Tag: technology

One step closer to Demolition Man

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Taco Bell opens a state-of-the-art, two story Taco Bell restaurant in Minnesota that prioritizes app and mobile pickup via drive thru lanes

And just like that, we’re one step closer to entering the world of Demolition Man.  The world is already full of pussies, the police are pretty ineffective at their jobs, and although not contained to one singular Simon Phoenix, there are insane sociopaths that run rampant who never seem to be brought to justice.  It only seems fitting that the time has come for Taco Bell to execute a preemptive strike at fulfilling their destiny of surviving the franchise wars, thus making all restaurants in the world, Taco Bell.

I eat way more fast food than I care to admit.  My excuse is that it really can’t be helped, because I’m still very much in daily survival mode with my two kid girls running rampant in my life, and by the time they’re fed, bathed and in bed, it’s already getting late, I’m hangry, and I just want something fast and delicious, regardless of the health detriment fast food is known to be.  All the same, I know what I like, and I would say that I know my way around the players in the franchise wars pretty decently.

I love Bojangles, I think Chick Fil-A’s app is the gold standard, and Zaxby’s is always a good way to break up the monotony.  Freddy’s has entered the market around here, and I hear that a Whataburger has opened up near Kennesaw State University, which isn’t an unreasonable drive if I actually had the time and patience to go there.  Wendy’s and Taco Bell are also welcome options, but with more of a gambler’s mentality, because you just don’t know when one of them will light a stick of dynamite in your digestive system, as satisfyingly delicious they reliably are.  I have no qualms with McDonald’s, and for whatever reason, Burger King doesn’t seem to do to well in the Atlanta market, but I’d consider them if there were one within a reasonable distance.

The thing is, at this current juncture of my life, and well fuck, at any juncture of my life, I tend to favor convenience and ease of getting my food, and hoping it’s accurate, above all else.  I know there are many who don’t like Chick Fil-A because of the original owning family’s religious anti-gay believing, but goddamn is their app good, and their restaurants loaded with hard-working brainwashed teenagers who get shit done fast, well, and like efficient machines.  So I go there above all else, because they’re reliable to get shit fast and consistent.  Bojangles and Wendy’s are like playing craps, because there’s like a 1/3 chance that the drive-thru line will be not be shitty.

But if this two-story Taco Bell in Minnesota goes gangbusters and inspires all Taco Bells around the country to adopt, that would be a game changer in like two seconds.  As efficient as all the Chick Fil-As are, their Achilles is usually the limitations of the sizes of their lots, and there are often times more cars hogging up space there than can be handled, so even if some of them have adopted app-only lines, if cars can’t get to them, they’re not really any better.

It looks like Taco Bell Defy’s saving grace is the fact that the mobile-only lines have independent entrances, and the most intriguing things are the way that the restaurant is literally built above the pickup area, so people are basically getting their food from a teller tube.  It does sound a little outlandish, but you know it has the capability of working miracles, and this is why that a Defy store is being tested in the first place.

What I’m really getting to is the fact that if Taco Bell Defy restaurants start popping up in other places, I have no doubt in my mind that they would rise up in my rankings if they were anywhere convenient.  As much of a luddite I can be sometimes, if there’s one thing about modern technology that I do love, it’s mobile food ordering, and I very much favor those companies that adopt it in well-functioning, logical and efficient manners.

I’m really rooting for this Defy, to defy the odds of surviving in the food industry, to where this can be somewhat of a standard throughout the world.  It would definitely inspire me to go to Taco Bell more, as long as they didn’t liquify my insides with their squirrel meat too frequently.  And then it would force other competitors to start trying to compete and copy, and hopefully we can embark in a world where more fast food joints are two stories and have mobile-priority lines for us gluttons who need our shit quick and efficiently.

I sometimes think only I can find the negative in a really great deal

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So in my last bitchy dad post, I mentioned that some really great news came my way, that I couldn’t really feel happy about because I was too busy being a bitchy dad at that moment in my life.  But to any of my zero readers who read my shit with regularity might’ve seen a post a little while back that mentioned that I was in the hunt for a new job.

Well, I succeeded.  An offer came my way, that I’m 99% certain that I’m going to accept, because it’s a higher title than where I’m at now, a fairly substantial raise from what I make, and if/when the day comes when we have to occasionally go into the office, it’s actually a closer drive than my current job, and I wouldn’t have to get on a single highway.

All things considered, it’s a win in every aspect.

So why am I writing about it as if there was some sort of questionable catch?

The thing is, there really are none.  At least from most normal standards.  The only reason I’m not completely gung-ho about the whole opportunity is that in spite of all the wins, this wasn’t my first pick in my job search.

Continue reading “I sometimes think only I can find the negative in a really great deal” →

Get with the times or get owned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR – smarmy New Yorker declares people who order their food online in advance are ruining lunch for everyone else

I know the topic of Chick fil-A is a contentious one for a lot of people.  Yes, they are/were run by some weird religious shitheads who are/were homophobic and probably also racist, and have been caught numerous times having donated money to some other hate-mongering shitheads and legitimately organized hate groups.

But their food is still delicious, there are two Chick fil-A’s within extremely convenient distance from my house, and I’ve got two kids that suck up all of my time and energy to where I have literally no time at all for myself, much less time to eat, and when I’m at a crossroads of Chick fil-A or starve to death, the chicken of bigots still wins out.  Sorry not sorry, is what the kids say these days, I hear.

Furthermore, Chick fil-A’s app is pretty much the greatest app on the face of the internet.  It’s smooth, has a clean and tidy interface, it’s smooth, executes clearly and without any bugginess or lagging, and it’s fucking smooth.  In less than 20 seconds, I can place an order and have it sent to one of the nearby CFA’s, and all I have to do is drive up and pick it up, and I barely have to interact with any of the eerily cheery teenagers and don’t have to do any exchanging of currency in person.

Not going to lie either, it gives me a semi whenever I show up to the restaurant, and pick the correct drive-thru lane, where I can check in and bypass multiple pleebs in the other lane, stumped by some luddite who doesn’t know what they want, needs a minute, and is paying in cash in person (and usually isn’t wearing a mask and is probably white but that’s besides the point here).

The point is, ordering food in advance and rolling in and picking it up is the true way of the future, and those who haven’t adopted it, or are not willing to adopt it, are fucking living in the past, and deserve to get owned for not getting with the times.

This smarmy Slate author and all the other pleebs he was in line with, deserved the loss of their lunch hours, for not having the wherewithal to be decisive and be prepared, because the pandemic only accelerated the timelines in which online ordering in advance was to become the more efficient and practical way to order food.

Chick fil-A has an outstanding app, but I’m definitely no stranger to using third-party apps or the restaurants’ sites themselves to put in my orders in advance.  Like Uber Eats or BeyondMenu, most of these sites will have no additional fees attached for pick ups, because you still have to get out of the house, drive somewhere and make a physical pickup, but most of the time, it’s still more efficient than waiting for someone to deliver, and usually cheaper too.

But the point is, those who are decisive and know what they want, deserve to be rewarded with the ability to get in and get out faster than those who want to rely on spontaneity or are indecisive on what they want to eat.  And if pleebs don’t want to get stuck in lines behind invisible customers, they need to both get with the times and learn to be more decisive in figuring out what they want to eat before they even put their shoes on and walk out the door.

Otherwise, I will continue to relish in skipping lines everywhere I go, to grab my pre-ordered, pre-paid shit, and be out the door while they’re stuck waiting, and getting owned. 

Let’s talk about Love Death + Robots S2

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was excited when I saw that Love Death + Robots season 2 had a formal drop date.  I enjoyed the first season tremendously, even if there was a lot of controversy around the perceived subject matter of two specific episodes, and regardless of what a bunch of SJWs on the internet felt, I still loved the first season, as it was an enjoyable, fast-paced anthology of short and sweet stories that paraded a myriad of animation styles, which touched all spectrums of the heart and mind, and was over in the blink of an eye because every episode ranged between 7-15 minutes.  So when I saw that more LD+R was on the way, I was quite pleased, and made sure to earmark some of my limited daily time to indulge.

At just eight episodes, S2 was over in the blink of an eye as well, if not shorter, and I watched all eight episodes in two short sittings, although I could easily have done so in just one if I timed it correctly.

I will say, I think that the polarizing reception of the first season probably had some influence on the second, or maybe it’s because it was a shorter season, but I felt like S2 didn’t have quite the bite that the first season did.  I’m not saying I require gratuitous violence or violence towards women specifically, but I felt that there was a little bit of edge lacking in this second season of the show.  The subjects of the episodes were more abstract and broad, and in most cases, did not seem to contain all three of the requisite love, death or robots, not that such was ever an established rule to begin with, but seemed to be better adhered to in the first anthology.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t like S2 at all, but after I had finished all eight episodes, there wasn’t one in particular that I was enamored with and could gush to anyone who wanted to talk about LD+R that it was my favorite.  But for all intents and purposes, this is how I’d rank the episodes (in parenthesis, according to Netflix’s order)

  1. Pop Squad (#3)
  2. The Tall Grass (#5)
  3. All Through the House (#6)
  4. The Drowned Giant (#8)
  5. Automated Customer Service (#1)
  6. Ice (#2)
  7. Snow in the Desert (#4)
  8. Life Hutch (#7)

Really though, it would be my top three, and then the rest were just kind of there, interchangeable in rank depending on the mood I were in, which is to say that they were all kind of okay, and not particularly close to standing out above the others.

I would however, like to talk about Pop Squad; the reason I would say it was the best episode of the season was not necessarily because I liked it the most.  In fact, the theme of the episode is completely horrific and I kind of hate it, but it was one of the episodes of the season that invoked all three love, death and robots, and frankly evoked the most emotional response out of me, which whether I liked it or not, makes it successful all the same. 

**Spoilers ahead, that being said**

Continue reading “Let’s talk about Love Death + Robots S2” →

This is the shit that makes me lose hope in humanity

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For reasons I have no idea, one of the more questionable targeted ads that I saw while doomscrolling through theFacebook was this video ad for what was basically a personal robotic piece of luggage.  Like, it showed some hipster douche walking through what was probably Central Park in New York because why would something like this not be demoed in New York, and he was being closely followed by this robotic caddy. 

No context was given to what it actually did aside from follow its master like a pathetic slave, but when curiosity got the better of me and I clicked the comments, aside from the bitter old man vitriol being exhibited by all sorts of commenters, it appeared to be something of a personal robot backpack, except not having to be worn on your back.  It just follows you like a puppy, and can hold your shit for you, without having to be affixed to your actual person.

Oh and one of these is supposedly like $3,200.

For basically a robotic backpack or briefcase.

I’m quite curious to know the impetus for inventing something like this.  Like, someone out there was so over having to drag a piece of luggage, or wear a backpack or hold a briefcase, that they just had to invent, what’s basically like a Home Depot bucket with some motion sensor and wheels that can be programmed to follow you around.

Lord only knows just how much something like this probably cost to develop, considering how over-designed it is not to mention the whole, probably didn’t need to exist in the first place thing.  I’d guess probably something like 200-250 thousand dollars went into making these robot caddies, meanwhile there’s a rash of fast food restaurant walkouts because workers can’t even make remotely close to a livable wage.

Needless to say, I hate the ever-living shit out of this invention, and it makes me cringe that something like this even made it this far into production, advertisement and inevitable integration into real modern society.  It’s an epitome of something that doesn’t need to exist, but does, and its development sucked up all sorts of resources and manpower that so should have been better spent doing something more productive, or useful.

I get annoyed enough at airports when people lugging their carry-ons are oblivious to how much space they make them consume, when space is already at a premium when they get crowded, it’ll be worse when these fucking R2-D2s are crawling behind the assholes wealthy enough to flaunt these, and the conflicts they’ll start when other people inevitably run into them or fuck with them.

Like most internet of things frivolous things, I hope these robots are rife with security flaws and vulnerabilities, and the people who actually think these are a good idea and covet and purchase them, are victimized by savvy hackers who hijack their motorized caddies, and simply steer them away from their owners, who end up losing them without even noticing, because they’re so self-absorbed in their own arrogant heads that they don’t notice when their little robot slaves just veer off in a different direction into the hands of some hacker.

That shit would make it worth it to me for these things to exist then.  Otherwise, fuck these things, and it’ll be really hard to resist the urge to not “accidentally” bump into them with some force if I ever were to come across one.

Can’t say I really blame them

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: the railroad system in Dalian, China went down because it supposedly was running on Flash, which was formally shut down in December of 2020

Now this might seem like a real easy layup to clown on the Chinese, like my Korean self occasionally likes to do, but frankly, I’m more on the frame of mind that understands the situation and can very easily relate in the sense that something similar, but not nearly as detrimental kind of happened at my place of employment.

Despite the fact that I work for a Fortune 50 company, the clock punch platform that we use still runs on Flash.  And in spite of the common knowledge that Flash was going kaput at the end of 2020, you’d think something would be done about the platform, so that the legions of hourly associates that work for the company wouldn’t be boned when inevitably Flash stops working, and nobody can access the system to punch in, punch out or any other time-related administrative functions.

December passes, and there’s no real news, and when January rolls around, I start getting emails, my peers within the company who also have reports are getting messages, and there’s a lot of people wondering why they can’t log in and punch in to work.  Naturally, there was nothing done to prepare for the long-reminded demise of Flash, and a scramble ensued, and basically some hackneyed band-aid is in place to hold shit together in the interim.

So I can understand how even an essential service like railroads, can fall victim to negligence of the end of Flash, because my multi-billion dollar company that I work for did the same thing, and they typically pay obscene amounts of money for people to be smart to prevent such things from happening.

I like to think of this really as a case of reminding too early, as bullshit as it seems.  Adobe did nothing wrong at all, they can’t be pinned for any of it, because they really have let the entire world and all industries know that Flash had a timeline, but because it happened so far in advance, nobody really paid any attention to it.  It’s like there really is such a thing as too advance notice.

But the best part about the whole story in Dalian was, how casual the article was about how the problem was fixed by installing a pirated version of Flash.  Because of course in the land of counterfeit everything, are they so cavalier about using bootleg software to solve their problems because of course they are.  But honestly, it’s probably no better or worse than the solve my company utilized to mitigate the need for Flash, but it’s just ironically sad and funny at once, all the same.

Have ad blockers become obsolete?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ever since I got my brog back up, I’ve occasionally struggled to find a good groove in which to get back to writing.  Even being down for four years hasn’t really changed anything in that regard, in spite of how gung-ho and excited I was to get it back up, and thought that I could bounce back quicker than hoped.

Honestly though, it’s not so much the lack of want or desire to write, it’s just that I’ve had difficulty finding things that I want to write about.  Considering my life is basically like 85% thinking about baby, I kind of rely on the internet to feed me news, articles and stories to hopefully inspire me to write words, instead of me having to search for them currently.

But a large part of my difficulties these days is that all of the sites I used to go to, to look up local and national news, stories and potential inspiration, all of them have become neigh unusable for people like me who don’t want to be inundated with ads, because either sites all have anti-ad block blocks on them, or I have to white list them and I’m drowning in an ocean of ads that turns me off faster than seeing pictures of psoriasis on Google images and I leave disgusted.

I guess this is one of those points in my life where I realize how much of a parent I am because I don’t want to dig to find out or look for solutions, but basically I’m a Chrome user, and having Ad Block Plus on either makes the browser mostly unusable unless I whitelist all sites to which then the aforementioned drowning in ads becomes the norm.  I’ve given cursory Google searches to why this is the case but finding no real tangible proof of it, but all I know is that in the end it just discourages me from seeking news from once-reliable sites to seek out inspiration to write about, and it’s definitely contributing towards the struggles to keep on writing.

It’s frustrating because this is one of those situations where a little bit of give and take on either side might fix everything, but advertising has gotten so out of hand these days, which is what necessitated ad blocking to begin with, but with advertisers getting into bed presumably with the sites that shill them, they’re making it less possible for people to browse them without the luxury of blocking.  Maybe if every banner wasn’t animated, needed sound or autoplaying video, they wouldn’t be so obnoxious to want to block, but here we are.

Anyway, this is all mostly one big excuse to why I’m struggling to write more regularly, on top of the usual explanation that my kid comes first.  So I’ll leave it with this unnerving photo I saw on the AJC of some Asian women wearing MAGA caps and shirts that appear to state Asian Pacific Americans for the Baked Potato, and all it really does is make me wince, cringe, and shake my head at how disgusting such a thought is, and how I really can’t comprehend how any Asian minorities, much less those of the female gender, can support a guy who fucking hates their very existence.

What a perplexing and obnoxious ‘Murica we live in today.