Comedy

Waiters – Prepare For A $350 Bill

/ Adam Scott / Leave a comment

Throughout my life I have worked as a server.  I enjoy it, to be honest, and have worked at many different restaurants including Bob Evans,  Chillis, Cheddars, and now The Elephant Bar.

Now, let me make a few things clear.  Working as a server or bartender is not the easiest profession in the world.  It can be fast paced and stressful.  With long shifts on your feet. Furthermore servers, like me, make money from the gracious tips our customers leave.

Some days/nights this is a blessing.  Other times a curse.

So as you can imagine for many servers out there every single dollar counts.

With that in mind, can someone please explain to me this new law?

Pursuant to Senate Bill 704, enacted into law in 2016, all retail food handlers, as defined, will be required to obtain a food handler card after taking a food safety training course and passing an exam to obtain a license which will be good for 12 months from the date of issue. The fee for such exam will be $350.00 and will be a requirement of any/all service employers who shall be serving food with the exception of the aforementioned districts. The guideline document was compiled by a stakeholder working group comprised of members of the National Retail Food Safety Coalition (NRFSC), the National Conference of Directors of Environmental Health (NCDEH), and the National Restaurant Association (NRA).  The frequently asked questions and answers in the document are intended to provide guidance for food handlers, local enforcement agencies, industry, and training providers as this law is implemented and becomes effective on January 1, 2017.

Now I am not saying that servers and bartenders should not obtain a food handler’s card. I am all in favor of better training, IF the training is effective, and leads to a positive outcome.

Gene Lee, president and chief executive officer of Darden (Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse, etc.), had this to say about the law: “We feel this new bill will improve the overall safety and excellence that we will be able to provide to our guest.”

My only question is how?  How will this “new” training improve safety and excellence?

Further, why is the government getting involved?  Where does this $350.00 charge go? Who benefits from that money?

It seems to me that this is just a ploy to make money for someone by taking it from us?

When Gene Lee was asked if Darden would ever consider paying for the card on behalf of their employees, he said, “At this time, there are no plans for that. The staff will be responsible if they want to work with the Darden company.”

If you think this kind of legislation is unfair, and want to do something about it, please Sign This Petition and help overturn this law!

65. WoW New Forum Policy

/ Adam Scott / Leave a comment

Yesterday I wrote about WoW new policy to use peoples real identity on their forum boards. Thanks to my Brother-in-Law Matt, who sent me the following, we can see how this will change the forums…

37. 56 Kinds of Geek

/ Adam Scott / Leave a comment

Once again I must thank my Brother-in-Law Matt for sending this to me. As I look over the list and think about my life as a Geek I fall into several of these different types of Geeks.

Trek Geek
I have mentioned this before, but one of the earliest memories I have with my family is watching Star Trek: The Next Generation together. To this day I find myself a loyal Star Trek fan. In fact one of the biggest draws to Dragoncon this year is the LARGE amount of Star Trek characters coming.

Jedi Geek
Do I even need to bother with an explanation on this one. Anyone who has know me for almost any length of time knows I am an avid Star Wars fan. Most of my Geek t-shirts are Star Wars. I own every Star Wars PS3 game. I love watching the movies. If I had three wishes one would be the ability to control both sides of the force, and have my very own lightsaber.

Larper Geek
I must confess that there has been times where I have enjoyed LARPING. Through my association with The Knightly Order of the Fiat Lux I was introduced to different types of larps including Dagorhir and SOLAR

Portable Geek
I love technology and gadgets. Nuff said!

Apple Geek
Well lets see I am writing this post on my Macbook while my Iphone goes through its weekly sync, and listening to music from my Ipod classic. I have three Mac blogs bookmarked, and check Mac Rumors everyday. Does that make me an Apple Geek?

Con Geek
I dont think I am a Con Geek. I think its perfectly natural to know how many days are left till Dragoncon….96.

There are several other categories that I have spent some time in, and may in the future spend more time, but I think its safe to say I am a Geek. So the question is what kind of Geek are you?

36. My Dream About The Ipad

/ Adam Scott / Leave a comment


So last night I only got about 2 hours of sleep. Why, you ask. Well the answer is Terra and I stayed up WAY to late, and then I had to be up at 3:00AM to pick up a friend who needed a ride to the airport. As I sit here at my desk writing this is occurs to me that the last time I was this tired I was in Thousand Oaks, CA serving a christian mission for my church. Lucky for me today will be an early day.

Anyways in the short time I was asleep last night my brain decided to entertain me by giving me a dream that involved the Ipad (What an unfortunate name). The dream took place during a meeting for work. I dont remember what we were discussing, but eventually I pulled an Ipad out of my backpack and started using it. Before long everyone at the table was envious of my new found possession. The meeting soon ended and I found myself in a hotel room getting ready to get on a flight home. Suddenly I remembered that I had only been loaned this Ipad from a local Best Buy store. They had taken a 300.00 deposit from me in case I didn’t return it. I sat on the edge of the bed in the hotel room pondering if I wanted to return the Ipad or just keep it for myself.

At that point I was suddenly outside looking out over a disney castle. The clock on the top of the castle struck 11:00PM. Suddenly the castle came alive with fireworks, lights, and disney characters all singing some song I cant remember, probably “Its a small world”. As soon as it had begun the singing, lights and fireworks were over, and I was left staring at a silent castle.

I realized I wasn’t alone and saw two girls standing near me that looked to be about my age. They were hurriedly writing something down. I asked them what they were doing, and they explained that the castle was a geocach and that you could only find the geocach during the lights, fireworks, and singing. I found myself disappointed I didn’t get to find the geocach, but vowed to myself that I would return the next night and find it. So I took out my Ipad, made the decision that I would keep it, and jotted a note down to be here again in 24 hours to find the geocach.

Thats when my alarm went off, and I woke up.

30. WootStock 2010

/ Adam Scott / 3 Comments

On May 7, 2010 Terra and I ventured up to the city of Seattle to Attend w00tstock. Both Terra and I had been looking forward to going since we attended Emerald City Comic Con. Our main draw was to go see Wil Wheaton, but we were encouraged about the other performances.

Our journey did not start off as we had hoped. After spending over two hours in the car, due to traffic we finally arrived in Seattle. (NOTE: from our house to seattle should only take an hour) We found parking reletivly easy, which is suprising for a Friday night, and headed out on foot toward the address given to us for The Moore Theater.

My plan at this point was to provide you with the same link I used for directions, however I have discovered that the address on the website has now changed, and the address google used has been removed. I have a feeling it was done so due to the large number of complaints I am sure both the theater and google may have received over this event, because both sites gave you an address of 94 Pike Street. If you follow the link to the Theater you will see this is not their address at all. So confused and still getting to know Seattle Terra and I ran around aimlessly trying to find where we were going. We asked a few people who knew we were close but couldn’t point us in the exact direction we needed to go. Terra even called her sister Megan and asked her to look it up on the net, and see if she could find a different address then I had. She could not, because she was given the same false address as I had. So at this point I turned to Foursquare. I quickly found the theater, and received directions from other people checked into the theater. Several of them mentioned how the address listed on google and the main theater site was false, and provided the correct one. Turns out from where we were standing we were only two blocks away.

Arriving almost 20 minutes late we carefully found our seats and sat down. Since we arrived late we missed the introduction….

And the opening song…..(10 points if you get the non related reference)

And the first act from Load Ready Run

We arrived here

Molly Lewis was the next performance, and she was AWESOME!!! Before my mission I never really liked the ukulele as an instrument, but for some reason after the mission I suddenly developed a shine to it. Weird.

Following Molly Lewis we were entertained by James Ernest and Mike Selinker. Now you will notice in the video that they give us some sort of a video riddle. I have watched the video, and looked on the internet at other people who attended w00tstock, and really don’t know what the answer to the riddle is. Maybe you do?

This short video was next, and I must confess I think it may have been one of my favorite parts of w00tstock, because so many movie trailers are just like this! Is it sad that I wouldn’t mind watching that movie?

And now comes the moment we have all been waiting for….WIL WHEATON!!!! I never thought that one of the least liked Star Trek characters would turn out to be one of my favorite authors, bloggers, and performers. I had heard Terra talk about Wil for years, but honestly had no interest in looking into what Wil was all about until Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle WA. Here is a picture of Will after he signed my Star Wars Lando Action Figure (read his books to understand!)

So Wil took the stage and gave a GREAT performance about one of my favorite high school memories The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

After the AWESOME Wil Wheaton left the stage Paul from Paul and Storm made some merchandise plugs.

Now comes the moment in the show that I honestly dont know how to review. At this point in the show MC Frontalot took the stage. The reason I am having a hard time giving a review is I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY SAID. I could not understand a single word in their whole spot. The bass was up so loud and the vocals were so low that I cant tell you if I would like their music and lyrics or not. I am planning on looking into their music outside of w00tstock and I hope I will be able to understand them, so if I like them or don’t like them I will let you all know later.

After MC Frontalot, Paul and Storm along with Wil Wheaton took the stage and gave a wonderful performance of the European Lounge Singer. If you haven’t seen it, then shame on you!

And then Hank Green took to the stage, and was VERY funny. His rendition of “what would Captain Picard Do?” was in my top three moments of the night!

Im going to let Stephen Stepto speak for himself! (It was AWESOME!)

And then came Adam Savage. I really didnt excpect him to be funny, but WOW!

Then they tried to wrap the show up, but they found this VERY difficult! OK here is the thing I have been able to find every other part of the show BUT the finale sooooooooo I am using a finale video from another performance of w00tstock in another city. If I can find the Seattle performance I will post it.

Overall this was an AWESOME night, and will become a yearly thing for Terra and I!