Time-saving ideas that work better in theory than in practice

"Hey! I'll just wait for my friend to finish up this gaming competition, and then I can hit him for a ride to my car, since he's parked in a garage, and I'm parked in a garage on the other side of the river!"

Please note, I am amused by this. I was perfectly aware of the time for the four hours I watched the competition, and I chose to continue to watch, because I LIKE watching gaming competitions. I could have left at any time, had I wanted to, but I wanted to stay. I'm just amused that my brain had originally come up with this plan as a way to cut down the ten-minute walk to my car.

Things I learned about bird intelligence at a panel earlier today. I mean yesterday.

Well, by the definition, "'today' increments when I sleep", it was today.

Alex is an African Gray parrot. He can apparently generalize concepts, and understand how language relates to abstractions and generalizations. When he is given tests about how well he understands these concepts, he scores an 85% success rate.

The interesting part is the 15% that are marked wrong.

"Alex, give me the red metal key."
"Want nut."
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
"Want nut. Want pasta."
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
Alex turns his back on the researcher and shits.
(mark that response wrong.)
"Alex, give me the red metal key."
Alex walks over and picks up and carries over every single object on the tray EXCEPT the red metal key and places them in front of the researcher.
(mark that response wrong)

Yeah. He didn't give the response that would count as being marked "right", but it's hard to argue that he doesn't understand what's going on . . .

He's not the only parrot in the lab, although he's the oldest and has been there the longest. He and the second-longest-tenured parrot will correct the pronounciation of English words of all the other parrots.

Alex makes up new words. He likes bananas and cherries. He was given an apple once, and apparently decided he liked it, because he asked the researchers for another "banary."

Other African grays show similar levels of intelligence. One parrot, who was typically only given orange juice in the morning, asked at dinner time for "breakfast-water."

Another African gray parrot owner was watching a documentary about Alex, with her parrot, Macguyver. Macguyver turned to her and said, "Poopy on Alex. Macguyver is a good bird."

Cockatoos are not at all as skilled at mimicing human speech as parrots are, and are probably not as intelligent. Nonetheless, there are flocks of wild cockatoos that have taken to sitting around outside cafes in Australia, waiting for there to be a good number of customers sitting around, and then mimicing various cell phone rings, just to watch all the humans go diving for their bags and digging through them. These are WILD cockatoos, mind you.

My night

Remember how I was saying that, sure, we were going to get slammed for V-Day, but at least they'd put together a dream team for handling the expected crowd?

I was half right.

We weren't hit as hard as we expected. Only 80 people came through -- mostly in a two-hour period from 7ish to 9ish.

However, the actual staff consisted of:
Monique, the manager,
Me, the bartender,
and Sassy, the waitress.

You remember how I was saying that they would really need three people on the floor, and that four would be better?

What we had was ONE.

Now, admittedly, she's REALLY good. But. . . still . . .

We made it through, though. We borrowed someone from Banquets -- obviously, we couldn't train her as a Grill Bar server in the ten minutes before the shift, but we showed her how to clear and reset the tables -- which is a HELL of a lot simpler in the Grill Bar than in Banquets -- and she those things -- clearing the tables, re-setting the table, bringing out bread, water, menus. Meant that Sas could simply focus on taking orders and delivering food.

Monique also took orders. Although, when I looked at the numbers, Monique did about $200 in sales, and Sas did about $800. Monique is an excellent manager. And probably a fine chef -- she used to work at Chez Henri as a sous chef before switching to front-of-house-work. She's got a double degree, both in hotel and restaurant management and in culinary arts. But she's only a mediocre waitress.

I learned more about some of the people who are regulars at the bar. I found out that "Bruno Marino", the guy that I was holding the GOOD bottle of wine, is "Dr. Bruno D.V. Marino", who was the director of science and research for the Biosphere2 project -- the SECOND one. Not the first one where they did crappy science and cheated and stuff -- the OTHER one, where they actually did USEFUL reasarch, in ACTUALLY controlled conditions.