The Weaver Family

When we go out to eat as a family, we expect good food and good service, at the very least.  It’s not that much to ask when you go to a restaurant to spend your hard earned money to expect these two very simple ingredients to have a nice dining out experience.  But lately, trying to find that dining out experience has become a challenge.

We went out to eat at The Olive Garden in Rome, GA.  Our history with this place as far as quality of food and service has varied.  The first time we went there, right after they opened the restaurant, the food was top-notch and the service was exceptional.  That was the last time we had that experience.  Every time there after has been a miss on the overall pleasurable dining experience.  The problem has been, that it hasn’t been so exceptionally awful to quit going back.  We’ve been trying to give them a fair shake.  The Olive Garden, truly isn’t an authentic Italian experience when it comes to the menu, but it has good food, at semi-reasonable prices.

But this last time, was the breaking point.  The food was decent.  It wasn’t outstanding, it wasn’t horrific either.  It was passable.  Good flavor, and hot enough.  The drinks were on the watered-down side.  Enough said.  But the service.  I’ve had drill instructors that didn’t push me that hard.  Our waitress was very pushy from the time we sat down, until the time we left, except for when we were looking for the bill.

Our main courses had barely been put on the table, before she came around to check on the meal.  She could see we obviously hadn’t taken a bite, but she kept on with the question “How is everything?”  Let us take a bite to find out.  And from that point on it was every two to three minutes of being interrupted.  We couldn’t carry on a decent conversation if our lives depended on it.  Then when we did want to order dessert, while we could see our waitress, we couldn’t get her attention.  Finally, ten minutes later, we ordered dessert, she laid the bill on the table, and five minutes later our dessert came out.   We ate our dessert and left.   And this time, we won’t be going back.

The next day, we went to a minor league Rome Braves baseball game.  We got tickets at the club level, so we could eat at the Three Rivers Club.    Food was great, our service was better.  The waiter wasn’t pushy at all, but our glasses were never empty.  We sat out at our table, on the patio, even after we were done our meal and had paid, our waiter continued to make sure we had drinks in front of us.  Best service I’ve had in a long time, in any restaraunt.  I was astounded.   All I can say is Three Rivers Club, great job.   The Rome Braves didn’t fare so well, but it was still a great game, and an enjoyable afternoon and dining experience.

Just goes to show that bad service can wreck a meal.  Good service can make a decent meal outstanding.  It’s a lesson Olive Garden could stand to learn, and they could learn it at Three Rivers Club.  Game on.

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Normally when I have to do hard disk work, such as backups, cloning or partitioning, I yank out a Linux Boot CD and get to work.  The main reason is because Windows, doesn’t have adequate built-in utilities, and when it comes to partitioning, at least in WinXP, non-existent.  In Linux, you can do partitioning, and resizing etc, on Linux and Windows formatted partitions, it’s just a heck of a lot easier,  ONCE, you get out that boot CD.  Running off a boot CD can be a bit slow, but still better than dealing with MS Windows.

Until Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 SE.  This program does quite a lot.

• Partitioning -  Maintenance, Creation, Deletion, Resizing,  Undelete a Partition,  supports Windows and Linux formatted partitions.  (You can do this from with the program or from a Boot CD that the program creates.)
• Backups – Full backups and differential backups, scheduled backups, backup restoration.
• HD Maintenance – built-in defragmenter (including Master File Table defragmentation),  NTFS to FAT32 conversions, surface scan, direct edit of HD sectors, and more.

The program has a clean easy to use  understandable interface.

It’s available for Windows 98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP (32-bit & 64-bit), Windows Vista  (32-bit).  Vista users may want to check if it works in the 64-bit environment, I’m honestly not sure.  This is an older version of Hard Disk Manager, but it is free with registration.  You can register  when you go to install, or you can go to Paragon HD Manager 8.5 SE registration page, and register ahead of time.   Download it and try it out.

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After reading this article, I’m finally of the opinion that most of Polk County’s governmental people think money can fix any problem that Polk County has when it comes to attracting business.  Eric McDonald proves no exception to this observation of mine.  I, for one, think he is mistaken.

The one glaring quote from Mr. McDonald, who is the President of Polk County Chamber/Development Authority, is…

“We need to have a continuum of readiness so that we are most competitive with resources that are available. The only thing between us and an international industrial park is money.”

Money will address the industrial park issue, both as far as expanding the park and the physical infrastructure of the park.  That much is as Mr. McDonald stated.  What is not true is that all infrastructure issues will be addressed by money.  The way I see it, Polk County’s other infrastructure issue is people, and in some sense, Mr. McDonald must agree.  Why do I say this?  Because of the following quote from the paper.

McDonald said two challenges confront local officials who plan for the future:

Finding a way to keep youth from leaving Polk when they graduate and creating an atmosphere that will promote and support people seeking to open a new businesses or small company.

The first problem for Polk County is if the kids graduate high school.  The graduation rate recently hovered somewhere around a 69% average between the two high schools.  That means that 31 out of 100 students fail to graduate.  Most entry level jobs these days require at least a high school diploma, or a GED.  But the school system here has infrastructure and educational problems of its’ own that need to be addressed.  If these are addressed, it will help to address the pitiful graduation rate, and future entry-level  and higher workers in the county.

The second problem isn’t the kids leaving Polk County when they graduate.   Kids leave the place they grew up in while they are still young.  But if the place they grew up in, has opportunity , they tend to return to their hometown, to raise their families.  But that opportunity must include educational and social opportunities for their families, and especially for their children.  The school system needs addressing, but the social activities for children, especially teenagers is lacking.  While teenagers can get jobs to fill in time, social interaction activities are limited to school and church.  Granted this may be an oversimplification, but for the most part, accurate.   Advancing community involvement and community social activities for teenagers would be a boon for the area.  If this was done, getting today’s children to come back to Polk County to raise their families would be an easier task.

Businesses like to make sure that the area they move to will take care of not only their business, but also their workers.  Supporting businesses means not only supporting their business’s physical infrastructure, but also the “personnel” infrastructure.  In order to do this requires more than money.  It requires community support, community integration, social opportunities for families, and a sound educational system.

At least that’s the way I see it.

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