Open Letter to the Gilroy Garlic Festival--Offer SAMPLES, not FULL MEALS!

to clove@gilroygarlicfestival.com
date Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 2:12 PM
subject You should have samples too, not just full meals

We're coming to the Garlic Festival this year again, after a long absence.

I see on your FAQ, however, that food at the booths is "for full meals, not samples."

This is a really bad idea, and a huge lost opportunity -- I can't believe after 30 years you still haven't figure this out.

Last time we went, it was basically "100 choices, pick ONE" because you can only eat one, maybe two full meals. So I miss out on sampling many wonderful garlicky concoctions.

This is nuts. It;s like having a wine festival that only lets you buy full bottles of wine -- no sampling. How does that make sense?

If you let booths offer (and charge for) samples, everyone would try as many different great things as possible -- and you and the booths would make more money than ever. We visitors would be happier.

Wine and beer fests have learned this lesson a hundred years ago. Please, SOMEBODY at the Garlic Festival management, learn this simple lessons some year soon!

(And yes, I figure there is some kind of idiotic roadblocks as the likely explanation, like some government regulation. You should campaign for modification of such rules -- every garlic lover in the state would support you.)

Yours truly, but disappointedly,

Mac McCarthy
Castro Valley CA

How I hate Nokia!

I got this AT&T Nokia dumb phone - a 6350, not a smart phone because I don't want to pay the data rates each month since I work at home and simply don't need to check email or go online from my phone enough to justify the extra cost.

So I got this because I need only to synch with my Outlook Calendar and Contacts.

Aside from having the worst user interface on Earth -- something like 14 steps to mail a photo from the phone to an email address -one by one, of course -- the synch software frmo Nokia is the worst. The worst.

It worked - for a while. Then it would sometimes not synch completely, especially the Calendar. It would say there is not enough memory on the phone. Believe me when I say this is untrue; no point in belaboring it, but it is simply not true. I've done everything there is to do to make it work right. So sometimes it works - then goes for months not synching the calendar.

They released a completely new synch suite called Nokia Ovi Suite (the previous version is Nokia PC Suite). The new software did not work either - except, unlike its predecessor, it simply ever worked right, ever.

Tech support at Nokia is, like its UI, the worst on earth. The problem I am having, it turns out, is a problem *everyone* is having. And has been having for several years. No one has ever received a single bit of feedback or support from Nokia for this problem. None. For two years. Ever. Still.

I have come to hate Nokia with the passion usually reserved for Microsoft -- or for the lying, cheating bastards at Buffalo. I look forward with glee to its final destruction at the hands of its equal in badness, Microsoft. I will dance on its grave.

Now all I have to do is trudge down to the AT&T store to find another cheap simple phone that's not a Nokia but that might - might - actually synch with Outlook's Calendar and Contacts.

I am doomed, aren't I?

(No urgings to try another carrier; this isn't a carrier problem, and I am apparently unique in not having had problems with AT&T over the years - tho of course I have not often had smart phones to test the limits of their system. One hateful enemy at a time, please.)

I will not waste my time trying to find reviews of cheap phones; cell-phone reviews are as close to useless as it is possible to get, in my experience.

Sorry; just venting....

mac