Signs that make you go “hmmm…”
Saw this sign in front of a night spot on Sucat Road coming home from the supermarket. Hmmm. Makes you wonder if they’re looking for someone to model wraps on the ramp or something like that.
Hello 2006! Here’s to more interesting signs. Happy Hogmanay!
Sharing is Bad?
You may have seen the signs elsewhere, but I’m not concerned as much with the one on the right (ubiquitously posted in all places public) as with the one on the left. No Sharing, No Take-out, No Leftover.
I’m not even going to harp on correct grammar here. We all know or at least have noticed that a lot of people say slipper (instead of slippers), scissor (for scissors), stair (instead of stairs, or a flight of, if you want to be really correct), so we know that they mean leftovers when they say leftover. Sa Tagalog pa, “Walang Tira” ug sa Binisaya pa, “Walay Salin.”
I cannot for the life of me understand the No Sharing, No Take-out, No Leftover.
Let me describe the place, if that will help. It’s a small fast-food outlet in one of the malls close to where we live. They have the regular “pick out what you want and we’ll cook it in 5 minutes or less” sort of orders, and then they have a “salad bar” of sorts where you can assemble your bowl of rice, veggies, meat and noodles after paying the package meal price at the cash register. The No Sharing, No Take-out, No Leftover rule applies to the latter.
I was too befuddled with the logic of the rule that I did not dare ask any of the people behind the counter exactly what the No Sharing, No Take-out and No Leftover rule entailed.
The No Take-out rule hits me as strange. There are eating places that charge 5% or so extra for takeout, for the plasticware in which the food gets taken away. I don’t mind paying that, as the plasticware is reusable and actually handy at home. Besides, people who do takeout do not occupy precious seats that can be otherwise populated by more paying dine-in customers. So until someone can adequately explain to me why they don’t allow take-out, I’m always going to walk past that eating place with eyebrows knit.
No Leftover(s) is also strange. I usually don’t get anything from any salad (noodle) bar that I cannot finish on my own. And should there be any leftovers—maybe my tongue didn’t agree with their cook or I may have mistakenly put in too much soy sauce in it—what were they going to do to me when they find a spoonful or two left in my bowl? Hit me with a fine? Ban me from the premises? Hang a sign on my neck that says “Takaw mata” or “Asyang Aksaya” or some such epithet? Or does it mean I can’t ask for a doggy bag? I don’t ask for doggy bags mainly because we don’t have a dog. I tell servers with no embarrassment that I would like them to bag my leftovers so I can eat them in the comfort and privacy of my own kitchen, even while standing in front of the microwave after I’ve reheated them.
Most perplexing of these rules is the No Sharing. Does it mean that if two of us walk into their premises we will need to place two orders instead of just one? And if we did place two orders, does the No Sharing rule still apply? What was going to stop me from sharing the bowl of food—for which I had already paid for—with a companion? Were they going to zip to our table the minute they spy Sam picking off a chopstick full of bean sprouts from my bowl, saying “Ops! Sir, bawal po yan!” I’d like to see them try saying that to Sam. He he he.
I dunno, maybe I should have asked the people behind the counter exactly what the rules entailed. But chances are the counter crew didn’t draw up those rules. And ever since I had that run-in with the counter crew at Tokyo-Tokyo at the Metropoint I have steered clear of run-ins with counter crews, more for their well-being than mine.
But that’s another story.
Jesus Saves
I once gave a mini-lecture to an office-full of computer newbies about the benefits of saving their work, telling them of the various yet quite simple ways of preventing the primeval scream that may be heard from a user whose work has disappeared because his computer has crashed. I enumerated everything from “clicking on the diskette icon on the menu bar” to hitting Ctrl+S on one’s keyboard every time your fingers become idle after typing, including not to turn your fiber cable into a doorstop, and capped it off with this well-known I.T. joke:
Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.
They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.
He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out.”
“Very well, then,” says God, “let us see if Jesus fared any better.”
Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is astonished.
He stutters, “B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus’ program is intact. How did he do it?”
God smiled all-knowingly, “Jesus saves.”
Things could be worse. We’ve had our share of computer mishaps from Coke on the keyboard to mice in the minitower. But this list from Ontrack.com tops all lists that I’ve seen so far.
The Ontrack 2005 Top Ten List of Data Disasters and Remarkable Recoveries
10. PhD Almost an F : A PhD candidate lost his entire dissertation when a bad power supply suddenly zapped his computer and damaged the USB Flash drive that stored the document. Had the data not been recovered, the student would not have graduated.
9. Suffering from Art : While rearranging her home office, a woman accidentally dropped a five pound piece of clay pottery on her laptop, directly onto the hard drive area that contained a book she’d been working on for five years and 150 year-old genealogy pictures that had not yet been printed.
8. Domestic Dilemma : A husband deleted all of his child’s baby pictures when he accidentally hit the wrong button on his computer. His wife hinted at divorce if he did not get the pictures back.
7. Bite Worse than Bark: A customer left his memory stick lying out and his dog mistook it for a chew toy. Ontrack was able to recover all of the data despite teeth marks all over the stick and a hole that went completely through.
6. Don’t Try this at Home: A man attempting to recover data from his computer on his own found the job too challenging mid-way through and ended up sending Ontrack his completely disassembled drive with each of its parts in a separate baggie.
5. Out of Time: A clockmaker suffered a system meltdown, losing the digital designs for all of its clocks. Ontrack literally beat the clock recovering all their data just in time for an important international tradeshow.
4. Drilling for Data: During a multi-drive RAID recovery, engineers discovered one drive belonging in the set was missing. The customer found the missing drive in a dumpster, but in compliance with company policy for disposing of old drives, it had a hole drilled through it.
3. Safe at Home: After one of their executives experienced a laptop crash, the Minnesota Twins professional baseball team called on Ontrack to rescue crucial scouting information about their latest prospects. The team now relies on Ontrack for all data recoveries within its scouting and coaching ranks.
2. Hardware Problems: A frustrated writer attacked her computer with a hammer. When the engineers received the computer, the hammer imprint was clearly visible on the top cover.
And finally, the number one most bizarre data disaster of 2005:
1. La Cucaracha: In hopes of rescuing valuable company information, a customer pulled an old laptop out of a warehouse where it had been sitting unused for 10 years. When engineers opened the computer, it contained hundreds of husks of dead and decaying cockroaches.
Xmas Family Pic
In lieu of the traditional family picture by the Christmas Tree,
let me offer you this whimsical rendition.
Happy Holidays everyone!
About Me
