Zappo’s

There’s this new pizza place called Zappo’s at King and Race St that we tried out yesterday. The wife says it’s the best New York style pizza around (she ought to know). She’s never been a fan of Andolini’s, the perennial City Paper Best of, because she thinks the dough is too sweet.

Zappo’s was a pretty decent pie. Thin crispy crust, slightly chewy (not as chewy as Andolini’s) and not too sweet (just the way the wife likes it). Being a deep dish kind of pizza guy, Zappo’s pizza didn’t seem too different from the others I’ve had around here. Reasonably priced though. Haven’t gotten around to trying the other items on the menu yet. It’s located pretty much on the way home from the dog park, so I have a feeling we’ll be stopping by on a quasi-regular basis.

Carnivore date night

Last night the wife and I went out on a date to Oak Steakhouse. It was a very pleasant evening, although it got a little loud at our second floor corner table with all the noise from people waiting at the bar echoing off the ceiling towards the end of th evening.

The food was quite spectacular and we ate ourselves a little silly. Really, how can you not at a place like Oak. I started with a carpaccio of beef while the wife went with the foie gras. Both very excellent. I’d never had a carpaccio before, so it was an interesting and tasty experience. Not at all like what I expected.

By the time we finished our salads (ceasar for me, the spinach salad for her), we were already getting full. The dressings on the salads were perfect, and we just couldn’t stop eating them.
Then came our entrees. At Oak, being a steakhouse and all, large hunks of meat are the star items on the menu. All of them grilled, and all of them very yummy looking. I went with the 36 oz bone-in ribeye which came out on a hot cast iron pan. The wife ordered the 28oz porterhouse. For some reason ours didn’t come out sizzling like the other diners’ plates did. Anyway, it was a carnivore’s dream. The ribeye was a bit charred on the outside, but cooked to a nice medium/medium rare on the inside. I sliced off a decent sized 5 or 6 oz serving (no way I was going to be able to eat the whole thing at this point) and started eating. A bite of the ribeye with the accompanying foie gras was utterly sinful. Buttery sweet texture and flavour of the foie gras went perfectly with the ribeye.

We left with enough meat to last us through at least 3 more meals. Definitely a place we would go to again, although probably not too often.

4.5 stars out of 5 (-0.5 stars for the rather loud atmosphere on the second floor. I bet the third floor would be much quieter).

Palm software plug

As just about every PDA owner will attest to, there comes a time in a PDA’s life where digitizer drift sets in: the PDA registers a screen touch in a different location than where it actually occurred. My first Handspring Visor suffered from this before eventually dying. My Tungsten T3 currently has a mild case of this.

Palm PDAs have a built in digitizer program that’s supposed to help recalibrate the digitizer. Most of the time it works…for a while. Sometimes it doesn’t help things at all, or ends up making things worse.

There are a few programs out there to help stricken PDAs. DigiE was one that I used before that helped a little, although the middle of the screen would still be off. One problem with DigiE I had was that it kept turning the PDA on (software bug), so you either have to move it to the SD card, or uninstall it after calibrating.

Then I stumbled onto a new program called PowerDigi. It’s pretty slick, offering 3 different levels of digitizer recalibration utilizing different numbers of screen taps. Works beautifully and cured my T3 of digitizer drift (for now at least). One thing I have noticed is that Grafitti recognition is kind of slow when using the DIA. Otherwise I can tap all over the screen and not worry about guessing where I need to tap.

Severe digitizer problems? Try PowerDigi. 14 day trial mode, and it’s pretty cheap.

5 stars out of 5.

Review: X-Men 3: The Last Stand

Went to see X-Men 3 last night. While my feelings were mixed, overall I enjoyed the movie. It was mostly non-stop action with plenty of CG effects. Those who are easily offended by deviations from the established canon will probably be better off skipping this movie because there are alot of them, and some of them are pretty major.

Lots of new characters that should be familliar to X-Men fans are introduced although not in any meaningful role. They appear more as cameos than anything else which left me wanting more. It was like the writers were trying to say to X-Men fans, “Look at these characters from the comic. See, we’ve actually read it, but what do we do with them?”

The Good

  • Finally get to see Storm kick some ass
  • Get to see Wolverine really kick some ass
  • Kitty Pride and Colossus have a more prominent role
  • The Danger Room
  • Beast

The Bad

  • Sometimes a little too much going on that distracts from the main plot
  • Warren Worthington/Angel
  • Magneto’s Brotherhood was more like a camp of brigands than anything else

Stick around for the end of the credits

3.5 stars out of 5.

Dust bunnies beware!

We decided to buy a Dyson Animal BallAfter Roomba died, we were stuck with using the old vacuum again (over there on the left). Does a reasonably decent job for being a 10 year old vacuum. We were going to get another Roomba, but then the wife decided she wanted a Dyson. And not just any Dyson either. We were going to get a Dyson Ball.
After some reading and research, we decided to get the Animal variant, partly because of the extra attachments it comes with, and partly because of the cool purple colour.
The wife got to use it first, and after seeing the pictures of what came out of the carpet, I’m sold. Now admitedly, it had been a while since our last vacuuming so that was probably a few weeks worth of dust build up. Still, I don’t think it’s anywhere near what our old vacuum would have sucked up.
The Dyson is a bit on the heavy side, but actually surprisingly easy to move around. It’s also a lot quieter than I expected. I used it a little bit last night to vacuum along the baseboards with the mini-turbine head. The hose is nice and long, although it becomes a little bit cumbersome moving around with the rest of the vacuum dragging behind. The telescoping wand is reasonably thin, and with the crevice tool allows me to get into places that our old vacuum wouldn’t (it had a larger diameter hose). I was finally able to get to those clumps of dog hair towards the back of the fridge!
I imagine the house will be pretty clean with the new Dyson (at least for the next few weeks until the novelty factor wears off).