Making Salads Better

Update: Don't worry about the smoke coming out of the oven, the olive oil dripped off the sheet pan onto the oven bottom. It looked much worse than it was. Please note, use an oven safe dish with sides to prevent the same thing from happening to you...

Video Recipe: Parsnip Puree

I blogged this recipe for parsnip puree a few weeks ago. If you're comparing notes with my past post and this video recipe, you'll note that the ingredients and method are slightly different. That's just how I roll.

VIDEO RECIPE: Chicken with garlic and shallots

New rules for airlines...or how you can pay me to deal with the misery that you cause

I flew the most excruciating flight in my life last week. US Airways red-eye from San Francisco to Philly, then a second leg from Philly to Orlando.

Both of the US Airways planes I flew were complete dumps. Each looking like it had participated in been on the ground during the bombing of Dresden.

Why can't your planes be like Virgin America's planes?



This post however is not about how your planes lack polish...

US Airways, lets talk about water. The substance that spawned a mission to Mars. The essential ingredient to life. The thing that if I go without for three days, I will die! And on US Airways, when I wanted to wet my lips with this sweet nectar of life, on a five hour cross country flight, it cost me two dollars. There is one word to describe you US Airways, and that word is "chintzy".

My experience also got me thinking about some new rules for airlines. Rules that'll help to flush the bad taste from the mouths of many of your customers. These rules center around rebates for bad experiences.

On one flight, the back of my seat butted up against a toilet and wouldn't recline. This was not an option I chose to reduce my ticket price. I paid the same price for an experience that was less than I expected.

So new rule. When I am stuck with a seat that doesn't recline, leaving my body stuck at a 90 degree angle, I should be able to invoke the 90 degree clause, obligating you pay me ten dollars for every hour of my misery.

On another flight, I was seated next to a man who's body spilled over into my seat. I didn't pay for 3/4 of a seat. US Airways, I paid you for a whole seat.

So new rule. When I'm seated next to a person who's arm rest has actually become a containment device for their body, I should be able to invoke the sidecar clause, obligating you pay me ten dollars for every hour of my misery.

What do you think of my clauses? What new clauses do you want to see?

I support bailout salary caps

While driving to work, I heard an NPR news blurb about a proposal being kicked around in the Whitehouse - capping salaries for employees at companies that accept bailout money.

This is something I fully support.

The recent reports of billions of dollars in bailout money being distributed as bonuses makes me sick. Companies are accepting bailout money because they are in trouble. So why in the hell are they giving out bonuses?

When I think bonus, I think,

"Job well done" and "You've really made a difference"

not

"Thanks for the mismanagement" and "Way to lose our asses"

The cap proposed is $500,000. Executives can be further compensated in stock that can be redeemed once the bailout money is re-payed.

This is a good plan.

Blog schism

I have a blog schism on my hands.

Unlike some other famous schisms, the East-West schism and the Western Schism, my schism is generally a good thing. People aren't getting burned or poisoned as a result.

So what's the schism?

Moving forward, Home Culinaire will be my personal food blog. No rants or advice about technology and social media. Those posts will now be housed at Social Enchilada.

I encourage you to give Social Enchilada a visit. The design kicks ass and the content is getting better. Hang out, leave some comments, and please, add me to your reader.

On the Home Culinaire front, I'm aiming to do a redesign soon and plan on publishing some instructional videos.

Thanks for your support!

Twitter support, your problems are far and wide

I recently posted about the lack of response from Twitter Support. I am unhappy to say that my issue has not been resolved yet. And as I've gone deeper and deeper down the Twitter support hole, I've learned just how broken the support department at Twitter actually is.

Most everyone is aware of the Twitter hack that happened earlier this month. My understanding is that it was due to security flaws in their support queue. Happily they fixed the issue by replacing their support queue with a new system called Zendesk ( they blog about this change at Twitter Blog: The Zen of Twitter Support ) and more recently rolled out Get Satisfaction for support as well.

I applaud the team for making changes in response to a problem, but, in my opinion, they really made a mess of things. Let me explain how.

First off, by removing the old support system, my existing tickets were deleted. I've been waiting over two months for a response and had to resubmit my ticket. Thanks Twitter.

Secondly, the new Zendesk support system has a MAJOR flaw. Your login for the system is your Twitter login. When you submit a support request via the web interface, it attaches the ticket to your Twitter account. That's fine and dandy, however Twitter recommends that people with a Terms of Service matter (that would be me) submit their request to terms@twitter.com.

Do you see the fatal flaw yet?

The flaw is that tickets submitted via email don't attach to an account. As a result, you are unable to view responses from Twitter to that ticket.

Try it yourself. Logout of Twitter. Submit an email to terms@twitter.com. You'll receive a confirmation email with a link to view the ticket. Click the link. You're taken to a page that says - "You do not have access to request #[ticket number]. It may have been deleted".

WTF?

Did anyone at Twitter actually go through the process that you created? Because, it appears as if you didn't.

And finally, the rolling out of Get Satisfaction for support. Again, I applaud you for the effort, however, you now have two separate support systems! For a company that is already spread thin when it comes to support, does it make sense to add complexity?

This entire experience has led me to giving this advice to anyone looking to implement support for their customers.

1. Respond to your tickets. Use a simple method of categorizing tickets by priority and assigning SLA's to each category. Assign someone the job of monitoring SLA's. If you are constantly missing them, maybe it's time to hire more people, or better yet review and improve your current process (Hint Hint Twitter).
   
2. Experience your own support. This is unbelievably easy to do, but can give you invaluable insight. Submit a ticket as an end user, see what happens. Click on links, make sure they work. See how long it takes to get help. Again, simple, but really really effective.
3. Use a central support system. Managing multiple systems is too much overhead and causes confusion for your customers. Besides, not all systems are created equal and they require varied methods for managing. Pick the right solution, and stick with it.