10 things randomly from my life right now:

1. I’m am totally over worked right now.  With working on the end game of an important product at Microsoft and with a few side projects also going on, I am regularly doing 11-12 hour days.
2. I’m excited to go home to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving this coming weekend, coupled with a recruiting trip for my college and my grandma’s birthday.  I was back home about 5 weeks ago to celebrate my sister’s birthday, but it feels far longer than that.
3. My photography is suffering right now.  Since it’s not my main source of income, it’s the first thing to go when I’ve had to make tradeoffs.  See #1.
4. On the flip side, I’ve had 3 killer ideas for themes for next photoshoots come to me in the past month.  If I can find the time to do them, they will be really fun to shoot, and produce some wild photos.  But until I can find time, they are just wishful thinking.
5. Some people very close to me are having a tough time with a personal matters, and it pains me to see them going through such a hard time
6. I’m 99.99% sure I’m changing from Canon to Nikon.  After shooting for years with Canon, it’s going to be a huge adjustment process, but the price-to-performance ratio is vastly in favor of Nikon and the new Canon 5D Mark II didn’t introduce enough new features to make it compelling enough.
7. My shoulder is feeling much better, but I still have lingering pain after straining my rotator cuff 4 weeks ago during a game of golf.
8. My ugly dolls are very photogenic.
9. I restarted the Hundred Pushup Challenge after being forced to abandon it (see #7).  I’m starting Week 3, Day 1 today.
10. For the first time in a long, long time, I can honestly say I’m incredibly happy with everything in my personal life.  I don’t think anything is ever “perfect” in life, but this is closer than I ever dreamed it would be.

What are your 10 things?

After hearing about all the hype around Rock Band for so long, I finally got around to trying it out with some friends the other night. Here’s a pic that Shawn took of us in between sets with me on the bass guitar.

I alluded to it previously blogging about my 30th birthday, but recent events brought this to the forefront of my mind again.  I was so upset about the events that transpired on my birthday that I decided to write a review on Yelp:

I had dinner at Coupage last Saturday for my 30th birthday and was looking forward to finally eating here given all the great things I’ve heard and read about the place.  I had a reservation for 14 people.

The food was quite good and everyone enjoyed it. The restaurant was a bit on the small side and the tables were a bit close together for my liking.  I think the proximity of tables is great if you have a party of 4 or less, since the conversation will naturally be quieter. However with a party as large as ours, or actually any party greater than 8, it might get uncomfortable given how close the other tables might be.  I couldn’t help but feel that everyone in the restaurant could hear every word of every conversation.

Following the meal, we asked for the bill from our server which included an 18% gratuity.. He was an absolute dream all night and very courteous.  However, when it came to the bill, we were told they could not take more than 2 credit cards.  Given our party size, it’s unrealistic to expect everyone except 2 people to have that much cash in hand, or us to piggyback tabs on top of only 2 credit cards.  We kindly asked our server to take more cards at which point he went to talk to the owner. He then got "permission" to take up to 6 cards, which was still very hard for us to do.  We tried to be as flexible as possible, and got it down to 7 cards which in itself is an amazing feat for 14 people to do considering there was only 1 couple at the table that could join tabs.

We asked them to take the 7th card, and were given a complete hassle.  One of the members of our party asked to speak to the manager, and kindly talked to him about how we were disappointed they wouldn’t take the 7th credit card given the party size, the bill total and the obligatory 18% gratuity that was tacked onto the bill.  The owner first tried to explain that the credit card fees are too expensive for him, and when challenged on that point, the conversation degenerated to what was effectively name calling where the owner declared that he "runs the 3 top restaurants in Seattle and we should be thankful for our experience".

I always write very balanced reviews and would normally be understanding when I have a negative experience. However, in this case, I’m not at all writing about the credit card limit or their inability to take more than 2 (or 6) credit cards.  Instead, I’m reviewing the owner’s extremely poor attitude towards his customers.  The specific conversation we had indicates something more fundamentally wrong with his customer service and his perceived right to verbally abuse his customers.

Not only did this ruin our evening, but it will ensure that we will never eat at Coupage ever again nor any of his other restaurants.

After posting this review on Yelp on June 30th, I’ve received 6 messages from other Yelpers in the Seattle area (3 of which are in the Yelp Elite group) praising me for the review and iterating how bad their past experiences have been at the restaurant.

What makes me re-write this in my blog you ask?  Well today I got a message from another Yelper named “Joseph S” (who just joined Yelp this week) who is brand spanking new and berades me with this gem of a message.  I’m quoting his message word for word so forgive the poor grammar and spelling mistakes:

give me a break dude when a paryty of 14 has dinner in a restaurant it is completley rude and disrespectful to assume you can split a bill 14 ways which is what your party attempted to do!    Try going to any fine dinning restaurant anywhere in the world and ask to split a bill 14 ways or even 6!  The manager, matre d, server, kitchen staff as well as other diners will be laughing at you.  It is unfortunate that the complete lack of respect your party has for the restaurant industry fueled an umpleasent experience on your birthday……You should repremand your friends not our establisment or better yet try going to Canlis or Crush with a group of 14 people and ask to split a bill any other way than one or two cards and see what kind of response you get.

It should have been crystal clear to anyone that read my review in entirety that I didn’t write the negative review based on their inability to take more credit cards than we wanted them to.  I was writing about the verbal abuse and poor customer service.  Seems that the newly joined Joseph S didn’t read it, but also seems to imply he works at the restaurant.

What’s ironic is that not only have I been to both Crush and Canlis, but have had some of the best dining experiences there.  They not only took more than 6 credit cards on several occasions with large parties I’ve been with, but their attention to customer service (and satisfaction) is something that the owner of Coupage should learn from.

If this other Yelper really does work at Coupage, it really chaffs my butt to receive a message like this from someone that represents their restaurant. If he does, it definitely is helping to continue their tradition of poor customer service. 

I’ve asked the mysterious Joseph S whether he does indeed work at Coupage, so we’ll see where this goes from here.  In the meantime, I encourage any of you that are Yelp users to mark my review as “useful”

My 30th birthday weekend was kicked off formally with tandem sky dive in Snohomish, WA with Chaitanya and Todd.  It’s the 3rd consecutive year that I’ve done this for my birthday and, as always,  it was an unforgettable experience.  Chaitanya had been before near Mt. Ranier, but this was Todd’s first time. So not only did I get to do my annual “scare the crap out of myself by jumping out of a plane”, but I got to help Todd lose his sky diving virginity. 

Sky diving was chased with dinner at Coupage, where I had a fantastic meal with some of my closest friends.  Can anyone say ground short rib burger with seared foie gras, kimchi and truffle potato chips?  Dinner was marred by a terrible customer service experience at the restaurant, but I’ll save the venting for my Yelp review and instead think of “happy thoughts” for now.

Following Coupage, we headed over to Chez Gaudy to close the evening out with some debauchery over drinks, food and more of my friends.  Throughout the evening a ton of my friends came through and it was so great to finally be able to have all my different circles of friends mix together for the first time.  Here are some shots from the evening:

Here’s the video slide show that was put together by Craig with help of my sister which features some horrific pictures of my childhood. Eep!

Thanks to everyone for coming out Saturday and I’m looking forward to many, many more years of memories.

Over the last two days I’ve been dealing with the issue and consequences of having my mail stolen.  What  a great way to kick off my weekend

I came home really late Friday evening and discovered that 2 days worth of mail was stolen.  It was impossible to know everything that was possibly in my mailbox, but I do know for certain that it contained at least one credit card statement, a bank statement and a credit cart statement.

I was fearful of having fraud or identity theft committed against me, so I did some quick research to find out what exactly I should do in this situation.  Here’s the info I have gathered and figured it was useful to share it with others:

1. Call your bank and have a “watch” put on your account. All major banks and credit unions will have this capability and most will also have the added protection of adding a supplementary password added that must be given for any access to your account.
2. Call all your credit card companies and also put a watch on your accounts.  If you’re ultra-paranoid, you can get your credit card company to issue you a brand new account # and card which you should be able to get within 3-5 business days.
3. Contact the credit reporting agencies to put a “Fraud alert” on your credit file.  Calling each one individually is a pain in the ass, and in the process I found out that if you place a fraud alert through Transunion, they will automatically notify and process fraud alerts to Experian and Equifax also.
4. Update (6/16/2008): As an extra precaution, I’ve also added a Credit Freeze on each credit bureau. This is a higher level of security on your credit file, and basically nothing can get pulled or approved without my specific approval.

• Transunion: You need to submit a written request including your full name, SSN, address and credit card # and expiration (for the $10 fee).  Address is on the Transunion site.
• Equifax: Same as Transunion except they also want you to include a copy of a recent utility bill to prove your current address.  See info on their site for mailing address.
• Experian: Has the easiest way to request a freeze with an online application process.  Unfortunately in my case, something about my info didn’t line up with their records so I had to submit a request in writing anyways.

I also filed a police report through the non-emergency number (206-625-5011) and a separate report with the US Postal Service “Postal Inspector”.   For the latter, you have 2 choices to file a report – you can either call them on the phone at 206-442-6300, or alternatively file an incident report online at the US Postal Inspection Service website.

It was  real eye opening experience to have my mail stolen due to both the invasive nature of it, but also the uneasiness of not knowing exactly what was stolen. Eep.

The good news is that my building has security cameras that has the little f’ers on tape which the police now have.   Since mail theft is a federal crime, I hope those punks get what they deserve.