Benefits of a knowing your local Restaurateur

January 14, 2011 by

So today at Gangplank a couple of the guys were standing around thinking about were to go to lunch. We didn’t figure it out – we just started walking towards Ol’ Town Downtown Chandler. About once a week, we end up at Murphy’s Law. A local bar, that has great great great great (did I say great!) food.

It’s an Irish bar – with great food. Why? They have a real Chef. His name is Chad and he knows his way around the kitchen. He’s also friendly enough to come out to the table and say hi to some guys that he recognizes from Gangplank.

Today we were looking around the menu, asking each other what’s good, and in a very collaborative conversation we decided to let “Chef” decide. Bring whatever. No rules, no allergies, no favorites, the only *hint that I dropped, was that I liked spicy, and no one objected. The price was set at $15.00 per person, and we would get an appetizer to share, and a meal for each of us. I can’t explain the ingredients to give them enough goodness, but I’ll try.

App 1 – Grilled Shrimp, with a mixed green salad with tiny pineapple pieces
App 2 (free bonus???) – Some sort of Sausage, laid out on onion rings, covered in a hot/spicy cheese sauce
Main Entrée – Spicy (Jalapeno) Mashed potato cake, covered with thinly sliced beef
For $15.00 a person, are you kidding me?

No.

This is just one of the benefits on knowing your local restaurateur.

Thank you Chad – It was a great lunch.

Note To Self: Eat at Murphy’s Law more often 🙂

 

Filed Under: Family

I HATE BlockBuster – Still!

January 9, 2011 by

About every two years or so, I forget how much I hate Blockbuster Video Rental. I think it started with petty late fees, and just an overall bad experience in the rental stores back in the day. For the last few years, we’ve had NetFlix, and it’s worked perfect for us. In fact – we still have Netflix – both DVD and streaming with our XBOX 360 kinect. The whole family loves and uses Netflix on a regular basis.

But today, I was looking for a movie that wasn’t on NetFlix Streaming, and Jamie and I wanted to watch it tonight, after the kids went to bed. It just so happened that I had a coupon from the check out at our local grocery store for a free Blockbuster Express Kiosk rental. I jumped online and setup an account on the express site, and found a rental kiosk at the gas station around the corner.

Upon checkout, in the fine print I see that the coupon I have is expired. Well I guess that the first thing that is stupid. Why put an expiration date on something that you’re trying to use as customer acquisition? OK – no problem, I’m still in for the $2.99 to Rent “Wall Street”

After setting up my account I get an email that reads …

And don’t forget, just for setting up your profile on BLOCKBUSTER Express™, you get a first night DVD rental FREE, on us! Simply enter the promotional code ESU11B when prompted during the rental process at the kiosk.

So cool, I’m back in the free trial – this movie isn’t going to cost anything. Off to the gas Station. I get there, thumb through the kiosk, pick the movie “Wall Street” and on the checkout screen, I see that you can add a coupon. So I type in my code and press the big green DONE button. Aaaannnnnddddd, I should have known they would mess it up again. The next screen says it’s not valid promotion code. I’m sure somewhere in the fine print of the email says, this coupon is only valid on blah blah blah. Why even send it if I can’t use it? Blockbuster – I HATE YOU.

Blockbuster is a liar    I hate Blockuster - Because they lie to their customers

So I walk away – the movie isn’t that important. I don’t want to be a Blockbuster Customer. I’ve since put the movie in my NetFlix Queue and when it releases in a few weeks, I’ll have the DVD magically show up in my mailbox.

Note to Self: I HATE BLOCKBUSTER!
Note to Self: I HATE BLOCKBUSTER!
Note to Self: I HATE BLOCKBUSTER!

Use NETFLIX – for DVD or online streaming – nothing beats them.

Filed Under: Family

#2 Windows 7 Taskbar Usage and Tricks

December 8, 2010 by

Good morning everyone! I’ve been upgrading friends and family from Windows XP and Vista to Windows 7. Everyone is saying great things about Windows 7, and I’m personally loving it. It just works, it’s fast, and I really like the new TaskBar. While there are a lot of features that I didn’t cover, this quick video is a nice introduction to the taskbar, showing how to arrange the icons, pin and unpin, as well as see the Most Recently Used (MRU) documents for each application. We also talk about pinning the MRU list, for more frequently used items.

Filed Under: Technology

#1 Windows 7 – Custom Thumbnail Sizes

December 6, 2010 by

I was just looking at some Christmas photos in a folder, and wanted to change the thumbnail sizes. There are several baked in options for the Windows 7 Explorer to see thumbnails at certain sizes. With my monitor resolution, the large were too small, and the extra large was too large. Then, it hit me. Right in front of me, was a selection to change the custom thumbnail sizes. I’d never seen this before. Who knows, maybe it was there with Vista and XP. But, it’s new to me, and I thought, maybe there is someone else out there who hasn’t seen if before either. Enjoy the quick video demo.

Filed Under: Technology

Using TechSmith Snag-It Editor for Image Batch Processing

December 5, 2010 by

I just found a nice feature in TechSmith’s Snag-It Editor that I didn’t know was there, but came in very handy. Batch Processing. Select a group of images, and then manipulate them. Change the size, colors, borders, captions, and a whole bunch of other helpful parameters around your images. Here is a quick video that shows the process.

Filed Under: Technology
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