SeanMike

To the anonymous (to me) Comcast technician who restored my Internet nearly three hours more quickly than predicted. Thanks dude!

Okay. Tell you what: send me a DM or an email or something, or hell, just post here, and just give some of the info you'd want to get across in a 3 minute or so spiel. For instance: * Why should they invest? What makes DR.com special? (Yes, I know why, but I'd prefer to start with your words.) * What would they get from investing? How do you expect to earn their money back and more? (That, I think, is the tricky question.) * What size investment are you looking for, and what ownership stake does that give them? How did you come by those numbers? The way I'm thinking about it, for instance: the owner of my company invests in a lot of small companies. He started out in white box computer manufacturing, now does reselling and services through our company, has a recruiting spin-off, and has investments in everything from recording studios to drone companies to cybersecurity. He comes into our main office regularly, but he's a busy guy, so if I wanted to give him a pitch on something (anything) I'd need to answer those questions quickly to even get on his radar, and that's despite the fact that he likes me...

Don, In terms of investors: do you have an elevator speech for potential investors? Something you could possibly post?

Went there with a friend last Friday. Got a bit of sticker shock on price at the end but to be fair, we did get into the tequila...but their draft prices are high. I'd forgotten how good the queso fundido is. We disagreed which of the tacos were better - she preferred the goat, I preferred the tongue. But both were quite good. It was pretty packed when I got there around 8 o'clock but quickly cleared out.

Jalapeno hush puppies are delicious. The wings spicy and good. But the fried oyster po' boy might have been the best po' boy I've had outside of NOLA, and it beat a lot of the ones I had in NOLA, too.

The Ballston Harris Teeter didn't have any more this weekend.

Really? The place next to Rock Bottom? I went there once and was very disappointed with it. I'll try it again this week.

Ya know what? To me. For dealing what I'm dealing with. And now, I'll go watch violent, stupid movies.

My dentist when I had braces was Dr. O.W. Clifton. He hated me calling him Dr. "OW!" Clifton. Good dentist, though.

I've had a couple - the Harris Teeter in Ballston carries a couple of flavors. This was the lighter one...

maybe we should have a DR.com get together for those of us who are single. Or if you're not, to bring someone who is, or to meet folks you might want to hook up with someone who is... don't listen to me I'm drunk and won't show up

Bold Rock Virginia apple cider, to wash down this cigar.

Is it screwed, or is it different as time goes on? Seriously -- as mentioned above thread, in the old days a soft opening was a very private event, and now it seems to be fairly public. I can't imagine not being at least prepared to pay, if I didn't ask ahead of time (which to me is like what you've said about tasting tables - don't be afraid to ask about money) if someone didn't specifically say in the invite. I feel bad for him, seriously I do, but unless you're given food without ordering and then charged for it (which, when he says "We asked the chef to select dishes for us" leads me to believe it's also more like the tasting menu) I can't imagine being annoyed by it. Were you invited personally? Yes. When I invite people to party - at a bar, at my house, WHATEVER - I try to say what the pay status is, but when invited, I never, ever, assume I'm gratis unless specifically told that I am (and then I typically expect to tip as much as I would've paid anyways).

Professionally: I'm an IT Architect in a pre-sales role at a government contractor. When I went to UVA, I started as an astrophysics major in Army ROTC, but due to problems with depression (and having never learned how to study) I ended up dropping both of those, briefly going into economics before switching to a government degree. Unfortunately, despite working part-time at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, I wasn't making enough to pay for school and had to take a semester off. During that semester I got a job doing first tier tech support for a local ISP. Soon they promoted me to full time, then to engineer. When they got bought out, I moved on to a dot-com, which went belly-up in a year. From there, I switched back to UVA, working in the School of Engineering primarily supporting *nix systems and Linux clusters. However, my boss there was very paranoid about me and regularly made up false stories about what I'd done (more accurately, perhaps, what he had perceived I'd done). I decided it was time to get out of Charlottesville but declined opportunities in California and Afghanistan (in 2004) when I learned my parents were moving back from Ohio to Virginia and my brother, graduating law school in Mississippi, was moving to northern Virginia. One fortuitous day my predecessor got drunk and quit in spectacular fashion, emailing not only the whole company his complaints but all his customers telling them the company sucked, and before HR had even seen those emails one of my best friends had my resume' in as a replacement. Close to nine years there and I'm still with the same company, said friend is also my boss now, and I've done a ton of really cool things (and some really stupid ones). As for what brought me here...I like to write. A lot. I started off with short stories, mostly sci-fi and often cyberpunk type stuff, on USENET. Later I migrated to LiveJournal and switched to mostly doing book reviews and occasionally other things (albums, etc.) and some random musings. A friend of mine in my guild from Dark Age of Camelot put me in touch with a new website that needed writers to cover video games. I came on board, willing to review anything at all (my review of the Blackberry "Brickbreaker" game got me on CNBC, and my review of "Desperate Housewives" is one of my most popular ones), which got me into regular media events such as E3 for a number of years, interviews, etc. etc. I burned out on that after a few years. In 2007 I was looking for a new hobby and considering Warhammer 40K. (To be honest, I figured I'd end up playing against a lot of 12 year olds, but maybe their moms would be single. Also, I really dug the setting.) Marshall came over one day and started babbling about cocktails. "We're gonna make our own simple syrup, and use fresh citrus, and blah blah blah" and I was like "WTF are you talking about?" Well, he started to convince me, so I told him we should write about it if we were going to do it. We started an LJ feed first, then moved to WordPress/etc. later. When we went to a MoTAC event, Derek Brown said he read our blog and that we should go drinking. I didn't believe him, but Marshall did, and it took off from there. Marshall heard about Ace from someone, and I believe Joe was the one who told me about DonRockwell.com. Whew! That was a good procrastination from studying!

So... I was raised as "Mike" but when I got to college I decided to go by "Sean" since all the correspondence, etc., had that name on it. Then I kept running into people from high school and before who knew me as Mike, so I started signing my emails "Sean Mike". Which got me the nickname of SnM in college, and is different enough I tend to use it IRL, as the kids wouldn't say. My family and my brother's JMU friends tend to call me Mike, still, while at work I'm just Sean. My Twitter handle is HighwayStar, which came from the days at UVA where we'd change our "real names" on the RS/6000s regularly. GWAR's spin-off band X-Cops did a cover of the song Highway Star, and it just stuck with me. I think I even had some stories with a character related to that song back on my days on alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo on USENET...

I had it recently and dug it. No tasting notes 'cause I don't roll that way (and I uh drank it all) but I found it quite tasty.

Speaking of Twitter and websites, I like when restaurants update by Twitter, because it's easier to keep updated on their perhaps than to edit a website. However, if you're closing for the evening, please announce it BEFORE that night! Such as when I wanted to take my brother to Hogo for his birthday, and the only reason I knew it was closed Friday night was that I was in there Wednesday (the night when my picture in last weekend's Post magazine was taken), but it wasn't mentioned on Twitter until after they would have opened on Friday. BOO-URNS. (I only pick on Hogo because, well, I know everyone involved, and I've said that before...)

I worked for Kroger in Roanoke for about 5 years. Our policy was if we had any question at all about an ID's validity, we were to deny them. If we sold to someone underage, we - the near-minimum wage making cashiers - would be paying the fine. (After I joined the union that may have changed, but I enjoyed my petty amount of power too much for it to be relevant.) My favorite was the girl who didn't have ID and when carded, suddenly got an English accent and claimed her passport was in the car. She, of course, never came back in. (Second was the VMI keydet trying to buy a case of beer and two six pack of wine coolers and claiming they were all for him, none for the two giggling girls who had been in there with him and left separately. We were encouraged to deny the entire group alcohol if any of them were underage, within reason.) The close proximity of Hollins College (now Hollins University) was probably the reason for at least some of those policies.

I've been invited to soft openings both comped and non-comped, in part and in full. I always go assuming I will pay the full bill, partially because if someone else is paying, I feel horrible ordering the most expensive thing on the menu. (Unless it's my brother, or there are other considerations.)

When I lived over there I liked those guys, mostly because they were so friendly. After they reopen I'll have to make it a point to swing back by.

Gawker tried it: http://gawker.com/we-drank-soylent-the-weird-food-of-the-future-510293401

Exactly. That's why I use them. As for the Greenway: it's pretty used. I could use it to get to my office, but it's not much faster than getting off at 28 and going to Waxpool Road that way. On the other hand, if I'm going to Sleazeburg or further (like visiting Catoctin Creek) I'll take it.

Last time I saw a bartender trying to do flair, he kept spraying me with liquor (this was in Boston). I was Not Amused.

Well, I've heard of people trying to do stuff like this before, such as the various "prison loafs" or such. I seem to remember one of the Mythbusters (Jamie, if I remember their names correctly, the guy with the big mustache) had something like that he made. What makes me suspicious on this one is a bit that they appear to be doing a Kickstarter campaign, but not with any site (that I can tell) that typically hosts them. Maybe because I don't feel like putting my credit card in to find out...the numbers have changed since I last looked at it. (And, to be honest, if there was something like this I'd be interested in it, because many times I don't want to deal with breakfast, and I tend to eat too much fast food for lunch due to work - and I have no desire to do anything that would involve using the break room there, either.)

So what do you think? https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body So I'll quote Warren Ellis, who posted this link on his Twitter feed: " 'I don't need 21 nice meals a week' - Soylent Corporation, epic trollers or beyond-food uberhipsters"