Berns baby!!

Last night I finally went to the famous Berns Steakhouse in Tampa FL.  This is the place where the President of the United States goes to have a meal whenever he is town campaigning or doing whatever it is he does when he's here.  I'll give them this, they make a pretty mean steak and they cooked it to perfection which was really nice.

The menu was quite extensive.  They had every type of steak you could think of and in every kind of thickness and they give you a list of the types of thickness, what ways it can be cooked, what thickness is appropriate for cooking it rare, medium etc.  There was even a glossary of terms and the waiter was very helpful as well in making suggestions.   When you go online and look them up and check out the prices, you're kind of overwhelmed at how much it costs.  But the thing is is that the meal includes so much stuff.  Say you order a steak (like I did) you get an onion soup, a salad, a baked potato, fresh onion rings, and veggies.  Thats pretty much a complete meal right there.  One thing that was pretty interesting was that they prepare your baked potato at the table.  You can't sub stuff but you can get a la carte.  I personally didn't sub anything but the people I was with did and even ordered this awesome tasting mac and cheese, and the crackers with melted cheese on it was totally awesome.

The wine list at Berns is just HUUUUUUGE.  It looked like a really thick text book I once had when going to school.  They had every kind of wine from every region you could think of.  And we're not talking the cheap stuff that you get a the liqueur store either, we're talking some vintage stuff that costs well over $700 a bottle.  I didn't have any wine of course but it was just cool to look through it and see what it was they were offering.

Dessert is yet ANOTHER completely different experience at Berns.  They have little rooms that have privacy doors so you can eat your dessert in complete privacy.  They even have a little box that lets you select different music to listen to.  Oh this is also really cool, they have a guy in a room that plays piano and you have a small phone so you can call him up and have him play a request so you can listen to it in your room.  You can't say that isn't freakin cool right there!  Of course this being Berns and all, it wouldn't be complete without yet another list of different types of spirits for just the desserts that they serve.  This list isn't as extensive as the wine list but its certainly just as expensive.  I had the Macadamia nut ice cream that they are famous for and they make it on site too.  I have to say that it was really good.

The atmosphere of the entrance of the restaurant is very old world European.  It has red velvet on the banister and on the walls, classical style paintings of famous rulers of Europe, and the lighting is quite dim as well.  There is a large bar on the premises as well and numerous different rooms that sport different themes.  I can say that if one lives or visits Tampa and has money to burn, Berns is a must see.  (The key here is that you need to have a lot of money to burn to eat here)

Parking woe's

This one will just be a general complaint. Can people no longer park between the lines? My garage at work has tons of spaces but it seems like almost half of the people park on the lines, crooked, or take up two spaces. I was forced to park on the roof after only leaving my spot for 10 minutes to sell something. Is it really that difficult to park between two little lines???? GAH!!

Feeding the asian stereotype that asians are bad drivers!

This morning there was a huge amount of traffic going into work so I tried an alternate route so I could get to work as close to on time as possible. On my alternate route I got stuck behind this street racer pimp Honda Civic. It had the tricked out muffler, the cool rims, and the tints and I think even a ground effects kit on it. There was only one problem with it, the person driving it was going so SLOW!! I'm in the car with my wife and we're both getting road rage that this idiot is driving like an old granny in a tricked out Civic that looks like its supposed to go fast. After I get to a road and pass him we discovered that it was a little asian man driving it. Being an asian myself I was kinda pissed that he was feeding the stereotype that asians are bad drivers so I promptly stepped on the gas and left him in my dust and proceeded to speed to work to attempt to make it on time. Gah, people like that make me so pissed and also make me late for work!!!

Tivo Trouble

I think recently the firmware on my Tivo was upgraded because its been acting funny for the past few days. When I used to look at the show guide maybe 5 minutes before the next hour it would show the next hours shows and not what I'm currently watching any longer. Now it only shows what you are currenly watching at any given moment which is totally annoying now.

One more thing that seems to be kind of off is that the reactions to the remote commands when I press a button seem ultra slow now. That's totally unacceptable considering when I press a button the menu should pop up instead of giving me a 3 second delay. I hope they fix both of these problems soon. I want my old Tivo funtionality back!!

My kitty sliced my hand!!

Last night was packing night since I'm making my big move to South Florida soon. I was handling Nala (the smaller yet fiestier cat) to put her in the second bedroom of my apartment since she has this thing about climbing whatever is around. As I approached the room, she decided to use my hands as a spring board. Needless to say she gave me a huge cut on the palm of my left hand. I have a huge bandage on my hand right now and used a shit load of Neosporin to kill any infections. I should be able to take the bandage off later today but my hand hurts like crazy!!! GAH!!

Mitchells Fish Market was Awesome!

Today I had lunch with a good friend from work and I suggested that we go to Mitchell's Fish Market here in Tampa.  I must say that the food there is excellent!  They have freshly caught fish every day and the menu changes daily too, not only that its printed daily with a date/time stamp.

The one thing that separates this place from all the other sea food restaraunts that I've been to is that this place actually serves raw clams.  For some reason thats a very hard commodity to get here in Tampa so I was quite excited to have some.  I haven't had raw clams since I lived in the north east and I used to eat them pretty regularly with my father when he bought them from Stew Leaonards on the weekly grocery trip.  They even provided a soup sampler so we could choose what soup we preferred.  I personally had an order of raw clams, the lobster bisque soup, and the grilled salmon with mashed potato's for lunch.  The food there is freakin awesome and I'm definately going to see if they have a location in Miami.

My car is perfect once again

Today I had to take my car to Kauffman Tire in order to finally get some new tires. I bought my car back in 2002 and I never got new tires for it. After dropping it off this morning I received a call mid morning and I was told that I needed new brakes!! Well thats just a ton more money down the drain but I must say that they did an excellent job with my car. Luckily I only needed 4 pads, 4 tires, and 4 cut rotors. On top of all that, I got even better tires than I requested. Originally they said they had Toyo tires that they recommended on the phone in stock but during my call this morning with them about my brakes, I was informed that the tires I asked for are actually not in stock and instead they gave me even better tires but at the same price. How freakin cool is that? I have the awesome warranty with it but its pretty useless unless they open a store in South Florida.

Now when I brake, my car doesn't shake which will definately make my wife happy. I used to make her really car sick because of all the shaking that went on when I hit the brakes. The car rides pretty well too on the new tires although I really can't tell the difference. I just know that I can go faster on these tires than my old ones but who goes 120 mph on the highway in Florida anyway unless you're trying to outrun a state trooper? Tomorrow I'll see if all the money fixing my car was worth it during my rush hour drive to work :)

It's a Google kinda world.......

I was just pondering how much stuff I use now that is Google related. I've used all types of products in my time with IT and in college and I have to say that I have seen my own personal shift towards Google and it surprised me quite a bit on how much I rely on the products of this company.

Lets take email as a prime example. Before GMail came out, I was tied into using my ISP's email service or the venerable Hotmail of which I have been a proud member since 1996. I still use Hotmail from time to time but its mostly for junk or promotions. Once I heard about GMail and its 2 gigs of storage I thought it was freaking awesome and I signed up via one of those invitations you needed to get. The best part was that it had free POP access so I could ditch my ISP's email, I used an email address from my old school and had them reroute everything to GMail, I in turn forwarded all that mail to another GMail account that I created so I can get it on my phone. I have yet a 3rd out there just holding files since some genius came up with the idea of GDrive so I could use it as an internet hard drive. Nowadays I rely on GMail for all my personal correspondence with anyone except for tech support which I still use Hotmail for. If Hotmail still had free POP, I would probably be using them right now but alas they don't so GMail it is.

Another fine Google product that I've started to use is the new Google Calendar. I like how I am able to have multiple calendars to sort my life out. I personally use Outlook at home because it syncs with my Treo and I also have a Plaxo account that synch with Outlook so I'm never without my calendar or contacts. But the collaboration abilities with Google Calendar are awesome. I can see my calendar in pretty colors, add more calendars as I need them, and add calendars of family and friends. Now my only problem with the calendar as it stands is that I can't access it from my Treo, nor can I export the calendar into a format that my Treo will accept. I'm hoping that this will be solved then I might just totally move to Google Calendar. As it is, I'm just testing it and messing around but it seems very useful so far.

Maps is a big part of my life since I always seem to find myself in unfamiliar places when driving around Florida. I've remedied that recently with my TomTom GPS Navigator software and Bluetooth GPS receiver but before all that I relied on internet maps. The grand daddy of them all in my view has always been Mapquest. For as long as I can remember I've always used map quest, that is until Google Earth and Google Maps came around. Not only were the maps better than Mapquest, I could view aerial photo's of where I was going and the directional lines would show up perfectly. There have been lots of custom maps around the net but I haven't used any of them. My wife still relies on them since my GPS is connected to my phone but until I see MS Live maps and Yahoo's Maps Beta best Google, I think I'll be sticking with Google Maps for now.

I subscribe to a lot of Google services but the last ones I'll talk about are the new spreadsheet and word processing apps. I've recently tested these out with some simple documents and I can heartily say that these apps are pretty decent. I haven't tried more complex stuff like calculations or advanced formatting but for simple stuff its still pretty good. The only downside is that you have to be connected but the up side is that it can import documents and you can collaborate with people in real time. That to me is pretty awesome and sure as hell beats emailing docs all around town. There are free apps like OpenOffice.org but those are local to your PC so you can't collaborate or share. Man you gotta love all these new web appliances.

So what does this all mean? Well really right now, the only thing that matters to me is my venerable email and as long as GMail is the king and I can get it via POP I won't be switching anytime soon. As for the other services, they're definitely nice to have in a pinch and pretty fun to play with. And to show how much Google invades my life, my blog where I write all my rantings and ravings is on Blogger which of course is owned by Google :) Now if I could only get my hands on Blogger Beta...........

Yankees sweep the Red Sox in 5!

According to most news sources, the Red Sox haven't been swept in 5 games for almost 50 years!  Now thats quite an achievment if you ask me.  I like the fact that they're calling this the Boston Masacre 2 in the NY Times online.  Now the Yankee's have a pretty good lead in the AL East and the only way the Red Sox are going to be in the playoffs is if

1. The Yankee's royally fuck up in the next few weeks leading into October
2. The Sox all of sudden have a huge surge and win the AL Wild Card Race
3. Insert favorite act of God here...........

Needless to say I have confidence that the Yankees are making the playoffs this year and October is definately going to be a sweeeeeet month!

Woohoo Google Calendar for me!

My wife and I are Gmail users and recently we both signed up for Google Calender.  I've actually had it since the beta started a while ago but I never really used it because no one else was using it.  I use Outlook at home and my Treo of course is with me but I also use Plaxo which syncs all my Outlook calendar stuff and my contacts to the web so I'm never without them no matter where I am.

I actually saw why people like it so much when I went to a conference in Orlando FL.  At the conference there were a bunch of meetings going on with different companies that were giving people information on how to upgrade their software.  When I went to see if there were any openings, I saw that they were all using Google Calendar to manage all the appointments.  I thought that this was a really cool way to use technology and share information with your friends, especially those that don't use MySpacve or Evite a lot.  I'll probably end up roping a lot of my in-laws and other family into using Google Calendar so they know when I'm around and when I'm not.  Now I'm just waiting for a way to sync it with my current Outlook crap so I don't have to do double entries into both my Treo and my Google Calendar.  Come on Google hurry up, I'm dying over here!

Windows Live Writer Beta

I'm trying out the new Windows Live Writer beta which is made for publishing blog posts on numerous different types of blog sites.  It's mainly optimized for MSN Spaces (I have an account there that I don't use) but it said that you can use it for Blogger so I might as well try it out.

There are a lot of enhancements going on in the blogsphere in terms of tools.  I was almost ready to jump ship to MSN spaces but then I heard that Blogger was finally updating their tool set after a really long time.  The thing that I liked about Blogger was its simplicity to post things but the ability to customize was a real pain the ass.  I had to figure out how where to insert snippets of code in an CSS form in order to get different elements to appear or stick it in something like MS FrontPage and edit that way.

With the new version of Blogger its supposed to be way easier but its currently in beta and it hasn't been released to all that many people.  Since I have to wait I figure why not see what MS has to offer in terms of a blogging tool so here I am writing a post in Windows Live Writer.  I have to say that the interface is very simple and the tools that you can access are straight forward and uncluttered.  The only bad thing is that you have to install it but I guess that's also a good thing so I can write my posts off line.  I could also write it up on my phone but it takes way longer and my thumbs get tired after a while.  It's time to publish this so its time to cross my fingers and see if this works!!!

They're more than meets the eye!!

Early this morning while I was driving into work I spied a van with the image to the left on the trunk. The symbol was freaking HUGE! I pointed it out to my wife who I car pool to work with and said, "Look its a Decepticon!!"

I then attempted to whip out my camera phone to take a picture of it so I could post it but alas I was unable to get a picture of it because I moved ahead of him, but thats alright because that has to be one of the funniest things I've seen in a very long time.

And for those of you that don't know what a Decepticon is, you totally need to watch Transformers, and I don't mean the new crap, I'm talking about the stuff that came out in the 1980's, now thats classic TV right there that one and all should watch in their life times.

My cat is smart!

Last night I put my older cat Thumper in his cage so he wouldn't wake me up bright and early this morning. As an added precaution I put something in front of his cage so he couldn't get out. I just put Nala's little round sleeping cat furniture in front of it but I thought it would be sturdy enough given that its made of wood and decently heavy.

Well lo and behold, I hear a faint meowing at my bedroom door! Thumper managed to get out of the cage by sliding the lock release over (its just a simple lock, I don't put a REAL lock on it since I don't want to accidentally lock him inside) and then pushing the door open and also moving the cat furniture. This marks the 3rd time that I've seen him escape from the cat cage which is pretty cool if you think about it. Now if I could only teach him not to meow at my bedroom door in the morning, that would be the ultimate!

My laptop burned me

I was working with my work laptop on Friday and it started to overheat by a lot. Now the USB ports aren't working on the PC so I had to swap it out this morning. I don't have any marks but it still burned when I put it on my lap and the plastic is a little warped because of the extreme heat. Hopefully it my new PC won't burn me.

So much for flying with carry on's

Right now the news is crawling with reports of how a terrorist plot was just thwarted in London. Apparently a bunch of people that hate the good ole USA wanted to destroy some trans-Atlantic flights going to the US but they were caught but it is still causing massive amounts of chaos at airports in the UK and in the US. As I was driving into work, all the radio stations were mentioning it on their shows and how that at a bare minimum you had to be at the airport 2 hours early because of the elevated security status.

Now the part thats really going to hurt is for people like me that don't like to check luggage when they travel. Most of my travels don't span more than a week and even then most of my most recent travels have only spanned 3 days or so. If I'm only going somewhere for 3 days, do I really need to check in luggage when a carry on is sufficient? Well according to most news I'm reading right now, you can barely bring anything with you on board the plane now (probably short term but if I was a regular business flyer I'd be pissed). A lot of the things that I normally take with me on a trip are electronic in nature, things like my iPod, my wife's PSP when she lets me take it for playing games, my Treo, and of course my laptop PC. I'm not very comfortable checking any of these things onto a plane because I know what happens when I give up my baggage to others. Normally it gets all banged up and thrown about in the cargo hold and the chance of one of these things being broken just sky rockets! I paid hundreds of dollars for this stuff which is used to keep me entertained on airplanes because the magazine thats on board really stinks and you can only shop on the Sky Mall for so long without going nuts.

As I'm checking my schedule right now I don't think I'm going to be flying any time soon except for October for my mom's birthday which is a small 3 hour hike to NY. Maybe at that time I won't be taking my laptop but I sure am taking a lot of my other electronic gizmo's and hells no am I checking that stuff in because NY bag handlers are some of the worst I've seen yet. I used to have broken baggage that proves this but the airline replaced it since it was so damaged it couldn't be used anymore. Now if gas were cheaper, I'd just start driving everywhere instead of flying, seems to be much safer and have a lot less hassles............ So to all your travelers out there good luck at the airports!

Cleaning up Flickr

Today I decided to clean up some of the stuff that I use on the web. I have used a lot of different photo sites in the past and I even started using some new ones. But the one that matters the most these days are the pics that come up on Flickr. Granted I post a few pics here and there on MySpace but the bulk of my online pics were up on Flickr but I've since cleaned that up :)

I used to have all sorts of weird stuff like pics I took on some of my trips, my wedding, my sister in laws wedding etc.... Now there are only cats and my latest trip up there which is nice. I have that little Flickr thing on the side of my blog and for the longest time it kept rotating some boring pics that I had uploaded I dunno how long ago. Now it has some much better pics that I took in Las Vegas when I was there in May. I also have an extensive collection of pictures of my cats but thats because I was bored enough to actually load them up.

Maybe I'll take another trip somewhere and will add more pics, in the mean time I'll get more pics from home, I know I have more somewhere that I can post.

Getting even more connected with my Treo

I've had my Treo for a while now (maybe a year, maybe more but I can't remember) and during this time I've found more and more stuff to add to it. I already have games, GPS maps, word/excel editors, and phone directories, I mean what else could I possibly want on this thing?? Well of course I want instant messenger on it, but since I'm a little stingy, I want free instant messenger :)

Recently I was able to find something that works pretty well called Toccer. It only works with AOL Instant Messenger but its great for what I want to do which is chat with people on the go. It's been espeically handy while I've been away this summer at conferences. During my last conference in Orlando it was very handy keeping in touch with my wife during the day since I didn't really have time to make phone calls but being able to use IM was great. So even if I'm away but in the US somewhere, at least I know I can still talk to my people or email them. :)

IT WORKS!!

After months of not working it seems that blogger mobile is up and running again. This is very good news because now I can blog and post pics from my phone..... Woohooo!!!!

Three ways to blog on Blogger

Just to give Blogger another chance I decided to look in their help files to see if there are better ways to post using my phone.

Recently I've been using U*Blog but I can't post pics with it which is what I would like to do on occasion. There is also emailing it in using a specific email address but then pics won't appear either. So that now leaves me with option 3 which is blogger mobile. This also requires me to email stuff in but it supports pictures however in recent months it hasn't been working well so I stopped using it. I guess now is as good a time as any to see if they have it working again. I'll attach some random pic to this post just to see if it works. Hopefully it does since I like blogging when on the go........

What's up with Blogger?

What's up with Blogger?

I have been a blogger user for quite a long time. My friend Alison got me started on this thing and at first it seemed pretty cool. At the time I could do all sorts of good things like adjust the template, send emails to my blog so they would get published and even send in pics from my phone and presto they would appear.

It seems that the service hasn't been upgraded in a little bit and things that used to work don't anymore. Right now is a pretty good example. I'm actually using my cell phone (the trusty Treo 650) to write this blog. However, instead of sending an email I'm using an app called U*Blog because my emails are now ignored by Blogger. That's just not right in my view. That was one of its most useful features because I take a lot of pics with my phone and like to blog about it but since I can't there has been a lack of posts in the last few months.

I do have other blogging accounts I just never used them since I've invested a lot of time in this one. One place that I might transfer my blog to is MSN since they did a huge upgrade and is way easier to customize. I don't like MySpace blogs simply because its just text really. I guess I'll wait a little while longer and see if I want to put in the effort of moving to a new blog or just suffer with what I have.......

It's funnier than I remember

Today I got my DVD's from Amazon. I recently ordered Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs. I loved these cartoons as a kid and they're even funnier now that I'm older. I've only watched maybe the first DVD but the episodes that they put on it are hysterical. I'll probably end up watching this during the week. I can't wait to get volume 2 of Animaniacs. The only thing thats missing now is Histeria which was really short lived but one of the funniest cartoons I've seen. In my opinion, Warner Brothers needs to refocus on great cartoons because the cartoons they made in the past are freakin great and their movies are just ehh...... they're alright but the cartoons are way better. Bring on Tiny Toons!!!