blog
Can't decide lunch?
1/31/2009
This is going to just be a quick post about something random I added to the website. My friends and I sometimes have a hard time deciding where to have lunch when we go out while we are at work. The idea of a tool to help us decide came up, so I made one and put it on this site.
Here is the tool or you can find it under the 'stuff' section. It allows you to create a tournament style bracket of 2-16 places and then it generates the result randomly by having 11 'matchups' between each two places. The winner is displayed after all the rounds have been played.
It may not be very useful to you if you live somewhere other than Rochester, but if you really want it I can make versions for other places too. If you are from Rochester and want a food place added, then just get in contact with me and ask.
Also, Happy Birthday Todd (though technically yesterday was his birthday).
Here is the tool or you can find it under the 'stuff' section. It allows you to create a tournament style bracket of 2-16 places and then it generates the result randomly by having 11 'matchups' between each two places. The winner is displayed after all the rounds have been played.
It may not be very useful to you if you live somewhere other than Rochester, but if you really want it I can make versions for other places too. If you are from Rochester and want a food place added, then just get in contact with me and ask.
Also, Happy Birthday Todd (though technically yesterday was his birthday).
Labels: lunch tool, website, work
Brrr....
1/16/2009
Things have been going along well lately. I can't think of too much to report.
It's been really cold over here in the past few days. Rochester Public Schools canceled their classes yesterday and today because the morning temperature was -25 with -50 windchill readings. It's supposed to warm up so that will be nice.
I've been watching the TV series Dead Like Me on my Xbox 360 recently. It's about a girl who dies and then becomes a grim reaper who has to take people's souls before they die horrible deaths. It's pretty entertaining. It's much more humorous than I just made it sound. It's available on Netflix Watch Instantly so I've been trying that out. I really like that service on Netflix, but they need to improve their selection of movies and try and work on a way to get 5.1 sound to work for streaming video. I wouldn't watch a blockbuster film with just stereo sound if I could get the disk.
My car has been having some issues lately. I've always had bad luck with tires so this shouldn't have been too surprising. The car had a flat back around November which was discovered during an oil change. They repaired it and then noticed that my wheel bearing was bad. $600 later everything was back to normal. On my way to Green Bay for Christmas I lost about 8 pounds of pressure on one of my tires so I had to take it in again to a place in Green Bay. Apparently I had a bead leak and they also informed me I needed new tires, because the tread wear was getting to be very small. When I headed home I bought some new tires at Discount Tire Co. The tires are pretty nice, but not something I wanted to spend money on. It also may or may not be leaking engine coolant. I haven't seen enough evidence so far to say that it is or isn't though.
I've been playing Gears of War 2 as far as gaming goes. I also finished up Fable 2 recently and I've been playing Fallout 3 on and off. There were too many good games released at the end of 2008 and it's hard to play them all. I will be going back to Fable 2 at some point because they released some new downloadable content. I'll probably start that again once I finish Gears of War 2.
I don't think I mentioned it but I took down the Netflix movie list on my sidebar for the website. I forgot why exactly, I think there were problems with it loading. Eventually I will try and put it back up, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now. In its place I put a flash application showing my Twitter feed, in case anyone cares what I am doing or likes reading random sentences that I post.
If you weren't paying attention to the CES show in Las Vegas this past week then you've been missing out. Palm finally introduced a new phone that looks good for once. It's called the Palm Pre and is exclusive to Sprint. I'm on AT&T so I can't really get it, but was planning on getting a new phone soon anyway. Right now I'm leaning toward the iPhone with the possibility of the Blackberry Bold. The Bold is $100 more expensive right now and I'm not sure I'd get $100 more worth of fun out of it. I will probably figure out the phone situation over the next week or so.
It's been really cold over here in the past few days. Rochester Public Schools canceled their classes yesterday and today because the morning temperature was -25 with -50 windchill readings. It's supposed to warm up so that will be nice.
I've been watching the TV series Dead Like Me on my Xbox 360 recently. It's about a girl who dies and then becomes a grim reaper who has to take people's souls before they die horrible deaths. It's pretty entertaining. It's much more humorous than I just made it sound. It's available on Netflix Watch Instantly so I've been trying that out. I really like that service on Netflix, but they need to improve their selection of movies and try and work on a way to get 5.1 sound to work for streaming video. I wouldn't watch a blockbuster film with just stereo sound if I could get the disk.
My car has been having some issues lately. I've always had bad luck with tires so this shouldn't have been too surprising. The car had a flat back around November which was discovered during an oil change. They repaired it and then noticed that my wheel bearing was bad. $600 later everything was back to normal. On my way to Green Bay for Christmas I lost about 8 pounds of pressure on one of my tires so I had to take it in again to a place in Green Bay. Apparently I had a bead leak and they also informed me I needed new tires, because the tread wear was getting to be very small. When I headed home I bought some new tires at Discount Tire Co. The tires are pretty nice, but not something I wanted to spend money on. It also may or may not be leaking engine coolant. I haven't seen enough evidence so far to say that it is or isn't though.
I've been playing Gears of War 2 as far as gaming goes. I also finished up Fable 2 recently and I've been playing Fallout 3 on and off. There were too many good games released at the end of 2008 and it's hard to play them all. I will be going back to Fable 2 at some point because they released some new downloadable content. I'll probably start that again once I finish Gears of War 2.
I don't think I mentioned it but I took down the Netflix movie list on my sidebar for the website. I forgot why exactly, I think there were problems with it loading. Eventually I will try and put it back up, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now. In its place I put a flash application showing my Twitter feed, in case anyone cares what I am doing or likes reading random sentences that I post.
If you weren't paying attention to the CES show in Las Vegas this past week then you've been missing out. Palm finally introduced a new phone that looks good for once. It's called the Palm Pre and is exclusive to Sprint. I'm on AT&T so I can't really get it, but was planning on getting a new phone soon anyway. Right now I'm leaning toward the iPhone with the possibility of the Blackberry Bold. The Bold is $100 more expensive right now and I'm not sure I'd get $100 more worth of fun out of it. I will probably figure out the phone situation over the next week or so.
Happy New Year 2009
1/04/2009
Happy New Year!!
Christine and I went to Green Bay for a short vacation this past week. We decided to go out for a nice dinner on New Year's Eve at a place called Rivers Bend in Green Bay. We had made reservations several days ahead of time but we still had to wait over an hour to get seated!! They were allowing walk in seating too, so I think that's why they were so backed up. It didn't really bother us much since we didn't have anything else planned for the night and got the opportunity to visit with each other. While we waited we also got to talk to a few nice older women. One of them even gave us a bottle of champagne that they didn't really want. The restaurant offered to buy us drinks because of our long wait but because the dinner we ordered already came with champagne we just decided to get free soda. They probably laughed at that.
I put up some pictures from the dinner and a few from a dinner that we had at my parent's house. It was a fun vacation. You can check out the pictures by clicking here.
On our way back to Rochester on Saturday we ran into some bad weather about 10 miles into Minnesota. There was freezing rain predicted for the area and we happened to hit the very start of it so most people were driving really poorly for the conditions. In about a 45 mile stretch in Minnesota we saw a total of 15 cars in the ditch, including two which were upside down. We also almost saw a tanker truck plow into the back of a sedan which was slowly passing someone in the left lane. Like I said, people were not realizing how slippery it was out. When we got to Christine's house we couldn't even walk up her driveway because we'd just slide back down it. On my way home (10 minute drive), I saw another 3 cars off the road. It was a pretty crazy afternoon.
Christine and I went to Green Bay for a short vacation this past week. We decided to go out for a nice dinner on New Year's Eve at a place called Rivers Bend in Green Bay. We had made reservations several days ahead of time but we still had to wait over an hour to get seated!! They were allowing walk in seating too, so I think that's why they were so backed up. It didn't really bother us much since we didn't have anything else planned for the night and got the opportunity to visit with each other. While we waited we also got to talk to a few nice older women. One of them even gave us a bottle of champagne that they didn't really want. The restaurant offered to buy us drinks because of our long wait but because the dinner we ordered already came with champagne we just decided to get free soda. They probably laughed at that.
I put up some pictures from the dinner and a few from a dinner that we had at my parent's house. It was a fun vacation. You can check out the pictures by clicking here.
On our way back to Rochester on Saturday we ran into some bad weather about 10 miles into Minnesota. There was freezing rain predicted for the area and we happened to hit the very start of it so most people were driving really poorly for the conditions. In about a 45 mile stretch in Minnesota we saw a total of 15 cars in the ditch, including two which were upside down. We also almost saw a tanker truck plow into the back of a sedan which was slowly passing someone in the left lane. Like I said, people were not realizing how slippery it was out. When we got to Christine's house we couldn't even walk up her driveway because we'd just slide back down it. On my way home (10 minute drive), I saw another 3 cars off the road. It was a pretty crazy afternoon.