EppsNet

It has to be about your readers, who will, it’s hoped, become your customers. It has to be about making them awesome.

So, for example, if you’re selling a clever attachment to a camera that diffuses harsh flash light, don’t talk about the technical features or about your holiday sale (10 percent off!). Make a list of 10 tips for being a better photographer.

If you’re opening a restaurant, don’t blog about your menu. Blog about great food. You’ll attract foodies who don’t care about your restaurant yet.

If you make superior, single-source chocolate, don’t write about that great trip you took to the Dominican Republic to source cocoa beans. That’s all about you. Instead, write the definitive article about making chocolate-covered strawberries. For the next 10 years, whenever a gourmand or a baker searches Google for a recipe on how to make chocolate-covered strawberries, he or she will find your post. Helping your users make awesome chocolate-based confections is likely to attract readers who might buy fancy chocolate . . .

— Joel Spolsky

I went to Subway for lunch and ordered my sandwich in an Australian accent: “LEH-us, to-MAH-to . . .”

Good times!

• IT Workers Being Converted into Teachers: http://bit.ly/BEMVv #
• RT @Aimee_B_Loved: I try to hide my disappointment when I drop the soap in the shower and nothing happens. But Rubber Ducky sees my shame. #
• RT @Lileks: Modern-day Sartre: hell is other people's ringtones. #
• @bjsrestaurants My favorite Deep Dish Pizza is the Great White! in reply to bjsrestaurants #
• WSJ.com – Group Tied to Obama Urges Tax Increase http://bit.ly/V1s6X #stopthepresses #

There’s a sign in the Taco Bell/KFC drive-thru advertising a “Value Drink” for 99 cents. It looks like a pretty sweet deal because the cup is at least three feet tall.

“How big is the Value Drink?” I ask the drive-thru voice.

“16 ounces,” she says.

“Really? It looks a lot bigger than that on the sign.”

“It’s a trick,” she says. “That’s not the actual size.”

“In that case,” I say, “just give me a large Diet Pepsi.”

I like to wrap up my visits to Souplantation with a serving of frozen yogurt but I can’t today because the yogurt machine is out of service.

My son is unsympathetic. “If you want yogurt,” he says, “you go to Yogurtland. If you want soup and plants, you come to Souplantation.”

Special prix fixe menus from participating restaurants:

• $20 Dinner Menus
• $30 Dinner Menus
• $40 Dinner Menus

You can’t go wrong with Orange Hill or Anaheim White House, in this reviewer’s opinion . . .

The guy at the Green Burrito drive-thru leans all the way out the window and almost into my car to ask, in an Eastern European accent, “Can I get you any taco sauce or something?”

Uh, no thanks, Miroslav. I know different cultures have different ideas about personal space but here in America we like you to stay inside the window and just talk to us from there . . .

• @ReporterHaley Love the food at Lucille's. And they make a very good mint julep… in reply to ReporterHaley #
• RT @capricecrane: I was trying to make exercising fun but apparently after a certain age its no longer "appropriate" to play Ding Dong Ditch #

• Writing Microcopy http://bit.ly/pYMPz #
• Hof's Hut closes. Went there on my first date, then to a movie at the Cinedome, which was demolished 10 years ago. http://tinyurl.com/nkc2s8 #

• "Clean and sober Andy Dick ready to invade O.C." http://bit.ly/lGfMb #bottomstoriesoftheday #
• CPK now lists calories on the menus. Suicide! Even the salads are over 1000! #
• RT @diablocody: Intrigued by full-service "dental spa." Tired of making separate trips for tooth bleaching and anal bleaching. #

Our flight out of Buffalo was delayed by gusty winds so we ducked into Anchor Bar at the airport for an order of buffalo wings. The Anchor Bar wings come with five sauce options: mild, medium, hot, spicy bar-b-que or suicidal.

I asked the waitress, “The ’suicidal’ wings — who’s responsible if they result in my actual death?”

“Oh they’re not like that,” she said. “There’s other places in Buffalo that serve wings a lot hotter. Oh my gosh, if you actually died?“

“You could use that in your advertising: ‘A guy actually died eating these wings!’”

“I’ll keep the defibrillator handy.”

We gave the suicidal wings their day in court. We liked them. Like the waitress said, they actually weren’t as hot as the wings I’ve had at some other places, despite the small kernels of red and black pepper that are actually in the sauce and on the wings.

My pulse and respiration may have been slightly elevated but not to a life-threatening level . . .

After a visit to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, we stopped by a Subway where an Asian woman with a strange accent made our sandwiches.

“Have you been to the Hockey Hall of Fame up the street there?” I asked her.

No answer.

“It’s great!” I said. “We came all the way from California to see it.”

“I came from Buffalo,” she said.

“Really? Where’d you come from before Buffalo?” I asked.

“I saw Niagara Falls,” she said.

Yesterday’s team bonding activities included miniature golf, pizza and a midnight screening of Brüno, all within walking distance of the hotel.

After the movie, the kids walked to McDonalds. It was closed. The drive-thru was still open, but they didn’t have a car.

Just then — in an amazing cross-continental coincidence — Eddie, the manager of our local rink in Irvine, pulled into the drive-thru, and the kids got him to buy them all ice cream cones . . .

As I get home from work, my wife greets me with what looks like a leftover, partly eaten Cobb salad . . .

“We went to IHOP,” she says, “and we got this for you.”

“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Thanks for thinking of me.”

Later in the evening I catch up with my son and ask him what he had to eat at IHOP.

“I had a steak omelet and pancakes,” he says.

“That sounds really good. I wanted to thank you for treating me to the half-eaten Cobb salad.”

“Mom said you’d like that,” he says. “And that was pretty much a whole Cobb salad.”

“It looked partly eaten to me.”

“The bacon was partly eaten.”

“That’s the best part of the salad.”

• RT @diablocody: I ordered a bunch of Yankee Candles while drunk. Now the house smells of pie and remorse. #
• RT @darthvader: I love national holidays where blowing up a rebel stronghold can easily be considered a spectacular “finale.” #
• Weinerschnitzel: 2 chili dogs plus chili cheese fries for $3. Ain’t that America! #
• RT @diablocody: Ah, the patriotic “flag bikini.” There’s nothing like having a nation’s pride wadded up in your labia. #
• RT @ericmusselman: Abraham Lincoln: “I will prepare, and someday my chance will come.” #

Pasta e fagioli — amazing! Linguine with shaved truffles — exquisite! Service — impeccable!

My wife had the veal liver. I don’t even like liver but I tried it and loved it! They can make you like things you don’t even like.

It’s not inexpensive — that needs to be mentioned — but if you feel like helping to spend the country out of this recession we’re having, I think you’ll really enjoy it.

• Automaker bankruptcies: A success of the market system – http://bit.ly/1BgH7 #
• At Wingnuts w/Casey. For wings. #
• At Corona rink for AAU Nationals #

We had Mother’s Day brunch at Todai Japanese buffet in Orange.

Unfortunately, directly in my line of sight at another table was a 500-pound bald Asian guy — a beast of a man — stuffing huge handfuls of food into his gaping maw.

And when I say “huge handfuls of food,” I mean he seemed to have a python-like ability to unhinge his jaws to accomodate the volume of food he was cramming in there.

Buffet managers must die a little inside when a guy like that shows up.

Everyone’s got armbands and 3-D glasses . . .

— Elvis Costello

Irvine schools are on spring break this week. I took a day off for father-son activities with my boy, age 15.

As we were driving back from lunch at Wingstop, I said, “You want to see Monsters vs. Aliens in 3-D IMAX?”

“Not particularly,” he said.

I’d already decided that I did want to see it so I got off at the Irvine Spectrum exit.

“I guess this means we’re going to see it,” he said.

“You know what they say: Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time, but regret for the things we didn’t do is inconsolable.”

“Oh shut up, Sophocles. It’s a movie for two-year-olds.”

“No it isn’t. There’s a giant girl in it. It looks cool.”

“I’ll be the combined age of everyone else in the theater.”

We got there a little early so we bought the movie tickets and walked around the Spectrum for a while. I bought a Tommy Bahama shirt and the boy got some red sneakers at Vans.

I have to admit that the movie didn’t really live up to my expectations, but the 3-D IMAX was good and I liked this line from BOB, the monster with no brain, when the battle against the aliens looks hopeless:

“Gentlemen, I may not have a brain — but I have an idea!”

In the evening, the boy had a high school roller hockey game and his mom and I watched him. It was a good day . . .

I know my son had a history test today, and that history is a make-or-break class for him. I want to ask him about the test but we’re having a delicious family meal at Olive Garden and I don’t want to break up the festive mood in the event the news turns out to be bad.

I decide to ease into it with some small talk . . .

“So, how was recess today?”

o_O (BLANK STARE)

I continue, “I know you had a history test today but rather than get right into that, I thought we could start with some small talk about recess.”

He says, “I haven’t had recess since 6th grade.”

“Oh. In that case, how was the history test?”