I saw this article on consumerist.com and it instantly made me think of my TINST207 class. The story is that a dissatisfied patient left a negative review on yelp.com after he had a bad experience with a chiropractor. The article quotes the information left on yelp, and I don't think any of it was slanderous. It was pretty much "I had a bad experience, I had billing problems, the Dr. was hard to deal with, etc."

The chiropractor claims damage to reputation, business, etc AND "mortification and hurt feelings." Regardless of what you think about chiropractic treatments, I think this whole lawsuit, and especially the above quote, make the chiropractor seem rather scummy. I think that this sort of thing is better resolved between the parties involved. Also, way to streisand yourself, dude. You just got your face allllllll over the internets and this just cost you way more than the yelp comment ever could have.

I believe that these review websites are good for everyone. They give consumers valuable information, as well as possibly act as a deterrent for unscrupulous business practices. These sites encourage businesses to resolve complaints. However, a commenter on consumerist.com did bring up a very interesting thing. They said that the same sort of thing had happened in her town. A man who was running for public office in the city had a wife who was a vet. In order to try to keep him from winning the election, some people slandered his wife's vet practice on every site they could find. One woman even accused the vet of killing her cat, even though she had never stepped foot in the office. The vet had a terrible time getting the reviews removed, and it could have ruined her practice.

I think this makes all kinds of interesting problems. Should we even have review sites like this? Should there be a way to see who made the review, or maybe a dispute process? Who should manage the reviews? Should a reviewer have to prove that they did business with the person/business being reviewed? Like I said, I love how the internet gives us so much information with which to make decisions, but the vet ended up in a terrible position. I definitely thing that the person who slandered the vet should be punished.

Interesting things to think about for sure. I'm curious to see what happens with the lawsuit...

This summer, during the crazy high gas prices, I felt like every extra bit of money I made went towards gas. I felt like $55 was waaaay too much to be putting into my tiny hatchback. I was working full time cause I was out of school, and by the time I bought gas I felt like I wasn't making any more than during school.

Yesterday, with my tank on empty, I spent $22 to fill up my 13 gal tank. It was like $1.87/gal. The first time I ever pumped my own gas, when I was learning to drive, it cost $1.88/gal. Amazing. Never thought I'd see that again.

The low, low price of gas does make me a little suspicious, but happy nonetheless.

So, I found out towards the end of the week that things at work were worse than they seemed. My office manager was really upset and told me that in the first of second week of December we were going to run out of work. She said that if no jobs came in the time between, pretty much the entire company would be laid off.

What a blow.... Christmas time. Finals time.

I had already been looking for another job and hadn't had any luck. There aren't a lot of people hiring, even for temporary holiday positions. I would prefer to get another office sort of job that is permanent, cause I don't wanna be in the same situation when everyone gets laid off after the holidays.

It's so disappointing because I love the family I work for, and we had been doing so well. The entire time I've worked there they haven't even needed to lay people off during the winter. We had sort of a bad winter last year, when we didn't get paid for a job. Work was already slow because of the season, and the $20,000 we were owed really messed things up. Since then, we had a couple other liens we had to file, and even with those we had gotten out of the "hole" the winter had gotten us into.

I feel really stressed because the job search hasn't been going well so far. I am excited because I have an interview (next week probably) with some people I'm already kind of connected to, so hopefully that will go well. The job is in Tacoma, which would be fabulous cause I wouldn't have to drive much. Anyways, wish me luck (and let me know if you know someone who's hiring!)!

I feel especially bad for the office manager and her dad (the owner). She has pretty much taken care of the books and financial stuff for the company for the past five years, and since it is a family business she is really entwined with it. She is looking for another job too. The owner of the business has talked about being in charge of supporting his employees (and their families, by extension) and how stressful that is. I'm sure he feels terrible about this whole situation.

I'm just trying to think good thoughts for our economy and be thankful for the love and support of my awesome family.

So, basically I'm blogging to avoid doing my (very tedious) philosophy paper. Anyways, I was thinking about it some more, and I was thinking about how you can be anyone you want to be online. You can choose what parts of yourself to show or not show, and you can downright lie. Take Myspace Angles, for example. Watch this video. I assure you, it is worth your time (NSFW). It's says ten minutes, but you only need to watch part one.
Anyways, I guess the idea is to take anything someone says online with a grain of salt. I know someone who moved here from almost the east coast to be with a guy she met online. They met online, and then in person on xmas eve, and she moved all her stuff over on New Year's Day. Guess how that turned out? Yeah, not good (note to self: don't tell her about your blog). Like with crazy fights and cops and a broken lease bad. Both of these people were sort of odd (I seem to attract the crazies!). Anyways, I'm not saying that online dating is impossible or bad, I'm just saying people should beware (and drop everything to move across the country to be with someone they've only known in person for two days).
Maybe all of this is why I prefer the real world to online? I hate myspace and never check mine (same with facebook). I only made one so I could look at someone's pictures. I think the technology is cool (how else could I look up my best friend from 1st grade who moved away?), but people are WAAAAAAAAY too into it, and I am not. I did Running Start in high school, and I never hung out with people my age (always had older friends) and I think I just kind of missed my myspace crazy when it swept over the high schools. Same with texting... I use it, but not much.

Since the economy has been bad, the new buzzword sort of thing is to have a staycation. It reminded me of the whole talk we had it TINST207 about online community. I think a staycation can be a vacation. You can get away, relax, and have a good time while staying at home or close to home. However, I don't like the idea of an online vacation.
I've never played a MMOG, but my boyfriend David has, and my 14 year old brother is way into gaming as well. I've seen how obsessive they get about games. At one point David was staying up like all night playing Star Wars Galaxies. He totally had friends, and they would all get online at the same time and do missions and stuff. Right now, as I type, he's playing like his 3rd hour of Fable2 (this is the second time he's played it through). For him, it goes in waves. Anyways, I understand that for him, these games are a way to relax. For me, video games are frustrating, and I think vacations are for relaxing.
David and I have both a Wii and an XBOX360, and when I get into video games, I am guilty of getting a little obsessive. It goes in waves for me to- I will play for a couple hours each day, and then not. I don't think I've played Wii for a month.
While online worlds are real, and they exist, they're just no substitute for for real life friends and family. That's why I'm gonna go visit my sister and her husband tonight :D

So, every Saturday David and I go to the Renaissance Cafe on Pacific Ave for breakfast. It is always awesome- will have to do a review on it sometime. Anyways, we decided to wander around Tacoma, and we happened upon the Mad Hat Tea Co.
Ever since David and I discovered Osaka Sushi and Teriyaki in University Place, I have been really into green tea. I hated it at first (normally I drink sweetened black iced tea), but after going a couple times, I got to really liking it with my dinner. We had been at SouthCenter Mall at the teavana store, and I was really disappointed that the only teas they sampled were really herbal gross sweetened ones. I was also disappointed because they have a 2oz minimum. This doesn't seem like much, but it it gets really expensive to try lots of things (2oz/$10 or so). Also, they won't make up samples for you. The store has lots of neat teapots and stuff, but a lot of their stuff is way expensive.
Anyways, so Mad Hat Tea was awesome. It is right downtown. There is all kinds of art on the walls, stuff to read about teas, and there are couches, chairs, etc. It's a very cozy space, but the shop is deceptively large. The owner, Tobin, was very cool. He was super enthusiastic, and really seemed to know all about tea. I told him that I was new to liking green tea, and he made a pot of some really good mixed oolong/green tea. He did the whole tea ceremony sort of thing with a Yixing teapot and everything. I was impressed because I have a clay/art background, and he had all kinds of hand-thrown dishes. We talked a bunch- we were probably in there almost an hour, and he let us try a bunch of stuff. We ended up leaving with quite a bit of stuff :)
The best part was his prices (you can see them on the website). He has some expensive teas, but a lot of them are like $4/2oz. Also, he was willing to sell smaller or larger quantities, so you could bring home all sorts of things to try. The place has sort of a eclectic/hippy vibe, but its way cool/calming. He even has a no cell phone rule! It's cool to support Tacoma Businesses, and this one is very unique. While you can buy loose leaf tea, flowering tea, etc you can also buy pots of tea and just hang out. Definitely a place to try out!

Was looking through my blog counting TINST207 posts and realized I was missing some that I had written. Looked around some more and saw that they were saved in my drafts, missing parts. I think that since I posted them at work (we have crappy satellite internet) and they auto-saved but the internet crapped out and they didn't fully post.

I'm working on fixing it.