Scott Knaster, Chris Espinosa, iPhones, Xcode and the Sonic Burger Complaint Blog

Ooooooh Ahhhhhhhhh!

The iPhone 3GS. The "S" is for speed because it's really fast.

I got to see two of them at lunch yesterday when Scott Knaster and Chris Espinosa were both testing out their new iPhones. They were spinning their compasses and making videos. Yes, that video is us having lunch. Though the phone has editing capabilities Scott was too excited to waste time editing and had to get his raw footage up on Youtube immediately.

This picture is me, taking a picture of Scott with my old iPhone, as he holds up his new iPhone and Chris makes a video of me on his new iPhone, taking a picture of Scott with my old iPhone. It's kind of like an iPhone circle of life.

Geeky enough for ya?

If you don't know who Scott and Chris are here's what I can tell you about these two guys:

Xcode

Chris Espinosa was 14 years old when he became employee #8 at Apple Computer. He was part of the team that worked in Steve Jobs' garage back in the mid 70's. In 1981 Chris became a member of the Apple Macintosh team and has worked on many projects at Apple since, including Mac OS, A/UX, HyperCard, Taligent, Kaleida Labs, AppleScript and Mac OS X and is now a development engineering manager on the Xcode team.

He's sat down with us at lunch in the Apple Cafeteria a few times and is a really nice guy. When he talks about normal things or even normal computer stuff I can kind of understand what he's saying. When he talks "in" Xcode it's the most bizarre experience. It's English as a foreign language. No mere mortal can possibly begin to comprehend the kind of genius mind it takes to understand Xcode. LOL

Scott Knaster is a technical writer who is best known for his books that deal with Macintosh programming. He is also the author of a random blog post that went viral in 2004 and has become a hilarious complaint site for disgruntled customers of Sonic Drive In, a burger chain.

The reason I say hilarious is because Scott is in no way affiliated with the company, and has posted this fact to his readers on several occasions. Yet some fans and dozens upon dozens of the shunned have continued to leave complaints of alleged shoddy treatment or poor quality food for Sonic Burger Head Quarters on Scott's personal blog for the past 5 years!

I went to a Sonic Drive In last year in Ohio and can honestly say that the service was well intentioned but completely lacking in availability. Translation: We had to wait FOREVER to have our order taken. When we finally did the guy was really nice and polite but brought me both the wrong food and drink. LOL

This was very good. Sonic is known for their cherry limeade. The lime juice is freshly squeezed.

This was very bad. My friend ordered the cheese tots. You'd think the cheese would be melted or grated right? Nope, it's just a big slice of cheese thrown over the tots. When she tried to pick one up the whole thing stuck together. It was pretty gross.

Both the popcorn chicken and onion rings were really good. I hate to recommend people eat so much deep fried food in one meal but I was on vacation so I lived it up a little.

Employees of Sonic Burger have actually taken to scanning Scott's blog to give responses to his readers instructing them how to contact corporate customer service to file an official complaint. One manager in particular, Andrew, seems to have spent the better part of his career with the company monitoring Scott's blog offering advice to customers and employees alike. The picture above shows in 2005 he was an Associate Manager. By April 11, 2006 when he shared he had resigned from the company his title had changed to Assistant GM/ Co-Manager. Thankfully with Andrew's departure from the company James, an Assistant General Manager in Florida, has stated he will pick up the torch as the official voice of Sonic in Scott's blog.