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AGORACOM Maintenance Alert: Going Offline Tonight, and Friday night for about an hour

Dear Members.

AGORACOM will be updating our server framework tonight and tomorrow night. As a result our discussion forums will be down for 1 hour or less.

These problems stemmed from our recent switch to a new web host and some issues with our DNS records (the settings that tell your web browser where our website is located). We believe we have squashed these bugs and are looking forward to pushing these updates through.

In anticipation of this scheduled maintenance we suggest the following:

1. If you are going to post any long and intensive material after 6PM either tonight or on Friday night, save a copy. We don’t expect to lose any data from the last 2-3 hours but better to be safe than sorry

2. Our blog (which you are reading right now) and Twitter account will be unaffected during the downtime, so feel free to contact us at either if you have any issues and can’t reach us through the site.

Best thing to do is to post comments on our blog. Alternatively you can reach us by emailing contactagora@agoracom.com

3. We expect the migration to be very smooth but please let us know if you have any issues.

4. If you are in Toronto, or the GTA, enjoy the weather! Summer is here so go out and have some fun!

We trust the above to be satisfactory as we strive to continually provide you with a great AGORACOM experience.

Thanks,
George and the AGORACOM Team

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Message: For all of you who frequent restaurants

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For all of you who frequent restaurants

posted on Aug 27, 08 05:46PM

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For all of you who frequent restaurants and understand the need for the service to be faster, this short story is a timeless lesson on how consultants can make a difference to an organization.

Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange. When another waiter brought our water and utensils I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, 'Why the spoon?' 'Well, he explained, 'the restaurant's owners hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all our procedures.

After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.'

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare. 'I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen, instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.'

I was impressed. I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter 'Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?'

'Oh, certainly!' Then he lowered his voice. 'Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the tip of your you-know-what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent.

I asked 'After you get it out, how do you put it back?'

'Well,' he whispered, 'I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon...'