ModifiedLogic

Last weekend I was fifth in line at one of my local Apple stores for a 16gb black iPhone. I was knocked out of line because I had a discount on my AT&T account and Apple basically said, if you have a discount on your account, their system throws up an error, so it’s a no go. I was told the change would take a minimum of 24 hours to even take effect, so I just watched my friend get his shiny new toy hoping that this was a sign to hold on to my silver iPhone.

Later that day, I called AT&T to remove my discount in anticipation of getting a new phone in the near future. I called a different local Apple store and asked them if they had 16gb black phones in stock and they did. When I got there, the lady at the store told me they only had white ones left so I just went for it.

After a few days of usage, I was very disappointed with the battery performance. I couldn’t believe that it was THAT bad or as bad as some on the internets were saying it was. It got so bad I started to do tests. One thing that was truly wrong was, when plugging in the phone at 10% charge in red, the phone would charge to 100% within an hour. But I was getting mixed comments from Twitterers and friends. Some say 2 hours of usage between charges was normal. Other friends were getting between 4 and 6 hours of usage with 40-50% battery left. The most I was getting was 2 hours of usage with 10% left. I knew that couldn’t be right.

Mix this with the fact that the white ones were starting to crack, I really thought it was time to get a replacement. I was able to do a retail swap for a black 16gb iPhone and the results were staggering. My usage went way up to about 6 hours of usage with 50% battery left. With this in mind it’s easy to say that the white one I was using had something wrong with it. And to the people who told me that they thought 2 hours of usage was normal should really take a look at their phone as well. When a product like this comes out to less than stellar battery reviews, it can be hard to tell if your battery is actually performing properly. I wonder how many people, like me, actually have a defective battery and think it’s normal.

I’ve had the worst luck with iPhones in general. Last generation, I had gone through two different replacements because my iPhone had the washed out black issue. I’ve actually had bad luck with Apple hardware altogether. My first Macbook Pro had a defective ambient light sensor. My current Macbook Pro had a whacked out keyboard which I just got replaced. Now, I am reading that all of the nvidia graphics cards in Penryns (mine) are defective. It never ends with me and this “luck”.

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Apple, hardware, iPhone, Macbookpro

Grand Theft Auto 4 crept up on me. I knew it was there, but I wasn’t going to get it day one. I was really in no hurry. I figured it was going to be just another GTA game. (That still might be the case)

Over this past weekend, I began reading the reviews, namely ones from IGN and 1UP. Then, I watched the GameTrailers video review. Then I started reading other reviews via metacritic. By this point, I decided that I now needed the game. I went from willing to get it in a week or two to I need to pre-order it and get it, maybe even at midnight madness.

When I got into work Monday morning, Gamestop had a big banner on their site for GTA4. It said. "Order GTA4 by 2pm today with overnight shipping, and we guarantee you will have the game tomorrow." I thought, wow, I waited until the very last day to decide to pre-order this game and it was still available through a guarantee. How "Lucky" I swiftly ordered the game.

A little back story on this is needed. I’ve pre-ordered some of the last major game releases from Gamestop. Mass Effect being the most recent and most major. Something always seems to happen whether it be showing up a day late or some other error. Regardless, I seem to keep going back to the fire.

I waited until about 9pm last night before I called Gamestop to ask why my order was still "In Process". The customer service rep on the other end said "the address you have listed isn’t the address your bank or institutional has on file". My answer was "cancel the order". I have had my cc on file with Gamestop since it was issued. Nothing has changed. But whatever happened, I knew the game wasn’t going to ship. I really believe they pulled some kind of bait and switch on the people like me who ordered based on the banner on their front page Monday morning. Either that, or they realized that they didn’t have the resources to fulfill all of the day one orders in time.

So today, I will make my way to a few local retailers to see if I can score a copy of GTA4. With the internet as my witness, I shall never ever ever pre-order a game from Gamestop again.

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.

Tomorrow I will be attending the NY Comic Con. It will be the first time I’ve attended a major comic convention. In true Vincenzo Luck fashion, it just so happens the pope will be within two miles of the Javits center at St. Patrick’s Cathedral over on 5th Ave. So many nightmare scenarios are running through my head.

I don’t want to disrespect the pope or anything. Hell, maybe on a different day I might even want to meet the pope. I don’t know that I would CRY though.

Here’s to hoping that everything goes as smooth as it possibly could. NYC is always crowded as it is and so is the train, but tomorrow is probably going to be off the charts. I’ll most likely just drink a lot to compensate, possibly over at this place with iFanboy and the8thsign.

For anyone not brave enough to wade through the people storm the next few days, there is always this semi-live webcam from the con floor thanks to CBR.