ModifiedLogic

This album King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime by Faith No More is not only their best album in my opinion, but also tops on my all time list for many reasons. One interesting note is that it was the last album I purchased on cassette. I remember looking through the cassette liner notes so much that they fell apart at the perforations. I listened to the tape so many times, some parts of the album began to have distorted sound.

I used to listen to this album front to back, or side to side rather, since it was a tape. I would listen to it in a walkman while I rode my bike when I was a teenager. Something about these songs always struck a chord with me. Somehow, the different styles that FNM were messing with (jazz, funk, metal, and more) on this album work so well.

This is one of those albums that I have quoted lyrics from for the past ten years. Lyrics like "what a day when you can look it in the face and hold your vomit" or "it’s always fun until someone gets hurt and then it’s just hilarious". I can listen to the opening of "Last To Know" a million times. The opening part of that song is so powerful and memorable for me when Mike Patton sings:

"Where it grows on trees
But never blooms"

Did I mention the album art by Eric Drooker is just classic?

The most interesting part of this album is that it became a fan / cult favorite type of album. It’s such a complete album I am surprised that it isn’t more known and revered. There are no big FTN hits like "Epic", but every song is polished and solid. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s not available on iTunes or the Amazon music store.

This album and I have reconnected in a big way and I can’t stop listening to it.

One of my top wants/needs for the iPhone is the ability to scrobble audio tracks to last.fm. I recently re-jailbroke my iPhone using ZiPhone and installed Mobilescrobbler. Now, a big piece of the "scrobbling puzzle" is filled in.

Mobilescrobbler is a full featured last.fm client. It allows you to listen to your last.fm radio (loved tracks, person radio, neighborhood), scrobble tracks, check lyrics, friends, artist info, love tracks, ban them, skip them, and more. Seriously, it covers just about everything you can do with the last.fm desktop client. It does all of this over wi-fi OR edge.

Now, every app has to have it’s "cool" feature right? Well, Mobilescrobbler supports iPhone gestures. Swipe and pinch away.

Sometimes, people ask me why I like last.fm so much and why scrobbling is so important to me. There are many reasons, but here are the first few that come to mind:

1. I like many many different kinds of music. Rather than talking about them all, I can say, go look at my last.fm page.

2. It helps me, and others, keep track of what I listen to. If I hear a new band from someone’s share iTunes library or on last.fm radio, there is a record of it. I can go back and see exactly what I was listening to at what time. In a lot of cases, now you can listen to full streaming tracks as well.

3. Finding new artists is a huge part of the equation. You can generate a radio station for say, bands that sound like Coheed and Cambria. For a person like me who likes to constantly discover new music, it’s a no brainer. Mix that with the rest of the social aspects of last.fm and the new music discovery possibilities are near infinite.

Getting back to Mobilescrobbler. The app itself is a big part of the puzzle, but there are still a few missing pieces, for me at least. The big picture to me is, being able to scrobble any and all music from any source. With Mobilescrobbler, it covers me at home, anywhere I have my iPhone including the car and walking. For my particular audio sources, I’m only missing audio played on say, my Xbox 360 or on my Sirius radio. Do we need to go that far? I’m not sure. But I’d like to.

The end result is, I am very happy with what Mobilescrobbler gives me. I’d say that now, at least 75% of the music I listen to will be scrobbled, and that’s just cool.

This is really a no-"brainer". It doesn’t pertain to Dunkin’ Donuts only. It also doesn’t apply to every clerk, but for my personal experience, it serves as a good example. Let me start off by saying I realize working at Dunkin’ Donuts isn’t the most glamorous of jobs. I have worked not-so-glamorous jobs, and in customer service. The idea is, treat the customer right. Go out of your way to do a good job. But really, that applies to any job. As we all know, going to your favorite place in which another human, often times an adult, needs to serve you, things don’t always work out.

You go to Taco Bell and they forget to give you half your order. You go to Burger King and your burger is cold and uncooked. You go to Chili’s and you SWEAR you taste spit in your soup. Or in my case, you go to Dunkin’ Donuts with a smile on your face and ask for what you think is a very simple order. Medium, Iced, French Vanilla with just cream. Before I go any further, let me explain the origins and intricacies of that order structure.

First, this is the structure that I have personally created to add ease of use for the person taking the order. Size, style, flavor, and finishing. I have spent the time to actually figure out what word order and combination would help a clerk out in terms of remembering and understanding.

SIZE never seems to be an issue. Occasionally, I will get a large instead of a medium or vice versa. Whatever, I can deal with that.

Let’s take a look at STYLE. Iced or Hot. If it’s iced, you say iced. If you say Great One or just leave out iced, it denotes hot coffee since iced does not come in the Great One size. This determines which cup you use and the temperature of the drink. For the most part again, I have not had too much trouble getting the wrong TEMPERATURE. This makes sense, because we are still on only the 2nd of four ordering steps.

Now, we come to FLAVOR. This is where it starts getting very sketchy. Many times I have ordered coconut flavor and received hazelnut. Out of any flavor you can give me, hazelnut is the worst. I understand the error here. The word NUT is in both of them. I won’t drink it though. I’ve thrown many a coffee directly in the trash when this happens. But we see that the brain is beginning to fail at short term memory at this point.

Finally, the most important step of all. FINISHING. I have ordered from Dunkin’ Donuts at least once, but up to three times a day for the last three years. In the three years of compiling data, a brunt of my experiences span approximately 10 locations in my area. ALL have failed on the last step NUMEROUS times. So much so that I have had to adjust and change it often. When I first began ordering coffee the way I actually wanted to drink it, cream and two sweet n’ lows, I thought it was a very reasonable request. Nothing like when someone asks for a venti iced red eye latte with a little skim and 2 and a half sugars with cinnamon and whip cream on top at Starbucks. To me I can see where a request like that can really confuse someone. But cream and two sweet n’ lows? SIMPLE. no?

NO. In the beginning, the biggest problem was getting sugar instead of sweet n’ low. I can’t drink sugar in anything I drink. It’s too sweet. Again, I can’t count how many times I went through a drive thru and tasted my coffee, looked at the bottom and saw a pile of sugar at the bottom and thrown a brand-new-just-paid-for coffee right out my window in anger and disgust. My next move, was to pretend I was diabetic. This worked for a while. I would tell them "No sugar please, I’m diabetic". Perfect. They get to step four and a red light goes off. If I put sugar in his coffee, he might die. It worked but it wasn’t always 100%. Sometimes I would end up with Splendas or Equals and I can’t drink that shit. Not only that, but it got to be tiresome to always say that. Sometimes I would forget. I dropped that strategy, but I’ll pull it out in situations in which I feel I need it.

This brings us to current day. Now I just ask for it with cream. Just cream. I am taking part of the job and putting in some of the finishing myself. My logic for this is, Starbucks charges way more for a coffee and they encourage you to put the finishing touches in your own coffee. Dunkin’ Donuts is cheaper. So modified logic tells me, that that’s ok. But nothing is fool proof. I still end up with the occasional sugar in my shit or milk instead of cream. Blah blah blah. Sometimes I ask for it black and sometimes that fails.

I have recently walked up to a counter and given my standard order. When they get to the flavor machine, they ask me the flavor again and then ask the finishing instructions again. That’s like 5 seconds, then memory failure.

Yes, that was a long setup. But here’s the payoff. What if the person making my coffee was required to play Brain Age once a day before he started taking orders? Brain Age is brain exercise disguised in a video game on the Nintendo DS. When I "play" it, I have fun but I also enhanced my memory, at least short term. When I stopped playing it, my memory power went back to normal. Some of the exercises even hurt my head. That’s how you know it’s working.

I think his or her memory power would improve. I don’t doubt the intelligence or mental capacity of any one of the people who prepare my coffee. Sometimes any one of us at any given time are just not all there. Brain Age could help this. It’s a dual benefit situation. They end up with expanded memory capabilities and I MIGHT end up with the coffee the way I want it. Not only that, but Brain Age is fun! And you can progress in just minutes a day no less!

It leads me to other questions though. Do people that work at Dunkin’ Donuts, namely ones that prepare my drinks specifically, drink coffee themselves? I never see them drinking it. Part of the reason I drink coffee is to stimulate my brain and kickstart myself. I think the people pushing the product should also consume the product. It can have many benefits.

I guess sometimes you have to step outside the donut box and form a mashup of epic proportions and endless possibilities.