The Blog: Laments From La Mancha

Thanks to XM radio, I’ve become a huge fan of Jim Gaffigan (you might recall him from various Sierra Mist commericals). In any case, I thought you might enjoy this little clip of Indiana native, Jim Gaffigan.

For quite some time I’ve been contemplating dining at Chili’s. Chili’s is of course the establishment that made the catchy little tune, “I want my baby back, baby back ribs” so popular with all the kids.

I mean the place looks clean and the food looks good on TV.

So this past Sunday when Michelle and I decided to go out on a date, I thought hey, why head over to the Outback, or some place like that, when we can finally experience Chili’s. Wait, that’s kind of miss leading, I’ve been to Chili’s before, but we are talking about 7 or 8 years ago so the experience is a vague memory in the dark corner of some crack in my skull.

Let me ruin my story by saying, I am no longer contemplating eating at Chili’s… ever.

Aside from our waiter having a tantrum in front of 4 tables full of people because the hostess sat another person in his area, the food was just horrid.

Horrid is too strong a word. Crappy is probably a better term. The nearly $10 appetizer (yeah, $10 buck) was cold and flavorless. The “chicken strips” (I mean if you want to call them that) were nothing more than giant size sweet & sour chicken chunks without the tasty sauce. The buffalo wing were just… ugh and the nasty southwest egg roll things, well I am still trying to get the taste out of my mouth.

Things didn’t get a whole lot better after that.

The sweet tender baby back ribs I was expecting, well they required a hack saw to even attempt to get the meat from the bones. I mean honestly, what kind of top notch waiter are you when a guy my size leaves ¾’s of his meal on the plate and doesn’t want it wrapped up to take home and you cannot figure out that perhaps they didn’t find it to their liking.

Michelle said she was very under impressed with her meal (I cannot even recall what she got, oh wait, some southwest chicken thing I think).

Any who, ugh.

From there we headed to go see Mission Impossible III (we were going to see the Da Vinci code, but the reviews haven’t been stellar thus far so we’ll wait for a cheap show).

In keeping with the theme of the day. Meh. Again, another unimpressive movie. For a summer block buster, come on, lame. Thankfully Over the Hedge (which we say the day before with the boys) was awesome, so the weekend wasn’t a total loss.

This was put together by Greg Adkins from www.andrew-peterson.com message board and I thought I would share it with you. It’s good stuff.

Okay, let me being by saying that I’m not about to bash garage / yard sales or the folks who frequent them (well maybe just a little). I understand the need to rid yourself of massive amounts of accumulated junk and the desire to find great items at bargain prices.

Many of my college possessions, childhood clothes and parts of my book collection are all treasures that I’ve found while stopping and rummaging through someone else’s previously owned stuff. Dafyd & Jace would have been naked for many summers if not for garage sales.

There are a few things though that I do not understand.

Like first off, who taught these folks how to park? I mean honestly, have you ever considered pulling off the road before you slam on your breaks, throw your car in park and jump out to rummage through someone’s trash? Oh and here’s a novel idea, if someone is already parked in the middle of the road, try not to pull along side them and park completely blocking off the street. It would make the way more passable for the rest of us.

Just some ideas, take them for what they’re worth.

Here’s another mystery that seems to baffle me.

Twice a year our neighborhood has an association wide sale. I clearly understand the benefits of that. What I don’t get is that year after year, it’s the same people who are selling their junk out on the front lawn.

How?

How is it possible that every 3 months at the beginning and end of you’ve got enough new crap to sell? Are you just that wasteful, do you really have mountains of stored items that you’re waiting to move at these larger sales? Or is it that your wares are so bad, not even you can sell them at a garage sale?

I don’t know. Maybe some things are meant to never be understood. Either way be safe out there. And remember, just because it says .25 cents a box, doesn’t always make it a good deal.

Every once in a while you find a site on the internet that’s actually pretty darn cool and useful (useful being the biggest surprise). I was scanning through one of my numerous newsletter emails that find their way into my in box and ZDNet had written a piece on something called the “Music Genome Project”.

It was an attempt by a group of musicians and music-loving technologiest to find a way to analyze and compare like music. 10,000 artists later the end result is Pandora.

What’s Pandora you ask? Pandora is a music discovery service that helps you find and enjoy music that you’ll love. The way that it works is you type in an artist or song and then based on the analysis of that Pandora recommends other music. If you like the music, then give it a thumbs up and it’ll continue to develop a further picture of your tastes. The really cool part is that Pandora streams all the music to your PC or Mac right over the web with awesome compression and flows pretty seamlessly. Even at work where they quash any streaming media it played without a hitch. You can create up to 100 different stations (your sappy love songs, your work music, whatever your mood is).

To top it all off, its free. Gotta love the free.

You can share your favorites and even buy the music you like online (always a way to make money in these projects I’m sure). In any case, check it out, its pretty awesome.