Burger update.

September 19th, 2009

After one previous failed attempt, we were finally able to hit Cover 3 last night, and I had a chance to try the Chop House Burger.

Reaction:

  • It was an okay burger. I did get bacon, but I skipped the cheese, and regret that.
  • I thought my burger was slightly undercooked.
  • The fries were good. I didn’t try any of the slaw.
  • The other menu items I sampled (nachos, onion soup, fried shrimp and oysters, mac and cheese) were just average. I probably would not order any of them again.
  • I was impressed with the level of service provided, especially since one of my fellow diners had some issues with his meal. (He didn’t care for the Reuben; they graciously replaced that with a Hickory Burger. However, he also felt his burger was undercooked.)
  • It was loud, but not as much as I expected, and not the loudest restaurant I’ve ever been to.

Overall, it just wasn’t an impressive experience. I could go back (and, if I did, I’d probably get the Chop House Burger with bacon and cheese, fries, and nothing else) but I’m not excited at the prospect.

Posted in Food | 1 Comment »

Under the Double Eagle.

September 16th, 2009

The NYT offers up an update in the case of ten 1933 $20 gold pieces confiscated by the U.S. Mint; in brief, the government has been ordered either to give the coins back, or provide proof the coins were stolen.

I’ve been interested in these coins since reading David Tripp’s book Illegal Tender. The short version of this story is that the 1933 $20 gold piece was never officially issued; FDR took the country off the gold standard after the coins were produced, but (supposedly) before the U.S. Mint distributed any of them. Some of these coins made it out to the public, but the government claimed they were stolen property and, until 2002, confiscated and destroyed all of the ones that turned up. For complicated reasons (outlined in Tripp’s book) the government allowed the sale of one coin at auction in 2002 for $7.6 million.

Tripp’s book makes it very clear (in my opinion) that the government believed all of these coins that made it out of the Mint were stolen property, that the government was allowing the 2002 sale as a one-off deal, and that any future coins that showed up would also be confiscated and destroyed.  I find it very difficult to believe that Mr. Langbord and his family were not aware of this, and I have a lot of trouble siding with them.

(As a side note, I haven’t read Alison Frankel’s Double Eagle, though I very much want to. Tripp’s book is okay, but I think it suffers some from his lack of experience in writing long form narrative.)

Posted in Clippings, Coins, Geek, Law | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

September 15th, 2009

“It’s official. Microsoft has no shame. None. They should just stop paying rent on that storage unit where they keep their shame because they, as I said, have none.”

—Dan Neil in the LAT

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

Noted.

September 15th, 2009

An article I missed yesterday that’s worthy of attention:

On September 14, 1959, a deranged ex-convict detonated a suitcase full of explosives at Poe Elementary School in Houston, killing himself, his son, two students, a teacher, and a custodian.

This is an aspect of Houston history I was previously unaware of; I’m glad the Chron covered this.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Media | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 1

September 15th, 2009

It’s the most wonderful time of year. There’s a nip in the air, the grackles are grackling, and the NFL season begins. And with the start of the NFL season, we also restart the loser update.

Last year was a great year; we had the first team to go 0-16 ever. Is it possible that we’ll have more than one team this year? Or a team that loses 16 games for two straight seasons? The excitement is palpable.

Without further ado, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Buffalo

Miami

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Tennessee

Jacksonville

Houston

Kansas City

Oakland

Washington

Chicago

Detroit (18 straight losses now: remember, the record is 26.)

Carolina

Tampa

Arizona

St. Louis

Posted in Loser, NFL | Comments Closed

Chris Elliott is…The Fugitive Guy!

September 14th, 2009

A few weeks ago, Scott Simon interviewed Bob Greene on Weekend Edition. Apparently, during that interview, Simon referred to Dr. Sam Sheppard as “the most famous convicted murderer in America”.

Now, those of us who keep up with true crime (or those of us from around the Cleveland area) know that this is, at best, misleading. (Dr. Sheppard was convicted of murder at his first trial; that conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court, Dr. Sheppard was retried, and acquitted at the second trial.)

Apparently, Dr. Sheppard’s son was listening as well, and wrote NPR. Here’s a transcript of Scott Simon’s interview with Sam Reese Sheppard.

For all the (considerable) problems I have with NPR, I have to say that Scott Simon comes across as a class act in that interview.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Media | Comments Closed

People who died, died…

September 14th, 2009

Obit watch:  Jim Carroll, author (The Basketball Diaries) and musician.

I’m not really wild about embedding the YouTube videos, so here’s a link to Catholic Boy on Amazon. When I get a chance, I’m going to put on the headphones and crank “People Who Died” all the way up.

Edited to add: Here’s a link to the NYT obit for Norman Borlaug as well. I didn’t note this over the weekend, even though I’m part of the Borlaug Fan Club, because it seemed to be well covered by FARK and the mainstream media.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Hooray beer!

September 12th, 2009

The good folks at Dogfish Head decided they wanted to brew a batch of chicha, the traditional corn beer of some parts of Latin and South America.

Now, if you’ve read Tim Cahill, you probably know that part of the chicha fermentation process is for the village women to chew up the corn and spit it into the vessels the chicha ferments in. (If you haven’t read Tim Cahill, why the heck not?)

Being dedicated craft brewers, the good folks at Dogfish Head wanted to follow the process exactly. There’s just one small problem with that; you have to chew up a heck of a lot of corn to brew a reasonably sized batch of chicha.

“The 20 pounds that we were hoping for was going to go into a five-barrel batch,” Mr. Calagione said. “If we went to production, the smallest tank would be 200 barrels.” He did the math. “We’d need 40 times this much. We would have to chew 800 pounds of this.”

Posted in Books, Clippings, Food, Mixology | Comments Closed

Thought for the day.

September 9th, 2009

When you have to explain that your humor columnist’s column is supposed to be funny, you’ve pretty much lost the battle already.

Posted in Clippings, Media | Comments Closed

The jokes; sometimes, they write themselves.

September 8th, 2009

Marc Katz has announced plans to run for lieutenant governor. 

I have nothing against Mr. Katz, and, indeed, he could be a perfectly fine officeholder.

But this raises the somewhat mindboggling possibility (arguably, a slim one) that the State of Texas could be run by a cowboy and a deli owner.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Lake Travis, September 7, 2009.

September 7th, 2009

090907-19_57_01

Taken with the spectacular Nokia N800 CrapCam ™ and the gpscamera application.

Posted in Nokia, Photography | Comments Closed

Some questions on the subject of rights and the Constitution.

September 7th, 2009

Late last week, Patrick over at Popehat posted an interesting entry about the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision in Britt v. State. The short version is that Britt was convicted of quaalude possession (a felony) in the 1970s, sued to maintain his right to own firearms, and won.

The Court, in a 5-2 decision, limited its holding to Britt’s specific facts, finding that the exercise of state police power to bar firearms to a non-violent felon, who had demonstrated good character for thirty years, was an unreasonable restriction of the state right to keep and bear arms.

I strongly recommend going over to Popehat and reading all of Patrick’s excellent post. But I want to use it as a jumping-off point to discuss a question I’ve been wondering about, without hijacking Popehat.

Where does the State (I’m using “the State” to refer to both state and Federal governments) get the authority to deny Constitutional rights to felons?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Guns, Law | 2 Comments »

Frickin’ Lasers.

September 7th, 2009

By way of Say Uncle, we learn that someone has come up with a laser sight for the NAA .22LR and .22 magnum revolvers.

While we admire the cleverness of the idea, this strikes us as being a solution in search of a problem (to quote the late Col. Cooper). It doesn’t seem that this is going to increase hit probability very much on a tiny weapon, which is basically intended to be used at not much more than contact range. And the sight goes for about 50% of the price of the gun; that seems high, but perhaps not out of line compared to Crimson Trace grips.

The video on that site is worth watching, if only for the cheese factor.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Project e, Part 3: The Virtualizing

September 3rd, 2009

Work on Project e continues, slowly, as time permits.

  • The Alfa WiFi adapter worked right out of the box; just a simple plug and play operation. Who’d a thunk it?
  • Built-in wireless continues to be a problem, but mostly on my home network. I am starting to wonder if this is an issue with the access point. Wireless at St. Ed’s (where I’m spending a lot of time these days) isn’t great, but at least the connections stay up.
  • As far as I can tell, the current version of Wireshark for Ubuntu 9.04 is 1.0.7, while the current stable version for other platforms (including Ubuntu Karmic, aka 9.10) is 1.2.1. Between that and the other wired/wireless networking issues, I think I’m going to wait until Karmic drops in late October, then upgrade and install Wireshark and Kismet if networking is stable.

In the meantime, I’ve spent the last few days playing around with something else…

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Posted in asus_eee, CompScI, Geek, linux, netbook, project_e | Comments Closed

Inglourious Basterds discussion (contains spoilers!)

September 2nd, 2009

Commvault Bryan and I have been involved in an ongoing discussion of Inglourious Basterds during our breaks and lunch hour at work. I thought I’d throw this open to the masses and see what you guys have to say. Big, huge, giving away the entire movie spoilers after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Movies | Comments Closed

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