Two weeks / months & brownies

Two weeks and still no word from out beloved olive oil guy. So it goes.

There is one post that I'm dreading to write. Fat Witch Brownie Mix. The box comes with everything you'd need to create your own famous at-home brownies save for the two sticks of butter you need to slap all of the ingredients together in a way that makes it seem like a cohesive eatable jumble of garbage. Some may praise Fat Witch for their delightfully 'moist' and 'heavenly' brownies created in the island of Manhattan - I mean in scene of seclusion from the outside world and that it is an island - where it seems that they love their desert to sit and meld at the bottom of a pan. Now, I may have made them wrong, though I'm pretty sure I know how to add room temp butter to a mound of mixture. I'd skip these if you enjoy the fully light and not throat clogging thickness that are these.

When we were in NYC for the show, we came across these hip, modern, and styled cocktail starters: Modern Cocktail. They were shoved into the back of the showroom floor, a new company that could soar under the ever growing market that is specialty food items. Two months we tired to call, leave a message, e-mailed, faxed. No response. Sure they might be super busy because of the overwhelming response to their pithy product - but let the small businesses know. I know it seems rife with holes, picking up the phone or responding to a fax, but is it that much a struggle. What happened was they got a 10k order from whole foods and shoved everyone else to the side to fill their HUGE order. Whole foods reorders, and pushes everyone else back, they can't keep up demand, they try to expand but don't have enough time/money. We get stuck not getting their kick ass product. Oh well.

Day off because of sickness. Here is to it.

Banging it out

Yesterday I wrote a few blogs, just pounding them out. I'm finding more and more interesting ways of describing food which is fun. I created a tumblr page for some reason. We'll see how well that goes. Yeah, sure I struggle to get stuff on this blog alone day to day, but I think b/c of the phone plug in, I'll be able to post small snippets there (longer than twitter & photos etc) instead of feeling the need to shove out something that isn't long enough to constitute a post.

I've been milling over the Google/Verizon paper for a couple of weeks and I think it's a mistake on Google's behalf. They were always seen a kind of 'underdog' gone pro. This way they kept their head on straight about being total fuck offs about net neutrality and brought out cool products us nerds love (see gmail, google reader, voice, etc). We can't make the distinction between wired and wireless internet. Talk about a slippery slope into disaster, where no one wins but the companies. Where I see a problem is in commercial. We have a shitty internet connection at work as it stands now. Lets say in five years wired internet is gone b/c of leaps in 4G and LTE etc, but this paper pushed legislation to make it "easier" for us to get "certain" data. We try and check people out at work, but cannot get through to the POS servers because we are a small company and cannot pay the big fat bill to pay for a quick POS connection. So we lose customers because our wait time at check out is longer, and spiral down. Cut to Target, Lowes, big stores. They don't have a problem because they pay the big bucks to get their POS data pushed through before ours. Tis but a single example, but one that some might understand better and hit closer than "you can't load youtube as fast."

Folded up paper, wasted time and money

So the other day I had a flier sent to me. A person had cold called the store (which I can't image to be very fun) and asked if we would carry their stuff. I told them the same thing I tell every single company, vendor, or joe/sara schmoe that tries to get their stuff on our shelf - "Bring in a sample, we'll try it out and we'll let you know." I guess I don't say those exact words but that is a rough outline of what I tell them. I learned this from my boss, who has delt with this for seven years, so I assume she knows what she is doing. I proceed to tell this person our normal deal. Of course they soft-of listened. Sure, they'll bring in a sample, but they wanted to send me this near worthless sheet of paper (what a waste) and asked when a good time to show up for a tasting would be. This is where I try to nail people down to a time, because of a couple of reasons; I can and like to work from home, as well as when samples are left for more than a day it can either be eaten or taken home within a day or less. So to try to set something up where they can come in and talk to me about their wonderful olive oil, but for some strange reason this person cannot be tied down. I even tried to give a general time when it would be best and that didn't work for them either. I just had to breath heavy, roll my eyes and say what amounted to "whatever." Not the best way to start off with someone that will be one of two votes on getting your product on the shelf.

I'm not flaunting my power over a vendor, but it's kind of a waste of their time and money to send me info I could and would much rather get from them personally. Which I would like to set up a good time for the two of us to talk about the ins and outs of their olive oil. Sure it's nice to crack open a letter mailed to me at work, something I rarely get, but come on.

Today I'm board at work without my boss here. I wrote a blog. I posted on facebook. I know I could be doing more, something a bit more productive than posting here on my blog but I'd really rather avoid work. Just one of those days I guess.

Tonight I'll take photos of the Sweetwater Bath stuff. It was pretty damn good and am looking forward to writing that post. That'll be tomorrow though.

Notes on a Saturday

I took a couple notes for future references at work on Saturday.

• Girls with ugly guys & vice versa
• Full beard with bald head
• "This is what it's like downstairs"
• Guys who "stand too close"

Pickles

shot_1282230043880, originally uploaded by Jacob D.

I'm supposed to put out pickles for people to try today 'at lunch.' I made menus this morning, and posted  to facebook and twitter about our surprisingly successful Cupcake contest. I'm trying to find more work, and make sure I keep this job.

Cookies

IMG_4712, originally uploaded by Jacob D.

Wheatfingers

Whole wheat flower, sea salt, butter, egg, sugar, sugar in the raw, butterfinger, vanilla, baking soda. Heavy modified Martha Stuart recipe.

Home office

Today I'll be working from home (hopefully) banging out a handful of new food blogs for SPG. I've got a couple things to do around the house but, it shouldn't stop me from getting work done. I brought home a couple items from work yesterday. Tasting and writing about the BBQ bath should prove interesting - I know the Peach vin rules, but I want to make sure to get the taste down on paper as well as try a few recipes.

A change of pace

I've been thinking of ways of making this something with a bit more substance than just my scrawls terribly thrown together in a mess of incoherence (which is okay), and lack of direction, meaning, or theme (not okay). So here is the deal. I'll detail all of the shit I do in a day, maybe even throughout the day. Examples: If I'm at work and I have a crappy product, I'll write about it - unabashed; if I'm on the phone with a magazine that sells 'editorial spots' I'll log my experience; if I have to host the restaurant, I'll tell of the horrible people by taking notes of their shitty-ness.

I'm kind of tired of having this be a wasteland of slowly dieing posts about my "life" and over arching themes that I couldn't give a shit about going back to. Most of the time I have no idea why the fuck I wrote something here, or why I think it matters.

So look forward to my real self: the crabby old man who lives inside of me and my crappy sentence composition.

Oh god my ____ is melting! A Summery of Ports

That's right. It's fucking hot. We all know. Repeating it over and over to each person you see in passing isn't going to make it better. I feel the same way about people walking their dogs. Don't ask me to explain it.

What I really want to talk about is the mini-dvi port on my Macbook - or really all the god damn proprietary plugs on my macbook. I want to start with the mini-display port.

Yes, I have an extra monitor hooked up at work. No, your right - I don't need it. But this is getting past the heart of the matter. First and obvious point is that the plug is proprietary. Yeah, big pain. Apple loves to make a buck off of extras (see: Apple Store, Apps). It's easily a two buck plug from any shady website that sells wires and plugs to connect every device into your house to each other, but at Apple it's a thirty dollar hunk of "California Designed" Chinese-made plastic. This again isn't my point. So what is my point? The connection is weak at best. Now, let me preface that I've got a 2008 black macbook. So you may not know my pains if you have another model. The connection: it feels cheap, barely in, and worst? Just kinda hangs in there. No clip or snap, just resting in there like a pair of overalls lay over the obese - sure they are on but they are just waiting for a strap to fall. A sleeping dragon of interrupted social media toolkiting.

(Author's Note: I'm just going to publish this b/c I've been sitting on it for a while.