Yet, there will be more.

Me: What’s the difference in the Chicken Fries and Chicken Tenders

Girl: One’s Chicken Fries and the other’s Chicken Tenders.

Me: .. .. Yeah, but is one seasoned differently?  Do they taste the…Nevermind, I’ll have a #7 with a Coke.

Girl: Everybody in here says they don’t taste no different.

Me: Well, in that case, I’ll have an 8-pack Chicken Tender and a Medium Fry.

Girl: Is that a meal?

Me: No, just the tenders and the fries.

Girl: Drive to the first window please.

The dialogue ended here, as the next guy to greet me wouldn’t even say, “Hello” or, “How are you?” or, “Thank You”.

ED: Oh and for those of you wondering, the chicken fries are what the tenders USED to be…the tenders are now what is commonly reffered to as “nuggets”.

I am a huge fan of Google, for several reasons. My main reason for being such a fan is because of the way they run their business.

1. Google has their eyes on the horizon.

While Google started as an advertising company, and still is for the most part. They are not just sticking to one thing and thus painting themselves into a corner. They are constantly branching out and developing other areas of specificity that makes them not only unique, but powerful. They are, in a sense, diversifying their long term business model.

2. Google doesn’t wait until their software is perfect before releasing it.

I wasn’t a very early adopter of Gmail, but Tim tells me that the first release of Gmail didn’t even support attachments. But by continually improving on their product iteratively, we now have Google Talk (or Gchat), and Google Calendar integrated into Gmail. While I’m on the subject, I love gmail.

3. Google doesn’t settle for “good enough”.

While the face of google.com hasn’t changed much over the years, the functionality of all of google’s products have become increasingly more robust and efficient. Take for example, igoogle (google’s personalized home page). It first offered the ability to customize the page, then add RSS feeds. Igoogle now has an RSS Reader built in. A tab to the left has your feed links. You click to expand it and read all of the recent posts from that feed. Yet another significant improvement from the previous version.

4. Google provides awesome gadgets

Even President Bush likes using “the google”, as he calls it. I can waste some time with google earth, but Google Docs is a terrific way for small offices to work remotely on documents together. Sketch Up, which is a fairly new addition to the Google family provides the ability to build 3D models, and then insert them in the google earth world so that anyone can visit your designs (if you so choose). If you want to see all the programs google offers, go check ‘em out. There’s no need for me to describe them all.

In closing, a company that no one had ever heard of when they came on the scene, is now a household name, used in popular culture and movies. No one says, “Yahoo it”, or “That’s what Yahoo is for”. Google has changed the way websites are designed and is deservingly shipped with any version of Firefox you download.

With the addition of Chrome, all we need now is for Google to beef up Andriod and take on Microsoft.

:: You can do it google; I believe in you ::

We have new tools at our disposal to make communication easy, facebook gives an at-a-glance summary of what everybody from your childhood’s been thinking/doing for the last hour, twitter tells us anything in a vast array of details, from what’s going on in Japan, to how someone’s not very impressed with their breakfast burrito. In addition to that, we have skype, instant message, text messaging, every one has cell phones, and it seems like email has almost taken the place of the traditional “snail mail”.

I just got back from a conference called South by Southwest, where everyone was demoing their new social networking site that ‘was better than facebook’, or ‘really would be the next youtube’. I propose that instead of creating social networks, we just socially network with real people.

I never thought I’d be concerned that when my daughters were teenagers that they wouldn’t talk on the phone. But I am. There was a girl in front of me at the store texting her friends who described talking as ‘awkward’. Granted, she was probably just grabbing for the right words to describe a phenomenon becoming less and less common, but still, it bugged me.

When I pump my gas now, I can conveniently use my checkcard to never leave the side of my car. This was created for convenience, speed, and efficiency. I experience a similar interaction at the grocery store, and the drug store, and just about everywhere I shop. I hand the clerk the items, they slide them across the scanner, tell me the total, and I slide my card, enter the magic numbers, and the receipt prints on my side. We’re done, and I didn’t even have to look at the clerk. I can rent movies from a kiosk (redbox if you don’t have it, they rock) and never interact with a human being — great for agoraphobs I’m sure. But not for me. It bugs me.

I love my iPhone, it provides me with anything I need to know, when I need to know it, but it also presents a tremendous distraction from everything around me. This past weekend at SXSW, there were several moments when I walked into lounges where there would be people sitting alone, with their iPhones, because that was actually a lot easier than talking to people they didn’t know (which is actually extremely easy at SXSW). I admit, it is easy to “look busy” when you have a smart phone, but it bugs me.

I think the beautiful thing about life is that we go through it bumping into others. I think it’s the combination of all those bumps that make any single person. I once worked for a guy who said, “yeah yeah yeah” all the time when you tried to explain something to him. It irritated us, so we had a pact that we would always call each other on it. Because we were looking for it, we noticed that we were doing it all the time. I don’t know how many things about “me” are actually things I picked up from being around others. Body language, facial expressions and sayings that may seem unique to anyone who doesn’t know their origins, but they’re not, they’re a conglomeration of interacting with other people.

I don’t want to be an automaton. I want to be a human being who interacts with other human beings, even in the small scale. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been taking the time to intentionally look the store clerk in the eyes, to ask “How’s your day going?”, to actually attempt to connect. Sometimes it’s a little awkard, sometimes they don’t know what to do with me, but other times, it’s refreshing, and they appreciate the gesture. Even if they don’t, and wish I would go away, I need to know that we can preserve communication, for it not to become “awkard” as the girl in the grocery store put it.

No man is an island. We were not designed to be automatons because that is a lonely existence.

Create a viable tv/movie viewing option for the iPhone.

Isn’t there something like this for the iPad?

Anyway, some company may have created this, but I want to give netflix the money instead. This could be another tier in their plans, mobile viewing through webkit enabled devices and iphones. I think it’d be great, but its not a huge bummer if they don’t allocate their resources to it.

Hulu on set-top boxes.

Seems like this would be a good move right? How much more would you use this service if it weren’t only through your computer? I realize that some folks only use their computers for entertainment, but it’d be really cool if this option existed. I’d use it like crazy.

Although, I guess that’s what TV is.

Build-your-own entertainment plan.

If there was an option to pay like 5 bucks a month and choose any channel. I think I’d be up for it. I enjoy Discovery Channel and Food Network enough that I might shell out 4-5 bucks a month for each.

My Idea: The network channels would just stream the feed through an internet connection. The channels would run 100% like they do now, including all the advertisements at programming. The networks would get a cut of the cost to make it more appetizing.

Rent movies with a 24 hour limit

I don’t understand why this is not currently available. I realize that Xbox Live and Amazon.com have on demand watching capabilities. But they’re both too high. Redbox is $1 a day, and they use DVDs, is bandwidth cost so much more (seriously, would it be more expensive? I honestly don’t know).

My Idea: When you rent movies (older movies $1, $2 for new releases), the rental fee is added to your account.

Why would that be so difficult? Zune does it. The Things app for the iPhone even does it, but the iPhone doesn’t natively do that? I just don’t understand why not.

2. Update my podcasts automatically

Why not?

3. Pair to a bluetooth keyboard

As much as I like the iPhone, the keyboard on it is frustrating. It’s got bluetooth, why not enable it to pair to a keyboard if you’d like.

4. Run simultaneous apps

This should really be first, but it’s still annoying. I’m sure Apple has their reasons, but it’s really annoying that I can’t listen to Pandora AND check my email or use my GPS app.

5. Have a lock hold or lock feature

This one is intentionally at the bottom of the list. My daughter likes to watch videos on the iPhone, and it’s easy to quell a fidgety child by handing her the wiggles, but as soon as she touches the wrong part of the screen, we’re back to the drawing board. It’d be nice to have a “Hold” button, or something like it…just for that occasion, I’m sure I could think of more cases where it would come in handy though.

I mean really. I don’t care if it’s a little darker in the morning, it means my daughter will sleep longer. She went from normally getting up at around 7:30-8am, to now 6:30-7am. That’s a big difference in my body clock. As soon as I get home from work now it’s dark. 5pm is too early to be dark…so is 6, but I’ll take what I can get. I say if people want to continue this silly tradition, they do so on their own time. Why should so many states be forced to set their clocks back an hour for virtually no gain at all.

Give me one good reason we do this stupid thing. I seriously challenge you. I’ve done extensive research on the subject and have found none.

Daylight Saving Time Sucks

Am I going to hide in a corner in the middle of a multiplayer battle and tweet, “Just got killed in COD4, not having a good night”? No. I’m not. I’m not going to tweet from my xbox because it’s inconvenient. There are, however, a few features I’ve wanted for awhile that Xbox hasn’t cared to build into the dashboard. They are as follows:

1. Notification of specific friends logging on to Xbox live.

Now, this might be a vague notion of convenience, but when I turn on my Xbox, I’d like to know if my best friend is online. I’d even like to know if people I play specific games with are online…it would help me to choose which game to play. Doesn’t seem like it’d be that complicated. But, I’m not an Xbox developer.

2. The ability to make video playlists.

Am I missing this feature? If I am, please tell me…I’d like to know, but I’d like to watch the entire first season of The Guild without having to back out and click “Play” again.

3. Button combinations for specific areas of the guide menu.

Now this might seem very complex, but if I held down the right trigger and pushed the guide button, it’d be sweet if it automatically brought up my friends menu — or something to that order. The guide button is so slow when you’re in the middle of a game, and it’s very frustrating.

These things would be helpful. Far more helpful than being able to tweet and post to facebook. Don’t we have enough inane descriptions of everyone’s play-by-plays already? Myself included.

I thought this someecards.com card summed it up nicely. This week we’ve had the following news items overshadowed by the king of pop’s death.

• Fights break out between two ethnic groups in China
• North Korea launches 4 short-range missiles in ‘provocative’ test
• Honduras Stages a Coup?

Ok. I’m done looking up new stories…there’s something else going on in Iran, but I don’t know the details. Look for yourself to find out what happened around the time Michael Jackson died. Probably a lot you missed. Did you know these things happened?

Analog signal huh? Ya don't say.

Just go ahead and switch over to Digital signal 13. There’s no reason to leave that terrible annoyance up there.