I went to Jerry's a few days ago, and I remembered a run in I had there a few years ago. I blogged about t then on myspace, but since I don't really use myspace anymore, I decided to pull that blog over here so I never forget about it. This was written November 4 2005.
---------------------------
Jerry's has quite arguably the best steak subs outside of genos in Philly. They are amazing... top that off with the hilarious commercials mocking bush, and it's the best place in the world hands down. The problem is, there isn't a Jerry's in the dena... at least, not one that I know of. It's very seldom that I'm in the vicinity of a Jerry's. The commercials while hilarious, leave my brain as quick as they enter, and I basically forget that the place even exists. Today I went to Jerry's because I heard the commercial on the way to drop off some papers in Annapolis-Junction (location of a Jerry's I used to frequent when I worked over in Annapolis-Junction). Of course the sub was delicious and terrible for me, and the bread was amazing, but this blog isn't about Jerry's. It's about Dave and Chris.
Dave is 38 and Chris is his 16-year-old son. Dave is about 5'9", skinny, long hair, and a gruff ass black beard. Chris is quiet, overweight, enjoys computers, but his heart is in shredding his guitar. He has a black jackson guitar that Dave bought him for Christmas last year, but he has been playing guitar for about 6 years now. His favorite bands are pantera and other assorted metal bands. Dave makes $17 an hour working as an apartment maintenance man in Laurel. That seems like decent cash, but also add on the fact that he gets to stay in this apartment rent free, and he gets free cable and electric, and that's the deal of the universe. Dave decided that it was too nice to work today, so him and Chris headed to Jerry's to get a pepperoni pizza, and a cheese steak. You see, outside of that salary, Dave also gets $350 a month child support from Jenny (his ex-wife). Seems that cheating whore was cheating on him since Chris told him that mommy had another man in the house when he was only 5 years old. It was probably going on much longer than that, but that was Dave’s first indication. Dave just went to the grocery store to get his father some stuff... his father had just suffered a stroke and was bed ridden. When he came home a few hours later, Chris told him what mommy did while he was gone. After leaving her, Dave kept taking her back... but after 3 strikes (like in baseball) she was out. On the third strike it was the ultimate fuck you because she was fucking 3 of Dave’s coworkers at the same time. Pretty much a Jerry Springer story in the making. Since then Dave has had a hard time opening up to girls. He checks em' out.. you know... always on the lookout... but he just can't trust them anymore. Fucking Jenny has basically ruined all women kind for him... He just goes to bars alone a lot, and hangs out waiting for a chick to approach him. At least then he'll know she is attracted to him, and he can start to trust them again. It's been three years since he finally split with Jenny and he hasn't hit any bait yet... but he's still looking.
You must be asking yourself right now. How do I know all these details? Do I know Dave from high school? No.
Have I seen Chris at a Silent Film show and he was talking to me? No.
Was Dave talking with a really close friend about all this, and I happened to overhear the conversation? Nope.
Dave confided all this to me, a complete stranger, while we waited for our food to finish preparation. This conversation was about 10minutes of him talking to me non-stop like we are old friends catching up. I was so freaking uncomfortable the entire time. I kept praying that his number would get called and he would pick up his food and leave me alone.... after he did, my food came up right afterwards. He was walking to his car, and I opted to eat in... he was looking through the window at me, gave me a wave and got in the car, and I thought... you know what, I wonder if Dave would like to sit here and keep talking to me. What else could I learn from Dave? How much of a crazy life story could he tell me if we were given an hour to talk as opposed to 10 minutes? Why is it that this was so crazy that I needed to blog about it? Was there ever a time in the world where strangers had conversation without being considered weird? This man gave me his address. Not that I can remember it, but he told me exactly where he lives (behind the pep-boys, make a left... I don't really remember). He asked where I lived... he heard Pasadena was a nice town, wanted to know if it was more country or built up. I didn't give him any details or anything about where I lived, but he was genuinely interested. He asked what line of work I was in... if I enjoyed my job. If I was dating anyone... wanted to make sure she treated me right. How lucky I was to go to work every day without my name on my shirt.
When Dave walked away, he shook my hand and said "You know what Chad, I hope to see you around man... it's a small world. Me and Chris eat here a lot, take care." Dave is probably a child molester, but dammit he just seemed like a really nice dude that really needed someone to talk to. Who else is he going to talk to? His son has heard it all before... he has no woman... his coworkers have all banged on his ex-wife...
Friday, January 16, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The MobileMe Web Client Couldn't be Worse
I've been using MobileMe now since the iPhone came out, so I guess that would set me at around July? I had .mac before that, and the webmail tool was awful. You had to log back in after 5 minutes of inactivity. I like keeping my webmail open in a tab at all times while at work and .mac never let me do this. I paid for the service because of the IMAP feature which wasn't available via google at the time.
MobileMe came along and has a much nicer looking interface, and doesn't have the same problem that .mac had, where I can keep it open all day. But it's the worst product I've ever used. I used to have frequent times where I would be composing an e-mail and then when I hit send, the message window would refresh to show the mail client, and the mail client window would display an error message and the email is lost forever. This was especially aggravating when writing a long important email.
This problem seems to have been fixed. Now the error is displayed in the message window, and the message is still there. but it still can't be sent, or saved to drafts. You need to copy it out of the client into notepad for example, go back to the browser and refresh the mail client which sometimes comes back, other times gives you an error, and then re copy the text back into the message window, and cross your fingers this time that it sends. While I'm able to at least work around this now, which is better than the initial problems, it's still awful implementation. gMail will auto-save emails as you type them, so this is NEVER a problem with that client, however, and more importantly, I shouldn't receive errors when sending mail frequently enough that it warrants a blog post.
On top of all this, it's slow. Painfully slow. Whenever I click the tab that mail resides in, I have to wait for it to refresh (unacceptable). clicking a new mail message often times forces the entire tab to refresh again. For all this touting that Apple has been doing for this Sproutcore framework, I can't say that I'm impressed. Considering the money Apple has to throw around, and considering I'm paying for the product, I expect things to work a bit better than all the free alternatives.
I can honestly say, my problem is ONLY with the web client. Mail.app on the mac works as advertised, though it's a bit slower than my phone at getting new emails. I love the application on my phone. I also love the push-ness of it, in that whether I'm at work, home, or out, I can see how many unread emails I have and everything. The wireless contact and calendar sync is also nice. That to me is what justifies the price. If they could just fix the awful web mail tool this product would be amazing. I can't be the only person who can't stand this web tool. I'm unable to bring my phone into work, so for 8 hours a day, this is the only way I'm able to get to my email.
MobileMe came along and has a much nicer looking interface, and doesn't have the same problem that .mac had, where I can keep it open all day. But it's the worst product I've ever used. I used to have frequent times where I would be composing an e-mail and then when I hit send, the message window would refresh to show the mail client, and the mail client window would display an error message and the email is lost forever. This was especially aggravating when writing a long important email.
This problem seems to have been fixed. Now the error is displayed in the message window, and the message is still there. but it still can't be sent, or saved to drafts. You need to copy it out of the client into notepad for example, go back to the browser and refresh the mail client which sometimes comes back, other times gives you an error, and then re copy the text back into the message window, and cross your fingers this time that it sends. While I'm able to at least work around this now, which is better than the initial problems, it's still awful implementation. gMail will auto-save emails as you type them, so this is NEVER a problem with that client, however, and more importantly, I shouldn't receive errors when sending mail frequently enough that it warrants a blog post.
On top of all this, it's slow. Painfully slow. Whenever I click the tab that mail resides in, I have to wait for it to refresh (unacceptable). clicking a new mail message often times forces the entire tab to refresh again. For all this touting that Apple has been doing for this Sproutcore framework, I can't say that I'm impressed. Considering the money Apple has to throw around, and considering I'm paying for the product, I expect things to work a bit better than all the free alternatives.
I can honestly say, my problem is ONLY with the web client. Mail.app on the mac works as advertised, though it's a bit slower than my phone at getting new emails. I love the application on my phone. I also love the push-ness of it, in that whether I'm at work, home, or out, I can see how many unread emails I have and everything. The wireless contact and calendar sync is also nice. That to me is what justifies the price. If they could just fix the awful web mail tool this product would be amazing. I can't be the only person who can't stand this web tool. I'm unable to bring my phone into work, so for 8 hours a day, this is the only way I'm able to get to my email.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
