Any food that you have at home that is expiring or spoiling, bag it up and bring it to the buffet restaurant. You can come up with a dish that someone will eat.

2. Advertise a 500 menu item buffet table. Remember! salt is 1 item, pepper is 1 item, sugar is an item, water is an item, coffee is an item, creamers are an item, sweetener packets are an item, what’s that 7 items so far? Ketchup is an item, on, and on, and on…  This way you can fool people into thinking you have a lot of food items, meanwhile all you have is 50% condiments, and 50% food.

3. Keeping food from getting dried out after sitting for 6 to 8 hours isn’t easy. Those heat lamps cause the moisture to evaporate. Sure, you could probably just frequently cook fresh food, enough to meet the demand and frequently replace old food with new, but why go through all that work?  Warm up everything just before lunch hour, and let it sit all day long until 9am.  Add water, LOTS of water. Infact, if you’re worried that you’re watering down the dishes too much, just add more spice, and more water. Water and spice all day.. Everytime the food looks old and dry, throw more watery sauce on it. That will keep it mystery of how old the food is…

4. Instead of option 3, of over-liquifying and manually re-hydrating your dried out old food.. You could simply undercook it!  Cook the food 1/2 way, and eventhough the lunch crowd will probably get sick, they are paying a cheaper price anyway.  This way the food can sit for 5 hours under the lights, and by dinner, hopefully the food will be fully cooked. Remember, if you purposely undercook the food, by the time dinner rolls around, not only will the food be cooked at 120 degrees by the heat lamps, it will also not look dried out! This way the higher paying dinner crowd will get what they are paying for..

5. Don’t buy fresh food from restaurant suppliers. Instead, you can buy food from the discount produce rack at the grocery store.  Look for dented cans, even if they do not have labels.  While you’re at it, put on some ripped clothes and get food from the food bank. Just because you’re a restaurant owner, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t save every last penny you can.. Besides, the customers aren’t looking into the kitchen, so they don’t know where your food comes from..

6. Buy as much pre-packaged food as you can. For instance, fool customers into thinking you’ve prepared nice dishes. Your spaghetti sauce can come out of a big bulk Ragu can. Make lots of kraft dinner and melt some mozerella cheese food product (not real cheese, the kind that has an edible wax additive) all over it, to give the appearance that its just like momma use to make.

7. Those wasteful customers! Watch out when you clean plates with food on it. The 5 year old kid who drooled all over his deep fried chicken leg but didn’t eat it… Go ahead and bring that plate back into the kitchen. 30 seconds in the deep fryer, and it can be put back out again.

8. Put things out on the buffet that you KNOW no one will eat. Stale shrimp with the shell still on is a good one. Make sure you put lots of icky sauce cuz no one will want to peel the shrimp skin off because of the sauce mess.  Put out octopus, whole.. squid with the ink sacks still in them. Any type of seafood that mainstream people do not eat. Then advertise “Seafood buffet $19.99″. When people show up expecting crab, mussels, peeled shrimp and lobster, you can snicker as you give them other “things” that come out of the ocean that are prepared horribly.  Imagine, tuna is seafood — who cares that it came in a can and you shaped into a boneless filet with some garnish on it, these customers do not know anything.

9. Salad bar!  Do you know that one regular bottle of salad dressing with extra water, vinegar, salt, and pepper can yield 18 bottles of the same salad dressing without sacrificing taste?

10. As the owner of a buffet restaurant, you must understand, this is a WAR. You know the customers are showing up to prove to you that they can eat 3X the amount they pay. When they pay $12, they expect to eat $36 worth of food. I know some people might try to tell you that on average it does work out, because some people eat LOTS, but some people eat hardly anything..

Don’t listen to reason this way.. Instead, you do your job of serving substandard product and see how many people you can charge this way before you run out of customers. If you are lucky, some people will even come back two or three times after forgetting about their gastroinstestinal illnesses.

P.S. You’ll have to buy the book, if you want to read things like:

a) How to deep fry foods in cooking oil that is more than 2 years old and never filtered. How fish, chicken, potatoes and more can be deep fried in one vat, and the extra dormant flavor just makes everything taste great.

b) How 80% of everything you serve should be breaded, then battered, then floured, then deep fried. Serving chicken balls? The chicken piece can be the size of a dime, but you can end up with a tennis ball sized ball! By the time they realize what happened, it will be too late.

c) How to serve 37 different types of cheap potatoes with only 2 meat products 

d) How dog and cat food can be made to work for you and your restaurant’s bottom line

e) How stray animals found out in the rear of the restaurant can be useful.

f) How hot dogs and spam can be popular alternatives to the other junk you’re serving

g) How to shave a roast so thinly that people can almost see through the meat! How to turn one 10 pound roast into over 2,500 servings!

Look, don’t get mad at the author for this article. I’ve eaten at so many substandard places over the years, that some of them truly do use this tactics to save a buck. The worst part is, that the public allows it to happen and the health authorities are very lazy at fixing them. They hand out warning after warning, but very little gets done, and I bet there are bribes out there everyday.

If you eat at a restaurant, and within 2 to 4 hours you feel sick, you’re probably the victim of food intoxification or food infection. This is why I applaud www.foodsafe.ca for coming up with a real plan to fix these problems from occurring.

Oh yes, it happens more often than you think.

(First of all, why the heck do we have so many names for a Pub, Bar, Tavern, anyway?)

Scenario 1

So you’re out for the night at your local bar, and your waitress comes by and asks you if you want another beer. You’re there for 4 hours, and get ready to leave. Your waitress presents a bill to you and your wife, showing that 17 drinks were ordered, and you owe $85 plus taxes = $91.02, plus tip it would be $100

You wonder how you both could put away $100 worth of drinks, and you scan the bill. Wait a minute! There’s a vodka/ginger ale on here. We don’t drink that. Oh says the waitress and says yes, I rang it in by accident, it should have been (insert whatever you and your wife were drinking).

You pay the bill, scratch your heads in wonder as you leave, realizing you’re not even that buzzed, how could you both drink so much without realizing it?

Answer: Sit by the cash register POS terminal. Watch how fast she tells the bartender 8 different drinks that need to be made, and she frantically flips in/out of table screens adding 1 drink per person. It’s chaotic there. She’s in a hurry, you see her making errors and fixing them as fast as she makes them. It soon dawns on you.. how many times does she ring in your brand of beer, and accidentally charges you for it, eventhough someone else in the bar is drinking it too?  Ahh.. they are all drunk anyway she thinks. I usually get it right most of the time..

So in fact you might have other people’s drink orders on your tab, and they might have some of yours on theirs..

Scenario 2

You walk up to the bar and ask for a Pepsi. The bartender tells you its $3.35 and you hand him $5 and tell him to keep the change. He pours you the pepsi, hits the cash button on the register, the drawer pops open and he sticks the $5 in while you watch.  Wait a minute, he didn’t ring that in did he? Well, its no skin off your back, you just walk away. Yes he’s cheating the owner, but that’s not your problem. How many times is this guy doing it? Is this why drinks are so expensive? The bartender is skimming the profits.

Scenario 3

You order a fancy mixed drink like a Pina Colada. By the time they run it through the blender, add all the fancy garnishes, etc.. What happened to that 1oz of booze that was suppose to be in it? Oh well, she won’t notice they say. So they serve you a virgin drink (no alcohol) which means your are liable to drink it fast, and order more drinks since they are not having an effect on you.  This is why many times experienced drinkers will ask for their booze and their soda pop to be brought in 2 glasses, so they can see the booze and mix it themselves.

Scenario 3

You walk up to the waitress, plunk down $5 and say whatever that guy is drinking, I’ll buy the next one. She nods, and gives the guy his next drink. He’s 1/2 way through the drink, and you say “hey, did she mention I bought you that one?” Nope, instead, she charged him on his tab, pocketed your $5, and said nothing to no one..

Scenario 4

The bartender’s bar gun has a counter in the back room that increments everytime they push a button for the bar rye, vodka, rum, etc. He knows this, and he knows that the owner will check the bar gun counter along with the cash register summary to see if they match.

Instead, the bartender brings in his own bottle of rum and sits it nearby. When someone orders rum, and they are paying cash, he pours the rum out of his own bottle, and makes change. This way he turns his $30 bottle of rum into $150 and there is no way to trace it.

———

As you can quickly see, there are many ways to cheat the customers by overcharging them, not giving them their proper amount of alcohol, and ways to skim money from the bar’s profits resulting in higher drink costs.

They know that many of the patrons are intoxicated so a greedy bar manager can take advantage of people this way, and they will rarely know it. The only thing that suffers at the end of the day is the customer’s wallet.

Be careful and mindful about what is happening at your local pub / bar / tavern. You might be surprised when you see what is happening right infront of you.