DISQUS

I've found that when we go out and eat as a family (with boys aged 1 and 8 years) that we seem to get less-than-stellar service from some restaurants' wait staff. I call it a self-fulfilling prophesy: the wait staff perceives you're cheap because you have kids and doesn't think they'll get a great tip, so they don't spend as much time or effort on you. Then you leave a less generous tip.

My personal tip meter is 15% of the pre-sales-tax total. You'll get a few points more if you're great, a few points less if you suck.

A PA note here: we just spent a week in Erie and made it a point to try to eat lunches and dinners in local, non-chain restaurants. We received great service everywhere we went. Is staff in Harrisburg restaurants as friendly? I'm not so sure.

Nima, for me the top 3 reasons to Flickr:
1. Off-site backup
2. Tiered sharing (family, friends, public) with CC support
3. Print to Target service

We bought a 32" (4:3) JVC CRT HDTV for about $1200 in May '03 and I couldn't be happier with it. We got CRT for the picture quality, 4:3 for the backwards compatibility with SDTV & VHS & the lower price vs 16:9 CRT, and JVC because it looked just as good as the Sony and fit in our existing entertainment center better. NFL in HDTV drove the timing of the purchase.

I read that article, too. The keywords are *theoretically* and *should*. I don't believe this has been physically tried yet.