February 12th, 2008
Brewcaster over at Metroblogging Portland posted something about suckage at Los Baez Mexican restaurant, which is not far from my house, even so far as to give it a rating of EPIC FAIL.
I would argue, however, that the even bigger suckulus is Citysearch itself, to which the article linked. Look at this. Apparently Citysearch is unable to perform basic math and find the average of ratings. I could swear my friend Todd stumbled upon this before [Updated: it was my friend Kes*], but I can’t find it on his blog right now. I just find it kind of staggering. The correct “answer” is about 3.23 stars.
By the way, I hate Citysearch with that special disdain normally reserved for things like Microsoft and mislaid dog poo.
* So, sorry about the whole plagiarism thing, Kes.
Tags: citysearch, Rant, sucks
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October 17th, 2007
I was reminded of a few of the Things I Hate The Most on my queasy way back from Salem tonight. I am still not back to a health point where I feel awesome about venturing out of my house, but I had a midterm for my viticulture class that was non-optional, so again the trek down I-5 and back. Here’s the thing. I absolutely hate, with an enveloping layer of vitriol, inattentive drivers.
Any excessive intra-cockpit dingling with gadgetry gets my hackles up (just ask Mr. Pencil). Looking out my passenger-side window to espy the next-door driver wandering into our lane with a half-eaten chalupa in one hand and an iPhone in the other makes me so riled that if I weren’t the effete passive-aggressive chump that I am, there would be some animated gesturing.
My problem, in sum, is that I feel that Americans don’t take driving seriously enough. Yes, it’s condescending, but I (like the vast majority of the rest of Americans–go figure) believe that I am a relatively superior driver. I’ll temper this by saying that my skills lie in broader-stroke driving: long hauls on freeways and journeys on sinuous mountain passes. Any situation where subtle maneuvering is required causes me to get all clenchy. Let it suffice to say that I am a passable parallel-parker but a hopeless backer-upper.
But I have driven coast to coast either 11 or 13 times now; I’ve lost track. I’ve driven in 48 states. So I was reminded tonight of a few observations.
- There are some hot pockets of sheer driving evil in this country. For this sad award I think I’m going to single out: Nevada! Congratulations, Nevada, you suck. Sort of stunningly. Granted, I’ve never driven in Alaska or Hawaii but I’m going to assume they couldn’t possibly suck this much. The stretch of I-15 into Las Vegas is my definition of blinding idiocy: SUVs of drunk 22-year-olds passing dawdling Buicks full of clutches of grandparents, often passing on the shoulder. Infuriating spates of miles passed going 40MPH only to accelerate immediately to 90, mostly caused by my biggest driving no-no, which is:
- There is never, ever, ever any valid reason to hang out in the hammer lane. Get in it, do your business, pass your old folks and your tractor-trailers, then get the hell out. You are not cool enough to decide what speed everyone else on the freeway gets to go. I cannot count the number of hissy fits I’ve been forced to throw because of some moron boxing me in in the left lane. It is not a travel lane. It is not, in fact, for driving in. It’s for passing. This is not a subtle thing. It’s black and white and doesn’t take a lot of self-inspection to execute upon.
- People in L.A. and New England drive like assholes, but for some reason it works for me. There’s a certain elegance to it and it’s wrapped in a tortilla of effectiveness.
- People in Chicago and Boston drive like assholes, but it really doesn’t work for me. Extra malevolence and lack of self-preservation prevail. I find Chicago terrifying and Boston infuriating (a taxi once hit my car on purpose in Boston because he didn’t want me to merge onto the freeway…apparently at all).
- It’s not that hard to avoid getting speeding tickets. My friends less fortunate in this department are likely to take umbrage at this assertion, but I swear 9 miles over is the ticket (if you will), 7 miles over if I’m feeling cagey or paranoid. I haven’t had a speeding ticket since 1999. I haven’t had a speeding ticket I deserved since I was 16, but boy howdy did I deserve that.
Tags: cars, driving, Rant, Travel, united states
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October 8th, 2007
I see people here and there talking about all of Amazon’s Web services and how spiffy they are and A9 Search and OMG Seattle rocks and books and Web 2.0 and and, but, really, as a boring old end user all I want WANT WANT is a bloody RSS feed of my Wish List. If anyone can figure out why there’s no RSS for this, I’ll buy you a beer. Just as likely: if there actually is an RSS feed buried someone in there, let me know and I’ll, yeah, buy you a beer.
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August 17th, 2007
I’m going to the beach this weekend with friends. I like friends, but I continually don’t get the beach. The weather is going be: rain, high of 60F (16C). It’s the hottest month of the year. In what way is this awesome?
I like it to be the summer when it’s the summer
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January 25th, 2007
Ugh. I’m so irritated.
This week’s idiocy chez moi happened on trash day. David put our recycling and trash by the curb, but during the night someone ripped open a bag of trash from the trash can and dumped it in the bag with our glass recyclables.
Thus of course the trash people didn’t take that trash, nor did the recyclers, who left a nastygram-flyer about not putting trash in with your recyclables.
WTF people?
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February 12th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I’ve noticed the same thing over the years. I’ve even noticed that most businesses start out with 5 stars…..it’s like, how do they know!
Also, would anyone be surprised if it were the paying customers of citysearch that magically have this “new math” going on?????
February 12th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
So, gun to your head: Who do you marry?
Citysearch or Pier One?
February 12th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
To be fair (not that Citysearch deserves it — there is no love lost between us), the rating at the top is unlabeled, while the rating histogram at the bottom might be affiliated with the text “What Users are Saying”.
Since Citysearch also has editorial reviews, I’d have to guess that there’s a (secret) editorial rating for the restaurant. Now, the editorial description for the restaurant is rather perfunctory, so perhaps an editor hasn’t actually visited the place. Given Citysearch’s need to not tick off the businesses it reviews and relies on for money (hello, conflict of interest), I’d bet that the default editorial rating is five stars. (This would also explain the rating of new businesses.)
Which, if you do the math, means that reader reviews are probably worth 1/3 of the overall rating, and the editorial reviews 2/3. To be fair, I’m not sure how I’d deal with a flood of haters unfairly trying to take down a restaurant, so maybe that’s fair. But in this case, the overall rating is goofy.
February 12th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
To be fair, very few unweighted rating systems are fair. Haven’t you learned anything from WoW?
February 13th, 2008 at 10:49 am
Who uses citysearch– put your reviews on yelp. There’s a rating details link on each business page that shows the breakdown of ratings.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-baez-mexican-restaurant-portland
February 13th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Unfortunately, Yelp’s 4-star rating for Los Baez really doesn’t say much in its defense as a restaurant-finding tool. But it is open, at least.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Aww sad. Los Biez is from Salem, OR originally. Granted, it is in no way ‘authentic’, but they make good greasy platters of spanglish food. I have many fond memories of curing Saturday night hangovers there, on Sunday afternoon. The Portland restaurant has none of the charm or kitsch of the originals in Salem.
That said, city search sucks, almost as much as evite.