Land of Oz

Best Buy

Caution - anti-rant here. Commercial endorsement possible. As much as I complain about lousy service, I figure it's only right that I mention good service. We recently bought a Nikon L18 camera at Best Buy, which in itself is kind of interesting. (It lists for $130 and we thought about it, it went down to $120 and I seriously considered it, then it was $100 and I bought it - and it's back up to $130 now.)

This weekend I tried the macro option to take some photos of some toys I'm building. While in macro mode, it made a grinding noise while it tried to focus. I tried a few times and it continued. Now I really, really hate to return stuff so I almost decided to keep it as is. But, I finally decided to do the exchange thing back at Best Buy.

I go to the Customer Service counter and stand in line (it is Xmas shopping season after all) and read my Palm Z22 (bought at Best Buy) while I wait. Finally I get to the register and the woman checks it out, confirms the noise and calls back to the camera department to let them know I'll be back there for an exchange. Wow - no muss, no fuss. Of course when I did arrive at the camera department the woman working there was absolutely clueless about what I was trying to do. Luckily someone else showed up and let her know what to do (get me a new camera).

A few minutes later I was heading out the door with a new camera and a smile. I have to admit that Best Buy has been absolutely great about returns so far. I really hate to return stuff, but Best Buy as been really nice about it. From this broken camera to a good, but unwanted iPod, they accepted things with no fees and no hassles. I know I rant about the noise in the store and the ofttimes clueslessness of their employees, but their return process is first rate.

Labels: rave, tech

Home Store

OK, I spend a lot of time complaining about stores here, so I thought I'd say something nice for a change. We moved almost out in the country this year. The ironic thing is that after a move from a city to the suburbs we are now within walking distance of some pretty nice places.

Pat's is a combination hardware/grocery/dollar store. The grocery store is Spartan based and the hardware store is Doitbest based. It's about 15 minutes away. The service is very good and the quality of groceries is pretty good as well. Prices range from OK to low to expensive. As a penny-pincher, I've had really good luck with their reduce priced meats.

The hardware store is well supplied although with prices somewhat higher than the big-box stuff. And unfortunately the level of knowledge is about the same as the big-box places. There's one or two older workers who know what is going on, but there's also a couple of younger ones who are totally clueless. Overall, though, it's a nice place to shop and of course, being only 15 minutes walk away, very handy.

There's also a couple of nice places to eat within a couple blocks of Pats for when we get tired of cooking. The Second Street Sports Pub is just what the name sounds like, a small sports related bar. I usually go early on a weekend when it isn't too crowded. They have a very good BLT, that unfortunately was left off the new menu, but can still be ordered.

Another place is Antonio's, an Italian eatery. It's basic mid-west cooking, no fancy Italian stuff, but they offer pizza, spaghetti, lasagna along with burgers and a pretty good breakfast. Nothing fancy, but nice prices and good helpings. Just up the road is the Log Cabin, which to be honest, I have been afraid to go into. Most of the time there's a load of bikers parked outside, so I've just decided to leave it alone. A few blocks further, almost out of walking distance is the Riverside Restaurant. It caters to the older crowd, but is always busy and has good prices and average American food. We don't go here too often, but the pies are pretty good and I've heard the bread pudding is great.

Most everyone around here is nice and friendly and I really like that. A little bit of Leave it to Beaver or Happy Days come to life.

Labels: food, michigan, rave

701

By the way, that last post was number 700!

Labels: rave

19 - 0

I think the Patriots are getting a bit of a bum deal out of this Super Bowl stuff. They did after all go 19 and zip. Unfortunately, instead of being known for 19-0, they are now known as the team that lost the Super Bowl.

Honestly, I'm not a big Patriots fan. Before this season, I knew almost nothing about them - and still don't, really. But you know, 19 and 0 is something to be proud of. I wish they could've taken it all, but their season is something that very few have done or will do. Good job Patriots.

However, my team has always been the Packers - there's a real football team playing in a real conference - the black and blue conference. And you know, even if they didn't get to the Super Bowl, old Favre and his bunch did pretty darn good this year. So, congratulations Patriots, and watch out for the Packers next season.

Labels: celebs, rave

My Hero

One of the rooms (our computer room) in our new house has some strange acoustics. For whatever reason sounds from certain areas outside are much louder in this room that anywhere else, including outside. For example, when they are plowing snow on the highway (about .6 miles away) it often sounds like the plow is right outside the window. Same with a local dog. You can't hear it bark from any other room and can hardly hear it from outside the house, yet it comes in clear in the computer room. I think part of if may be the way the gable vent is situated and another might be the fact that there is an almost completely clear corridor from the computer room window to the highway (tracing it out on Google earth).

Anyway, the important thing in this story is that the other day my wife was in the computer room when she heard someone yelling for help. She first looked to see if it was the radio or TV, then looked out all the windows around our house. She thought it was kids playing. Finally she put her coat on (it was about 24F yesterday) and went outside to see what was going on. It turned out that the grandmother of the neighbors across the street had fallen on the ice and couldn't get up. She had been yelling for help for almost a half-hour. My wife managed to help them out getting her up and on her feet, by contacting the daughter and another neighbor. I'm not saying someone wouldn't have heard her sooner or later, but my wife sure helped shorten the time and get things helped out.

Her daughter in the house the grandmother was just outside of couldn't hear her and neither could the neighbor right next door who was home; but my wife across the street in the house sitting in front of computer with a fan running could. These aren't cheek-by-jowl city houses either. There are two large lawns and vehicles and a street between our two houses.

My wife doesn't think she did too much, but she easily could have saved the lady from getting frostbite or even freezing to death. An older woman on the ground in sub-freezing weather doesn't really have a lot of time.

Labels: michigan, rave

Papa Vinos

I have mentioned this restaurant several times before, but it bears mentioning again. Papa Vinos, in Mishawaka (the only one I've eaten in), is a great place to eat. We've been there several times now, usually as a family dinner around Christmas, and without fail the food and more importantly, the service has been great. In our case, we usually need a last minute reservation with wheelchair access, all on a weekend. And without fail, this place has managed to take care of our needs. Even better, the food, Italian style, has been very, very good. My wife usually orders a dish with mussels in it and I'll order some sort of pasta dish and they have yet to mess it up.

They start out with hot bread with an olive oil/baked garlic dip. We added MUSSELS IN SAFFRON for an appetizer and a house salad to be shared. This time my order was SHRIMP RAVIOLI, tasty and hot and the portion size was just right. Not so big as you'd feel stuffed, yet not so small as you'd feel cheated. My wife had LINGUINI PESCATORE, a shrimp and mussel dish that she enjoyed just as well. Other people in our party had different pasta dishes and no one had a bad one. We had a range of desserts including lemon tango cake, apple crumble sundae and tiramisu none of which had any leftovers. Even my beer was crisp, cold and tasty.

If you are ever in the Mishawaka/South Bend area and get a hankering for some Italian food, you ought to try and get into Papa Vinos. You're probably going to have to wait for a table, but you'll find the wait worthwhile.

Labels: food, rave

Happy New Year

To Snoopies and crickets and old grumpy guys, booklovers and friends from Taiwan and even those others I don't know about - have a great upcoming year.

Labels: rave

WWW Defined

Here's a simple, yet interesting example of just what the World Wide Web is capable of. I was inbetween edits at work when I saw a story about What's in your fridge? on the BBC, so I posted off a quick comment on their form. A few minutes later, one of their editors emailed me back asking if I could send a photo of our fridge to them. I called my wife and asked her to take a picture and email it to me so I could email it back to the BBC. A few minutes later my wife emailed me a couple of photos to pick from and I chose one and forwarded it back to the BBC editor. Just a short while later she sent me back the link for the article (the image below is the header).

So this 30-40 minutes of international colloboration involved my Taiwanese wife (who I met on the Internet after she moved to Canada), the midwestern Me and a BBC editor with an hispanic sounding name, posting info on an international story on the BBC Web site - is that cool or what?

Labels: computers, government, rave

The Moving Business

We recently had a move planned. Not a huge thing, but enough so that we decided to hire a moving company. I can't believe the range in estimates for this job. We talked to four companies and got four wildly different estimates. Three companies sent a rep out to the house to look things over and one company did the estimate via a phone call and email.

The first company estimated four people over 12 hours for a cost of about $2200. The second company estimated four people over 18 hours for $3000. The third company estimated four people for eight hours at $1300 and the last company (over the phone) estimated two people for six hours at $600. (The prices here are estimates as I remember them)

Hard to believe that all those folks were going to do the same project, isn't it? The $2200 company rep was personable and I got along with him fine. We had some similar interests and he seemed to know what he was talking about. The $3000 company rep was late for our appointment and rushed. I can't say he was very impressive. The third company ($1300) rep was the only woman and had a cold that day, but pulled out her handheld and made her estimate and then printed me out a copy. The last, $600 company asked how many rooms I had during the phone call and then sent me an email with the estimate.

I ended up choosing the $1300 estimate (based on hourly charges and the fact she was the only one who followed up the estimate with a letter) but asked for her to recheck the place since that estimate was so much shorter than the others. (I dropped the email company out of the running since it seemed to me to be so obviously out of the loop) She did return and say yes, only a day.

Came the day of the move and a big old Corrigan moving van pulled up right on time and four guys got out and started hauling. Three hours later they had everything moved out (we pre-packed) and they said they'd meet us at our new place at 1230-1300 hrs. Came 1240, and there they were and started hauling all over again. They finished in just under eight hours. Best of all, it seems like nothing was damaged and nothing was missing and they were under the estimate.

If you're looking for a mover in the Saginaw area, you ought to try Corrigan Moving, 989.667.9000. Obviously, your results may be different from mine, but I'm really happy with their work.

Labels: gripes, rave

Halloween

I just saw an article about the 10 best places to spend Halloween. One place that wasn't mentioned was Stonehenge. It's probably changed a bunch now, but back in the early 80s (probably 1981 since Halloween was Friday night) when I was stationed at RAF Upper Heyford, I spent the evening and early hours of the day around Stonehenge and Avebury. I started out at Stonehenge, but it was too crowded and hard to approach and I ended up in the village of Avebury later than night (early morning) completely by accident.

One couldn't have asked for a better night (as I remember it anyway). It was pretty clear with a large moon and scattered clouds that the wind pushed across the sky. There was a little bit of ground fog that would come and go as well. It was fairly cool. I found a place to park in Avebury that gave me a good view of the area from the seat of my VW Thing. I had a thermos of hot tea and BBC was playing very good music over the radio. Nothing that I'd consider supernatural happened, but it was a very neat way to spend all Hallow's Eve. The only strange bit was that I took an entire roll of film and absolutely nothing came out when it was developed. That was the only time that ever happened with my Canon EF in over 20 years. I might expect a shot or two to not come out, but not everyone. I took an assortment of long exposures of the countryside and also of car lights moving along the various roads.

Labels: rave

Destroyer

There's a paperback series with a large number of volumes called The Destroyer. It was started in the 70s and has to do (to make a long story short) with a cop framed for murder, put through a fake execution and then trained as a secret assassin for the U.S. government. His trainer is Chiun, who is the current Master of Sinanju, the first martial art that was started in Korean a couple of thousand years ago.

It's actually a pretty good series full of humor and cutting remarks about the U.S. and many of its foibles. I just finished episode #30, Mugger's Blood. This was an interesting tale in its take on black America. I googled the title and was a little surprised there wasn't more feedback about it. The story skewers quite directly street and ghetto blacks and New York city.

I think there's something like 115+ volumes. There was a movie sometime ago about this bunch. It was pretty universally panned, but I enjoyed it. Joel Grey actually plays North Korean Chiun and as far as I'm concerned, hits the character spot on. It's not a great movie, but clearly follows the books in spirit. This is one of the few movies where I think having read the books enables you to enjoy the movie more.

Anyway, I'm working my way through the series, up to volume 31 right now and just thought I'd mention it. And there's a faint memory of having written about it before on this blog.

Labels: rave, reading