Since I keep pretty busy these days, one would assume I’m a fairly interesting person.  Or, so at least I would like to hope that is the case.  I am going to attempt to start using this again to share some of my stories and experiences of my every day life.  Ew, that sentence sounds extremely vain… Not that anyone cares, or that I’m anything special, but yeah…. And now time for something else.
Starting the 14th of next month I will officially begin my culinary education at Le Cordon Bleu in Sacramento.  I am very excited to begin.  I’ve enjoyed cooking since I was a kid, but it took me a long time to realize that is the sort of job that would make me happy.
Meanwhile, I’m still anchored to the USAF – for better or worse (or worse).  Recently passed my fitness test with a 93.8% or something like that, which I suppose is pretty decent.
In March I’ll be going to Boston to attend PAX East, and I am taking a team of 9 to cover the event for Vagary.TV.  I’m looking forward to it, I’ve somehow never been to Boston.  My stay will be short because I don’t want to miss any classes, though I will definitely miss one.
E3 is registration is open, I need to figure out my team this year and hopefully I won’t be limited to 5 slots like last year.  E3 was pretty awesome, and Los Angeles from what I could tell was decent; although I still prefer NYC.  Even Seoul is more interesting IMO.  Los Angeles seemed to have two sides, superficial and dirty.  I’m not really in to either one, but still there is a lot to see there.
Today (or yesterday now) was my 2 year anniversary, holy crap.  We haven’t killed each other yet, and it seems like we’ve got at least 2 more years in us.  Wish I could have done more, unfortunately this month more than ever has been a firm reminder about that whole “money” and “trees” saying.  I was gifted a new Shiba Inu by my wife.  Despite my initial opposition about getting another dog, I’ve been won over.  I’ll get around to posting pictures eventually.
Well, 4 AM – time to call it a day… lets see if I can build up some blogging momentum again.  Apologizes in advance for my incoherent ramblings.
-Ryan

Terrible.

Upon first entering Sasa you may be impressed with the decor.  It is a nice -looking- restaurant, but your dining experience will go down hill from here.  From the moment we walked in we were asked for our drink order before we even made it to our table; unconventional, but forgivable if that was the only issue.  My wife and I asked for a high chair for our one year old son, we could clearly see them at the other side of the restaurant – however, the waitress returned with a booster seat.  Again, minor mistake but we begin to see a trend.  Next our drink order came out wrong, two waters when it should have been one water and a coke.  I clearly over heard the table behind us order two waters and a hot tea, so these waters probably belonged to them.  I informed the man (who was the manager) that brought our drinks out we only ordered one water, that is when he broke restaurant cardinal sin #1.  He decided to take the extra water from us and give it to the table behind us!  Seriously?!  I informed him both waters belonged to the other table and he gave it to them.  Finally we got our correct drinks and ordered.  I ordered the #28 pho and my wife ordered #37 Singapore rice noodles.  The waitress returned after a while with a #30 beef ball soup (which is not appetizing no matter where it comes from), I informed her my order was incorrect and then she looked as if I had done something wrong and made a face as she took it away.  When she came back there was some low quality beef floating in the pho with the beef balls, and as an added bonus there was a piece of imitation crab meat that looked like it fell off of someone’s dirty dishes.  I once again informed them of this and the waitress tried to defend it saying it fell on to the plate on accident.  Wrong!  I fished it out of my pho and placed it there for her to see it.  After this we had half considered being generous enough to give them a shot with their second dish but when the waitress once again walked off with a disgusted face I knew the next order couldn’t be trusted.  We informed the manager and left without eating a thing.  Utterly disappointing.  For a new restaurant you would think they wouldn’t want to gamble with their customers like that.  Hopefully Sasa shapes up, or they will be shipped out very soon.

0 out of 5 stars.

August 20th 2004 was a historical day for internet, it was the date I bought ryankenward.com and decided to force myself upon the masses.  So many things have changed in six years, in my life, the world, and even this site.  If you were to come here 6 years ago you would find me writing crazy little pieces of fiction that I did for fun in my spare time.  Spare time? What the hell is that?!  Now you find a barren wasteland of internet here; from nearly daily posts years back to nearly quarterly posts today.  I’m not sure why I don’t blog anymore.  I guess it could be because I have too many other things going on, or it could be the part where crappy things always seem to happen.   At any rate, here I am writing for probably the last time until October when I suddenly realize I have one of those blog things.

I use wordpress on a daily basis but the context has changed so dramatically.  When I write anything now its usually a review or some sort of administrative tidbit for staff or users of Vagary.TV.

Come to think about it, maybe an even larger part of the reason why I don’t really write like I used to is that I’ve become even more reclusive than ever before.  Not entirely for my own sake but for that of my family.  I guess I don’t feel as comfortable now with just anyone reading my little musings.

Then there’s my real job, which I can’t really say anything about.

So what more is there to write?  Perhaps someday I will find that energy to write interesting or funny things on a regular basis but today certainly doesn’t seem to be that day.  For all of you who have wasted your time reading this, sorry.

I also used to have subscribers, don’t see much of those anymore…
Here are some cool sites though:

www.vagary.tv
www.realmofshadows.us
www.gamebynight.com
www.gameseers.us
www.finalchallenge.net

Woot.

See you next quarter!
~Ryan

A few points:

*** Vagary.TV is doing well, a new site has been contracted and will be live within the month.
*** The Vagary.TV Crew went to PAX East in Boston and Covered it as Media and got their faces out there (IGN.com and XBox Dashboard)
*** Myself and some Vagary.TV crew people are going to E3 this summer as press! (woot)
*** Evan turns 6 months next week.
*** We are leaving California in October for Ohio.
*** Things are going pretty well.
*** I need to do more real updates in the future.

Edit 9 Feb 2010 – After a complaint with the BBB and a few weeks, I got a phone call from Walmart’s insurance company asking where to send the check   I win

It all started on the day of my wife and I’s first anniversary.   My car was due for a standard oil change, and I decided we’d get it done before we went out and spent the evening celebrating.  I decided to take it to Walmart for the oil change; as I had done the previous two changes with no issues.   So, I took it in, and my wife and I did a little shopping, and then we paid and left.  About twenty minutes later I heard a grinding sound, but since it was a windy day I dismissed it for wind and finished the trip home.  When I got home, I noticed the belly plate for my 2005 VW Passat was hanging on the ground.  I was immediately furious.  I decided to try to put it back up, hold it together with some tape, and to get it to Wal-Mart to show them what they had done.  Obviously that failed. It fell down again,dragged, and ended up tearing off and breaking; which could have easily been a very bad and dangerous thing. When I returned to Wal-Mart a few of the employees in the automotive department noticed right away, knew who did it, and also knew he was an inferior worker.  I let them pull the car in to survey the damages.   The guy who did it proceeded to try to tell me the car was broken when I brought it in, which it clearly was not.  He made the outlandish claim that it was missing screws, and then said that he documented it on his comments.  That part he did do. However, no one pointed that out, and no one had the sense or courtesy to even try to check it out or put in screws if it was missing screws; which it was not.  He later then stated, twice that I heard and twice again when I walked away, which my wife also heard, to his boss that he tried to reattach it but the screws didn’t fit.  Which meant, there were indeed screws, and he did indeed reassemble it incorrectly.    The assistant manager of the store then offered to pay 350.00 up front from the store for the damages or I could let it go to the insurance.  The damages were estimated at $520.00 by the VW dealership and I was not going to pay out of pocket, nor was I going to let them pay for the part and then touch my car again.  I let insurance handle it, spent a day driving all over to get the quote and returned it to them.  Two days later I got a call from the insurance company saying they declined my claim because “Screws were missing”; which again, they were not and I even have one of them that fell off after the fact in my driveway.  The part itself is woven together and if not replaced correctly obviously the screws will not fit, VW mechanics can verify this.

Here are some obvious facts to support it was their negligence in service.

1.)  Over 10,000 miles driven and never an issue, yet 20 minutes after I leave their store my car is broken.

2.)  I have the bill from my previous oil change which states nothing about missing screws, this was dated 30 October 2009 and I had this oil change performed 16 January 2010.  So somehow, in driving around on base my car lost screws?  Yet it held until I got to Wal-Mart and then broke after?  That is not sound logic.

3.)  Volkswagen mechanics can verify that had screws truly been missing the part would not have held in place that long – It was incorrectly put together by the servicing mechanic at Wal-Mart.

Here are some additional things to consider.

1.)  The dragging part could have done considerable damage to the car.

2.)  The dragging part could have heated up and caused a fire.

3.)  When the part detached it could have caused an accident.

Thankfully, these scenarios did not play out but they are all very real and reasonable scenarios.  The entire 10 minute drive to Wal-mart was one completely ridden in fear shared by my wife and I, on our anniversary with our 3 month old son in the back seat.  A simple oil change should never have come to this.

If my negligence damaged someone’s property it would be my responsibility by the law to pay the cost of the damages, and in fact I should be happy to only pay the cost of damages.  It’s the law.  However, apparently multi-million dollar corporations are clearly above the law and don’t feel they need to be held accountable for their actions.  I however, am going to be sure that they are held accountable