Would it be so difficult to put in an automated credit card machine into the booths at the local TGI Friday’s? (Or anywhere else, for that matter.) Certainly restaurants could take a page from the gas station industry and install “pay at the table” kiosks to enable the patrons to pay for their meals without the help of their server. This enables servers to focus on serving you better, and enables people in a hurry to leave more quickly.
This one’s a little more esoteric, and I could probably do this one if I felt the need, but what the heck. Take a jelly doughnut and remove the jelly from the inside. Then, using an injector, put soft-serve ice-cream inside the shell. Take ice cream doughnut, put in Tupperware. Put in freezer for an hour or so. Take out, put in microwave for 15 seconds. Voila. “Frozen doughnut.” Outer shell should be warm, inside is cold and ice-creamy.
Thoughts on these revolutionary boons to mankind?
Do you have any good ideas that are so large in scope, you’d just as soon give them away to people that can make them happen?
A world subway: airtight cars travel under constant acceleration through evacuated tubes through the crust and mantle of the earth. Direct service point-to-point (although not straight-line) between major centres worldwide. With luck we can get the travel times down to less than an hour anywhere in the world.
It’s been featured in the old SF movie Genesis II, and in Arthur C Clarke’s story Rescue Party (this story is still one of my favourites).
I like “Pay-At-The-Table”, and the design of the device itself can help address Missy2U’s concerns about this being server-friendly. I would have one big button called “Show Charges” which would display the meal charges and a total. There would be a big “Pay Now” button at the bottom, but it would not be enabled just yet. In between, I’d have a series of tip-related buttons. I’d have, say, one big “Tip 15%” button and and smaller “Tip Other” button. The user would HAVE to go through one or the other in order to be able to pay. The “Tip Other” would default to the 15% amount, so if someone wanted to completely stiff the server, they would have to erase the current amount so that it would go to “0.00” before they could actually pay.
My contribution to “Pay at the Table”: Barcodes. Like the Delta self-checkin kiosks at Hartsfield. You get a barcode on your bill, wave it under the “Pay at the table” thingie, add a tip, swipe your credit card, get your receipt, and leave.
I could probably do this with a lot of time, effort, and re-learning. But I am WAY WAY too lazy.
My idea (years ago actually) was to create a virtual, high quality 3D gallery using directx which would display the photos in a specified directory on the walls of the gallery and would build the gallery in real time (room layout would be random or a hybrid of random and structured)
I have seen one example of this, which did not use 3d hardware and used very very basic room structure (worse than the original doom game)
With today’s graphics cards and programming an almost photo-realistic gallery could be created.
Oh man, I always have a million of these and now that I have a place to share them, I’ve forgotten!
Make battery-operated heated gloves and socks, and heated steering wheel covers more readily available. Heck, heated EVERYTHING. Heated windshield wipers!
A heated gas station where you must drive indoors to pump gas. It’s so cold, I hate having to stand out in it and pump gas!
I’d love to also invent a university where they DON’T make every mistake possible and then blame you for it and then charge you $2 for a bottle of juice that isn’t even SPECIAL juice, it’s just juice.
If there is to be no “pay at the table” option, another option would be a light akin to the lights on a police car, and when you’re finished eating you could just hit the button and turn the light on above your table so they could bring the bill. Whenever my ex-boyfriend/best friend and I eat anywhere and they take a long time to bring the bill, we jokingly tap the table lightly as we would if we were hitting a game show buzzer and then whirl our fingers in the air and go “WHEE-OOO”, but not loudly even though I typed it in all caps. Our light wouldn’t have a siren, but we like to go WHEE-OOO anyway. It’s not noticeable and doesn’t make them show up any faster, but since we know we’re referring to the imaginary light it makes us giggle. Hee!
The national debit-card point-of-sale network that all banks and most mercants use has an option where a merchant can enable tipping, and you have to press the “Tip? Yes or No” buttons to go on to pay. The same, presumably, holds for credit cards. Combine that with the wireless point-of-sale terminals that the server can bring to the table, and voila! Pay at the Table!
I haven’t actually seen a restaurant that does this, but I figure it’s only a matter of time, and it’ll creep in at the high end first. (It’ll be cheaper and more secure to equip the servers with one terminal each, rather than build a terminal into each table, where the customers can mess with it…)
You could run tubing from your water heater under the driveway. Maybe a different water heater that you could activate in the winter. Or keep a solar heated supply somewhere. Maybe an electric blanket type of thing you could unroll when it starts to show. Heck, why not a tent type thing that would cover the driveway and pile the snow to the sides? Or hot air blowers on the sides that would retract? Anthing like this would be really expensive, but if you lived in Nome or Toronto or Siberia you wouldn’t care.
I could probably implement this myself if I felt like it. But I don’t. So here goes:
A Pot Luck Cafe. The menu items would be the typical things you get at potlucks/church dinners, etc. The salad section would have a variety of jell-o salads, for example. Side dishes? Stuff like funeral potatoes, broccoli-rice casserole, etc. Comfort foods, like meatloaf & mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese. Desserts would be pies, ice creams, cobblers. There would be a “frequent pie-ers card” where you would earn a punch for every $10 you spent–11 punches would get you $10 off your ticket or a free pie.
It would also be really cool to have a combo fast-food restaurant/car wash. You’d drive up to the first window, place your order and pay. Then you’d drive into the car wash, sit through however many cycles you’d paid for, and then drive to the next window and pick up your dinner.
I’d also like to start a college student book-exchange type thing, where you could sell your books directly to other students for more than you would make selling them back at the school bookstores and yet for less than it would cost them to buy it used at the school bookstores. I’m sure such a thing exists, but I haven’t managed to find one at my university. And my books are too expensive this semester.
[QUOTE=N. Sane]
I could probably implement this myself if I felt like it. But I don’t. So here goes:
A Pot Luck Cafe. The menu items would be the typical things you get at potlucks/church dinners, etc. The salad section would have a variety of jell-o salads, for example. Side dishes? Stuff like funeral potatoes, broccoli-rice casserole, etc. Comfort foods, like meatloaf & mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese. Desserts would be pies, ice creams, cobblers. There would be a “frequent pie-ers card” where you would earn a punch for every $10 you spent–11 punches would get you $10 off your ticket or a free pie.
Hey SF Bay Area residents! Tired of fighting traffic every time you want a nice ski weekend? Meet the Snow Bunny train service, which, to my great dismay, exists only in my fantasy world.
It leaves San Jose at, say, 5 AM. (There may be later departures, just like regular train service.) It generally follows the Cap Corridor route, picking up riders, and arrives in Truckee around 8 AM. (Like the Cap Corridor trains, it has a fully equipped cafe car, and a quiet car for the sleepy.) It is met at the Truckee train station by shuttle buses from the various ski resorts in the area, all of which are anxious for the train riders’ business. After a fun day on the slopes, return service proceeds similarly (with the cafe car in apres-ski mode), and skiers are back in SJ by 8 PM or so.
*Less traffic going up to/coming back from the slopes!
*Trains less affected by bad weather
*More efficient way to get Bay Area folk to and from the mountains
*Gets people riding mass transit
*Sheer comfort and convenience of NOT having to drive, park, etc. You can even sleep on the way up!
They have bus services that do stuff like this. Why not mass transit?
I would love it if this could happen. My books for my Spanish class next semester are going to be scarily expensive. At my college, all it takes to start a “club” is to have at least five interested people and $50 fee. (The fee may be my imagination.) There’s nominal paperwork. I don’t know the rules about selling things directly related to the school, but it’s worth looking into. Once word got around, you could easily have membership of 100+. If by some weird twist of fate, you go to UW-Milwaukee, I’d so help you organize a bookswap.
Don’t you people post signs? “FOR SALE: Billion Dollar Art History book. Used $70 at the bookstore, but I’ll sell it for $50! Call 555-5555!”
When I was an undergraduate there was even a “whole campus” e-mail folder just for sale notices. Books, loft beds, file cabinets, cars, houses, whatever. Very convenient.
