Why Yelp Sucks

My days can usually be found on the internet reading up on many things. My girlfriend turned me onto this site called Yelp. You can find reviews for everything and anything.  If you haven’t heard of this site either you are not missing much. So let’s say it’s Dinner time and I want a burger. So I go to Yelp.com and run a search for burger and I get this place.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/hamburger-harrys-seattle

The first review is from someone named Terrell.

“If you like ground beef, grease and sports on big screen televisions, this is your place!”

The rest of the review is about how he was not happy with his burger because he doesn’t like that type of thing so he gives the place 2 out of 5 stars. Now on Yelp you can rate a review in 3 ways. “Useful, Funny or Cool” Where is the button that this is a bad review if you don’t like this type of food why the hell are you reviewing it to begin with. Why did you even go in there if it’s not your style. I wish I could vote the review off the page and have it no longer count.

There are other sites like digg.com where you can review news articles and comments. You can either digg it up or mark it down. If it’s dugg down enough it disappears and is gone. You can do this with peoples comments so you don’t have to read idiocy if you don’t want to. Yelp doesn’t have this feature so even people who write “This place sucks!” and that is all and give it 1 star you can’t do anything but say if the review is “Useful, Funny or Cool”

What this makes me think about is that when I go check a place out and it has 3 stars that I need to parse through every review to see why the person is reviewing it and what their other reviews are to see even if I want to trust them. Well fuck that shit I don’t have time I just want to know where a good burger is that isn’t being judged my some vegetarian who hates the place because they don’t have their soy full of shit burgers with their private agenda. You are eating at a burger joint. Cow was murdered for the purpose of being grilled and put inbetween bread with cheese on top of it. That is the whole damn point. But you are marking a place down for doing so.

I really don’t get it. I can see where such a thing would be a good place to get seen and get new customers but I just don’t agree with the system on yelp and it could be improved in so many ways. I bring up this argument to most people and they are just like “Meh whatever you say Tristan” There are other review sites out there but I have yet to put my finger on why Yelp took off. People thought I was crazy for thinking myspace was a big steaming pile of shit. I usually try to check out the review on Yelp and then Urbanspoon, Yellowpages and then Citysearch that wastes a great deal of time where I would rather just go to the place and try it myself. But I have a girlfriend who doesn’t follow that same idea.

I really like it when a Vegetarian or a Vegan reviews a Steakhouse. Gives it a 1 star for not having anything other then a side salad. I really hope they shutup real soon. You don’t see me going to a vegetarian restaurant and giving it a 1 star review for not having a freshly slaughtered piece of flesh for me to consume.

Some days I would really kill to have this T-Shirt.

My XBOX 360 started a Blog

So I was reading an article on Digg about the top 10 things your 360 can do. It made mention of this site 360voice.com which you can associate your XBOX to and it will generate a blog based on what you do or complete on your XBOX 360. I thought it was a pretty cool feature and it was free so all the better.

You can follow my XBOX 360 by going to the following link. : http://www.360voice.com/tag/TristanP

My favorite post so far has been.

You would think I had died and gone to heaven when TristanP showed up to play. Gamer score stands at 4,110. That is a gain of 265 points over last time! We have now entered the 4,000 GS club! He played Halo 3 gaining 4 achievements, and then he started getting all these friend requests because of high awesomeness levels.

For some reason that made me laugh.

Blogging Year 1 – 2003

2003 was an interesting year for me. I really got inspired to blog when I was reading slashdot and saw that google had purchased blogger.com. So I was like what the hell I will check it out and found that having this easy engine to write down my thoughts to be a rather nice release for me. I was in a relationship that was on it’s way to an end. I was working with SiriusBackstage.com as a Forum Jockey and had been around the Satellite Radio business for a while now. I was working for Best Buy as a Computer Tech.

I think the two highlights of the year were when I came back to Seattle for 3 weeks for my sisters graduation. I got to borrow my aunts truck when I was visiting so I had freedom to just do whatever the hell I wanted when I wanted. Went to a few Lan Parties and all and all it was a great vacation to see my friends.

When I was living in Indiana I honestly had no real friends. I had all of my internet peeps that I connected with and that was enough to make time pass easily enough. But I had no such happiness in Indiana. Which resulted in the end of my time their. The girl I had been seeing broke it off with me in December of 2003. To which I promptly got on the internet and let my mother know of the situation. The resolution was I could be out in two weeks to tie up all of my affairs. I flew my buddy Darin out from Seattle to Indiana. We drove from Indiana to Seattle in a few days with threat of a winter storm at all moments. I have been really meaning to finish writing about that drive since it was incredibly interesting. But have just never been able to find the time to do so.

I got back to Seattle a few days before Christmas it was the first Christmas I had spent at home in 2 years. That was pretty much 2003 in a nutshell.

I am going to write up a yearly summary daily up until this year. Friday-2003, Monday-2004, Tuesday-2005, Wednesday-2006, Thursday 2007-2008. Let’s see how well I do to meet that goal. =)

September 11th 2003

Was the first day I wrote my first official blogpost. I will start working on a 5 year summary. Good times indeed. Been a fun ride thus far. I seem to never have the time to write on this site anymore. It’s not that I don’t want to. I just can’t find the free time to do so. I find it hard when I am at home to grab my laptop and start writing.

I really miss podcasting and blogging. I need to make a stronger effort. But anyway 5 year writeup coming up.

Sad News

I am a bit late on this one but I just heard about it this morning. One of the most famous voice over actors passed away. Don Lafontaine (August 26, 1940—September 1, 2008).

I really admired the guy. I wish I could do what he did. I always thought I had a pretty good voice. Nothing compares to this fellow. He will be missed. Lots of people passing away this year. George Carlin will be missed. I remember going to see his last concert in Seattle. I said “I wanted to see him before he passed away” Not even a year later he does. Sad Times indeed.

Here is my favorite youtube clip.

5 Voiceover Guys