We ate dinner at the 522 Grill in (near?) Lancaster, SC on Saturday night. Stuffed into the back of a convenience store (complete with gas pumps!) we didn't really expect much. But it turns out we were wrong.
Denise had a flounder sandwich that was quite tasty, I had the cheese steak (onions, mushrooms, no peppers please) and we split an order of onion rings.
Wheeler, that is. The former City Council member, voted out in the last election after her stance on the arena, is back. Or trying to be back, at any rate. So what has changed? Why should you vote for her now, if you didn't last time?
I can't answer that. But I can tell you about her platform. She's focusing on crime (more badges = less crime reads one billboard not far from my house), taxes and roads.
Apparently this lady bought a lottery ticket with a stolen credit card, I presume to pretend like she made out even better, by getting something for nothing, plus winning and getting even more. The only problem? She won. $1 million. Normally that wouldn't be a problem. But because she bought that ticket with that credit card, she can't collect. Woops.
Now I can certainly understand not paying her. But what about her mother-in-law (the owner of said credit card)? Well, in this case, the owner is deceased. So she won't enjoy it much. But I think that would be sweet - steal a credit card, win the lottery, you get to deliver the winnings that you can't have to your victim.
Denise left on a business trip a while ago, and I found myself wondering if there was a way to track her flight online. Surely there had to be something! So as with most things I need to know (but don't), I turned to Google. Interestingly, when I entered flight tracking for my search, the top result was, in fact, Google.
The only problem was that it was the home page, not some special search page that told me what I needed. So acting on a hunch, I entered the airline code and the flight number. Most (all?) airlines have a two-digit identifier, which seemed like a good place to start. If you live in Charlotte, chances are that you'll be wanting us, for USAirways, but that isn't really necessary. There are a couple other airlines that fly here.
I've really been very happy with Site5 since moving to them nearly a year ago. So happy, in fact, that I've signed up for another year (I took advantage of that special offer I mentioned earlier). The service is excellent, and the service just works.
But in other cool news, I stumbled across the Site5 Engineering Team Blog the other day, a planet that aggregates content from several different blogs located around the net.
Nothing earth-shattering to be found within (though there are some screenshots of the Flashback function), but it's just cool to see them talking with the community, and in turn to see the company make customers aware of that fact. Nice touch.
Politics and money shouldn't go together. I think that a large part of the problem is that the politicians spend money like it isn't theirs. And a huge percentage of it isn't. But the even larger problem is that people don't seem to get that. They want the government to do this or build that and all the while, they are the ones who have to fund those payments.
I don't understand that disconnect, or how to get that message across to those who don't understand that the government is not a money-printing machine. It's a money-recyclying machine, and the money being recycled is ours. Sure, we are "paid" a certain amount of money, but a large part of that paycheck will never be seen by us.
In another strange occurence, when the big oil companies rake in large profits, they have somehow done something wrong. When companies are referred to as "business", there is a reason for doing so. No one is in the business of going broke (except perhaps the US government).
Yet when GM loses $1.5 billion, no one is crying out for them, and demanding that they be paid money so they don't go broke. You figure it out.
If you don't read Pearls Before Swine, you should. It's a bit uneven, and sometimes goes a few days or weeks without anything really enjoyable, but yesterday's strip was awesome.
JoJo the Gator has become a radio talk-show host. When he hits a patch of dead air, he starts to wing it, asking if the caller wears pants. His response is classic: "Me no wear pants. It feel guuuuud".
Even better is a little family tie-in, where when dinner is especially tasty, we say "It's good - G-U-D". Don't ask. I don't know how these things start.
While trying to hastily assemble a Javascript image rotation script, it occured to me that you could probably do the same thing with PHP - and it would not only be easier, but more reliable, since PHP happens on the server-side, independent of the browser someone is using. Sure enough, a short search resulted in an easy-to-use image rotation script written in PHP.
Look no further. Apparently Harris Teeter and Bi-Lo are offering pumpkins as large as 175 pounds. That should satisfy most of you.
Update: For the rest? Hang on. I'm sure these thousand-pounders will be at the corner store before too many years go by.
Update: When will the Punkin Chunkin contest (video) be able to handle these big boys? That would be worth the price of admission.
After a few hair-raising moments, it looks like the site move was successful.
You see, I took advanage of the Site5 special offer that I mentioned a couple weeks ago, and part of that is the always-fun process of moving things from one server to another. At the moment, it's looking like everything was successful, and I'm very excited about that.
There's still a bit to do behind-the-scenes, but it's looking like everything thus far has worked as expected. If you notice any problems around the site, let me know.
After hearing good things about Blue Restaurant and Bar, Denise and I were happy to try it out last night. To be fair, we knew it was pricey. So we were happy to give it a go, considering that someone else was picking up the tab!
In any case, wanting to try something unusual that I can't get anywhere else, I chose the Wild Boar. Four slices of tenderloin and a small chunk of shoulder, served atop a bed of spinach, which in turn was on top of some sort of risotto (rice-like) mixture, and the whole shebang was highlighted with berries (huckleberries, I think).
