Thursday, July 7, 2011

Meh, is the best description.

I feel like I need to vent but I don't want sympathy or someone feeling bad, or sorry for me. So I come here. Coming here is rare for me so I'm sure it's even rarer for someone to find my rant but I going get it out.

I feel like I just don't fit into life at all. I have friends, a few good ones, some okay ones, and plenty of terrible ones. Up until the last year I've at least felt comfortable around my two best friends. That is no more. I just don't feel like I even fit in with them which is no surprise because we're so different. Time can't keep friendships going.

Other friends, co worker friends, and that crowd I just feel ousted in. They let me hang around but there is just that feeling like the don't accept me for who I am. These isn't much to me. I just pretty much exist to work, and take care of my son.

Girls... I am so picky, and so happy being alone and not answering to one that I think that I'm done with girls... Maybe even people. I honestly can say that if I was to never see another person I would be okay with that.

Motivation. I have no motivations other than taking care of Nate. That's one thing I know I'm doing right, and probably the only reason I keep pushing along, and going.

Insomnia. It has been hell the last few months. I can barely sleep. I just stay up till I can't keep my eyes open. Last night I was so exhausted by the time I went to lay down I forgot to take my contacts out. I never do that.

Work... Work is that I wish it was better, but it sure the hell isn't bad. Good people. Decent Pay... Just wish I enjoyed it more since I'm good at it.

Well that's all I got other than... Why chase if they don't run...

Friday, February 5, 2010

LaRosa’s Cincinnati Tradition or something less...

Recently I had the poorest experience at LaRosa's ever, and here is the story!

From: Eric
Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:29 AM
To: LaRosa's Customer Service
Subject: Online Feedback

Thank you for taking the time to 'contact us'. We want to help you with whatever comment or question you might have. Our goal is to respond to you within 24 hours. So that we may better help you, please provide us with the following information:
Daytime phone number (should we need to contact you): 513-xxx-xxxx or 513-xxx-xxxx
Phone number you gave us when you placed your order: 513-xxx-xxxx or 513-xxx-xxxx
Date of your visit or purchase: December 23, 2009, and February 2, 2010.
Pizzeria that served you: Harrison
Your online ordering username: N/A
Thanks again for your feedback! We will reply to you soon.
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To whom it may concern,


My name is Eric, and I live about 15 minutes away from the Harrison, Ohio location. In the last year I’ve been there three times because I like your product and normally the atmosphere I get at a LaRosa’s. The first instance I won’t mention much about because it has been so long I don’t remember what all happened to make me not want to go back for 6 to 7 months. I hate to be a customer that complains, but I am also the customer that will talk about a good experience. None of my experiences with this location has been positive.

My second trip to Harrison LaRosa’s was on December 23 with a friend that used to live in Cincinnati. LaRosa’s being a Cincinnati Tradition made it a place I wanted to take him, and his lady. So we came over about 6:30 or 7. They were busy as expected for dinner rush. The hostess told us it would be 15 minutes, 20 at most. So we waited, and it really took about 40 – 45 minutes. I know that is not in the control of the hostess so it did not bother us. Once we got sat it took our server 10 minutes to get over to offer us drink which would have been fine if we didn’t spend 40 minutes at the front door. When she came back she had our drinks mixed up, and had to go back to correct it. She came back to get our order with the correct drinks. Nothing about her was friendly or inviting like I’m used to at the White Oak, or Colerain LaRosa’s. We placed our orders for salads, meals, and was intending on getting desert. It took about 20-30 to get our meals delivered to our table. When the female server was delivering the dinners she realized she forgot our salads, and went back to get them. This was instead of asking if we wanted them, or offering to take them back. Since she didn’t give me any time to respond when she brought mine out I sent her back with it. As I do not want the salad when my burnt calzone is sitting at the table getting cold. The food was a little chilled already, not the piping hot that we would have gotten if it was delivered to my house. After our meals she came back and dropped off the checks, and finally offered us a refill on our empty drinks. She asked us to pay now so that she could go on break. I’m not sure if her manager or something was pressuring her to take her break or if she just needed to take one, but it’s not professional at all as a server to tell your table that. When she said that I ask her if we could order desert, which turned out to be a mistake as it was terrible. On my way out I said nothing as I hate to complain as I was a host, bartender, and server for many years as was my mother.
I did however call the next day, and talked with the lady that sat us. She said she was a manager and apologized time and time again. She explained that they were busy, and that she would have a talk with her waitress. She also offered to supply me with a credit for $30 to my cell phone number of 513-xxx-xxxx. I could careless about the credit as normally when I have such service I do not go back for a few months if ever. There are restaurants that I still do not go to because of poor service, and no response or correction.

So I made the mistake of going back a second time thinking that there would be no way we would receive such terrible service twice from the Harrison LaRosa’s. My lady and I went in for dinner on Tuesday, February 2. We went right in, and sat down since it was a little before the dinner rush. The reason we decided to give them a second chance is because I had the $30 credit. Once again we had to wait about 7-10 minutes to get our drinks. Once we placed our drink order a second waitress came by and asked us what we would like to drink. We responded that someone has already asked us for our drinks. When she brought back our drinks she was able to take our order, and get it correctly. The salad came before the meal with plenty of time to eat it. The meal came, and was terrific. It was warm, fresh, and smelled great. The bill came, and I gave the waitress my number so that she could pull up the credit, and apply it to our bill, and I could pay for the difference. That is when the manager Kevin Martin came over and asked me if the credit was under another number. I gave him the home number, and told him that the lady said she put it on the 513-xxx-xxxx. I was fine with providing this information to Kevin, but when he came back I quickly became embarrassed as he was interrogating me on his dinning room floor about who gave me the credit, when was it issues, why was it issued, and all the details he could get from me. By this time we were already at your location for an hour and a half. I was ready to go as we were done eating and our take out was only getting colder. I gave him my credit card and told him to just put it on there we have to go. He continued asking me questions about who told me they would give me the credit, and if I remember their name or my server’s name. I don’t remember their names I don’t even remember the server’s name from Tuesday, which I don’t even remember her introducing herself. This only created more irritation, and I told him I would call him once I got home to give him the date, and time the charge was ran. I have never been as embarrassed in a restaurant as Kevin did in front of his other customers.

Kevin told me that the General Manager or Owners would be calling me the next day. I never heard from anyone nor do I expect to.

I write to you because I know this isn’t the type of business you do. I have helped “Buddy” LaRosa in the past while working at Cincinnati Bell, and I know if he knew about this instance he wouldn’t be pleased. He has worked far too long to create a name, and business for issues like this to be occurring.

I live, work, and eat in Harrison. I rarely leave the area because I like it out here, and it’s a nice and growing area. LaRosa’s competition in the area is O’Charlies, and Cracker Barrel in my opinion for dine-in places. I have never received this service at those places. I don’t think I’ll drive by them to get to LaRosa’s again. As for pizza your competition is Little Caesar they have your prices beat with about the same quality.

I do apologize about the length of this email, but I felt it contains details that are important to the situation.

Thank you for your time,

Eric

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Dear Eric,

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. Hearing and acting on what our Guests tell us is the only way we can improve what we do. I am very sorry that you had such disappointing experiences with our Harrison Pizzeria. I am forwarding your comments on to the Operations Management Team for our Harrison location so your concerns can be addressed. You can expect to hear back from someone on their team within the next several business days for further follow up. If we can help you with anything else, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Thanks for the privilege of serving you,

Stacie
Guest Satisfaction Supervisor
LaRosa's, Inc.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stacie only took 10 minutes to respond to my email which was nice, and she forwarded over to a few others so that it could be handled. The response seemed kind of copy and pasted. Which I would expect is cause they get a lot of emails daily.

Following up this I did receive a call from Tim, General Manager of LaRosa's. He was a nice guy, and as expected threw money at the problem with apologizes. That is all you really can expect with a situation like this. I think it's how all problems are handled now a days. So now I have a $30 credit that I could careless about as I do not plan on going back for a while....If ever. Maybe this Cincinnati Tradition will become a pass time.

I think that the biggest disappointment here is that I used to go into LaRosa's after games, and stuff at school event. We were terrible customer (although I always tipped well) and we got better service. After games and stuff they would get slammed with tons of kids, and I received better service then. Now I care more about service, and being a server in the pass maybe my expectation are high but if I'm going tip then I want a few things for it.

Oh well, I hope your experiences are better with LaRosa's.

Cheers,
EricNCincy

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Melting Pot

So I went to The Melting Pot a few weeks ago with my Lovely for the first time. We went to the one closest to us at 11023 Montgomery Road in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a random, non planned trip so we did a little research online. We ended up placing our reservation online at OpenTable.com. As I said it was a random trip out there and we were able to set our time on the website for our reservations. I have to say the OpenTable.com website is very easy to use, and a great idea. I would like to see more companies using it.

When we got there they had us sat with in 3-5 minutes. I was expecting more of a wait even with placing our reservation. We got sat and were given a few minutes. By the time we figure out what we wanted to drink the server was at our table educating us on the menu and making suggestions. I knew what drink I wanted based off of a friend's suggestion (Ying-Yang). It was just as delicious as it looked in the menu.

She brought back our drinks a few minute later after dropping off waters (didn't even have to ask for them!). She further explained the menu and their highlighted/special promotion they had going on. She suggested the dinner for two for $88 special as this was my first trip. It came with the appetizer fondue; which we choose the cheddar cheese fondue. It came with all types of healthy items to dip into the fondue.

Second course was our salads that we each got. I was happy with their ceasur salad as they put a lot of dressing on it (just how I like it). The house salad looked good also with their ranch dressing. My sampling proved it's appearance to be correct.

Third course being the main entree was a plate full of various meats. Coming out to the table they bring out a broth, and throw in potatoes, broccoli, and ravioli since they take longer to cook. Our plate was piled full of 3 types of steak, lobster, shrimps, and chicken. It surprised me when it came out raw as I have never been to a fondue place it. Our waitress put the vegetable in to cook for us, and told us that we would need to cook our meal 3-5 minutes for each piece. Everything turned out perfect with her cooking instructions. There was more than enough of a meal for two. I ended up getting stuck with my half plus a little more. That was fine with me as I was able to be rolled out the front door when done.

The Dessert.... It was a chocolate and nutty peanut butter mix with a plate full of rice crispy treats, brownies, pound cake, cheese cake, strawberries, bananas, and marshmallows. As with the rest of the meal this was delicious.

After all the eating, and filling up it was check time which is normally the worse part of the meal. This was no different but there was a small upside. When the waitress brought me our check she mentioned that another table gave her a gift card they couldn't use for $25 off of your meal for two. She said it was something they got restaurants.com and they could only use one of the two they had. It was a nice surprised and added to her tip. After discount, and tip we still spent a little over $100 for the meal. My own impression from the value to quality was that it was a little over priced (especially if we didn't have that coupon). I guess that is why this restaurant would be one of twice a year location for special events, and not a normal weekend place.

Let me know what you think if you have been there before, or leave a suggestion of a great new place to tray!

Cheers,
Eric N Cincy

Friday, October 2, 2009

The Burnout

The Burnout it's happening with everyone at the start of a new month. In my last two jobs I've experience it, and seen it hit hard with people.

My last job at Cincinnati Bell, we had to earn commission to get paid. So the last few days of the month could make or break you. At the end of the month you were always "thirsty" for a few more dollars of commission for that following check. Which the thirst everyone had at the end of the month killed people start to the month. This also happened to me, just like everyone else in the stores that I worked at. It's kind of like you try to run at full speed all month, and then try to push a little more at the end. It ends up in exhaustion, and irritation. And hopefully it also ends up in you getting where you need to be, or where you wanted to be.

Now with my new job I am noticing this happening again. I really think it's contagious. We cruise all month long, and then at the very end we have crunch time, power hours, and intent of pushing ourselves into exhaustion. Which is great, and looks good on the board. But the following month we're burnt out, and not ready to do it again. So our numbers start out bad, and we get a message the first week from our Lead about how we need to step it up. Luckily enough this has not happen to me up until the last 2 months. Now it's happening to me and that is why I think it's contagious. My numbers will always be made but I hope that I can break the cycle that I'm getting sucked into.

It happened to me at my last job, and it was so annoying. This job I like, and I'm not going let it annoy me. I'm wondering how many other people have this issue? I really should not be complaining as I do have a great job, and a perfect employer.

Just to brag how great my place of employment is because I do not want to appear to be unhappy in my position, or not thankful for it. As a first year employee I got 2 weeks of vacation, and was able to buy a 3rd week of vacation. They give me every benefit under the sun, even if it is sorta expensive in my own opinion. They take out medical deductions pre-tax under cafeteria laws (I think that is what they are called). So that saves a little money but it not being taken after taxes. They pay us for 15 holidays; one of them being a personal holiday we get to pick to use like a vacation day. They pay us for one full day of work to volunteer anywhere we want. Which a lot of people use to go to their children's field trips or class room parties. They allow us to be tardy 15 times a year without being punished. At 4 years you get another week of vacation, at 10 years you get two more week (5 weeks given, six if you buy it). They also do 401k which they currently match 4% of my pay at %50, which used to be 5% at 100%. Due to the economy they cut that back instead of firing people, and have the intent of giving it back. Also when time were really bad they didn't lay people off, but they did cut everyone's hours/saleries down to 37.5 hours.

Now that I am done bragging, and pointing out the burn out it's time to go!

See-ya,
Eric N Cincy

Monday, August 31, 2009

Digsby!

I have been using Digsby as soon as I could get my hands on it. Which was probably about a year ago. I have fallen in love with it.

The program used to be extremely slow loading, and running with lag when you would use alt/tab to move through various programs. Digsby would just hang, or lag when putting up an Instant Message, or the main list window.

Now I have like 3 screen names that I have used growing up that I should probably delete, and get rid of, but just can't bring myself to do it. What is that one person I've been waiting to hear from whats to get hold of me via that deleted screen name. It does a very nice job putting all three names, and organizing all of my buddies into one list. It took a little work on my behalf but it was well worth it now never needing anymore work.

The next thing is it keeps and eye on my various social networks. It takes Facebook stalking to a whole new level. It tells me when people change status, logs in, loads pictures or has a new wall post. With this information go set up your Facebook, or myspace account and stalk that ex of yours! She wont mind, I promise she'll friend you!

And finally it also will keep an eye on your email accounts. I, myself purfur to use the Modzilla ThunderBird program for mail. It makes me feel more organized. As I can't say how well the email portion works on a day to day usage it did appear very well done the time I was messing with it for a day.

I would suggest the program to anyone that is on their computer, and wanting to stay connected. It's got a pretty interface, and is becoming more and more efficient. I leave it on 24/7 and never really experiences any troubles at all.

You can head over to www.digsby.com to download, and try!

Cheers,
Eric N Cincy

Friday, July 31, 2009

Love, Lust, and Laptops....

Catchy Title Huh? Well I just wanted to share that I have purchased a new lap top. Its a HP Pavilion dv7. I was a little iffy about buying anything with HP on it. As I've always had friends with issues. So we'll see how this laptop treats me.

It's very nice, and loaded I suppose for a lap top. I have to say that I'm surprised by the amount of thinking it does for a new laptop. I guess I'm just used to getting beefy desktops and they never have thinking when you first put them to use. I haven't had the chance to really test the system.

It does have a blu-ray player which would be nicer if I didn't already have a Playstation 3. I have though used it once so far watching Talladega Nights in bed. The quality of the video was what it should have been. The sounds quality was pretty nice for a laptop. It does have much better video, and sound quality compared to the Dell Inspiron that my mother owns.

The 500 gigbyte hard drive is only 5,600 rpm which I'm sure will be an issue for running Everquest or other hard drive intensive games. Out of the box your hard drive is 451gigs, and a recover partition of 12gigs. What oh what happened to those other 37gigs. Maybe I'm showing how little I know about computers there! I know you always loose memory but I never expected that much.

I am impress with the quality of wireless. It seems like I can take it a lot further than the Dell laptop and it will have a stronger connection. I haven't had any trouble connecting it to my, or the neighbor wireless.

I do however wish that I had a choice of colors on the outer shell. It looks nice in the grey/silver. But the silver keys do make it hard to sometimes see what I'm looking for. Luckily I can type without that but the additional key (home, end, page up, page down, insert, delete as examples) are in much different than on a normal keyboard. I do like still having the number pad on the laptop. Which is nice for gaming. I also don't like seeing my finger prints all over the keys, and mouse pad. Also this laptop does come with a flash light built into the back side of the monitor. It lights up with a HP symbol. Can I sell that space for advertising?

It has enough ports to keep me busy filling them up for a while. A few usb, hdmi, and various others that I will probably not ever use. Also it came with a snazzy little remote. It didn't seem very good the other night when I was using it from 5 feet away. Maybe I just was aiming in the wrong spot, but if that is so it would be picky which is a downer.

Maybe one day I will find the need for a webcam. And when I do I will already have it with my laptop! I did however play with it the other day, and it has a lot of different options that can be changed. Filters, popping balloons, and various other stuff that will distract you from what I'm doing.

So my first gaming experience on my new Pavilion dv7 was a struggle. What game you might ask? Well I felt like playing some old school robot world domination, Total Annihilation. After trying to find the game for an hour I got back to my desktop to turn off the music, and move to murder of the Arm forces. It didn't take long to install Total Annihilation at all. But when I tried to install the expansion, The Core Contingency the ever so loving Windows Vista told me that it couldn't install this. I searched the web for a little looking for answers and found out that many other people have the same issue. Hello Micro$oft, I never had problem loading this software on XP. You might want to think about people playing old games, as I'm sure a very large portion of people using Windows is playing games. Don't always think ahead, and never look back.

So far I'm pretty happy with my HP Pavilion dv7. The battery life seems to be pretty good for the size of screen, and HP logo I'm powering. Ha. It is about what I would expect as it's weight is concerned. I feel that I got a good deal for the money I have spent on it.

Cheers,
Eric N Cincy

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Dear Raven,

Dear Raven Software,

I have to say that Raven has shown poor form in releasing the Weapon X Arena as a downloadable content for 800 Microsoft points / $10. My reason for this is they gave to free to people that pre-ordered it from GameStop. What about all those fan's that pre-ordered, and didn't have the option of doing it with GameStop? Which if I knew it was going be as good as it is I would have pre-ordered, and if I knew it was going give the downloadable content for free from GameStop I would have probably done both.

How about those people that paid the full $59.99 to get it on the day it released (me!), and don't even get a discount? Why would I get a discount?

Amazon's Newest Price!

That is a lot cheaper than I paid for it to have it the day it came out, plus I got an email from Amazon to save $5 off of that price (use promo code XMENWLV5 at checkout). Well I guess they need to do what they need to do to make a dollar. I mean the economy does suck now doesn't it? I know my opinion of it is not to buy from Raven, and put forth effort to not buy from Activision. I would say since April I have bought 12 games, and received a system for my birthday in April. The economy must not be hitting me as hard as it is for Activision.

Guess the good thing is Raven don't produce a whole lot of games per year. Which looking over since 2000 they have made 13 titles, of which I own five. I was going purchase Wolfenstein but now I know if I do they are going get my $60 bucks, drop the price by $20, and sell some downloadable content for $10. So nix that idea, and anyone else I can spread the word to.

Once again I vent about them, and to my friend that works there. Who knows what will happen but the point would stand regardless if I got the content or not. Anyways if I inspired anyone please feel free to send them a message, as I already have.

Raven's Site

The Email Address

Cheers,
Eric N Cincy