Premonitions

A few weeks back I commented on Samantha's blog about Google becoming a place to save data you want to find again, things like web pages you've visited. Imagine my surprise when I see this show up in my Google Reader feed for Google's blog: Google Launches Web History. Guess that was just my little bit of premonition.

Wouldn't be the first time either.

Back in April of 2006 I posted about Google's Calendar Release and how they weren't too far away from replacing Microsoft Outlook in many places with their combination of mail & calendaring. I envisioned an appliance one could put on their network that would run a local version of Gmail & Google Calendar so that companies could keep their own data. Well, they haven't done that, but with the release of the Google Apps Premier edition, apart from being master of your own data, they've got the calendar/mail goodness I spoke of, with the added bonus of Google Docs & Google Spreadsheets. I don't see lots of large businesses jumping on this, but after looking at Google's FAQ entry on Security, Privacy & Compliance, it looks like this would be a very viable option for quite a few small businesses, giving them the ability to ditch Microsoft Office/Exchange and save money at the same time.

--JOsh

Mmmm... Barbeque

Ok, since Melissa was busy tonight with something for Walk America, I was on my own for dinner. Hy-Vee Chinese sounded really good. As I was turning into the parking lot to Hy-Vee over on Edgewood Rd, I noticed a few cars in the drive-thru of the new Barbeque place over here, Dickey's. Their parking lot was pretty full so I had to check it out. I knew they had a late April opening date, but could it have possibly been today? Sure enough, it was today.

They've got a pretty basic menu. You can choose to get either a sandwich, or a plate of meat. I opted for the plate of meat, with 2 meats. I wanted pulled pork and beef brisket, but they were out of the pork, so I ended up getting the smoked turkey breast instead. Au Gratin potatoes and fried okra rounded out my sides, with cornbread chosen over the dinner roll.

It was pretty busy when I came in, so I was lucky to find an open seat. I ordered at 7:05 and my food was out by ~7:25. This was a little long in my opinion, especially for someplace whose slogan is Slow Cooked, Served Fast, but I'll cut them slack since it was their first night open & they're probably going through some growing pains.

The brisket was pretty good, not quite as good as Famous Dave's, but I'd say better than BBQ This. The smoked turkey was delicious. It was nice and tender, with a really good smoke flavor to it. Their bbq sauce is served warm, with your choice of hot or regular flavor. I got a little of both. The hot wasn't too hot, and the regular was pretty good too. It's a little runny to use as a dipping sauce, as I tend to do with the meats. It also had more of a vinegar-y flavor to it, opposed to a sweeter flavor of say, Famous Daves. I thought the au gratin potatoes were ok, nothing spectacular. The fried okra was good, but a little too greasy, even for something that's traditionally fried. I was rather disappointed with the corn bread. Maybe I've been spoiled by the corn bread from places like Famous Daves, BBQ This, or even Jimmy Jakes in Iowa City, but it was dry with none of the hint of sweetness that I'm used to. Even boxed Jiffy corn bread has better taste better than this did. After dinner, they offer free ice cream, either as a cone or a small dish. A small twist cone finished me off.

Despite sounding like I didn't like much of dinner, I'd say that overall it was good, and I'll definitely be going back. They've got 8 different meats to choose from, and 17 different sides, so I've got quite a few different combinations to try till I find something that's just right.

--JOsh

PS. The car that was parked next to me had not one, but two open Busch Light cans stacked on top of each other in the cup holder in the center console. Talk about redneck... LOL

Mmmm.. Wisconsin Cheddar Soup

On my way home tonight I saw Little King Deli's new digs on the corner of 2nd St & 2nd Ave SE. I was actually surprised to see they've finally gotten a website. Just needs a little work to look better...

Help support a local downtown Cedar Rapids business and get some delicious soup too! Or as Mitch would say, some 'delicis sp'.

--JOsh

Find local business's by calling Google

I was poking around over at the Google Labs site today and noticed this little nugget, Google Voice Local Search. I had already used their SMS service to get business info before, but there was a period of time when US Cellular didn't support short SMS codes, so I couldn't use it. This would have been much easier to use. Plus, the cool thing about this is that they'll connect you to the business for free. Oh, and they'll even SMS you the information, all you have to do is ask. HA! Suck it 411 pay charges!

--JOsh

It's all Ian's fault

I've been kinda busy lately, and not really in the mood to post. But this morning Ian mentioned that I had an update, and if I hadn't updated, it would have been almost 1 year since I've updated this blog. Well, unfortunately, the 'update' he saw wasn't really an update. A couple of months ago, I noticed in my server logs that I was getting a ton of traffic from myspace. Turns out someone, or lots of someones actually, were hot-linking to the full-res pictures from my Chicago night skyline post as their page background. I changed the pictures on the server & updated the new links here, so that must be what triggered the 'update', though I don't know why it just picked it up, as that was over 2 months ago I did that.

Anyway, a few things are new with me:

• Helping Melissa plan for our wedding on 07-07-07


• Put a new engine in my Subaru. Funny enough, it was 18 months to the day since it had last run.


• Got a motorcycle last fall, an 1990 Yamaha XT600E. I've been enjoying it, I put on a little over 1k miles between the end of August and mid-October.


• Work at the forest as usual. We decided to put in real electricity this year, after renting generators for the last 4 years or so. Funny that the cost to get power ran is just about what we paid a season for the generators, fuel, etc. Something we should have done long ago, but hindsight is 20/20 as they say.


• Figuring out where to store my tools & such, as Dad is selling his house and I'm losing access to the garage where I keep my welder and cutting torch set-up. I've gone through a couple of iterations of garages/storage buildings and I think I've finally come up with something that's workable.


• Starting the planning stages of building a Locost from scratch. A Locost is based on the Lotus 7 sports car. Mine will be based loosely off of the Stalker, using a 1987 S10 truck as the main component donor.

So, that's about it for what I've been up to lately. Hope to update more often than once a year, maybe that can be one of my goals for this year.

I've got a few posts that I had started in the last year, maybe I'll finish them up. While they won't quite be as relevant as if I had posted them in a timely manor, I'm gonna post them anyway.

--JOsh