1.Please go find out about Schrödinger’s Cat.
2.Understand the application of this theory to modern political asshattery in the media.
3.Watch the debates again.

or as an alternative you can:

…Drink more Kool-Aid.

Anyhow, it occurred to me tonight, that buried within most of the rhetoric and banter between candidates in the GOP debates, these guys directly allude to Schrödinger’s Cat in one form or another.

…My example is as follows:

…Pandering to the idea that the cat is dead and might still bite and scratch you…or maybe…the cat’s alive and out to steal your freedom as soon as it’s released. Worse still, the idea that someone actually KNEW there was a cat in the box AND gave it poison. Is that person criminal? How do we charge them?

…you have to remember…no one knows if the poison even affected the cat. Yet…we’re going to allow ourselves to be guided on a crazy journey of how beautiful this poor little cat was and how we wish it were still alive…

…then we’ll be guided into how we’ll hold responsible the horrible man that put that poor cat through such a horrible ordeal.

…then the media will make it worse by sensationalizing the state of the box that poor poor cat was imprisoned in.

…then we find out that some country that we have a some strategic or financial interest in supplied the poison.

…by the time the politicians are finished inspiring us and protecting our national interest in the cat…billions of dollars are allocated and we’re going to stop that country from ever poisoning cats again. Because that’s what they are. Cat killers.

…it gets worse. we are informed that an small extremist group of fanatics (who it so happens don’t even know what a cat is but believe the U.S. to be responsible for all the problems that arose from poison boxes) intend to place cats in boxes across the U.S. and poison them. With a fervor that shakes the world economy and eventually accounts for a truly scary portion of the national deficit, we eliminate and destabilize those horrible cat killers.

In the last ten years since things have become REALLY crazy and scary, the loss of innocent life in the last decade makes me saddens me to the bone, the effect of profiteering at the expense of our economy has sliced my income in half and even then, there are a lot of people here far worse off than I am, and yet the politicians got their salary increase and kept their benefits while the people they likely misrepresent to satisfy special interests and lobbies start to become a little more aware of the practice.

…and now comes the time where we have the opportunity to decide on which leader will be most capable in making sure the box is never opened again, the poison is never produced again, and the cats never die.

After repeatedly making laws that serve the big business and the financial block, we begin to realize that we have far more to fear and distrust in those who represent us in the government. All the candidates are either viewed as proven failures, proven liars, proven crooks, proven loons, even worse…proven inexperience.

…debates rage between potential leaders regarding the dead cat, the unclean box, and looming threat of yet another poison.

…we are told we have to remember what’s happened historically with cats, boxes, and poisons, and that the party that wants to make antidotes for the poison just in case isn’t a priority because the cats all of a sudden are jumping into boxes. Worse still, we’ve found out that a nation that hasn’t attacked another nation in hundreds of years suddenly hates Geiger counters.

And so the debates are still going now. They are getting more and more poignant and the candidates are fighting already, the tasteless commercials depicting candidates as faithless lunatic crooks are in full swing. Again, we begin to loose faith as we realize that the current electoral, media coverage, and campaign system will not allow the US to rally behind a single leader ever again…even if they deserve it.

The worst thing of all. For the last umpteen years, we’ve had to listen to politicians earning a living and invariably stressing information about a cat that never existed, a box that we never owned, a poison that actually was never created, and lastly a Geiger counter that was never really necessary.

Maybe you’ll get it. This isn’t about which GOP candidate can beat Obama in an election (if that’s even possible coming election time). This isn’t about all the dirt you see in commercials and advertizements. It’s not about who’s got some truly radical ideas (in every sense of the word).

I think it’s more about your own priorities after you’ve managed to filter out all the crap they’ve been feeding you about the idea of Schrödinger’s Cat.

Thus ends my rant for the evening.

For everyone returning to my site after everyone on the internet got a 12-24 hour taste of what kind of effect SOPA/PIPA will have on the US-based netizens, you can find a VERY clear and descriptive article on what SOPA and PIPA are on Wikipedia. So far the very best (and maybe the most objective) description of what the bill is about.

Take care and good night.

-Tony

PS – Ignoring the lines starting with … will serve as a shining example of what I was trying to point out.

Stiffing or shorting tipped personnel is like asking for service and then refusing to pay for it. From a server’s point of view…you just stole from them.

The service industry minimum wage for tipped personnel is 2.13 an hour.

$2.13 PER HOUR!

The national standard % for tips right now is 18%. Not 5% for pizza guys and 15% for servers…it’s 18%. As a professional courtesy, service personnel usually tip each other much more, usually at least 20-25% or even more. This courtesy in many cases is the only reason some service professionals can claim a reasonable income.

…because everyone else thinks someone else will take care of them.

So tip your service.

Most restaurants never allow overtime so these servers make less than $90 a week unless they get a tip from you. Not tipping under the premise that they are already making enough is a shit poor excuse and is one of the biggest reasons turnover in the restaurant industries is crap. So now when you short or stiff your server you’re hurting the restaurant too.

I’ll take it a step further. In most restaurants and hotels (and even pizza delivery), significant portions of the tips go to personnel other than your server. usually 1-5% of a servers sales will go to wine/bar/buss/etc. Now if you stiff or short the service, you’re actually costing the server money.

Next step. Large group gratuities. Next time you get “grat’ed” don’t get your feathers in a ruffle. The reason restaurants do the is because if your party spends hundreds/thousands of dollars on the check and your split-check requesting idiocy allowed half the party to stiff on their tabs, it is very likely that the server may not claim to have made enough to cover the difference in minimum wage. This will cause problems for the restaurant because the restaurant is required to cover the difference if the server hasn’t shown to have made enough to clear minimum wage. They don’t care that the server didn’t make what they wanted to, they only care about making sure they don’t have wage insurance claims filed because the IRS absolutely loves seeing those records…because the IRS considers it a sure sign that “someone” is misreporting their income.

Now before you decide to say that not all hospitality concepts pay minimum. I’ll go ahead and say this, I’ve worked for about 10 different major restaurant groups in almost every capacity. Of those, only one paid above minimum wage, but then only for experienced servers. Now the real statistic…of the hundreds of concepts out there, only about 3-5% provide compensation past minimum wage…EVER. Annual salary increases don’t happen for tipped personnel.

If you base your tip on the quality of the food, you’re effectively blaming your paper boy for the crappy articles in your newspaper. While some concepts allow the servers a modicum of control over the food that comes out to their tables, most do not. Your best bet is just to make sure the server repeats your order back to you, because thats all the control they actually have on your food as well. The same occurs for drink service as well.

So when you decide it’s okay to not tip, here’s what your really doing:
*Insuring the servers income is sub standard and even sub minimum
*Increasing turnover in a business
*Costing the restaurant mucho $$ because of turnover for the job
*You will likely always get “grat’ed” on large groups
*Damaging the restaurant industry as they will just raise the price of their food to cover the profit margin…or worse, employ inexperience and/or unqualified people to server you to replace the ones that got fed up when you stiff or shorted them.
*You’ve probably punished a server for a problem they didn’t have much control over.

This all said, this little rant is mainly just to give people an idea of why all the craptastic ideas about why they shouldn’t tip properly is slowly eroding a good industry, because the restaurants are making more money from it and the level of service and professionalism coming from once-great hospitality concepts is slowly getting destroyed.

So…if you have a question about this subject please fire away, I love educating people on this stuff.

/Rant over.

-Tony

UPDATE

Unfortunately, someone that trolls restaurant service/hospitality industry articles and regurgitates content via comments decided to post about 7 pages of comments last night and after a significant amount of research (including calling Yahoo and other Website owners) I found that this person has been trolling forums and regurgitating the same article content for quite some time and actually using indexed comments as a method of getting self promotion on their own written articles as well.

After finding that this person had been equally as aggressive on multiple other service-based forums and blogs (and in most cases banned), I have removed their material and all links to my website. In addition, because these comments are in many ways identical to the comments posted on other venues, I’m going to treat them as a comment spammer. In a future article I will be sure to cite the submitted content as prime examples of deplorably ill-thought and incredibly jaded ‘opportunistic’ netiquette and hopefully this will help said person to understand that their point of view, while certainly relevant, was presented in such poor taste that they could only be regarded as a troll looking for a fight rather than a contributor to an intelligent discussion.

I would like to note that I do NOT subscribe to censoring comments lightly, but once I saw that the same content had been posted multiple times in other websites, that was a crossed line. If you have something to say, say it but don’t post a ton of pages of comments/content used in other sites and expect to retain any shred of credibility with me.

The Story…

Believe it or not…I was recruited and sworn into the Army at age 16 to become a Russian linguist. At the time, this was a DREAM job for me in so many ways, they weren’t just paying for school on the GI…I had a full ride for 6 years of school and OCS when I signed on for 8 years (all this was in writing).

Of course, this is ME…so nothing really goes as planned. Just two days after swearing in, a quack of a contract surgeon that wasn’t even a part of the MEPS staff examined my knee (required for anyone joining that had an arthroscopic surgery in the previous year), and determined that my kneecap was too loose for service in the military…thus permanently disqualifying me from service.

If you’d known me at the time, you’d know how bad a call this was on the doctors part.

This was a really pivotal point for me…because up until this point I had a plan, and it included a paid-for masters degree and an extra $60k sign-on for my first 8 years and made OCS mandatory. This wasn’t just school, it was a guaranteed career with some serious career opportunities available when I was done. When I found out I wasn’t going to be able to serve…it had an incredibly negative effect on me. I couldn’t do what i thought I was supposed to be doing. Never you mind that I was already physically capable of all the physical training requirements, and nevermind that I’d aced all their tests. I was mad because I wasn’t ever going to get to serve in the manner I thought I was supposed to.

…and it’s always been something I felt everyone should do, myself included.

Being the all or nothing sort of guy I am…I wouldn’t even speak to my recruiter again. He fought and fought hard for me, apparently he went pretty for up to get the ruling changed…so much that it actually took him six months to get my status changed contingent on my willingness to re-enlist, but by then I’d already slipped down into the craziness that was my senior year and was bent on getting a full ride to some obscure college as far from everything local as possible.

It was when I found that my aptitude for learning saved me, and I learned that I could enjoy life without it needing to be rigid.

Eventually, I learned that it was their loss, not mine.

Anyhow…thus ends the day’s journal.

-T

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/givesback/2011/

If you didn’t know about this. A couple years back I competed in Google’s Project 10 to the 100. My foundation project was to build an education system that allowed an open forum for educators and subject matter authorities to discuss and dictate curriculum (not politicians/civil leaders), utilizing up to date education methodologies(our public education system is old and non-competitive globally), and most importantly…free.

Well…obviously, I didn’t win the grant, but the Khan Academy did win, and allowed their curriculum to be translatable in a number of global languages, allowing for an education system that is FREE. It’s almost exactly what I was hoping for.

I just wanted to say that while there is a LOT of banter on what Google’s mission is…they are one of the few big players that are in it to make the world a better place, not just fill their wallet. It was cool to see that they’d granted not just the money from Project 10 to the 100, but also about 100 million more to other initiatives.

Google (and Microsoft) taught me a long time ago that employers can choose to be a part of the solution, rather than being just another part of the system. I wish everyone shared the same business model.

/end kudos-ranty-type-post

-Tony

PS – I swear I’ll post more. Really. This is just a phase I swear

Faith has always been the big one for me. I put everyone on a pedestal. People are amazing and the more you show this to them sooner or later, they begin to shine. Inspiration is a big thing for everyone. We all want and need to be inspired. I think thats a big piece of faith in itself. Inspiration. Inspiration allows us to transcend, to believe, to act, and with a little foresight allows us to be better.

Sounds hokey I know. But it’s always what I look for in people. Friends & loved ones…even the people I see in a mall. When someone does good, we shouldn’t just count ourselves lucky…we should be stocking up on karma like it was a rare metal. Some people think it is that rare, but it isn’t. I think it’s all about the people we want to be and the people we look for in friends.

That same inspiration, that faith…it makes it all worth it. If you see something that needs to be done. If you see someone that needs help. Do it. Help them. Along the way that same act will be contagious, and all of a sudden it’s not one crazy blogger writing a little post…it’s a few people that go out of their way to help others in need.

As a practice THIS is how we become a better society, a better people. I’m not talking about starting a government program to help the poor. I’m talking about helping the poor, and underprivileged…hell…I am talking about helping an old lady cross the street. Do it! It’s these same acts that serve as an example to others. It’s these same acts that should permeate our society rather than the indifference and social narcissism we’re beating into our kids. We raise the bar as individuals and society will fall in step. That increased level of inspiration could revitalize our faith in each other ten times better than the occasional tear-jerker article I see on the net.

May I am just ranting here but it’s a goal right? When I started my own consulting firm I promised myself it would NOT be one of those ventures that was just there to make as much money as possible and not give something back. I made the decision that my firm would donate every bit of money it could, and in some cases I’ll be donating resources…to the maximum amount I can without jeopardizing my future. I’m hardly giving up my ambitions, I’m just saying that my company will be a part of the solution, and not part of the many many problems we see in big business today. If you shape your business model to include giving back to the community, you will figure out a way to do just that. Instead of just one person going that extra mile…it’s an entire business. I think that if everyone in the city donated 4-6 hours of their week this would truly be a society worth being a part of. There are sooo many things that donated time and resources could resolve without spending any of our precious dollars that I think we’d find ourselves living far far easier.

And it comes back to that inspiration, that faith. We all want it, it’s just insane that we all don’t simple stand up and make it a reality. It’s pretty obvious this more a journal entry than some other edgy rant, but I still have to get these out there too. I rely on inspiration. When I read or meet new people, you can bet i am wearing some seriously rose-tinted glasses, because I want them all to inspire me, even if it’s only to teach me how to clean dishes with a big fat grin on my face…I still want it.

You might have thought I was going to lean on the more spiritual end for this entry, but the truth is I’ve been having a harder and harder time with talking about it lately. I feel like differences in opinion, and the psychological blowback from some really hard experiences from way back are finally coming to roost. I haven’t set foot in a church in over a decade, and I can count the number of times in the last twenty years on one hand. The difference is I grew up knowing, but slowly learned to question those beliefs. Before I was twenty I’d learned from the worst of people and many very hard and bitter experiences lessons that changed my perspective on what the difference was between learning how to be a better person and learning how to be what society implicates we should be doing. Fare more often than not I found myself having to take a moral high ground that made me feel more and more ostracized from both friends and family alike. I’ve since learned a happy medium with friends and family…but not so much where religion is concerned. That difference between knowing and believing, that gap between inspiration and faith, it’s still kindof a mess for me.

Okay enough with the rant…ending this sappy journal entry

Gnight!

-T

I have a really cool friend/tweep (yes it’s a real person!) that is trying to raise money for Cancer Research and a her dance company, the Midland Festival Ballet.

Her name is Casey Bryan @Starstruck1409 and she’s absolutely looney about Dallas Stars Hockey busting her buns on this. So if you have a need, please go to her blog and help her out!

There is a good selection of colors so if you are curious please check her site out! You can get all the details HERE.

Take care and have great day! Ciao!

-Tony

PS – No this wasn’t a paid review or article, it’s just me getting the word out for a friend on what I think is a worthwhile cause

Years ago, when I was 19, we were leaving Ellum going northbound on 75 and were exiting to hit Cafe Brazil I think…our exit was slowed to a stop, but the highway was full speed.

I was looking out at the cars passing by so fast. Then it happened…I watched a biker get rear-ended and hit again twice by cars that did not stop afterwards, the bike with no driver spun into the middle of the highway, further causing another biker and a couple other cars to crash.

My friends in the car were jamming out pretty loud so when they heard me scream “NO!” they didn’t realize what it was I had seen right away. It wasn’t just that all those people were in trouble. I wasn’t just fear that gripped me. I was soooo angry. Because even after all that…the cars weren’t stopping.

I couldn’t stand it, and jumped out of the car I was in and ran onto the highway to get people…anyone to stop and help. The people in the cars that had crashed were fine, and even their cars were relatively okay…but the bikers, no one would come near them.

The second biker was closest and was in full riding gear, he was able to tell me his name, where he was and which day it was. A doctor stopped his car to block the lane properly and help with him as I then ran to the second biker.

The second biker was barely breathing and he couldn’t talk. His eyes were alert and frantically trying to communicate…it was pure fear…and though and I could tell he was trying to move – he didn’t have the strength to even move a finger. I was afraid to even hold his hand his body was in such bad shape and…slightly twisted.

It took the police 5 minutes to get there because of the traffic jam, and it took the ambulances almost 10. It was Friday night around 12am on northbound 75. I don’t remember much after that, I was horrified. At some point I guess I’d given my contact information to the police and that doctor that helped out there, because the next day he called me and thanked me for the effort. Unfortunately, he also informed me that one of the motorcyclists had passed away at the site of the accident, and the other had passed away overnight in the hospital.

That wasn’t my first tangle with Death. But that was when it became clear to me that I’ll never be able to even feign indifference in these situations. I would never be that guy that just kept driving on.

A year or two later on vacation in New Mexico, while I was blissfully asleep in the passenger seat. The driver of the car I was in fell asleep from exhaustion and drove us off the side of a mountain at 60mph. Your best imagination could not describe what happened to us in that fall. The only thing that didn’t happen was the car didn’t explode…

…It took the busload of people behind us over 30 minutes to get to us from the road. It took over an hour for an ambulance to get there, and almost two hours to get us back to the hospital. The truck had bounced and rolled over 100 yards down. Days later, we were shown pictures of what had happened and what happened to the truck, and pictures of where it had happened. If that bus hadn’t stopped and those people on it not come, the sun and environment would have finished the job for both of us.

It wasn’t just seeing a wreck now that influenced me. As far as I was concerned, I felt, and still feel to this day, that I have a moral obligation to help in any way I can. I don’t expect the same from everyone, but from experience, I sure as hell hope that when something like that happens to me, someone will be around that feels the same way I do.

And for anyone that feels they can’t be bothered to stop and help, I hope there was a lesson in this somewhere.

My .02 for the evening. Hope everyone has a great night.

-Tony

It’s probably because they are Fridays. Let loose, cut loose, grab your friends, check out a new scene, catch a show, gather at a friends, cook out, hit a party…whatever it is you do on the weekend, Friday is what sets the tone.

This Friday has been just a hair outside the norm. There are so many things going on that my eyes got crossed. I have the opportunity to come out and meet a pretty cool twitter friend at a local club. The Stars regular season opener is tonight, in which fektons of friends and tweeps are going. There is a really good band (The Mind Spiders) playing in Denton tonight. This is the last weekend of DTC’s production of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ at the Wyly Theater. AND, a very awesome little girl named Sydney made me a dragon for my birthday and I have to go visit and accept said gracious gift this evening.

So. I have this HUGE deal about not showing up or being there for kiddos when they are expecting me for something they consider important. Ergo, I am meeting up with my friends and they insanely cool daughter is going to give me my present…(yes, that a photo of the dragon she made me)

Anyhow last week this came up in some conversations and really just makes better sense to me. Who you follow on twitter should be based on interest, not on building reciprocal followers. That said, I’m going to *try* to do this every Friday. I’ll be present a few cool peeps that I follow on Twitter. If it’s going to be called “Follow Friday” I am making sure you know why I recommend them.

Here’s this week’s awesome people:

@TheRealChes Ches is a geek, a supermom, a great coder, and most importantly she’s got a pretty damn good sense of humor. We been friends for a pretty long time and she’s got a good .02 for you when she sees fit

@MarkRamsey – http://markramsey.com Mark is a buddy back from my college days and is a pretty fun guy to listen to. He’s got tons going on and has two internet shows, in addition to running multiple other businesses and is a great resource for almost anything tech. Check him out!

@Melysa_S – http://sexliesandbacon.com I kind of consider Melysa an authority on snark She’s a pretty funny and her quest(s) to find the right guy are pretty funny to follow.

So here’s to a great start on the weekend have a great weekend everyone!

-T

So you want to be a good person? Do what’s right? Here’s the deal, you’re going to be hated…Hated for reasons you’ll never fully understand. People are going to say things about you: lies and over exaggerations about your past. People are going to take advantage of you, cheat you, lie to you, steal from you because you know it’s no good to be untrusting. You will be taken for granted. You will not be respected and you will suffer and, yet, you will walk with grace through it all…and grow and grow and you won’t stop…because you made a commitment…and it’s far from the easy path…but you are good person…stay true…do the right thing and, in the end, nothing will stop you. Being good is it’s own reward. It will all make sense in time…and remember, you weren’t always a good person yourself.

-Aaron Manley Smith

He’s right. When you think about it, doing good things IS it’s own reward. There are a tons of people out there that are under the mistaken impression that they will not succeed if they don’t take the time to stop and help others do the same, and I feel bad for them, because in doing good things, you lead by example. You teach others that you should never be reluctant in helping those that need it.

A couple months ago a friend and I were driving back to Dallas from a long trip visiting friends, and the craziest thing happened. We’re on our side of the highway, and the lanes going the other direction we at least 20 yards away, but something was really wrong because I was seeing headlights directly ahead of us and coming fast. I swerved quickly onto the shoulder of the highway as a sports car zoomed by at about 60mph going the wrong direction on the tollway. My friend and I just kindof looked back stunned wondering what the hell just happened. We then called the state troopers and let them know about it. Just as we finished the call and were about to pull back onto the highway, a truck pulled up behind us.

The driver got out and walked up to my window and asked if I needed help. Why? Because I had my blinkers on and it was late at night. He wasn’t some horror figure from a bad movie, he was being a good person. I kick myself when I remember this because THAT is the exact kind of person I like to meet. I wish I had gotten his name so I could invite him over to meet the crew, etc.

If we as a society made sure to impress this behavior as a moral obligation rather than playing the ignorance or indifference cards I think our lives would be quite a bit better. I know I come off as a bit hardcore about this type of perspective though. I still tell people this, “The only divinity you will ever experience is your own.” It’s not meant to discredit anyone’s beliefs, it’s meant to get people to make an effort to make and experience their own miracle. I think walking THAT path affords you a far brighter journey.

Just my .02

-Tony

I don’t like the notion of referring people to follow/friend without saying why exactly I am referring them. I’m sorry but it just makes sense.

Who you follow on twitter should be based on interest, not on building reciprocal followers. That said, I am going to start pointing out people that are generally awesome, interest me, and/or I think you might benefit from following. I have a LOT of people on this list, so i am going to keep it low-key and just do a few people a week that have been pretty fun to stalk follow and read up on.

@avitable – http://www.avitable.com/ I don’t always agree with him, but I do most of the time, which says quite a bit in itself. He has a nasty habit of writing about things you’re too timid or embarrassed to admit you feel the same way about. He makes the list because among so many online peeps that knew what a mutual friend was going through (hell). He was the only other person I know of that actually got up and did something to help.

@TheBloggess – http://thebloggess.com Jenny has a style about her, when she posts, it’s like someone just magically showed up to kiss you square in the face with a cream pie. She. Will. Make. You. Smile. On the off chance she doesn’t make you laugh, you probably need more meds.

@GenesisMeranda – http://genesismeranda.wordpress.com I started reading her blog before I saw her in the twitterverse. She’s done a pretty decent job of documenting her own journey of self-discovery, and it’s been really interesting to follow her blog.

There. Now you all have references and can follow these people and blame me for it be confident that you made the right choice.

Have a great weekend people!

-Tony

If you’re looking to follow me, please feel free to do so, you can catch me on twitter here @tony_hunt