Do you ever get annoyed with those coasters or napkins your sever or bar tender places underneath your pint glass that just end up sticking to the bottom of your glass once your glass starts to perspire?  Put some table salt on the coaster or napkin before you set your glass down on it.  Apparently that breaks the surface area and keeps the coaster or napkin from sticking.

AT HOTEL CHECK-IN:
As a former bellhop during the college years, I’ve got some serious requirements for you to get my coin at check-in and check-out.

1.) You MUST open me lady’s door first, then mine.  This might even be a deal breaker for you.
2.) You MUST greet me in some way and welcome me to where ever I am.
3.) You MUST ask if I’m checking in and whether I’ll be requiring valet.
5.) DO NOT assume I want valet and have someone staged and ready to drive my car off.
6.) DO NOT assume I want help with my luggage and start grabbing at my gear.  Ask if I need help.
7.) You MUST tell me the price of valet.
8.) Once you have my luggage unloaded onto a cart, you lead me to the front desk and wait by my gear.
9.) You MUST tell me all about the joint I’m staying at and recommend stuff even if I am obviously tuning you out as you lead me to the room.
10.) You have to open the door for me.  That’s what that master key in your pocket is for.
11.) You have to unload my gear from the cart onto the luggage stand and place anything else on the bed and hang up anything I have on a hanger.
12.) Better get this one right, son.  Don’t ask if I want ice, just go and get it.  This gives me time to get my tip out and it not be weird.  When you return, don’t you dare stand their with hands out; that’s the movies.  You ask if there is anything else you can help me with.  I’ll say no and hand you some bills.

Depending on the bellhop’s performance within the above, you’ll get anywhere from $2-$10.  If you acted like I did as a bellhop and did all of the above, you’ll get even more, because I know you’ll remember me when I need my wheels and it’ll keep you from taking my ride for a spin around the property (yes, we did this), keep you from forgetting to put my seat back in the original setting (or not moving it at all), and keep you from f’n with my radio.  I also know you’ll go out of your way to know when I’m checking out and fight everyone at the stand to get to my room first.

AT HOTEL CHECK-OUT:

By this time, I just want to leave.  No talky.  Just get to my room with a cart, load my junk, arrange for my car, pack things right, and open me lady’s door, and you’ll get the fiver or a 10-spot if my stay was memorable.

* Don’t think I’m a hotel snob.  I RARELY stay at upscale joints.  But when I do, I expect some service.  Truthfully, I like to handle things myself.  But I do like helping out the brotherhood of bellhops when it’s earned.

AT A BAR:

I admit it.  I have a hard time tipping someone to open a single bottle of beer or pour a single glass of wine for me at a bar.  I’d do it myself if you’d let me back there.  I tip only if a mixed drink is involved, since you get a little personal touch and it takes some level of skill and knowledge.  It’s different if I have a tab open but the onesies-twosies are hard to justify a meaningful tip.

AT A RESTAURANT:

Nothing but the standard here.  Do us right and you get the 15-20%.

VALET AT A RESTAURANT:

If I can spit on my car after you valeted it, you get nothing.  It’s a scam a lot of “upscale” ATL restaurants like to employ.  This is when I cash in on the “complimentary” part of the “complimentary valet.”  I know what it means to valet and it ain’t driving someone’s car 10 feet away.  I feel like the biggest toolbag standing there after coming out of the restaurant watching the valet get in my car 10 feet away.  Just give me my keys and I’ll do it.  If I can see my car, forget it.  If you have to park my car far away because of no space at the restaurant and it IS actually a convenience to roll up and go directly in, then you get the standard tip:  $2 to park; $2 to retrieve.  And I get it.  Valet parking is sometimes just used for controlling that only restaurant patrons get to park.  How about just having some muscles from Brussels make sure that anyone who parks gets out and goes into the restaurant; otherwise threaten with a tow.

1.) DON’T send the “You’re welcome.” email.  It should have ended with the “Thanks.” email.

2.) DON’T put a message in your meeting Acceptance response.  Those get immediately deleted 99.999% of the time.  Messages in the Declines are acceptable - you owe an explanation

3.) DON’T hijack the email subject and include off-subject content once the original trail has ended.  Create a new thread.

4.) DO zip up attachments larger than 1MB.  Some of us have Draconian email policies that bring the hammer at the 10MB inbox size mark.

5.) DON’T put your email address in your email signature.  Wait for it, wait for it…ding, ding, ding, ding!

6.) DON’T put a question mark on sentences that aren’t questions, e.g. “I wanted to follow up with you on the project?”

7.) DON’T reply to all to tell everyone to stop replying to all.

8.) DON’T put ASCII art in your signature.

9.) DO have some sense about carbon copying.

10.) DO give your emails a good bit of structure.

I fell short of a top ten, so I linked over to a buddy of mine’s site for 9.) and 10.)

Anyone else have some annoyances to share?

My battle with “the junk” started in my first two years at college where I averaged a good six regular Cokes a day.  They are no doubt addicting and too easily available. There are only a few people in this world that find it easy to resist that sugary, carbonated tickle you feel as the drink meanders down your throat; I am not one of them.  So between the daily six pack, an extraordinarily irregular eating schedule (I’m talking 2am Subway dinners here, folks), and a busy work and study schedule, those freshman 15 had easily forged a path to my waist.  It wasn’t until I added in regular exercise to my daily routine did I actually see the fatness burn away.

Once I got out into the real world, I was forced into a steady, regular eating schedule.  So that issue was taken care of, but my Coca-Cola cravings never went away.  Stace introduced me to the joys of QuickTrip fountain diet Cokes, which I’ve “been on” for the past 5 years.  There are obvious benefits of cutting out the sugary, leaded “pops,” but eliminating diet drinks also has positive effects as well.  Some studies say (sorry I don’t have a reference) that certain chemicals in diet drinks actually keep your body from properly processing fat.

So my final battle was with diet Cokes.  I needed a transition plan.  It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve now been going for over three months without imbibing the sweet, carbonated nectar.  Like I said, it wasn’t exactly easy in the beginning and I knew I had to find something to help bridge the transition.  Here’s my secret recipe for coming off the junk:

1.) Don’t think you can give up the caffeine so quickly.  Save it as the last thing to ween yourself from.
2.) Do switch to diet Coke or some other diet drink as a transition.
3.) Then switch to lightly sweetened ice tea and drink flavored or unflavored carbonated water (club soda, sparkling water, etc.).  This way you keep the caffeine and carbonation.
4.) Then switch to unsweetened ice tea and flavored or unflavored carbonated water.
5.) Then if you truly want to do it all in, switch to decaf tea and normal water.

So where did I end up?

Well, I recently got my teeth whitened (thanks, Grace!) so I’ve given up tea all together (at least for now) and am downing a good bit of tonic, club soda, and sparkling water these days.  You can get a 2 liter bottle of sparkling water for 75¢, so there are cost savings involved in cutting out the junk, too.

Ultimately, I’ve determined I can give up the sugar and caffeine, but I don’t think I will ever give up the carbonation.  I need the burn.

Unfortunately, my Cheerwine discovery couldn’t have come at a more inauspicious time.

I had read a little while back somewhere that Cheerwine would finally be coming to the Atlanta area and ladies and gentlemen, I can confirm today that my childhood favorite carbonated drink is now available in the metro ATL!  If you’ve never had one, it’s like cherry Coke, but not.  It’s simply better.  It’s not widely distributed, which only adds to its mystique.  It’s like when Coors wasn’t available east of the Mississippi.  Was Coors really that great, or was it really because it was so hard to get in a specific geographic area?  Don’t know.  I just know I love me some Cheerwine.

1.) I don’t have a static IP address with my ISP, so whenever my “sticky” IP address‘ lease expires for some reason, the site is unavailable until I notice it and update my godaddy dns settings with my newly assigned IP address.

2.) The occasional late night temporary power outage in the neighborhood cuts the server off and the site is unavailable until one of my 1.5 million readers informs me of their frustration and I power it back on.

You would actually be surprised how often 1.) or 2.) occurs.  I had looked into fixing 1.) a while back but just got lazy and forgot.  It wasn’t until my router had been requiring reboots every hour recently that I decided to get a new router and finally apply the fix that allows the site to have a “sticky” IP but act like it has a static address.  Thanks to Veader for reminding me of the easy solution.

It’s called “dynamic DNS” or DDNS.  I won’t go into the details here (that’s why wikipedia exists for you, my friends), but suffice it to say that if you want to host a site behind your home router and you didn’t purchase or otherwise procure a static IP for your router, you can use a (often free) DDNS service to make the dynamically assigned IP address issued by your ISP for your router to act like a static IP address.

Check out DynDNS.com for a free solution to your “sticky” problems.

I never ended up hearing what the winning suggestion was and to this day, every time I go to the grocery store and go to check out, I think about what the name is for those things.  It bothers me every time.

So, I’m officially reopening the competition here at the site, in hopes that I (and I assure you others worldwide) can one day keep their sanity at checkout counters.  Submit your best ideas and the winner receives Old Willard’s admiration.

Do you know of anything else in the world that needs a name?  Let Old Willard know.

Luckily, I discovered earlier last year a little-known trick a lot of I-285E daily commuters employ:  drive just one more exit East to Ashford Dunwoody and turn back around onto I-285W and get on 400N that way.

I just thought I’d share this in the hope that it may help lower someone’s blood pressure level during their drive home.  I like to use the drive home as a way to decompress from the workday, but the unpredictability of Atlanta traffic sometimes only compounds the stress.

Plus, being able to drive by hundreds of cars and yell “suckaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas” really makes me feel good.

4.) Successfully emptying the clothes dryer without dropping an article of clothing on your way to the couch to fold.

3.) Fitting that last piece of dinnerware into an already record-breaking, overloaded dishwasher and everything still coming out clean.

2.) Switching out one battery in another remote to make the main tv remote controller last another year.

(drum roll)

1.) The toilet not clogging up when everything indicates otherwise.