Friday, December 25, 2009

The cheapest way to Mac

When I moved a few months back I had the "opportunity" to renegotiate with Comcast and as a result ended up with a bundled deal of some sort, and a free Dell Mini 10v. As I just recently hit the magic 90 day mark on the cable service the netbook arrived on my door. I had been looking forward to this, a super small notebook for travel etc.. and even better that it's free! However after powering it up and playing with it a bit I just can't deal with Windows XP. Vista's been out for a few years, Windows 7 is released (and a great OS) but they still ship these things with plain old boring XP.

Some searching around for other OS options that would run well on the netbook platform led me to http://www.mydellmini.com where they have some fantastic guides on quickly and easily turning the Dell into what I suspect is the worlds cheapest Mac. It took me longer to restore my OS X 10.6 install DVD to an external hard drive than it did to wipe the XP nastiness off the Netbook and get OS X up and running.

So far so good, it's been stable, quick and plays nicely with the other computers on the home network.

Off to make Christmas dinner, happy holidays!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Po-Dog

A couple weeks KMJ and I went to a new gourmet hot dog place up on Capitol Hill for some pre-Thanksgiving weekend chow. Po Dogs is over on East Union and claims to be Seattle's first gourmet hot dog shop. Fresh off a weekend excursion to Chicago in October where I gorged myself on a variety offerings at the infamous Hot Doug's I was excited at the prospect of something even faintly similar here in Seattle.

So we walked down there and found a decent crowd of around 12 people waiting in line(s) around lunch time which was a good sign, not so good was the lack of direction on where the actual line to order our lunch was. The cashier was nice enough but not overly helpful in directing traffic.

After about 15 minutes we got to place our order (Chicago dog, Dub-t dog and Texas dog) and took a seat. The service was pretty quick and we had our dogs within about five minutes or so.

My thoughts on the food:

Chicago dog - The brioche bun is fantastic and the presentation is good. Sport peppers? Check. Celery salt? Check. Spicy Mustard? Check. Tomato? Check. Neon green relish? MIA. But what kind of hot dog is this? The true Chicago dog is made from a Vienna Beef Hot Dog but Po Dogs are using the same hot dog for each of the menu offerings and honestly the Chicago dog just isn't right without the snappier Vienna Beef sausage.

Overall the dog was pretty good, minor gripe is that dogs don't really sit in the buns so all the toppings are piled up over the top of the bun and tend to be a bit messy. Also the price is in my opinion to high for what you get. $6.95 is just excessive. By way of comparison the Chicago Dog at Hot Doug's was not only better (except for the bun) but cost $1.79.

Dub-T dog - A hot dog with crushed potato chips and cheese sauce. Nothing less than fantastic, sloppy, drippy and delicious.

Texas dog - I didn't actually try this one, but KMJ seemed pleased with it

Fries - Excellent! The house made potato chips on the Dub-t dog were also great.

Final thoughts:

Po-Dogs is good concept but needs to really consider expanding their meat horizons and focus on sourcing the most appropriate hot dog type/brand to compliment each of their offerings rather than standardizing on one hot dog and trying to make it work. The big kosher dogs are good, but they are not a Chicago style hot dog. The hot dog buns on the other hand are out of this world and I would buy them on their own if they were available.

Price, price, price! Po-Dogs is offering up a good product but the pricing is in need of adjustment. We got 3 hot dogs, 2 drinks ($2.50 for a can of diet coke) and an order of fries for $25. That's about what it would cost at a Mariners or Seahawks game.

Despite that I'll be back at some point, a good dog is hard to find.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Moved in, sort of

Damn the internet, it's so much harder to actually focus on getting things unpacked and put away with email rolling in but I'm making progress none the less. It will be a huge help to get all the empty boxes out of here tomorrow once the recycling get's picked up and there's room in the dumpster.

On the bright side it's a good time to put the iTunes on random and listen to music I'd all but forgotten about. Off to the garage to tidy up the storage locker so I can jam more stuff in there.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

New layout

Just trying out a few new templates to improve the look and feel, bear with me.

Monday, April 27, 2009

Tour de Lopez

The past weekend was the Tour de Lopez which was either a 10, 17 or 31 mile ride around scenic Lopez island. The island is really great for those who haven't been there I really recommend it and travel by bicycle is especially great since you won't get stuck in line waiting through the weekend ferry traffic like the cars do. After bailing out of work early on Friday we all piled in the cars and headed north. First stop after breaking most speed laws in the area was at Breadfarm to buy some cookies and potato bread. After that we headed to the Rhododendron Cafe in Bow, for some dinner and then on to Anacortes.

Saturday started off with a mad dash to buy ferry tickets and then stampede aboard the boat to contribute to the growing pile of bicycles that were stacked up like firewood all along the upper part of the car decks. Nice little bonus for the state to get so many extra riders on the ferry Saturday morning, unfortunately they didn't anticipate that people may want to eat and only had one poor worker in the kitchen that was chef, cashier and busboy.

Finally arriving on Lopez we joined the rest of the cattle herd in trying to get down the stairs and unwind about 200 bikes that had all been stacked together like a bunch of firewood on the upper parts of the car deck. Just when I thought the fun of getting that sorted out was over, we walked off the ferry and I realized that the first of many hills featured on the days ride was right in my face before we even got to the starting point down at Odlin Park. After a pretty good start KJ and I decided to ride the 17 mile route rather than the 31 (actually closer to 36 mile when you add riding to and from the ferry) mile one as we had planned. This was a good thing since there were some just killer hills in the first 10 miles that pretty much gassed my legs that aren't used to such treatment.



Following the ride, well the first part if you count the 5 miles back to the ferry there was a good lunch and chance to buy some cookies and stuff at the local bakeries and lay around hoping the sun would poke through which it eventually did. That evening we all headed off to dinner at Adrift in downtown Anacortes. The food was great but it was a bit warm in the restaurant and as a result I nearly fell asleep at the table. Up early on Sunday morning, we went back to Bow Edison to visit the Farm to Market Bakery for the Polenta cake, and then doubled back south to take in some tulips before heading home.



All in all a great weekend and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a good weekend escape this time next year. If you want to check out the rest of the photo's go over to my smug mug site

I got video

I recently bought a Flip Video camera off of Woot! (review of that to follow) and to go along with that just setup a new You Tube channel so I have someplace to put them. Not much there at the moment aside from some classic Husky Football but more to come.
http://www.youtube.com/user/elgauchogrub

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Finally a sunny day

A nice summery day in between the seemingly endless rain. Went for a bike ride from Lake Forest Park up to Gasworks, easy on the way there but ran out of gas on the way back big time proving that biking in the gym does not always equate to biking on the road. Need to get back at it though, the Tour de Lopez is coming up in just a few weeks.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Huskies in Portland

Just like ESPN predicted, the Huskies are opening up tournament play down in Portland, now just need to find tickets.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Microsoft Tag

I just came across this new tag application from Microsoft https://www.microsoft.com/tag/ that allows you to create visual tags with embedded URL's or other data. Simply install the tag application on your mobile phone then point the camera at the tag and it will take you to that URL.

Here's an example

Friday, March 6, 2009

Photo Gallery is live

Still somewhat of a work in progress but I've got most of my pictures uploaded, sorted, organized, geo-tagged and so forth. So without further ado, thebriankdotnet photo palooza can be found right here on your local internet http://thebriankdotnet.smugmug.com

Check it out!

On a related note I really recomend www.smugmug.com for anyone looking for a reliable way to share and backup your digital photos.