Family, Friends, Food, and Tech

Jewish New Year vs. the Roman Calendar

travisvn1 — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:08:09 +0000

Sitting here pondering the the last year and looking at the ups and downs got me thinking. I don’t always think that everything good and bad goes in yearly cycles but It always seems that things do change in my life every 12 months or so. Stating around September of 2007, my life began one of those down cycles. I was feeling depressed, then I lost my grandfather, then finances got really really tight for us and finally I lost my job. Then came September of 2008, and things began to change. I found out that my contract job was becoming a permanent position, My wife and I found out that we were going to be able to adopt twin boys after 3 years of trying to have a child on our own. At the end of November our boys were born and we got to bring them home from the hospital, and I found out that my soon to be perm position came with a substantial raise. Out of curiosity I did a search to see if anything happens in the Sept – Nov time frame and lo and behold it was when the Jewish new year occurs. Although I am not Jewish, I am a Christian and until the birth of Christ they were the same. In fact all of the holidays were the same until Constantine changed the catholic church to make it more attractive to the Pagans of the time in order to convert them. So it may just be coincidence but maybe not!!!!

Phil’s BBQ

travisvn1 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:20:24 +0000

One of my favorite places to grab a bite for lunch in San Diego is Phil’s BBQ. They are located right by the San Diego Sports Arena formerly the iPayOne Center.

Phil’s is not what many would consider southern BBQ, cooked slow and low in a wood fired pit but I can assure you that the flavor of Phil’s is all BBQ. Their food does have that slow cooked juicy tenderness and is finished on a Mesquite fired grill to get that unmistakable taste. Their BBQ sauce appears to be a tomato vinegar base with something to add some sweetness. It is almost a glaze. They have incredible beer batter onion rings along with many of your other BBQ standards. One thing that is apparent is that nothing here is from a can.

On any given day (except Mondays in which they are closed) you can find a line out the door and almost to the parking lot filled with people waiting to get some of Phil’s food. If you want my recommendation on what to order, I would say you can never go wrong with the “Rib Tickler.” This includes either 3 bones of their incredibly meaty baby backs or 1 Beef Rib (I believe it actually come from a breed of cow related to a Brontosaurus), Coleslaw, fresh cut fries, and two onion rings (see the picture above) all for around $9 you really can’t go wrong. you can check out their website at www.philsbbq.net

Can birds actually read?

travisvn1 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:58:17 +0000

While making a weekly visit to Wing Stop (reviewed in earlier post) I couldn’t help but notice this sign. I wish that I had a better camera at the time but the one on my LG Dare didn’t do too bad of a job in a pinch. It appears that a pigeon took the meaning of the sign literally and decided to take a break. If only he know what was happening to his feathered cousins on the inside.

Can James Bond save us from Google?

travisvn1 — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:37:54 +0000

OK let me preface this by stating that I am a huge fan of James Bond/ World Domination type of films. I also want to say that this most likely has influenced this topic. Does Google have too much power?

Google started out as a simple and very good search engine but as time has passed they have expanded. They have added an online office suite, webmail, instant messaging, internal office search. They have attached themselves to our browsers; IE, Firefox, Opera, and have released their own, Chrome. And now they have released their own mobile phone OS, Android, and are trying to soon control all your other calls with a product in limited beta called Grand Central. Soon this will all be mobile with talks of floating Data Centers. And what about their service to index medical records?

With this much data and information all flowing through one company who is truly monitoring those who monitor us. I know of no other organization who is collecting so much information about our lives, with maybe the exception of the NSA (and who knows they probably use Google themselves). Just think of every time you do a Google search for a product, let’s say “cola” who determines that Pepsi is higher on the list of search results than Coke. With online commerce becoming a major part of our lives, Google can easily manipulate where we “find” the best deals, so what if they didn’t list the company that has the best price because they didn’t pay for the advertising. Who has the power to influence presidential campaigns by putting those article that favor their position higher on the search rankings (the articles you most likely read first). All this is just something to think about. I use Google every day and will most likely continue to do so. They say knowledge is power, what is keeping the company that has all the knowledge from having all the power. Can James Bond save us now?

Wing Stop Update

travisvn1 — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:37:43 +0000

I have a belief that I try not to form an opinion on a restaurant without making at least two visits with similar experiences. Today I once again had a wing craving and decided to make a second trip to Wing Stop, a buffalo style wing chain of restaurants. The one I visit is located in Point Loma (San Diego), Ca. I don’t know if all their locations are located in strip malls, but this on is. It is a small little place with around 5 or 6 tables and an aeronautical decor. There are pieces of airplane wings and aviation themed photos on the walls. Now the most important part of the visit, that would be the food. Today I ordered the 15 wings and fries again. This time I chose the hot style, as before, but opted to try their Hawaiian style for my second sauce. Both the styles were nicely coated in their respective sauces. The hot had a nice amount of heat to them, with a good flavor. The Hawaiian was a sweeter somewhat fruity glaze, similar to a teriyaki, but more on the sweet side not so much soy. Both the wings and fries were served piping hot, you could literally see the steam rising. The fries once again had the delicious seasoned salt that appears to be salt, garlic, and a dash of black pepper if I were to guess. I will now say after two visits that this is a decent place to get some wings. By the way their menu consist of Wings, Boneless Wings (breaded chicken strips), and sides (fires, potato salad, coleslaw, etc), and drinks so don’t go in planning on a burger or even a chicken sandwich. If I were to rate these wings on a scale of 1-5 I would give them a solid 3 1/2 with 5 being “Oh Man I must have died and gone to heaven). I would strongly recommend giving them at least a chance and if you do let me know what you think.

Spore

travisvn1 — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:15:45 +0000

This is going to be a quick one. I made the mistake of downloading Spore to my LG Dare now it is hard to put down. Well gotta get back to playing spore

Deep Fried Pickles

travisvn1 — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:21:26 +0000

Deep Fried Pickles a food that just sounds so odd but is quite delectable. This is by no means the kind of food that you are going to find in a 5-star restaurant, you’re more likely to find them in a county fair, a BBQ joint, or a diner that make good ol’ fashioned comfort food. From what I understand these have been around for a while but I just discovered (at least got brave enough to try them) within the last 6-8 months. Since then I have become addicted. I have had both fried spears and fried chips/slices. I must say I like the chip/slices a little bit better. What do they taste like you are probably wondering? Well that is kind of hard to explain they are warm, crispy on the outside and have a DILLicious inside. The ones I have had have been served with either ranch or a horseradish sauce for dipping, again I prefer the latter, as I am a big horseradish fan. All I can really say is if you get a chance then try them or you will not know what you are missing. If your wondering where you might find some there is one restaurant that has an affinity for owls and the color orange that carries them.

First post from Live Writer/ Buffalo wing craving

travisvn1 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 06:43:35 +0000

OK I just downloaded Microsoft’s Live Writer as a client to use when posting to this blog. It looks like a really scaled down version of Word or maybe Word Pad with a few extra features. I will be using this for several days to see how I like it and who knows it may become a permanent tool.

After a disappoint incident this weekend that resulted in me not getting to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings I was left with a craving for some Buffalo style wings. I decided to take a chance and try Wing Stop

in Point Loma, Ca. I must say I wasn’t too disappointed. They aren’t BWW but they were meaty, juicy, not under cooked and the sauce wasn’t half bad. I was able to try two sauces with my combo order so I chose the hot, which was a thick buffalo sauce with good flavor and just enough heat. My second choice was Garlic Parmesan. I chose this at the recommendation of the cashier. I must say this was good but not great, they were basically wings tossed in a very light coating of garlic butter and than covered with Parmesan cheese. There was no heat to them at all. I may considering ordering them again as they were a nice contrast to the heat in the hot sauce. My combo also came with some fries. Now this was a surprise, not that I got fries with the combo but that they were fresh cut, hot, with a delicious garlic season salt. These were excellent. I will definitely have these again. Overall it was a good experience that calmed my craving.

Bites-n-Bytes.net

travisvn1 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:49:13 +0000

Well I just set up a redirect from one of the domains that I purchased to this page. This page can now be viewed using http://www.bites-n-bytes.net I figured that this is an appropriate domain for this site.

TTFN