Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

I tend to get really great service from shops, sometimes even discounts that aren't generally available. Why? Because I use a few simple tricks for being a great customer.

1. If there's a menu, look at it and use words that exist on that menu.
2. If I've been there before, present all the information needed to produce the correct outcome in the order they want that information at a pace that they can process it.
3. Please, thank you, don't invite them to come to my place and get naked.

I shouldn't need to say this, but apparently I need to say this: Yelling at your barista will not make the postal service deliver first class mail any faster. When you put a stamp on an envelope and drop it in a mailbox, you don't get a tracking number that can be used to get a delivery estimate and yelling at your barista will not change that fact. If you are unsatisfied with the quality of mail service, do not direct your outrage at your barista. Take it up with your congress peeps.

All of today's outgoing packages contain Holiday Blend coffee. It's not a promotional special, that's just what customers ordered.

Opened the bag of tree/snowman/spacekook candies. The cat is interested in how that smells.

@gryphon It also glows in the dark, like the raycats if the nuclear waste disposal site is leaking.

Wearing a baseball shirt today. It's my favorite team.

Ordered more carry out cups and lids. The next shipment of lids will be pink because they were sold out of black lids and white lids and the remaining non-pink options were more expensive. This might upset one firefighter who several years ago accidentally ordered a pink beverage and said it was delicious, but that he could never order it again because I guess fire fighters aren't allowed to like things that are pink.

Tried to buy groceries but new road construction turned the intersection I needed to turn left on into a right turn only so I hit a drive through instead.

Apparently Space Kook is just upside down Santa (or is Santa upside down Space Kook?)

Was given some Christmas candies. The assortment included red blobs that when viewed one way are Santa heads and when rotated become the head of Scooby Doo villain Space Kook.

The cat has requested and received a hug.

If you emailed me asking for technical support a few days ago and don't think you've heard back from me yet, please check your spam folder.

I prefer KDE.

Microsoft Word 5.1a ran well on a Mac with 1MB of RAM and a <7MHz processor. It already did then more than I'd use a similar program for today.

Needed to reboot my phone. Haven't been able to send text messages for a few days because the stupid app refused to believe it was connected to a network. (never mind that it could receive messages and everything else could see the network connection) It's pathetic that the only fix is turn the whole phone off then back on. What is this, Windows CE?

The cat continues to be confused as to why I would do something other than hug the cat. The cat has now been hugged and she's much calmer.

cat: *loud purr*