Troy Forster

Musings on technology, environment and adventure

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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

Lakai Fully Flared Intro

It's just an intro to a skateboard video but wow!  It's beautiful and a great choice of accompanying musical score.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soWwa_Xwy7U&rel=1]


I would love to see a similar treatment for a climbing or mountain biking video :)

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Posted: Jan 29 2008, 21:30 by tforster | Comments (0) RSS comment feed |
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Filed under: adventure

Organic Olives and Olive Oil (Danforth & Jones)

I was walking home along the Danforth this afternoon and spotted a tiny little shop on the East side of Jones just south of Danforth.  The sign was one of those printed vinyl banners with grommets and rope, tied over whatever previous sign was still in place.  The banner simply said "Olives and Olive Oil".  It sounded intriguing and since I was in no hurry I detoured and went inside.

It's a smallish retail store with shelves of olive oil in large cans and a counter top with 5 or 6 stainless steel containers of various black olives.  The proprietor is Turkish and his family still runs a farm in the old country that they've owned for many generations.  He directly imports the olives and wholesales them to various locations around town.  However, most retail outlets find his organic olives too pricey after they apply their markup so he's selling those from this little store.

I tasted a few of them and they were fantastic.  I also tried some of his olive oil and it was out of this world.  Apparently it takes about 4-5 kilos of olives to make one litre of olive oil.  Needless to say, the oil isn't cheap.  About $16 for a litre.  But after you taste it you can easily justify the cost.

He has only been open for five weeks so I urge any of you that live in the area to support his shop.  The address is 585 A Jones Avenue and the phone number is (416) 833-3410.

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Posted: Jan 21 2008, 00:13 by tforster | Comments (2) RSS comment feed |
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Filed under: food

eee

links from eee forum

other links

tried old fashioned using freedos (bootmanager issue?)

got hold of cd rom worked so easily except no post boot cd rom support

900mb free time to make tiny xp

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Posted: Jan 17 2008, 01:20 by tforster | Comments (0) RSS comment feed |
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2-4-1 Pizza Woes

pizza I have been experiencing an ongoing customer service battle with the 2-4-1 Pizza chain in Toronto that has gone from inconvenient to amusing to frustrating to incredulous and back to amusing again.

I've always liked their product.  As chain pizza goes it is consistently fresh and cooked exactly how I like it (thin crust and well done).  Above all it is tasty which is more than I can say for that cardboard crap that Pizza Pizza pedals.  Ordering delivery was always an easy experience because they had my previous order online.  I could ask them to either re-enter that or tailor a new order to my pleasing.

However, that all changed about a year ago when I was at my local pub with some friends and we decided to order a pizza.  McCarthy's is an awesome place and they don't mind if your order food in but be sure to offer a slice to whomever is behind the bar.  As always I provided my mobile number to the 2-4-1 order representative and told her that the address was different than what was on file since I was not at home.  She noted the one-time delivery address, hung up, and a delicious pizza arrived 40 minutes later.

Well, ever since then every time I call 2-4-1 I give them my phone number and verify my home address and the first question is: "Have you moved recently?"

I've probably ordered 20+ pizzas over the past year and I go through the same thing every time.  I explain to the person on the other end of the line that the address on file is incorrect.  When they offer to change it for me I mention that every order taker I've spoken to so far has asked the same thing and entered the new information.  Yet the next time I place an order the change does not appear on screen.

Once I was put through to a customer service representative.  I explained the situation to her, gave her my phone number and guess what?  The correct address came up.  But the very next pizza order I placed with them had the incorrect pub address again.

Since I am in Information Technology I find this an intriguing conundrum.  I don't doubt for an instant that each person has updated my record.  But for some reason it's not persisting in their system.  I have asked several times for a phone number or email address so that I can contact their I.T. department directly to discuss this but they are not willing to divulge that information.

For now I will continue to order from 2-4-1 because the product outweighs the inconvenience.  I just wonder how many other people are experiencing the same bizarre situation.

For what its worth one of my favourite orders consists of two pizzas with one having sun dried tomatoes, hot peppers and pineapple and the other having green olives, feta cheese and sliced tomatoes.  Both thin crust and well done.  MMmmmm.

2008/01/18: update

Tonight I ordered my usual from 2-4-1 Pizza and as is the custom now I went through the convoluted process of describing to the order taker why the address she had on file was not the correct one.  In typical fashion she said she would update my record so that I wouldn't have to deal with this hassle again and I of course told her that was a waste of her time.

After she had finished taking my delivery address and order she said she'd entered the new info in the database anyway so it would be fine for next time.  So I asked her if she would indulge me for a minute or two and log out and back into her system.  Then enter my number as if she was taking a new order from me.  She said sure and I heard the tapping of keys for a few seconds followed by

oh, Oh, OH My, well that is strange now isn't it?

So at least I feel better now knowing that they have seen first hand what I"ve been complaining about all this time.  She said she would certainly escalate the matter with her helpdesk.  So stay tuned for the next update...

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Posted: Jan 11 2008, 21:06 by tforster | Comments (0) RSS comment feed |
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Filed under: life