Posted Live from Burger King

OMFG

Couple of quick things.

If you are a business owner you need to recognize the wireless masses and have free open wifi at your business.

I live in a medium size town and almost no one has a published open wifi access point.

I discovered by accident that my local Burger King has open wifi and I have been a constant consumer of their stuff since. Letting your kids play in the indoor playground while I blog is uber!

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Sponsored Lunch Shoutout

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Jrose gets mad props for sponsoring my lunch today. He even drove us downtown for fat sushi. Get a grip people. Everyone needs to sponsor my lunches. I did get two other invites for lunch for Jason beat you to the punch. Come on. Send me an outlook invite early in the morning to secure your spot. Semi props to my boy Luke and Christina for trying to get me for lunch. How about tomorrow?

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Cool software you need to try/buy

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For the record. I hate buying software. I so prefer free or open source stuff. If I have to buy it I will. If something is close to good enough and free I'll run with it unless its just some killer feature I can't live without. Can't think of one good example but I'm sure it's out there. For the record I did buy my first web browser back when a web browser wasn't free. (Spry Mosaic Internet in a box from a local PC store).

Official software pick is Synergy.

It's a sourceforge product so it's 100% free and open. The software runs on two or more machines and it allows you to use/drive one keyboard Mouse across two or more different Monitor/Computers. So its kind of like a hardware-less KVM minus the hardware and cables. This also runs on multiple disparate Operating Systems. I'm running this on a Vista and an XP box. I have a friend who runs this on Linux and an XP system, and another developer who is running this on a Mac (Tiger) and a windows XP station. It's fat with a capitol P!

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Stuff that pisses me off

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Gas stations that slow down the gas when you aren't even close the amount you pre-paid. Example. My local gas station forces you to pre-pay. I go in and ask them to turn on the pump and they say how much? I say 11 gallons. They say How much? I say again, 11 gallons. They say sir how much is that? I say I don't know how much do you charge per gallon? They say well today it's 2.36 a gallon. I'm like Ok. That times 11. They say I don't a calculator. I say ok turn on the pump and I'll come back and pay. They say then tell me how much to charge. I said how about 2.36 a gallon. They say don't be a smart ass. I stare. I end up saying fuck it. Here is 20 bucks how about I buy 15 bucks and you give me back a 5 spot. I say this since they obviously can't do simple math.

They then take my money and make change. Yes I counted it just to make sure they didn't fuck it up. Then I stroll out to pump my gas.

As I stand there pumping I'm amazed at how fast the money gets burned up at the pump. Then I wonder about the warning signs on the pump and wonder how many dumb-asses killed themselves before they slapped some of the warnings on there. My favorite warning...If fuel catches fire while pumping do not remove the hose. Are you fucking kidding me. If I see fire shooting out of a working pump stuck in my gas tank my ass is taking off like an Olympic runner.

Anyway. As I stand there waiting for the gas to finish I see that the fuel magically slows down at .20 cents into my last pre-paid dollar. I have to wait for the last .80 cents to crawl down the hose into my car. WTF! Are you fucking kidding me. Is this a safety feature? Is this adjustable? What asshole set the gas to trickle out for the last 80 cents of a transaction? I understand slowing down the gas for safety or waste reasons but 80 cents? How about the last ten or twenty cents? Eighty! Seriously!

I almost walked back in there and demanded my 1/10 of a penny back for every gallon I pumped. Somebody is getting screwed here I'm sure.

To my friend that didn't get the job she applied for. I'm sorry but don't feel bad a lot of people apply for that job more than once before they get it. I'll help you out on the next round.

Posted by Jeff Estes wishing you would subscribe to my blog and sponsor my lunch breaks.