Tom's World

Iowa Castle, I FEEL Cheated

Thu, 01 May 2008 14:28:59 -0600

Last night (Wednesday April 30, 2008), our small family of 4 headed out to have a quick dinner and then over to Baskin Robbins for $0.31 ice cream. As per usual, we couldn't decide where to eat, and then I remembered reading an article about Iowa Castle in the Des Moines Register. It was close, so we ventured over.

Upon entering the restaurant, we were greeted by a big sign on the window that read "10% OFF Dine in Only". I thought, "Sweet, a discount just for eating here!" We ordered our meals (Crissy - #2 $4.99, Tom - #9 $5.99, Josh - Kids Nuggets $2.99 w/milk). We were charged $15.86, I thought nothing of it, sat down and proceeded to eat our meals. While sitting there eating, I thought to myself, gosh, for 10% off, it seems that we might have over paid a little bit. My math said $4.99 + $5.99 + 2.99+6% tax = $14.81 right? No one was at the counter (actually there was practically no one in the restaurant at all) so I thought I'd ask what the deal was. The guy explained to me that you only get 10% off if you have some special "VIP" card which he offered to me for future visits, and since I we ordered milk with the kids meal instead of pop it was an extra $0.99 charge. At that point, I accepted the answered and sat down to finish my meal. When Crissy finished her meal, she looked down at the placemat and read that on Wednesdays, for each combo meal purchased, receive $0.50 off a kids meal. At that point, I noticed that there was another window display on the other side of the building that said, "Kid's Nite each Wednesday". I decided at that point that I had given the establishment an opportunity to right any wrongs on pricing so I wasn't about to re-approach the cashier about the kids night deal. Instead I thought I'd post it here and say to the world, "HEY IOWA CASTLE, I FEEL CHEATED!" It's entirely possible that I was charged appropriately. It's possible that a little carton of milk was $1.49 OVER the cost of a pop. It's also possible that straight up, milk is $0.99 and they owe me a kids size pop because I apparently purchased both.

In summary, we went to Iowa Castle last night for dinner, paid $15.86 and I feel that we should have paid somewhere between $12.85 and $15.33.

Best Case: Kids Nite, 10% off, and no extra charge for milk on a kids meal (like the rest of the world)
($2.99 + $4.99 + $5.99 - $0.50) * 0.9 * 1.06 = $12.85

Allow only 1 discount (with and without extra milk charge):
($2.99 + $4.99 + $5.99 - $0.50) * 1.06 = $14.28
($2.99 + $4.99 + $5.99 - $0.50 + $0.99) * 1.06 = $15.33
($2.99 + $4.99 + $5.99) * 0.9 * 1.06 = $13.33
($2.99 + $4.99 + $5.99 + $0.99) * 0.9 * 1.06 = $14.27

There may be more combinations, but those are the scenarios I came up with. I know I'm being silly, but I am a bit ticked off at being misled (either intentionally or not) as to "deals" at this restaurant.

I'll end on a positive note. The food was great, and I may even decide to eat there again.

On an even better note, Baskin Robbins was awesome. Josh, Crissy and I had ice cream cones and the total bill was $0.99!

Josh Has something to say

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:56:00 -0600

Josh has been BEGGING to tell everyone something!

SHall Turns 30!

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 11:35:59 -0600

Seth turns 30!

Download iPod format

Woah, Slashdot down, Slashdot down!

Sun, 17 Sep 2006 21:44:34 -0600

Tonight, I broke into a cold sweat. I went to read an article through slashdot about the first programming language I learned in college (Scheme) when suddenly, the unthinkable happened! SLASHDOT WAS BROKEN!

Chris P. tried it too and reported the same thing. Luckily, as of a few minutes ago, The Slash followed by the Dot worked once again.

Fireworks

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:04:29 -0600

Some outtakes from fireworks at Andy's in Ohio!

Download iPod format

Fame Dancer

Mon, 16 Jan 2006 22:10:52 -0600

This is a funny video I put together for a friend. It's a video of a friend of my friend put to an appropriate song :)

Also in mp4

Father

Mon, 30 May 2005 11:35:19 -0600

A couple days ago, my dad passed away. We're going to miss him, but he's in heaven now!

The last month of his life have been chronicled by my sister Jennifer. His obituary was published in the Muscatine Journal.

I hope that my son Joshua will love me as much as I love my dad.

New Project

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 10:37:31 -0600

Hello! Long time no see ;) It's only been about 3 years since I last posted here. I post here in my free time, so you might be able to figure out why I haven't posted in sooooo long! I wanted to share my new project with you. Well, Joshua isn't really a project. He's amazing!

Winblows 98

Mon, 25 Mar 2002 22:33:15 -0600

I couldn't resist the impulse buy!

Crissy pointed this one out to me in the store. For the potential defamation lawsuit itself, it was a must buy! I'm sure it will be a collector's item.

The only question now: Should I open the package and play the games or leave it in the shrink wrap???

Vacuum

Tue, 12 Mar 2002 23:20:00 -0600

Tonight we bought a vacuum from a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman! It was his 3rd sale ever! The sales-manager ("the guy on the phone") thought that it was his first. We got a really good deal. I'm such a softie for door-to-door people. We bought a TriStar EXL. I won't say how much it cost, but trust me I checked on Ebay and we stole this one.

More Pictures of Neil

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 21:48:57 -0600

Andy just uploaded a whole bunch more pictures of Neil Andrew Pohl!
I took the liberty of making a thumbnail page.

New books from Audible.com

Sat, 09 Mar 2002 20:01:01 -0600

I just downloaded 2 new books from Audible.com.

The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the New Economy by Pekka Himanen, Linus Torvalds, and more
When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It! by Yogi Berra and Dave Kaplan

I'll let you know how well I like them! I'm sure that they will be most positive books!

Neil Andrew Pohl

Tue, 05 Mar 2002 12:18:24 -0600

I'm an uncle again! YEAH!!!

Pictures: 1 2 3
From Andy:

Neil joined us last night at 6:34 p.m. with a little help from the doctors. He weighs 8lbs 0oz and is 21.25" long.
Here are a few pictures from last night. In some (actually most) of the pictures you will see a funny looking plastic dome over his head. He was having some problems breathing to start out but he is doing fine now. Mom (Cassie) is doing great in fact right now she is on here way to the nursery to feed him for the first time.

'Little guys' need computer help, too

Mon, 04 Mar 2002 19:20:34 -0600

Here is a little article from the 3/4/2002 edition of the Des Moines Register. Steve Woo is a great wordsmith. He can even make me look good!

Thanks Steve!

Click on my picture to read the article (246kb)

It's NOT Over until I WIN!

Sun, 03 Mar 2002 22:55:22 -0600

Today, Steve Woo came over to the house after church. Actually he followed us home :) ... sort-of (He got a little lost). Anyways ... this afternoon, we played on his old computer that he converted into a linux machine. It was an old Pentium^tm 200. Did I mention how OLD it was? We booted it up and noted its utter slowness. I was origionally *just* going to show him what PHP was all about, but since it was so slow, we decided to tackle that first. He and another firend installed the latest version of Mandrake on it. Mandrake is really just another flavor of Linux. There was a LOT of extra programs that were running that really didn't need to and his webserver was a little flaky because PHP wasn't setup quite right. Anyone who knows my taste in Linux knows that I think Slackware is the best Linux *flavor* because it isn't as bloated out of the box. Being the glutton for punishment that I am, we decided to reinstall the machine with the latest version of Slackware, which I happened to have on CD. Well ... 3 hours later and repartitioning his harddrive for the 5th time, Slackware was up and running happily. Did I mention how OLD his machine was? I've never had so much trouble installing Linux onto a computer (and I have done it a LOT). His BIOS was out of date and not too happy to have a harddrive that was 6GB (way bigger than what was available at the time when the computer was new). Persistence was the key to making it work. And yes, Les Brown, I won!