Why do vegetarians want to eat their vegetables in the shape of a hamburger?

Hamburgers were invented with meat at the foundation. There have been hundreds of iterations, but the core ingredient of the hamburger is always the meat.

The hamburger wasn’t invented to stick it to vegetarians. It wasn’t intended to exclude them from cookouts. It just… well, is. A hamburger is a hamburger, just like a salad is a salad.

Fruits and vegetables come in all shapes and sizes and can be sliced or peeled or grated. But fruits and vegetables don’t come in the shape of a disc, so why do some vegetarians insist on eating them that way.

There’s no reason to have your veggies in the shape of a disk and on a bun. It’s forced. Vegetarians who eat them are essentially saying “it’s no fair you get to eat your food as a disk on a bun.”

I think it only fair that when vegetarians have parties and invite some meat-eating friends, they serve up a meat salad. Everyone else will be eating a salad, and meat-eaters should have to feel left out. So vegetarians should be courteous and make an all-meat salad to serve at the table especially for their meat-eating friends.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I won’t be satisfied until I get a bowl full of steak leafs for dinner.

I’m asking in all seriousness. Who’s career could potentially suffer more? Jason Collins is currently without a team. Is he in any danger of not playing in the league again because of this? Will his fan base turn on him? How many new fans will he pick up?

Leonardo is between movies right now. What is the risk that he could be blackballed if he came out as a conservative? How many fans would he lose? How many would he gain?

Which is more unusual in 2013? Would President Obama call Leonardo if he came out as a conservative?

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I’m confident I know the answer to this one.

If you’re looking for a good bar, just look for where all the old guys are drinking, because they’ve had a long time to figure out the best place to go.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I know wisdom when I hear it.

My Adium was set up with my Yahoo account, which was actually an SBC global account from back when I had Internet service with them over 10 years ago. I had cancelled the account when we moved from the Midwest, but I maintained the account for free because it had 10 years of email in it.

So when Adium threw me out, it asked for my account password. When I put it in, it didnt’ accept it. I tried accessing the account through my phone, and my phone was no longer giving me email because of the now incorrect password. I went back to my laptop and tried to access the account through the Yahoo login page, but that failed as well.

Obviously, something had changed my password.

The next day, I called Yahoo, and I was immediately transferred to AT&T when they realized it was a legacy AT&T account.

They answered the phone right away, and after about 20 minutes, I was able to learn that the account still existed, which was a relief. I simply needed the password reset. The man on the phone gave me a site URL to go to where I could reset my password, but it didn’t work.

Both the site and the man on the phone were asking me to verify information like my old account number, home address or old phone numbers. I gave them all of the last 15 years worth of addresses and phone numbers, but none of it was working. Since I couldn’t give him any information that was matching his records, he said he was unable to help.

I asked him if he was able to open my email account because through my phone, I was still able to read the old messages I had received prior to losing access. I told him I could tell him great detail about all of the email in the account. He kept telling me he couldn’t open the email because I couldn’t prove who I was.

My point to him wasn’t to see if he was allowed to open it. I wanted to know if he was technically able to open it. Could it be opened by anyone at AT&T. It seemed to me that someone there had to have permission. No good. They wouldn’t do it.

I continued to press on them because my theory was that someone had hacked my account and taken it over. I wanted to know what they would do in that case. If someone had gone into my account and changed all of the information, how could I possibly verify any of it. That concept was lost on the man on the phone.

He kept trying to get off the phone because, to him, this was going nowhere and I kept pressing. Somewhere in our conversation, he informed me that since I had a free account, there was no support for me, but if I was still a paying Internet subscriber, they would reset my password for me.

Then he decided we were done. But I had another idea.

I called again and decided I would subscribe and get their home Internet service so I would become a paying member again. As a paying member, they would be able and willing to reset my account.

When the woman asked for the address at which I wanted the Internet service, I gave her my current home address – only to learn they don’t provide service at this address.

So I gave her my old home address where I had the service, but she told me they don’t serve that address either. I asked her where do they serve so I could pick an address there. She told me it doesn’t work that way. They don’t know where they offer service, they can only find that out as customers give them individual addresses to serve.

Basically, if I wanted to get service to become a paying customer to get my email password reset before I would then cancel my service, I needed a valid address. I tried my parents, but that wasn’t in their service area, either.

Finally, I told the woman, “look, I’m trying to hook up Internet service so I can become a paying customer so I can get someone to reset my email password so I can use my account. As soon as I become a paying customer, I’m going to get my password reset and then cancel the service. So let’s avoid all of that and just reset my password now.”

She said it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just pick an address. Apparently, you can’t sign up for an account and pay them right away. Taking the bait, I asked that age old question that has vexed society for generations – when does a person become a paying customer?

Turns out the answer is that you are only a paying customer after a technician comes to your house and hooks up your Internet. Then you’re not only paying for service, but also for the modem and other equipment.

I asked her if that’s all refundable, and she told me most of it is. I reasserted that this seems like an awful lot of work to simply reset my password. She told me to hold and said she’d get a technician to see what they could do.

After a few minutes, a woman got on the phone and asked me what the problem was. I told her my password was suddenly changed, and I couldn’t access my account. I needed my password reset. Going on, I shared my theory that if my account was compromised, and my information changed, how could I give them any information to prove  I was who I said I was. The only thing I could do was tell her what email was in it.

She then said, “let me reset your password… that should help.”

Indeed.

She reset my password, and after 2 hours on the phone arguing and pleading with several different AT&T employees, it was fixed… simple as that.

And the lesson, as far as I could tell, was this – if you want decent customer service, keep calling until you get someone on the phone who doesn’t care about the protocols and rules and is more interested in using their common sense to fix the problem confronting them.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I take on complex and unusual customer service problems as a hobby.

The other night, I was flying home from Irvine, CA and chatting with a few people on IM from my laptop. I use Adium to chat through my Yahoo account.

I was in mid-conversation when all of a sudden I was thrown out and asked for a password. When I entered my password – the same password I had used for the past 10 years (I know, not secure) – it was rejected. So I tried to go into my Yahoo email through my phone and that didn’t work either. I went back to my laptop and tried to get in through the Yahoo mail page, and I was informed my username and password didn’t match.

For reasons I can’t explain, my password had been reset, and I couldn’t figure out through the site help how to change it. I needed to get it fixed, though, because not only was over 10 years of email sitting in that account, but it was also what I used for my IM account, and without it, I would have lost all of my IM contacts for work.

The next morning, I called Yahoo and went through their automated customer service. When I chose the reset password on my sbcglobal account, I was sent directly to AT&T customer service.

I immediately got a person, which was encouraging. But in my experience with customer service, it’s not about just getting a person, it’s about getting a person who doesn’t care what it takes to solve your problem.

The first person I spoke to listened to my problem. I told him that I had originally opened the account when I was an SBC customer. I had my Internet service with them back when I lived in the midwest. It’s been four years since I had their Internet service, but I kept the email account after I dropped the service. In that time, SBC merged with Yahoo, so I now log in through the Yahoo site.

Though I haven’t written about it, yet, I’ve had a S’well bottle now for quite a while. At least 8 months, if I’m not mistaken.

I can’t say I’ve put a lot of thought into my water vessels (which is why it took me so long to write about this), but I have to say the S’well bottle (now bottleS) I have are fantastic.

Right off the bat, what’s most remarkable about the bottle to me is that it keeps your drinks cold (or hot, as the case may be) for as long as you have them in the bottle.

It’s pretty common for me to fill up a bottle with water and leave it in my cup holder in the car. But until S’well bottle came along, it wouldn’t be more than an hour before that water was either as warm as the outside temperature or even hotter in a hot car.

With my S’well bottle, I can come back to it two days later and the water’s as cold as it was when I put it in there. This only had to happen a few times before I took note and picked up a few more.

What’s more, it’s been that way ever since I owned it. I don’t usually spend a lot of space on my blog reviewing things, so I’m going to defer to a review I read today in Brit + Co that is not only an excellent review of the S’well bottle product, but simply a well-written review, in general.

While the bottle is a bit expensive, I think you get what you pay for, and this bottle has already paid for itself in cold bottles of water I would have purchased if not for this.

And when I contacted their customer service with some questions on care and maintenance, they not only were super helpful, but they also let me know that if anything happens, they’ll stand by their product.

Also, a percent of that revenue goes directly to WaterAid, which is an excellent charity making sure people around the world can overcome their challenges finding water.

Finally, I checked out a few reviews online, and one thing I saw is people objecting that it’s made in China. My challenge to you folks who raise that issue – find me a water bottle that’s made in America. Hell, find me anything that’s made in America. The American corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. Where do you think businesses are going to gravitate to – high taxes or low? (But I digress…)

Like any mass produced product, I’m sure there are defects, but by and large, the reviews across the Internet are positive, and I’m happy to add this review to that list.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and my life-giving water is proudly kept cold by S’well bottle.

While they’re working for me, I expect them to push themselves, their peers and me to do high quality and innovative work every chance they get. My goal is for each of them to see the opportunity in front of them as a chance to build their skills, enhance their resume and move on to something even greater than the work they do for me.

In a creative environment with writers and designers, I try to be realistic about the people with whom I work. Writers and designers rarely stay in one place for too long, and the only way I’m going to get them to stay with me is to give them as many opportunities as possible to improve themselves and do new things.

But after a few cycles (years) in any job, things will tend to start repeating themselves. When that happens, I try to be realistic about the fact that they’ll start looking elsewhere and eventually leave.

So I look at it as my responsibility to prepare them for their next opportunity and ensure that they go on to something even greater than they did for me.

I’m very honest with my employees about this, and I try to make it clear that they should take advantage of the opportunity with me and only leave if they’re going on to something better. If they leave me for a lateral move or something with lesser pay, I take that as a sign that I didn’t do my job as a manager.

But if I’m doing my job right, my employees will tell me when they’re starting to look and even use me as a reference. This recently happened, and I couldn’t feel better about it.

I worked with a Senior Designer who was excellent in every way. Aside from being a talented designer and a great strategist, she is also a natural leader who brings calm, composure and professionalism to everything she does.

She told me she had an opportunity and asked me to be a reference. When I saw that the opportunity was a big step up for her, I couldn’t have been happier to oblige, and I like to think my reference call, as well as the work she did for our group, helped contribute in some way to her advancement.

When my people go on to greater things, I take it as a badge of honor. It’s a sign I did my job right and they took advantage of what was there in front of them.

I don’t look forward to my good people leaving, but I know it’s natural. Many times people fight natural evolution. I choose to embrace it. Hopefully, this makes me a solid manager.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and who knows… maybe we’ll work together some day.

I’m confident this was done because HD was emerging and television was slowly converting to letterbox ratios for all of it’s programming. Apple realized the market was going this way and wanted to capture it both on their desktop models as well as with their laptop line.

The only problem is that most computer applications and projects are not landscape, they are portrait. Word documents are best seen top to bottom. Most design projects used to be portrait in nature, and the majority still are. And when it comes to design, the Mac line of computers has long been the favorite for the designer market.

This is one of the few examples I can think of in which Apple through the functional considerations of the core, existing audience to the wind in favor of the audience they didn’t yet have but were trying to win over.

The new audience is not made up of professional designers. It’s made up of early adopting, digital driven consumers with money to spend. And, ironically, thanks to the tools that have evolved, most all of them, one way or another, are amatuer designers who are probably experiencing the same horizontal frustrations that the core of professional designers have been facing for years.

As a person who rarely uses their Mac to watch movies, I’m surprised this is the way the monitor has gone. I wonder what kind of market there would be for someone who created a vertical monitor and targeted professionals who use their computer solely for work…

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I’m living in a horizontal world.

While everyone’s concerned about people texting or talking on a cell phone while driving, I’ve never once heard anyone mention the safety issues around driving with a live animal on your lap.

I’m not disputing the dangers of texting while driving. Things can happen quickly, and if you’re looking at your phone at the wrong second, it can change your life forever.

But in Seattle, where people have more dogs than children, seeing drivers with pets in their lap is not an unusual site. (And if I had to guess, I’d say many of these people are the same ones making noise about the dangers of driving while talking on the phone.)

Anything can happen with a live animal in your lap. If something spooks them, or they get in the drivers face or even decide it’s time to go.

I’m a fan of consistency. If we’re going to make a bunch of rules for people, let’s not cherry-pick based on the biggest and noisest lobby.

Seems to me the real definition of RINO is actually this:

“A conservative without a party who’s holding on to the slim chance someone with an “R” after their name may actually represent them.”

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I’m just trying to clear things up.

I’m fairly aware of my personal strengths and weaknesses, and one of my strengths is simplifying complex problems and considering all possible solutions.

In order to identify the multitude of solutions for any given problem, you have to solicit and listen to input from others.

I have found that whenever someone tells me I’m not listening, they’re usually projecting. They can’t believe I’m not in agreement with their point of view because, in their mind, there’s no way they could be wrong. To have that perspective means you are, in fact, closed to what anyone else is saying.

“You’re not listening” = “I’m right, and you’re wrong. Why can’t you see that?”

That, in my opinion, is not an effective way to encourage someone to see your point of view, and it doesn’t lend itself to the kind of introspection necessary to consider the possibility that you may, in fact, be wrong.

- My name is Jon Friesch, and I consider every scenario and opinion I can.