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DePonzi and Associates
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1656
We get lots of business people. The Big Wheels in the city, mostly oil and gas, some technology and support services. People with big expensive cars and even bigger expense accounts. Most of them are regulars, we know them by name or to see them.
And then there are the others, the not so regular, shady business people looking to make a great impression. Reservation under "DePonzi & Associates", they meet with potential investors and hush their voices when the service staff approaches. Still you can overhear fragments before the tone drops - quiet voices promising great fortunes: "Millions of ounces of gold....still underground...limited investment opportunity...", huge returns promised on relatively small capital investments, and their eager guests, starry eyed in anticipation of the great sums they'll make...
It's a classic con, the fine restaurant a front for dodgy dealings, and you wish you could warn them but it's not your job and so you just smile and take their order.
Bad Manners
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1740
He comes in at 1:00 PM. We close, officially, at 2:00, the kitchen's often gone by 1:15 or 1:30.
He's waiting for his date. He doesn't want to sit in the dining room with the rest of the customers, he wants to sit instead in the closed dining room. And once there he gets on his cell phone and begins talking to his date. "She's on her way" he tells me.
He's a new regular, I don't recognize him since I left but one of the other staff members lets me know who he is.
He won't get off his cell phone, but eventually, the third or fourth time I approach the table he tells me that we have a bottle of wine for him in the cooler, the owner knows what it is.
I find it, it's a cheap Orvietto.
We charge him a small corkage, $20.00, it makes it by far the cheapest wine on our menu, or not on our menu as luck would have it.
He continues to talk to his guest on the phone, 1:30, 1:45 and she's still not here. The Owner, the kitchen is open awaiting their order. And the whole time he's on his cell phone.
At 1:55 she arrives and the kitchen gets the order. The last table has left the restaurant, from the other, the "open" side, at about 1:30.
He's out of wine now and gives the waitress $22.00 to run to the liquor store and buy him another bottle of this wine, this $11.00 bottle of Orvietto, and reminds her that the corkage is only $20.00.
They strew their papers and business documents all over the table and stay in the restaurant with his guest until 5:00 PM when we reopen, then decide it's time to leave.
Their waitress, she tells me that he's a new regular of sorts, started coming before Christmas. The owner doesn't know what to think, wants to tell him to come in earlier so he doesn't have to keep the kitchen, keep everyone here all day, I want to tell him it's futile, this customer, he's not unaware that we're closed, he's just possessed of incredibly bad manners.
Genetic Algorithm Car Evolution Using Box2D Physics (v2.2)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2476
This is quite interesting. An algorithm that "evolves" to discover the best "car" (2D graphic representation) for the terrain that it's driving upon.
What is interesting about this is less the program than the idea that we can somehow create software that evolves with the tastes of the times and the user. Solutions that anticipate problems and "evolve" to overcome them. Programs that can evolve strategies to solve problems in mathematics and physics, like the Big Bang Theory or String Theory, or how to calculate prime numbers...
Link: http://www.boxcar2d.com/
Placebos
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1907
And a video that should raise a few questions about the mind-body connection. Don't worry, it's short.
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