10 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
Today we had some free time, and I took a couple work friends up to Point Loma. Point Loma rises more than 400 ft above San Diego Bay, and provides excellent protection for the harbor. The view of San Diego is stunning. During whale migration season, there are often whales on the Pacific Ocean side.
A large two-masted schooner came into the Bay while we were up there:

Schooner Entering San Diego Bay
We also walked around the lighthouse that has been restored on top of the cliff there, and a building housing a large lighthouse lens. Very neat.
Tags: Point Loma, San Diego, CA
Posted in Travel | Leave a Comment »
8 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
We used to frequent Papa Dios a few years ago, when it was just the two of us. The place is a little expensive, but it has always been very, very good.
We went there this evening, as my very cute but occasionally indecisive roommate had a desire for Chicken Parmesan. She and Ian got that, and it was really, really good. Ian scarfed his completely, and Raegan ate about half of hers (the rest is going to be my lunch tomorrow).
Erin got Fettuccine Alfredo. It was great.
I got Chicken Marsala. The Marsala is a thin sauce that has a really nice, subtle taste to it. It adds a tremendous flavor to the chicken. They cook it with a smattering of mushrooms and capers. I think that the capers could be eliminated in favor of more mushrooms. It’s an excellent meal regardless.
We shared some Balsamic Vinegar and Oil to dip the excellent, crusty bread in.
The salads were OK. The Italian dressing seemed to have less bite than in the past. I do not like a lot of extra stuff on my salad, and I took the olives, tomato, and peppers off mine (in the past, I have requested the salad plain, and it would come that way.
The iced tea had a faint aftertaste of coffee to it; a bit of sugar rectified that. Refills were good.
In the past, I usually got the #9-1/2, which is Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken; this is not for calorie counters, the Alfredo is extremely rich, and they do not skimp on the butter.
Papa Dios is in The Village, a suburb of OKC that has a reputation as a speed trap. I actually try to avoid doing business there as a result, but Dios is so good I don’t mind laying down cash there. Dios is still a bit expensive; our meal for four was $64. We got there at 1755, and were seated immediately. The place was only about 40% full. It was still that full when we left at 1900.
Tags: Italian, OK, Papa Dios, Restaurants, The Village
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
7 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
I have had several recommendations for Kendall’s over the years. I ate at the Norman location probably five years ago, and was not terribly impressed. The Norman location closed at some point. I tried another location in Purcell a couple years ago when I was coming back from Dallas, but it was closed also. But a couple months ago, I was headed down to Dallas, and looking for restaurants when I was between Norman and Purcell, and Kendall’s was at the top of the list – in Noble. Turns out this was the original location.
Today I had the kids down at the National Weather Festival, and decided that Kendall’s would be a good thing to try, since it’s only about five minutes from the National Weather Service in Norman.
I got a Chicken Fried Steak – it was about a 8 out of 10. It was tender and had decent taste. It was clearly hand breaded. There were voids in the breading where there was no meat. The gravy was good, the green beans were really good. The mashed potatoes were OK, as was the corn. It thought it was good value at $8.95.
Ian got a cheeseburger. It was pretty darn good also. The fries were OK. Erin got dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and liked them.
The iced tea was really good.
Our check for the three of us about about $23.
One thing – Kendall’s is cash only, no credit cards.
Tags: Kendalls, Noble, OK, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
7 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
I am very disappointed in my fellow citizens in Maine. The vote to overturn the Maine law allowing same-sex marriage is a spit on the US Constitution.
I saw a few of the ads run in opposition to same-sex marriage. There were a lot of out-and-out lies (the claim that the Maine law would “force the teaching of the homosexual agenda” in schools comes to mind). So assuming that the people running the ads are christians, I guess it’s OK with them to lie in support of advancing their agenda – a direct law (thou shalt not bear false witness) being overridden by fear of gays.
If supposed pro-marriage supporters want to protect marriage, why don’t they focus on the 50% of marriages that fail? Why don’t they make divorce illegal or really hard to get?
I guess it is easier to lie and promulgate anti-gay fear than it is to work to solve the big problems with marriages. Not to mention ignoring and spurning the Constitution.
Tags: gay issues, Maine, marriage
Posted in General Commentary | Leave a Comment »
6 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
A friend who works for Sprint got me a couple tickets to InnoTech 2009. I must confess, I had not heard of InnoTech before this. When I looked at the conference tracks on the website they looked interesting.
I signed up online and marked the date in my Blackberry.
I was not interested in the two keynote addresses, so I decided to show up about 0900 for the first thing I was interested in (moving websites up in the search engine rankings) at 0915.
I got there in good time. There were four computers, two for pre-registered people, one dedicated to exhibitors and speakers, and one for un-registered people. Neither of the pre-register computers recognized me, which I find highly annoying. That meant I had to go to the end of a line of about 20 people who were either un-registered or were in the same boat I was in, having their pre-registrations LOST. I didn’t get through that line and get my badge until 0945; the track I was interested in was winding up as I got there. So that was a huge waste of time, so far.
I went to another on deployment of alternate desktops at the OU Health Sciences Center. That was interesting and I learned a couple things about mobile desktops and virtual machines.
Unfortunately, that was the end of the stuff I was interested in. I went to the exhibits area. There were a number of interesting things to look at there.
I saw a number of people that I had not seen in a couple years, including a number of people that used to work for either my Large Defense Contractor employer or one of the Slightly Smaller And Eaten Defense Contractors that had been bought by their larger competitor.
I think that InnoTech needs a couple more computers to check people in. It would be nice if they would not lose pre-registration information.
I like the fact that they have some software developer tracks in the conference. I hope that this kind of practical knowledge will be expanded on in future conferences.
Tags: InnoTech, Oklahoma City
Posted in Oklahoma City, Technology | Leave a Comment »
6 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
I know I am going to catch a ration of it from my very cute and fiscally conservative roommate, but…
Yesterday I left InnoTech and headed towards work. I was getting quite hungry. I located the Midwest City location of Chuck House CFS restaurant, drove to it, but it is drive-in only. I decided to hit Taco Bueno, but on the way there, I saw Mackie’s, and said the heck with it, I wanted STEAK.
The family and I ate at a Mackie’s a couple years ago, in Edmond. We all got the buffet. It was… OK. I thought it was kind of limited. But when the Mackie’s were Western Sizzlin, they had pretty good steaks, so I hoped that they remembered that the same way I did.
I ordered the (#6, I think) Ribeye. I ordered it medium rare since I knew the steaks were kind of thin. It got there very quickly, and it was medium rare, just like I asked. I like my steaks medium rare to medium, I like the hot pink center. This steak was a little less cooked than straight medium, but it was really good. The steak was swimming in juice (not a bad thing). It was a little bit salty. But the bottom line was that it was tasty, had great beef flavor, and was tender. There was not too much fat on it, either. It was good-sized, and filled me up nicely.
The fries that came with it were OK. My server brought me a wheat roll (really nice, to have wheat rolls and not just white rolls); I usually don’t get those, but I was so hungry it was nice to have. The iced tea was excellent. The service (Brandon, I think his name was), was excellent – prompt without being obnoxious.
So the steak was well worth it. I didn’t look at the buffet to see if it was any better.
Tags: Mackie Mc Near's Steakhouse, Midwest City, OK, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | 2 Comments »
2 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
Daughter Erin’s Girl Scoup troop and family members met at Parkhurst Ranch this afternoon. The girls and their various siblings had fun, no one got hurt, no one got upset, and no one got mad. This to me is a highly successful outing!
Parkhurst Ranch is a couple miles southeast of the town of Arcadia, OK. It took us about 15 min to drive there from our house in NE OKC.
The kids had a bunch of mainly undirected activity:
Walking through a corn maze. There were a couple places that were kind of muddy, but it was a nice walk.
Getting swung on a big tire swing. The kids had fun being swung, and the adults (Bill in particular) had fund swinging them.
Riding a hay wagon around a big loop, towed by a tractor. Lesson learned: don’t ride on the front unless you have an affinity for diesel exhaust.
A really good petting zoo! Bunnies, ducks, a turkey, a couple ponies, a burro, a calf, some goats, and some sheep.
Riding a pony.
They also had some carriages for the kids to ride in.
We booked as a group. The normal entrance is $8 each, but with a group of 10, you can get in for $10, get one of the picnic shelters complete with a fire pit, and Parkhurst will provide hot dogs to grill, drinks, and stuff for s’mores. That’s what we did.
All of the kids (heck, maybe everyone that gets in) get to pick a pumpkin to take home. We got there around 1445 on Sunday afternoon, and left just after 1700.
It’s a low-key way for a bunch of kids to have a lot of fun.
Tags: Arcadia, OK, Parkhurst Ranch, pumpkin patch
Posted in Oklahoma City | Leave a Comment »
1 November 2009 by Bill Hensley
I have written before about how cool it is to use Open Source software to Get Stuff Done. This is somewhat related to a couple other things I have written about, namely my quest to replace my computer-based DVR function.
I have a 250GB disk that came out of a Dish Network DVR that had been used for recording (but not paying for) movies. I wiped it and used it in the school server for file serving, but I was the only one who ever used it, and the roughly 10GB of space I had on the main server disk was only 20% full. So I pulled the 250GB device.
The computer I want to use for my DVR has an 80GB primary disk with Windows on it. I have a 20GB disk that came out of a failed laptop a couple years ago; it has a GRUB boot partition and a Linux partition on it. I had recently upgraded the Linux partition from Fedora 5 to Fedora 10; all my personal files I have on DVD from the backup that I did before the installation.
My idea was to put the 250GB disk into the computer, and image the 20GB over to it, then stretch the Linux partition out to 40GB just for some extra room (the 20GB Linux partition is only about 25% full, but you can never have too much disk space, right?). Then I would take all the extra space on the 250GB, make a partition, and format it for NTFS (the theory here being that Fedora talks to NTFS, and Windows talks to NTFS, but Windows can’t talk to a Linux ext partition). This way, both Windows and Fedora can share the big space.
So I put the 250GB drive in, pop in System Rescue CD 1.4, do an fdisk -l to make sure it sees all the disks, and then use dd (Disk Duplicator) to copy everything on /dev/sdc to /dev/sdb. dd runs in about 20 min, and for the first time since I started using it, I had some errors reported during the copy process. Hmmm, thought I.
I shut down, pulled the System Rescue CD from the drive, pulled the 20GB drive, and moved the 250GB drive to that slot on the IDE bus. Booted both Windows and Linux, so good there. No problems from the reported errors.
A short detour: When I upgraded my Linux partition to Fedora 10 from Fedora 5, all of a sudden I could not boot ANYTHING. I used System Rescue CD to boot the system, mount the Linux partition, and change the boot drive from the default of (0,0) to (1,0). This allowed GRUB to find the operating system commands. But for some reason, the OS selector menu wouldn’t show. If I hit the up arrow key a number of times, then enter, then Linux would boot. Down arrow (or let it just set throught the default timeout), and XP would boot. I looked online a bit, but this evening I figured it out: the “splashimage” command was pointing to disk (0,0) also. I changed it to (1,0) and we were off again. Whatever was setting GRUB up in the Fedora 10 installation was figuring out where the various OS’s were, but didn’t put them back into the right place in grub.conf.
So now I have a 250GB disk with a 20GB Fedora 10 Linux installation. I go back to System Rescue CD, and fire it up. I go into the Linux GUI and start Gnu Partition Editor (GPartEd). It sees the two disks, but it does not recognize the OS on the 250GB drive. Hmmm. I check the version number. I then reboot to the Fedora, and load the latest version of GPartEd using Yum, and run it. It reports that the parition type is Linux LVM, which is correct, but it also informs me that LVM isn’t supported yet.
So I create a new partition in all that free space, and format it as FAT32, so both Windows and Linux can read and write it safely. I was planning to do this as NTFS, I seemed to remember that FAT32 would not support more than something like 120GB, but when I identified the space for formatting, FAT32 was an option, and the process was successful.
I booted into both the Windows and Linux partitions, and they worked, and could read and write to the FAT32 partition, so overall success.
So my basic requirement is accomplished: I imaged my existing Fedora 10 and boot partitions from a 20GB to a 250GB disk. I have a HUGE amount of space to store DVR data. I was not able to stretch my Fedora partition, but I will go and see if there is a schedule for GPartEd or some other Open Source tool to support LVM.
Open Source wins again: Linux/Fedora, GPartEd, Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB).
Tags: Open Source, DVR, Linux, System Rescuue CD, GRUB, GPartEd
Posted in Technology | Leave a Comment »
30 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I run MS Outlook since my employer and my job require it. I actually think that some of the functions provided are pretty cool (the Calendar, for example).
I keep most of my email in an Outlook data file (a file with a .pst extension). So today, I tried to drag some stuff from the Inbox to my primary data file (named, remarkably enough, Bill_Hensley.pst). Outlook put up a dialog box complaing that the pst file was full. This caused me to vaguely remember that older versions of Outlook had a maximum data file size of 2GB. I looked at the file on the disk, and sure enough it was right at 2GB.
So I created a new pst file called Things_To_Take_Care_Of.pst. I was going to dump a couple folders of information there to “take the pressure off” the Bill_Hensley.pst file. OK, the new file was created, and I selected a folder in Bill_Hensley that had some largish items, and dragged it to the new pst. Outlook complained that the data could not be accessed because the file was full. WTH? I tried another folder. Same result. I tried to open up a couple mail items in the two folders, got the same message.
After playing around, I figured out that any mail item that caused the expression ((pst_size+item_to_open_or_move) > 2GB) to become true was rejected by Outlook. Since the Bill_Hensley file was a couple MB less than 2GB, I could grab and move a couple MB worth of files to the new file. As I moved stuff tot he new PST file, I could move more and more stuff. Eventually I got it done, but with a couple detours to repair the Bill_Hensley.pst file (Outlook complained that the file was damaged).
So I do not understand why moving a mail item OUT of a PST, or opening the mail item up, would cause the PST file to grow to larger than the 2GB limit. But MS does some things in a super paranoid way (see the post on Word 2007). This paranoia cost me an hour of otherwise productive time today.
And one other thing. When I started this, my PST file was 1,950,368,768 bytes in size. After I moved a folder of pretty big mail items out to the new PST, the new PST file was 300MB in size. After the move, my PST file was 1,948,337,152 bytes, a difference of 2,031,616 Bytes. The removal of 300MB of mail items reduced the size of the PST file by… 2MB. So moving stuff out of a PST does not really move it out. Next, I will find a compression or packing utility somewhere.
It never ends.
Tags: Microsoft Outlook
Posted in Technology | Leave a Comment »
30 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
My Very Large Defense Contractor employer uses a website from American Express for booking travel. They call it The Edge. The site overall does an OK job of getting travel booked. It has some very strange behaviors (for example, a predeliction for only wanting to display flights that depart at 0600 or after 1800). It also has a hard time finding hotels, and an even harder time finding open rooms at hotels, and an even harder time getting the Government per diem room rate. It also will rarely get a better price than the prices on the airline web sites (I know these last two, since I will fire up the aa.com or hilton.com sites and browse them at the same time).
But that’s not what this is about. This evening I needed to book travel, so I brought up the site. The front page has a bunch of travel advisory stuff and the usual screen clutter you might expect, and it has the user ID and password text boxes.
So as soon as the site comes up, my daughter informs me that she needs to bake a cake for the class party tomorrow, and we are out of eggs and milk. Grrr, says Dad, and off to Braums I go. I got back around a half hour later.
I sat back down at the computer, entered my login information on the website, and clicked the Log In button. The site immediately returned a page stating that my session had expired. Huh? I followed the link back to the main page, logged in, and then booked my trip. After all this was done, I logged off and navigated back to the home page, and then I went off to Facebook or something, and came back after about 15 minutes. I tried to log in again, and got the session expired page.
So for some reason, AX bases the session on the load time of the home page, not the load time of the itenerary build page that you get after you log in. Some developer made a dumb choice here. I sent a Feedback in, but I suspect that it will meet the fate of the other Feedback I have sent to The Edge (which is to say, relegation to Oblivion).
Posted in Technology, Travel | Leave a Comment »
27 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I intend this blog to be a way for me to comment on issues of the day that interest me, and to be able to share some of the places I go with friends. I really do not want it to become a Twitter-like listing of my moods of the day (which in general is fairly sunny).
But today something happened that has not happened before. I got demoted. My boss describes it as a way for me to put all my energy into engineering and testing. But the fact is I got demoted. I have not screwed anything up. This is personality and politics.
I work for a large contractor, who is in this case a subcontractor to a small business. The prime has a lead program guy, and I was the technical lead for the team, and the supervisor of the employees of the sub. I note for the record that said program lead guy does not work any aircraft modification program. He “monitors” them. The rest of the team, both the prime and us subs, we all work multiple programs with our Air Force customers. The AF guys like all of us subs just fine. The prime guys and the sub guys work well together (those prime guys that have real (not “monitor”) jobs, that is).
But the lead program guy, the one who does not have a real job, wants to know everything the rest of us do (those who can, do, the rest, monitor). He does not understand it. He gets mad when he is “surprised”, it does not matter if he was included from the start and just forgot, or if something cropped up in the past day. He gripes straight to my boss directly (in almost two years, he has NEVER once come to me with an issue).
So prime lead guy (who does not have a real job) apparently griped enough directly to my boss that my boss decided to demote me. I asked for reconsideration and got none. No support at all. This is the part I really don’t like. The prime lead guy – well, sometimes people just act like that; they don’t produce anything useful, but get all bent out of shape when they are not treated like the King Of All Things. But I’ve known my boss for more than 25 years and I expected better.
Some might argue that I got what I deserved. If I had emailed the prime lead guy everything that I got then he would not have been able to gripe (maybe that’s true, but he also griped about plenty that he was kept up about). I should have gone by his desk every day or so and given him a personal briefing (maybe, but I don’t expect people I work with to spoon feed me, that’s not being professional).
Besides, the really important thing is that the ultimate customers – the Air Force guys we work directly with, the guys who fly the airplane, the other support organizations, THEY are all quite pleased. So it really comes down to one guy, who doesn’t run any programs, griping about me, a guy who routinely works most of the programs in the office and with most of the people in the office (why not ALL of the people in the office? Some work on stuff I have nothing to do with, like engines and spare parts).
So now, to my great surprise, I am going to start looking for another job. I had really hoped to be able to finish my career out with this tremendous Air Force asset, but I frankly just do not feel any support for doing this. It won’t happen in the next month, because someone has to remain professional in all this, and it will be me, and I will not walk out on things I started. But I am afraid my days in this most wonderful of jobs are numbered.
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
25 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
This morning daughter Erin and I drove down to Girl Scout Camp Ekowah near Marlow. My very cute and somewhat camp-overtrained roommate had completed a weekend of camp training, and we wanted to bring her back home.
Erin and I had a really nice walk around the camp. She had been there for summer camp and wanted to show the place to me, so we literally walked to all four corners of the camp, checked out the platform cabins, petted some of the horses (it’s a horse camp), went out on the dock, did the low ropes course, and generally had a good couple hours. We walked about five miles.
By this time, we were quite hungry, and we stopped by Wild Horse Creek Cafe, as Marlow is the first town you come to from Ekowah.
The server told me that their chili had beans in it, but she was wrong! It was 100% meat, and was outstanding. Taste and consistency was perfect. I loved that chili, great stuff.
I got a chicken fried steak, with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was kind of a strange meal.
There were a couple different kinds of green beans. They had some bacon and onion, and tasted OK, but there were what I would refer to as “good” green beans (like you would get out of a Del Monte can), and “not so good”, like you might get in a cheap cafeteria (these beans can be identified by being bright green like they are dyed, and they are tough, relative to “good” beans).
The mashed potatoes were good. The gravy was OK.
The CFS was another mystery. I am pretty sure it was not hand breaded there, and had been frozen, but it tasted pretty good. The taste was the taste of a pre-fab CFS. I’ve had some terrible pre-fab CFS, but this one is was better than most – call it a 5 out of 10.
Erin got a baked potato, and it was loaded and fairly standard. She thought it needed to be baked a little longer, and needed a lot more cheese on it. Erin got a pair of warm brownies ala mode for dessert.
Raegan got a fish sandwich, and at least part of the fish tasted bad (as in, spoiled) to her. She was not terribly hungry since they were well fed at camp, so we didn’t pursue it. She got a slice of pecan pie to get the taste out of her mouth, and it was good.
So the experience with the Wild Horse Cafe was a mixed bag. The chili was outstanding – I can’t believe that it was pre-fab. The next time we have a chance to eat here, I will try a steak and see what they do with it.
The place had people at four tables when we got there around 1400 on Sunday afternoon, and had about three when we left around 1450. Our check for three was $29.86.
There is a technology aspect to this – it’s something I have Never Seen Before. The servers use handheld HP iPAQs to take the orders. The handheld runs an app that has the complete menu for the restaurant. The server uses a stylus to click each time, including notes or variations (for example, if you order fried mushrooms and you want ranch dressing to dip them in, the server can either click a standard option, or use an on-screen keyboard with the stylus to add the note). The order is submitted over a dedicated wifi link to a (computer) server, where it is displayed in the kitchen for the cooks to start working up.
The restaurant had a couple of wifi links that I scanned with my Blackberry. One had an SSID of something like “serverlink”, and was WEP protected. I presume this was the destination for the iPAQs. There was another wifi link as well (don’t remember the SSID) that was about the same signal level, and was WEP protected as well. One of the servers said that they really liked using the iPAQs. Pretty cool stuff.
Tags: Restaurants, OK, Wild Horse Creek Cafe, Marlow, iPAQ
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Technology, Travel | Leave a Comment »
24 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
We had a road trip and dinner adventure this evening. My very cute and Girl Scout trainable roommate is spending the weekend at a training session for taking Girl Scout troops camping. Never mind that she has been camping since she was a GS, and has camped with me, with her high school science club, and as a GS leader back in the late 80s. So since she is not a fan of driving, I drove her down to the camp, roughly 95 miles south of OKC. It gave us some time alone, since I’ve been on travel for a couple weeks, and there is only a low risk that the kids will burn the house down in the meantime.
I targeted a well-known Oklahoma restaurant for dinner: Ken’s in Amber. Alas, they do NOT take credit cards! We do not typically carry much cash. We headed south to Chickasha for our alternates. The first one was GONE, apparently the building has been taken over by a law firm (I hope there were survivors from the restaurant). The second one was a BBQ place, and Raegan didn’t want to put her stomach at risk in the wilderness.
We settled for Chicken Express, as we drove by. Every once in a while Raegan wants some fried chicken, darn it.
The place was not crowded. It was a nice building. She got a two-piece with a biscuit and potatoes and gravy. I got a three-piece.
I ripped into the first piece, and it was wonderful. The crust was perfect, the chicken flavorful, tender, and juciy. I dug in a bit, and the fork came back…pinkish, not the expected white or ecru or whatever. I got a second fork and did the spreader routine, and the damn stuff was pretty much raw. Grrr… I tossed those utensils in the trash (they were plastic) and got another pair, and opened up the other two pieces. They were cooked all the way through.
Meanwhile, Reagan had some pink juice on her plate, but the meat looked liked it was cooked more or less all the way through. She ate, making a comment to the effect of “That which does not kill us…”.
I ate the second and third pieces very carefully. The chicken was really good, not too salty, not mushy. The first piece I boxed up, planning on cooking it in the oven a bit tomorrow, for lunch.
The biscuits were really pretty good, but the mashed potatoes and gravy were just OK, really bland. I suspect the potatoes of being from rehydrated flakes.
The tea I got had a slight coffee aftertaste. I cut the unsweetened tea with some of the sweet tea they had, and the sugar masked the aftertaste. After the first big glass, I switched to Coke, which was pretty good.
When I mentioned the undercooked chicken to the counter person, she offered to replace the piece, which I thought was nice.
People were eating outside when we got there (it was in the mid-50s), and there is apparently quite the pick-up business. Our check for two was $17.31. The meals we got were the chicken, a biscuit, and a side; a LARGE drink is included.
I would go back there (not often, as Chickasha is about 55 miles south of the house) and give them a second chance, because the chicken that wasn’t raw was really good. I would not get mashed potatoes.
Tags: Restaurants, OK, Chicken Express, Chickasha
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
23 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I was really looking for some comfort food this evening. The hotel had some less-than-appetizing lasagna, so I decided to find someplace else to eat. I fired up Google Maps, centered it on Omaha, and started looking…
I chose Grandmothers. It’s in Ralston, a small town adjacent to Omaha, just east of 84th on L. I got there and was immediately seated.
The place was really, really good. My server said she liked the chicken fried steak best, so I got it. I was not terribly hungry, so the size of the CFS was a pleasant surprise. It was probably about 7″x3″. It was absolutely fork tender, and tasty. The gravy was clearly not out of a carton, you could taste the flour. It had a good consistency.
The meal came wth mashed potatoes and corn. The potatoes were covered in the same gravy, and were clearly mashed right there on site, since they had a couple lumps in them (this is not a bad thing!). The corn had been soaked in just a bit of melted butter, and were great!
I usually don’t get dessert, but I did this time. A warm brownie, with a scoop of ice cream, with some whipped cream and a drizzle of hot fudge. It was really good.
The iced tea was perfect. The service was also just what I wanted. I was left alone to work my USA Today puzzle section. My check was $15.16. A big part of that was the dessert, which probably could be eaten by two or three normal people (that’s people with a normal appetite, not MINE).
The place had large windows to the north side, which would have had a very nice view of part of Omaha if it hadn’t been dark and pouring rain.
I liked this place. It’s kind of out of the way from the parts of the Omaha metro area I usually hang out in, but it’s worth a drive.
Tags: Restaurants, Omaha, Grandmothers, Ralson, NE
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
21 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
These places are scattered over the eastern half of the United States. I have been to the location in Clearwater, FL a couple times, and I’ve seen the Council Bluffs location in the distance from I-29.
When I got to Omaha this evening, was was not terribly hungry, and didn’t want a huge meal. The Homewood Suites I was at had cajun-drenched chicken that I could smell all the way to the lobby. I’m not a huge cajun fan. I like BBQ chicken wings every once in a while, and so I thought about the Quaker Steak in the Bluffs.
So I drove all the way to Iowa for dinner. It was a grueling 2.8 miles from my hotel on the north side of downtown Omaha.
The Quaker Steak was playing the Classic Vinyl channel from Sirus/XM; it was loud but not overwhelming.
I ordered a bowl of chili (no cup sizes available) and ten BBQ wings. They use some numeric rating for the spiciness of the wings; my BBQ wings were a 30, with 3000 being the top heat “Atomic” level (they say on the menu that you have to sign a waiver for this level).
The chili arrived and I was prepared to be unhappy. There were a LOT of green peppers in the bowl. I think that chili (as in Texas chili) should be meat, onion, tomato sauce, and spice, mainly red chili power. The green stuff in there made me leery. There were also huge chunks of tomatoes (not so bad). In a happy suprise, the chili was pretty good. The green peppers were not overwhelming (which is the usual problem); I could barely taste them. The huge chunks of tomatoes were a little annoying but not bad. I ate most of the bowl.
The wings were decent. They were large and meaty, and most importantly, even though they were grilled, they were not burned! The BBQ sauce was a little sparse, but was good.
The iced tea was good, and the service was pretty good. The place was about half full when I got there around 1840, and just a little more full when I left at 1920. My check was $15.50.
I’ve had a chicken fried steak (rated about a 7/10) and a ribeye (about an 5/10) at the Quaker Steak in Florida as well.
Tags: Council Bluffs, IA, Quaker Steak and Lube, Restaurants
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
20 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
Today I was visiting CSI, and a couple of us decided to head to Dickey’s on Plano Road near Collins for some BBQ for lunch. We got there around 1205, and the line was out the door about 20 ft, the longest line I’ve seen at that Dickey’s. I drove through the parking lot, and there in the strip shopping part was Fred’s.
I like cheesesteaks, so we decided to give it a try. At first glance, it’s a dump. There’s a lot of Philly sports team stuff on the walls, and the tables and chairs are a mixed lot.
The cheesesteak was wonderful. I have flown to Philidelphia several times, and each time have had cheesesteaks for lunch. Geno’s and Pat’s, both rate 10 of 10. Jim’s, maybe a 7 of 10. On that scale, Fred’s is a 9 of 10.
I got a 10″ extra steak and cheese (you would order this as “wit wiz big” if you were at Geno’s, maybe). The meat had a tremendous flavor, and was super tender without being mushy. There were just enough onions, and they were cooked perfectly. There could have been a bit more Cheez Whiz, and it should have been drizzled over the top (I think it was put on the bread). The bread was warm and had a perfect texture.
The fries were OK, not very crispy. The place had a soda fountain, but no iced tea (boo!).
The steak and drink were right at $10. When we got there we had about a 10-min wait; the place was about 3/4 full. There is a second section that got opened up as we were ordering, and by the time we left, the whole two-section restaurant was about 3/4 full. We got out right at 1305.
I did a little research just now, and there is apparently a second location in Plano. I will try that location the next time I am in that area.
Tags: cheesesteaks, Downtown Philly, Fred's, Restaurants, Richardson, TX
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
20 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
The food choices at OKC have not been terribly good ever, but improved a bit when the terminal was rebuilt a couple years ago. They got better again over the past month, when a mediocre pizza place got replaced by a BBQ place.
The Salt Lick is decent. I have heard of the original down near Austin, but haven’t made it there. The OKC location is not bad at all.
The menu included brisket, hot links, chicken, and some other stuff. I got a brisket platter, which included slaw, fries, and beans.
The slaw was… odd. It was not made of cabbage (although I think it had some cabbage); it was made of very small bits of chopped up raw broccoli. Now, I like broccoli, but I like it cooked (preferably steamed). There was some other stuff in there also. The dressing was, I think, very good. I didn’t eat much of it since I did not like the slaw.
The fries were good; they were home fries that weren’t too greasy. The beans were pretty standard pinto beans.
The brisket was another thing altogether. There was a lot of it, for one thing. The carving chunk was clearly smoked somewhere – no boiling or grilling here. The meat was tender and moist. There was not a lot of beef taste to the meat, but there was enough. The sauce was a thin mustard-based sauce (this is only the second mustard-based that I have tasted; the other one is at a place in O’Fallon, IL). The meat was medium-rare.
Salt Lick had a fountain, but didn’t even have fake iced tea. I went next door to Schlotskys, which had not only iced tea, but a machine out to get free refills of Dr. Pepper.
My total bill was $16.66 and some change. This was from $14.41 for the dinner, and then $1.99 and tax for the drink next door.
One note: Apparently Pepsi raided Will Rogers and got the soft drink contract. I’m not against Pepsi, but I do not like it as well as I did back in college. They do have Dr. Pepper in the machines. The Sonic next door still has Coke.
I noticed this at DFW a couple years ago. Pepsi is everywhere, except McDonalds. I don’t drink nearly as much Coke/whatever as I used to, but I still notice.
Tags: BBQ, OKC, Restaurants, Salt Lick, Will Rogers World Airport
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
17 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I like keeping in touch with friends from high school and college, and people who I no longer work with. I ran across one such friend that I had not been in contact with since around 1986, and it turned out she and her family live in Falls Church. During my last trip to DC, we made arrangements for all of us to get together, and she suggested the Sweetwater Tavern.
It was 6 miles away from where I was staying in Tysons Corner, VA. We were to meet at 1800, so I drove out of my hotel at 1740. I arrived at 1820 (that’s 40 minutes to drive six miles, about 9 miles an hour). You would end up sitting for five minutes, and then drive for a minute.
So I guess after not seeing her for 20+ years, being 20 minutes late isn’t earth-shattering, but it really annoyed me.
The restaurant was really nice. It was a little bit too loud. The service was OK. There were a couple times where we did not see a server for a bit, but the iced tea was kept full, at least.
I got a roast half chicken (apparently popular, it was labeled “until it runs out”). It was excellent. The chicken was tender and moist, and had a great flavor. The chicken came with mashed potatoes (very good) and some corn (not very much, maybe they were running out). All very tasty.
We shared a dessert of chocolate waffle and ice cream – yummy.
The meal was really good, but the best part was the conversation with my friend and her husband, who I had not met before. We had quite a number of mutual interests. They had a pair of cute and bouncy little girls also. They were kind enough to pick up the check, so I owe for the next time, but my chicken was about $10 IIRC. It thought the prices were pretty reasonable, and the portions were not huge, but just about right.
The restaurant was crowded when I got there at 1920, and there were about six people waiting for a table. It was just as full when we left around 2100.
Tags: restuarants, VA, Sweetwater Tavern, Falls Church
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
16 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
OK, I have to be up front. There is very little that swims or lives in water that I like to eat. Every once in a while, we’ll get Long John Silvers, or my very cute and fish-loving roommate will crisp up some breaded fillets, or I will have some clam chowder, but that’s about it. I like bird and mammal much better. I eat the stuff mentioned above without complaining, but with little relish.
But, one of my work buddies loves seafood, and Phillips in particular, so when we come to DC we always go here.
Phillips is like a triple-sized Golden Corral of stuff that swims. They have a menu, but it’s quite limited. The real reason to go here is the seafood buffet – huge amounts of shellfish, finned fish. Steamed, broiled, boiled, etc. Everyone I have been here with says it is all excellent. I’ll take their word for it. It’s all you can eat/stuff yourself silly with.
They have non-seafood. There is a pasta saute, and they usually have roast beef. Tonight they had a big pork roast, and broiled chicken. And roast turkey in gravy (I had two helpings of this). There is a decent variety of veggies (some excellent skin-on red mashed potatoes tonight). There is also a pretty good salad bar. There are a number of odd things (there was jambalaya, and two different kinds of curry this evening). I had some risotto that was very good, if not less creamy than I would expect.
They have about six flavors of ice cream for dessert, along with a number of cakes, pies, cobblers, and other stuff.
Service is usually very good, they have outstanding iced tea. The place occasionally has quite the wait (tonight not a bit, even though we got there at 1930). My check for buffet and iced tea was $30.
There is also a Phillips we have eaten at in the Inner Harbor at Baltimore. It’s a bit smaller in offerings than the “Flagship” in DC.
You can walk along the waterfront and look at the boats when you are done.
Tags: DC, Phillips Seafood, Restaurants, Washington
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | 2 Comments »
15 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I did my usual thing for dinner tonight, I fired up Google Maps, and asked for “restaurants near Tysons Corner, VA”. One of the entries was for O’Malley’s. I drove over there (it was about 10 blocks from my hotel, and I didn’t feel like walking this time). It took a couple passes, and I couldn’t find the place. I finally called, and the call was answered as “Crowne Plaza, where may I direct your call?”. The place was in the hotel. Note to O’Malley’s webmaster: this would be a nice tidbit for your website.
I walked the place finally, and knew that I had been in there before. I gave it some thought, and finally remembered that I had eaten breakfast there, when I had stayed in the hotel, which was then a Holiday Inn, about 10 years ago.
I ordered a cup of beef vegetable soup and a Shepards Pie, along with iced tea.
The tea came. It was instant tea, or concentrate. Probably concentrate. It wasn’t totally horrible. But it wasn’t very good, either.
The vegetable beef soup was pretty good. It had more chunks of meat and stuff.
The Shepards Pie was really, really good. It had almost a chili consistency for the filling, and it was more red than most Shepards Pies I have had. It had peas and carrots mixed in. A traditional SP has a spreading of mashed potatoes over the entire top, but this one had scoops of mashed potatoes embedded in the filling. No matter, it was really, really good. I really like cassaroles and the like, and Shepards Pie is at heart a cassarole. The key is the filling, and in this case, the filling was excellent. It wasn’t huge, either, and that was good since I wasn’t terribly hungry.
I got there around 1845, the place was not even 15% full. When I left at 1927, it was about half full. My check was $14.44.
O’Malley’s has a website: http://www.omalleyssportspub.com/
The place had a lot of TVs with mostly sports on; a couple of them also had news on. It wasn’t too loud, but it was louder than most restaurants on. It was also well-lit, which was good since I took my USA Today in to read, and work the puzzles.
Tags: O'Malley's, Tysons Corner, VA
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
15 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I have heard about Five Guys burgers for a couple years now, and I have been trying to make it to one of their locations. On Tuesday I had a meeting in DC, and conveniently enough there was a Five Guys about 300 yards away from my meeting location.
I expected, I guess, a well-appointed place. Instead, the place was pretty basic. Not a dump, but certainly not a, say, Fuddruckers. The cheeseburger, however, was first class. The burger was cooked to order right in front of me.
The beef was really tasty, it had a lot of flavor. It was juicy, but the juice didn’t run all over the place. I got the burger with mayo and pickles. The burger was a 1/4 lb, I think, and thick. Not a scrap was left.
You can order fries. They come in two sizes, standard and large. If there are three of you, get one standard order of fries. There are a LOT of them. The large size looks like more than twice as many. I almost never leave food behind, but I left fries behind in this case. They were good fries, also.
They did not have iced tea. They had tea concentrate out of the soda machine, vile and horrible. I had Coke.
It was really good, and it was fast. My check was $10.76.
15 October 2009 update:
A work friend and I ate at the Five Guys location at 800 N H in DC. It was just as good. I got a bacon cheeseburger this time. One bonus: this location had real iced tea! Yea!
Tags: DC, Five Guys, Washington
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
10 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
Today, as a result of a little bit of Facebook stalking, I ran across a site called nsis.net. It’s an ISP based here in Oklahoma City. NSIS has a bandwidth (speed) test on its homepage, so naturally I clicked it.
I got a measured speed of 5.8Mbps. I tried several other times and got speeds up to 8Mbps. That’s not bad. That is a measured time from my computer, through a 54Mbps wifi link, through a wifi router, through a 100Mbps wire to a cable modem, through the Cox network, to the Internet, and then to NSIS, and back.
I decided to see if my Blackberry would get a report. I fired up the browser, went to NSIS, and got a report back of… 85Mbps (not eight point five, eighty five). My first impression was, I think I’ll download an HD-quality movie to my handheld!
But the reality is, my Blackberry is actually pointed at a proxy server at Research In Motion (RIM), and so the actual test is between the RIM proxy server and the test server at NSIS. The typical link between ISPs is at least an OC-12 (600Mbps) and I’m sure that RIM uses an OC-48 (2Gbps), so 85Mbps for such a test is not unreasonable at all.
I’ve measured the download speed of my Blackberry, and usually get around 150Kbps when I’m on the EDGE network over the cell tower (which is about the same bandwidth as three dial-up modems), but it seems to work pretty fast, since on most web pages, the RIM proxy server reformats the pages for the small Blackberry screen, including resizing the images, which are the real bandwidth hogs. It’s a lot faster when the Blackberry is connected to a wifi access point.
So 85Mbps to a Blackberry is a dream, but it’s a good one.
Tags: bandwidth, Blackberry, nsis.net
Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »
9 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
This place has the potential to be one of my favorite restaurants. I found it via an indirect route – a guy who was at a meeting I was at heard me make a comment about Chicken Fried Steak, and he said that the CFS at Checkerboard was the best in OKC.
Such claims must be verified!
A couple work friends (let’s call them Dlorah and Kram). Checkerboards is in a shopping center on the NE corner of Reno and Air Depot, next to an Office Depot (I think). The place looks like crap from the outside, but when you walk in, you get a pleasant surprise. The restaurant is really well decorated on the inside, really nice. It’s quiet and open. It smells good!
The menu had one thing on it I’ve not seen before. It talks about how Checkerboards has free wifi, except from 1130 – 1300 (that time range might not be 100% accurate – I just know that it implies that wifi is turned off during lunch.
I had every intention of having a CFS here. But up on the chalkboard was the daily special – roast beef, and it smelled really good!
Two of us got CFS. I got the dinner size. It was really, really good. It was not fork tender, but the meat was easy to chew and had a lot of flavor. The breading was light and not terribly sweet like some places – it was good! I got whipped red potatoes and gravy (both very good) and some green beans – tasty but a bit mushy. I also got a cup of decent potato soup. It had a bit too much cheese (I’m sure Erin would disagree), but that was about the only thing I could find wrong.
The other guy (Kram) got Chicken Marsala. It looked really good also. It was on a bed of pasta (angel hair, I think).
I got iced tea, it was good and strong.
The dessert menu had a lot of potential, but all of us were pretty much stuffed and so did not partake. I’m thinking that Checkerboard might be a good place to take a work break…
That was a really good CFS. The Marsala looked excellent, and the other meals I saw looked good also.
This place has real potential, and that potential must be explored! We got there about 1145, and there were a total of four occupied tables, and a small group. When we left about 1245, it was about the same. I hope that it is a bit busier at other times. My check, for the dinner-sized CFS, soup, and iced tea, was $18.62.
Tags: Checkerboards, Midwest City, Oklahoma, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | 2 Comments »
7 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I was first introduced to Cheddar’s a number of years ago in Plano, TX. Since then I have eaten at several Cheddar’s: Richardson and Dallas, TX; Joplin, Missouri; and Clearwater, FL. I don’t know that I’ve ever had any bad food at a Cheddar’s. I’ve always liked their Chicken Fried Steaks, cheeseburgers, salad, steak, soup, etc.
I’ve referenced Cheddar’s as one of the restaurants that open in smaller markets before they open in Oklahoma in general, and Oklahoma City in particular. Cheddar’s opened a restaurant in Tulsa last year, and I just noticed that they opened one in Norman. Just in the past month, Cheddar’s opened in Midwest City.
Today a couple work friends and I checked it out. We got there around 1150, and had about a five minute wait to be seated. The restaurant is really nicely appointed on the inside. It reminded me of an Elephant Bar.
I got a Chicken Fried Steak. It was tender, and had good taste. There were a couple pockets in the breading that were meat-free. The gravy was good, and not too peppery. I got mashed potatoes (tasty) and green beans (very good). The server brought more gravy quickly. The iced tea was good and strong.
As an appetizer, I ordered chips and salsa and queso. This was not a good value. The chips were good, but the salsa was about eight tablespoons total. I didn’t try to ask for more. It was chunky and not spicy at all. The queso was not good. It was OK for the taste, but it was really thick, like concrete that was setting up. I would not get it again.
So overall, it was a good meal, except for the queso.
My check was $14.52, of which $3.99 was the chips and queso and salsa. We got out around 1300.
Tags: Cheddar's, Midwest City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
5 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I’ve eaten at Lupe’s a couple times over the years. It’s on Douglas, between Reno and 15th.
I went there for lunch last Thursday with a couple work fiends.
I had a pair of enchiladas, one chicken and one ground beef, with rice and beans. They were pretty good enchiladas, along with the sides. The iced tea was good.
The service was attentive and the iced tea was kept full. The food got there fairly quickly also. The meal was served with queso (very good) and a medium-hot salsa (decent).
My check was $8.50. Not a bad lunch.
Tags: Lupes, Midwest City, OK, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
4 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
Seems I have had a lot of Tex-Mex recently. Something like four places in the past couple days. One of these was Margaritas. This place was suggested to me by high school classmate and all around good egg Leslie a couple months ago. It was a good recommendation.
We eat at Ted’s a lot, and this particular evening Ted’s looked like they had a line halfway down the block, so I remembered Leslie’s recommendation, and Margaritas was just up the road at Wilshire and May, so off we went.
The place (as I was told) looks like a dump/dive on the outside, it’s in an old hamburger drive in (if it’s raining hard and you want Tex-Mex, this is a good feature since you can park and walk under the awning). The people inside were super, super friendly.
We got the usual setup before dinner. The queso was a little thin and didn’t have a lot of cheese taste, but it was OK. The salsa had a HUGE fresh tomato taste; I really liked it even though I am not a fan of raw tomatoes, it was that fresh tasting. We got flour tortillas to keep the kids occupied while my very cute and restaurant-loving roommate and I talked.
My standard first-time Tex-Mex meal is either fajitas (mixed) or a pair of enchiladas, one beef (ground beef preferred) and one pollo. I got the fajitas this time. They were pretty much perfect. A lot of places tend to burn the onions, but not here. The meat was tender and not charred, and it all tasted really good. I piled up a bunch with salsa, beans, and rice, and went to town.
Raegan got a chicken chimichanga, and liked it. Ian got chicken quesadillas and wolfed them down. Erin got a cheese enchilada and liked it.
The iced tea was great. Our server was very attentive without being annoying. We finished the meal off with sopaipillas and honey (all except the obstinate Ian).
The place only had three tables occupied (out of about 12) when we arrived at 1820, and was only about half full when we left at 1920.
It was good stuff, and I’d happily go back. I need to try the enchiladas anyway.
Tags: Margaritas Mexican Restaurant, Oklahoma City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
1 October 2009 by Bill Hensley
I walked into the Qboda in Midwest City yesterday for lunch, thinking that it was a Chipotle location. For once, I was just not terribly focused. I walked in and ordered a Burrito Bol, getting a funny look from the guy behind the counter, and a snicker from the two flight suits behind me.
They did not have a Burrito Bol, but they did have a Taco Salad that was pretty close. I got it with grilled chicken and the hot variety of salsa. It was OK, not spectacular. The “hot” sauce was, to my taste, just barely spicy (and I do not like really spicy hot stuff); the salsa did not even raise a bead of sweat on my forehead. The iced tea was good.
Next time I go back (hopefully on purpose), I will get it with the steak instead of the chicken.
Tags: Midwest City, Oklahoma, Qboda Mexican Grill, Restaurants
Posted in Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
30 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
OK, we ended up here in a most pathetic way. After school, we were all hungry and wanted to eat NOW. Since three of us were in NW OKC, and Ian was at home in NE OKC, it was either pick something up and take it home or drive home and get Ian and head to an eatery. We had no agreement except that Dad’s three suggestions were all shot down by the female wing of the family, so we pointed the car towards home and picked up Ian. We headed towards Edmond and drove down 2nd street, while nothing appealed to us (which is to say, Dad made suggestions and the rest of the family shot them down; notice a trend here?). We turned down Broadway and eventually drove past Chuck House, which I’ve noticed several times in the past. So I said, how about that place, and out of general apathy we turned into the parking lot.
Now, I must say that any place with the slogan “Best Chicken Fried Steak In The Universe” has some proving to do. Chuck House is in a former KFC location, but the parking lot was pretty full, even at 1745.
A side note, the menu said that the Edmond location is the second Chuck House location. I checked Google Maps, and the original location is at 10th and Meridian. I remembered seeing that location over the years, as I used to do a lot of driving around that part of Oklahoma City, but not so much recently.
Anyway, we ordered. I got (what else?) a Chicken Fried Steak dinner. I also got a bowl of chili. That chili was really good, no beans, and decent flavor, not too spicy. The CFS came with mashed potatoes and gravy. The mashed potatoes were, well, bland. I really like potatoes, the taste and texture can be wonderful. These were just bland. The gravy was good, a bit thick, but had a good flavor and wasn’t peppered out. The chicken fried steak was pretty darn good. It was tender and had a good beef flavor. It didn’t have too much breading. The real test was that I could cut it with a fork without any effort.
Raegan got a steak sandwich. I nipped off a bite of the CFS and it was just as good as my dinner. She ate most of the sandwich and took the rest home for lunch tomorrow.
Ian got chicken fingers, mashed potatoes, and corn. He ate about half the chicken and the corn, and none of the mashed potatoes. His appetite has not come back since his encounter with H1N1, and we are not really encouraging him to go into power-eating mode.
Erin got a grilled cheese and ate all of it.
We also got a chocolate cake dessert that was very good.
I got iced tea, and it was OK, but there was a bit of aftertaste. Just a bit. A touch of the sweet tea added to the glass erased that aftertaste.
So is it the best CFS in the universe? No. I still find the CFS at Ozona in Dallas to be better, along with the CFS at Cheddar’s, and at The Embers in Nebraska City, and a couple other places. But it was pretty darned good! I’ve had plenty of CFS that was way, way worse than the Chuck House CFS. I now have a personal action item to hit the Chuck House original location soon.
Chuck House was also pretty reasonable price-wise. Our check for four was $35, and that included my bowl of chili and the dessert.
Tags: Chuck House, Edmond, OK, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
26 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
A work friend and I ate at this restaurant a couple years ago for lunch. It was pretty good.
Yesterday a couple work friends and I went to Someplace Else again. It was pretty good again.
I got a meatball sandwich on wheat bread with Sun Chips. It was messy and had a lot of meatballs, and a lot of marinara. They didn’t have any Parmesan cheese, unfortunately. The meatballs were mostly meat with some bread, instead of the other way around. The marinara was really good. Someplace Else is also a bakery. I got five (small) peanut butter cookies and a snicker-doodle. The snicker-doodle was good, but the PB cookies were crumbly and not all that tasty. I think they lacked the PB part. They have iced tea and it’s good also. My check was $7.50. The cookies were $1.50.
The last time I went to Someplace Else I got a brisket sandwich. It was pretty good also, and so I had wanted to come back and try other stuff.
Someplace Else is on Western just about 100ft south of 23rd Street. We got there about 1130 and the place was already filling up. It’s not large.
Tags: Oklahoma City, Restaurants, Someplace Else
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
18 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
Oh, this place was good. Really good. As an aside, I really enjoyed the Western and Native American themed paintings in the place. It was a very welcoming restaurant.
I ordered the Combo Dinner, which is two meats. I got smoked chicken and chopped brisket. The chicken was a bit (just a bit) dry, but really good. The brisket was really good. I got green beans (EXCELLENT) and mac and cheese for the sides. The mac and cheese could have used a little more cheese, but that’s trivial. The chicken, BTW, was breast meat that had been cut off the chicken, which made it a lot less messy (I try to reduce any BBQ to a pile of bones; preferably, the bones should look like they had been bleaching in the desert for a couple months).
I also had part of one of Ian’s four ribs. This was a Good Thing. On a scale of 1 to JT’s, that taste was a 9. Yes, 9 out of 10. It was GOOD. That good.
Erin got a kids meal with smoked turkey. It was tender and good.
Raegan got a Combo Dinner as well, with pulled pork and turkey. Both excellent, she said that the turkey was the best part.
They had two sauces. The “mild” was very sweet, and very, very mild. The “hot” was not all that hot, but was very tasty. I ended up mixing the two, about half and half, and it was a perfect mix.
Raegan got carrot cake for dessert, and she reported it was OK. A philosophical comment: do not go to a BBQ restaurant for carrot cake. A brownie, maybe. Cobbler, sure.
A note about the iced tea: The unsweetened tea was just what I would expect. Strong. The sweet tea? My very cute and tea-loving roommate said that the sweet tea was “exactly the way sweet tea is supposed to be made”, or words to that effect. It was good also (I don’t mind sweet tea, after all I drink Coke and Dr. Pepper), but it was really sweet.
This place was good. I look forward to my next visit.
Bedlam BBQ is just east of Lincoln on NE 50th. Our check was $47. The place had one family there when we got there around 1745, and we were the only ones there at 1845.
Tags: BBQ, Bedlam Bar-B-Que, Oklahoma City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | 1 Comment »
18 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
I had eaten at Dan’s a couple years ago. It was good.
Today I had lunch there with a group of current and former work friends. I was pretty late due to meetings running late.
Dan’s specializes in onion burgers. I got a Double Dan with cheese, which is a half-pound of meat. It was pretty much perfect. The burger was medium well, juicy enough that I needed to wipe my fingers every bite or so, but it wasn’t super greasy. It was tasty. The onions were not burned (as many onion burger places tend to do), and there were not an obnoxious amount on the burger. They didn’t put mayo or mustard or anything else on the burger, and that didn’t matter at all. The meat was very tasty.
I got a side of tater tots, and a big, strong iced tea. All great.
When I got there about 1215, the place was pretty much full. When I left around 1300, the place was still about 80% full. My check was $10.39.
Dan’s is at 8433 S. Western, about four blocks south of I-240.
Tags: Dan's Ole Time Diner, Oklahoma City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
17 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
I do not eat at many Chinese restaurants. There is one in Midwest City that makes my otherwise cast-iron stomach do flip-flops. Lido is not like that.
I last ate at Lido back around January 2008, with a group of work friends. It was good then.
I had lunch at Lido the day before yesterday with a friend. She got something with noodles and chicken. I got my usual for a Chinese restaurant, Sweet and Sour Chicken. It was really tasty, the sauce was good, and the chicken was perfect. I got fried rice with it. The presentation of the meal was really attractive, and I don’t usually notice stuff like that. I also got Egg Drop Soup. It was good, but different. Most Egg Drop Soup is yellowish; this was white, to the point I thought that it might be Egg Whites Drop Soup. It had peas and carrots (small amounts) in it.
The service was good. We got there for lunch about 1145, and were seated immediately, but the place was pretty full. When we left at 1300, it was still half full. Our check for two meals was $16; pretty reasonable.
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
15 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
I just love Open Source software. I have a number of Visual Basic 6 projects that I use quite often for work and school. I move them to different computers.
I usually use the VB6 Package and Deployment Wizard to build an install package for these. However, at least three of these VB6 packages have cratered while trying to get them to install on the target system. One time, the target system was a computer on the E-4B, and I was trying to help a guy get it to install, with little luck. The errors being reported were (1) random and not consistent, and (2) cryptic, to say the least.
I can hand-install most any Windoze program with a little patience, but in that case I was 1400 miles away, and it needed to be installed that day!
I searched around on the web and found NSIS. Just a bit more searching and I found a companion to NSIS that acted as a VB6-NSIS Converter. The way it works, you run the VB6 Package and Deployment Wizard. If the installer fails, then run the VB6-NSIS converter, point it at the VB6 “SETUP.LST”, and it creates a script for NSIS. Then run NSIS, point it at the converted script, and it builds a nice setup.exe file. Burn it to CD or email it to it’s destination, or copy it to a flash drive, and you are on your way.
In every case where the built-in VB6 tool at trouble, NSIS/VB6 converter got the job done. Great stuff.
Almost forgot:
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page
http://nsis.sourceforge.net/VB_Converter
Tags: Installer, NSIS, Open Source, Package and Deployment Wizard, VB6, Visual Basic 6, Windows
Posted in General Commentary, Technology | Leave a Comment »
15 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
We had dinner at Jason’s Deli on Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City this evening. We do not go to Jason’s enough, I think sometimes.
Jason’s is just as good, and has different things, than City Bites (just for example). I have had their brisket sandwich, and it is good, really nice and tender. The brisket is good on a sandwich, and it’s good piled in a big baked potato also.
Tonight I had a baked potato, but filled with chili. The Texas chili con carne kind, instead of New Mexico red or green. It’s good and meaty and thick and tasty, but not so spicy that it scorches your taste buds. I usually get it in a bowl, and occasionally I get Fritos on the side (I don’t’ get the on-the-menu Frito Chili Pie, if you order the bowl of chili it’s a $2 less than the FCP, then you can get a side of Fritos for another $0.50.
I also like a couple of the soups, in particular the broccoli cheese.
The sandwiches are uniformly good. I like the turkey club a lot.
They have a good salad bar as well.
Jason’s Delis are all over the place. I’ve seen them in Largo, FL.
Tags: Jason's Deli, restuarants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
12 September 2009 by Bill Hensley
Tonight we gave Ian the opportunity to choose where to eat dinner, since we like to eat out on Friday, and he did a very good job on a test in school. He chose TGI Fridays, and we went to the one on Memorial Road in north OKC.
The meal was good and the service excellent. That’s not the point.
We got there around 1715. The music was really loud! We asked the hostess to turn it down; she reported that they could not, since the high level was set by TGI Fridays corporate.
We went up the chain to a manager. The volume came down a bit, but was still too loud. The manager explained that it had something to do with TGI Friday corporate wanting loud music to help the image of the place as a bar be enhanced.
If this is true (and I cannot see why it might be), it’s stupid.
Tags: Oklahoma City, Restaurants, TGI Fridays
Posted in General Commentary, Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | 1 Comment »
29 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
I have driven past this restaurant about 10,000 times over the years, but had never stopped. It really doesn’t look like much. It is on the NE corner of I-35 and Waterloo Road, so technically it’s not even in Oklahoma County. The building looks kind of like a bait shop.
Earlier this summer, I took my very cute and culinarily observant roommate and our kids on a trip to Omaha. As we drove past right at noon, Raegan noted that the parking lot was full, and said we needed to go eat at the place. We made a mental note and pressed on.
Yesterday, we were able to leave school early, and Raegan suggested that we head to the Barn to eat. We picked up Ian at home and off we went.
I was amazed at the amount of traffic that was exiting Waterloo and turning west towards the Edmond/Guthrie Miniplex (just made that up, pretty good!).
We got to the Barn around 1730. The place was only about 10% full. The inside looks like a combination of a fishing shack and an Elvis shrine. Raegan remarked that it smelled kind of like the Galveston beach, and it did (not in a bad or strong way, there were a couple tanks of tropical fish). We had complementary hush puppies, they were good. The iced tea was not strong but it was tasty.
I got a chicken fried steak. At first, I was not impressed. There was a lot of breading (which was actually fairly tasty) and little meat. As I got farther into the CFS, the situation improved. The breading was thinner and there was good meat. In fact, it was a decent CFS. I would rate it as an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10. The gravy was good. The mashed potatoes and green beans were also good. I got a peach cobbler ala mode for dessert (the server noted without my asking that it was not home made, but it was still good).
Raegan and Erin got the house specialty, deep fried catfish. Both said it was very good. Ian ordered a ribeye steak. When it came I cut a big chunk off for sampling (hey, I paid for it!). It came in a perfect medium. The steak was good but not outstanding; it looked good on the outside, and had good marbling, but the taste was less then I might have expected. I was kind of surprised.
So the verdict on the Barn is that if I were cruising north or headed south on I-35 around a meal time, I would not mind stopping in at the Steak and Catfish Barn for a meal. Our check for four was $61, which in retrospect seems a little high. Ian’s steak was about $20 of that, and given how it tasted I am not sure that it was good value for the money. My CFS was only $10. We did get two desserts, but they must have been kind of expensive. The service had slowed down significantly toward the end (in fact, I had empty iced tea for the entire dessert).
When we left around 1745, the place was pretty much full. For it to be that popular, either it’s the only restaurant around, or they are serving something that brings people back. Maybe it’s the catfish, a lot of people were getting it. I’m not much into fish, but I will have to try a bite next time.
We drove back home by heading east on Waterloo until we found a likely road south. We ended up a mile west of Pops in Arcadia, were we stopped and bought some… pop. They have Dublin Dr Pepper and Coke from Mexico with cane sugar, and lots of Jones Soda. We continued home east of Lake Arcadia.
Tags: Arcadia, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Pop's, Restaurants, Steak and Catfish Barn
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
28 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
The Washington Post reported today that the Bush policy of allowing unconstitutional searches of laptops and other electronic devices entering the United States (even those held by US citizens) will be continued by the Obama Administration.
The Constitution specifically forbids searches without probably cause (check the 4th Amendment). The Bush policy, while in line with his apparent commitment to a tyrannical government that watches its own citizens obsessively, was completely wrong. President Obama should reverse or repeal this odious policy completely. Instead, he wants to strengthen oversight:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday framed the new policy as an enhancement of oversight. “Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States,” she said in a statement. “The new directives announced today strike the balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”
Secretary Napolitano sounds reasonable, but first off, blatantly violating the Constitution of the United States is not a good way to keep Americans “safe”. I also fail to see how screening materials entering the US keeps us safe. Anything on a laptop or PDA can be sent in via the internet, even superencrypted to ensure no one can even tell what it is.
The President should start repealing or canceling these terrible, un-American laws and policies, not just adding “oversight”.
Reference: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082704065.html?hpid=topnews
Tags: Obama, Bush, search and siezure, US Constitution, 4th Amendment
Posted in General Commentary, Technology | Leave a Comment »
24 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
I was headed up to Omaha from OKC yesterday, and I passed a Montana Mike’s sign on the interstate. I had always intended to try one of those restaurants, a friend had recommended it, and I thought there was one in Topeka. Unfortunately, I was not correct. I decided to go to Longhorn Steakhouse instead.
This Longhorn was the first one I ever ate at, maybe a couple years ago. I liked it, and then realized when I was at another one (in O’Fallon, IL) that they were a chainlet. I griped in another blog entry that Longhorn was another in the list of restaurants that smaller cities had, but OKC did not (that’s not true now, there is a Longhorn in OKC along Memorial Road).
I have had a chicken fried steak and a ribeye steak in previous visits, and have been impressed.
In this case, I had another ribeye. It was perfect. When the steak arrived it was medium rare (I almost always order medium), and since it got there very quickly I just let it rest, and by the time I finished my salad it had finished cooking to what I might call the low end of medium.
The start was a salad, with a lot of stuff I don’t usually eat and end up dumping. I dumped out diced tomatoes and cucumbers. I left the cheese and egg and carrots. The ranch dressing was outstanding! I got extra and scarfed every bit of it.
Once the steak had cooked a bit, it was simply perfect. It had a bit of black pepper rub on the outside, but not so much that it destroyed the flavor. That was one tasty steak.
It also came with a good baked potato.
My server was extremely friendly (he shook my hand coming and going), and hung around just enough to keep the tea filled (and it was excellent iced tea) and to make sure I had what I needed.
All in all, it was a really good meal. I got there around 1730, and the place wasn’t 15% full. By the time I left around 1845, it was about 90% full. It wasn’t too loud, either. A great eating experience. My check was $21.58 before an $8 tip.
Tags: KS, Longhorn Steakhouse, Restaurants, Topeka
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
22 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
I picked this restaurant more or less at random using the Google Maps app on my Blackberry. I was headed home from Omaha after a short trip there.
Boss Hawg’s is in a strip shopping center across from a nice park in Topeka. I got there around 1245, and was immediately seated. The place was about 50% occupied. There is wifi from the coffee shop next door!
The iced tea was good. One funny thing: one of the servers refilled my tea on the way by, and I took a big hit of it, and almost spit it across the room! Turns out it was raspberry tea. The server came back and asked if something was wrong, saying she had seen me make a horrible face. Then she looked at the pitcher she was carrying and went “Oh, I gave you the wrong stuff…”.
I started off with a cup of chili. It was OK. The chili was mostly beans (I think kidney, pintos, and some other kind). Very little meat flavor. The chili was served with a plate of tortilla chips, which was a nice change.
Since it was my first time, I got a three meat special (called The Hawg Heaven). It had a quarter chicken, a quarter rack of ribs, and a quarter pound of one of the other meats. I chose spareribs (baby back was the other choice) and brisket.
The ribs had potential. They had the same kind of dark crust that JTs ribs have. They had OK flavor, but almost no meat on them. I left a small pile of denuded bones behind. The brisket was decent. It was shaved very thin, was tender, and had a decent smoke flavor. The chicken was really, really good. It was juicy and smoky and just damn good. The next time I eat here, I will include chicken in the meal.
The lunch also came with cole slaw. It wasn’t that good, but it wasn’t bad. I really liked the french fries. Cornbread rounded out the meal, and it was a sweet cornbread that I brought home and had for a late snack.
There were two kinds of BBQ sauce on the table, one labeled sweet and the other labeled hot. The sweet was OK, but the hot was perfect. I wouldn’t even call it hot, it did not raise a sweat on my forehead. As usual, I disdained the ketchup and even dipped the fries in the BBQ sauce.
I would eat here again. My check was $25. The service was good. I think I would get chicken the next time, and maybe something else. I would not get the spareribs, since I do not think they provided good meat value for the money.
Tags: BBQ, Boss Hawgs, KS, Restaurants, Topeka
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | 1 Comment »
13 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
I ate at a Saltgrass Steakhouse for dinner this evening. I stopped at the location on US-75 just south of Midpark Road in Dallas, TX. I’ve previously eaten at Saltgrass locations in west and east Plano, TX, McKinney, TX, Lewisville, TX, and maybe a couple others I can’t think of right now.
Saltgrass has always been a fairly high quality place. I’ve had some excellent food there, and I think the worst was a burned steak (I don’t mean just overcooked from Medium to Medium Well, I’m talking black char 3/4s of the way through) that got replaced and was complementary. I like their CFS pretty well, and I’ve had NY Strips, Ribeyes, and T-Bones.
I had a T-Bone this evening. The tenderloin side was PERFECT. It was literally fork tender, and very tasty. The strip side was a bit undercooked (I had asked for medium), and near the bone the steak was between rare and medium rare. It wasn’t underdone enough that I sent it back for more cooking, though.
I got a decent baked potato; it did not have the cheese I asked for, but that’s of little matter. I also got a bowl of really, really good baked potato soup; it had plenty of cheese to make up for the baked potato. I don’t know what they do to to BP soup; it has kind of a pinkish color, and is a bit peppery, but thick and tasty. Great stuff.
Tags: Dallas, Restaurants, Saltgrass Steakhouse, TX
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
12 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
A group of work friends and I ate here for lunch today. I got a BBQ chicken sandwich and a large iced tea. The iced tea was great. The sandwich was so-so. The chicken had little flavor to it, and the BBQ was bland at best. If I eat here again, I would try something else. The sandwiches and soup and stuff that the other guys got looked good.
Tags: The Great Outdoors, Richardson, TX, restuarants
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
12 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
Ruby’s Restaurant is attached to Ruby’s Inn in Purcell. I came crusing through Purcell after helping a coworker get his new laptop on his house wifi network, while in transit from OKC to the Dallas area. It was near lunch and I was hungry!
So I decided to check out Ruby’s. It’s about a mile off the south I-35 exit for Purcell.
It’s family type comfort food. The prices are really reasonable. I saw a couple breakfasts that looked really good as I walked in, and a couple good-looking cheeseburgers.
I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak off the menu. There is a regular order and a half order. I sneered at the half order. The meal includes a veg (I got mashed potatoes) and a trip to a small but decent salad bar.
When the meal arrived, it was… TWO meals, essentially. Two full-sized CFS, and two scoops of mashed potatoes. Really. Holy smoke, thought I.
The meal was pretty darn good. On a scale of 1 to 10, the CFS (or rather, CFS’s) were an 8.0. These were clearly hand breaded. The flavor was really good, and went well with the copious amount of cream gravy. The potatoes were also very good. The CFS was a little too brown on the outside; I think the cooking oil was kind of old (there was not any hint of burned oil, though). The meat could have been cooked just a bit longer (it was cooked all the way through, but it had not fully firmed up), and there were places in the meat that was a little tough, so I had to use the sharp knife to cut it there. But again, the meal was very good.
The tea was excellent, and the service was also. I got in there around 1235, and was out at 1309, and didn’t rush at all. The place was about 80% full when I got there, and about 60% full when I left.
I’d go back again.
Tags: OK, Purcell, Restaurants, Ruby's
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
9 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
This small restaurant (it has four tables total) is in a strip shopping center in SE OKC. It’s just south of the intersection of SE 89th and Sooner. I ate there with a couple work friends on 29 July.
I don’t eat a lot of Chinese/Asian food, but there are some things I really like (curry comes to mind). My typical meal at a Chinese restaurant is Sweet and Sour Chicken or Port and fried rice. I also really like Egg Drop Soup. China Olive has all of these, and it is all very good. The menu is extensive, I’ll bet there are 30 items on it.
They do not make iced tea here. If you want a drink, you can grab a soft drink or water out of the cooler.
Once or twice we’ve gone in there and all the tables were full. In one case, we just took the food to the office we were visiting in the same building, and in the other case we toted it back to the Northrop building.
This is a basic order it and they cook it place. It’s fast and inexpensive and good.
Tags: China Olive, chinese, Oklahoma City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
8 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
Super Sub is a little restaurant on Douglas, just south of 15th in MWC. They specialize in cheesesteaks (or as they say in Philly, “steaks”). They make a damn fine steak, except they they don’t have Cheese Whiz for the full Philadelphia experience.
I usually get beef with onions and mushrooms, and Provolone; it’s always good.
Yesterday I ate lunch there with work friends. I got a full-size chicken with extra meat, onions and mushrooms, and Provolone cheese. It was a huge amount of meat. The cook offered to deliver it with a to-go box, but that was not necessary! Aside from being hotter than heck (from the grill), it was wonderful. The bread was great and had nice texture, and wasn’t tough. I got an iced tea to go with it, and you just can’t beat it for lunch. My check was $11.50.
The place is small, and has about 10 tables. I’ve never failed to find a seat, although sometimes you sit with other people.
Tags: Midwest City, Restaurants, Super Subs
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
8 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
The family ate at the Red Robin in north OKC. I am not a huge fan of Red Robin. The cheeseburgers are kind of mushy, I guess is the best word. I think that a well-cooked burger has a good dark brown on the outside, and while it won’t crunch when bitten into, it will have texture to it. I don’t find that at Red Robin; the meat seems to fall apart. I also don’t find a lot of beef flavor, which makes me wonder if the meat is “stretched” with filler.
Ian likes the cheeseburgers. Raegan got a club sandwich, and liked it. Erin got the mac and cheese, and ate all of it – it was very cheesy.
I got a Caesar Salad with grilled chicken. It didn’t have much chicken. It also came dry – I had asked for extra dressing on the side, and ALL the dressing came on the side (it’s very difficult to toss a salad that’s on a plate). Once I got it tossed, it was decent tasting.
The tea was good, although not as strong as it could be. Service was a bit slow but not too bad.
One thing we really liked was the onion rings. We got a small order. We really like the dual-dips there, ranch and a mix of BBQ and mayo (really good). The rings didn’t have too much breading, and the onion was well cooked and sweet, really good.
We think that the prices at Red Robin have gone up significantly. The check for the four of us was $50. Given that two of us got sandwiches, one got a bowl of M&C, one got a dinner salad, and a small appetizer, that really seems pretty high.
Tags: cheeseburgers, Red Robin, Restaurants
Posted in Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
7 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
I saw a short review of Jeff’s in a recent Oklahoma Gazette (http://www.okgazette.com/). It talked about family food and good prices. Today we went and checked it out.
I got a Chicken Fried Steak. It was not the best I’ve had, but it was also far from the worst. It was fork tender and fairly tasty. It came with two veggies; the green beans were OK, and the mashed potatoes were real. The potatoes were not reconstituted; they were formerly baked potatoes that had been mashed up, but not very much (this isn’t a bad thing). The gravy was decent, and not too peppery.
My very cute and mushroom loving roommate got a mushroom and swiss burger, and Ian got a cheeseburger. The hamburger meat was OK, if bland. Erin just got fried cheese, and pronounced them good; We got some decent onion rings.
The tea was good.
We got in there around 1200, and were out around 1300, and our check was $28. I will have no issue going back. My summary of the experience was that Jeff’s is a good, average-quality family restaurant.
Tags: Jeff's Country Cafe, Oklahoma City, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
5 August 2009 by Bill Hensley
Don’s has been around as far back as I can remember. It’s on SE 29th street, between Sooner and Sunnylane in Del City.
Don’s has family comfort food. I’ve had burgers, steaks, beef stew, CFS, and a lot of other stuff there, and I can’t think of a single thing I did not like. The CFS and beef stew is especially good.
Today I went to lunch at Dons with work friends. I had a double cheeseburger and a bowl of chili. The cheeseburger was perfect, good beef, seared and firm and with good beef flavor. The bun was even nicely grilled. The chili (no beans!) was beefy and not greasy, great taste, and just spicy enough to add some extra flavor without burning a hole through the roof of you mouth. I had iced tea, and as always, it was fresh brewed and really good.
Don’s was pretty busy today and the servers seemed a bit overworked. The dining room was pretty much filled, and it took just under 1.5 hours to get from Tinker to Don’s and back.
My check was $11.00.
Tags: del city, Don's Alley, OK, Restaurants
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | 1 Comment »
31 July 2009 by Bill Hensley
I first ate at an Olive Garden around 1985 at a location in Garland, TX, that had been found by my great friends Jamie and David. It was pretty darn good, and very popular. Since then I have eaten at them in many, many locations. When I was living in Waco, TX for a year, I was very happy when an OG opened up around November of 1992.
Tonight my very cute and OG-loving roommate announced she would like to hit the OG here in OKC on Memorial. We had not been to eat at OG since late May, so it seemed like the thing to do.
I got Chicken Marsala. It was really good; there was a lot of marsala sauce, and it was strong in places, I could feel the wine evaporating during some of the bites. Raegan got a pair of Manicotti, Ian got Chicken Parmigiana, and Erin got lasagne (I think). Everybody liked their meals. Some people I have talked to just hate OG; it’s “not real Italian”. I like it because it’s consistently good, the price is reasonable, and there are a wide variety of offerings.
A couple comments about this visit: Raegan asked for her manicotti to have Alfredo on one instead of both having marinara. “Upcharge” said the server. I asked that the roasted potatoes and vile and inappropriate peppers be replaced with pasta alfredo on mine, another upcharge. Raegan and I have both had those exact meals dozens of times, but this was the first time that an upcharge was stuck on the meal. I didn’t gripe about it until now.
The OG usually has good tea, and the service is usually very good.
Tags: Oklahoma City, Olive Garden, Restaurants
Posted in Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
29 July 2009 by Bill Hensley
While finishing up our visit to Omaha last week, we went by The Tea Smith so my very cute and tea-snarfing roommate could check out some odious brew she read about somewhere. I read the newspaper.
I like tea, both iced and various blacks and such hot, in the English style with milk and a bit of sugar. I’m just not into some of the greens, or the rotted (I mean fermented) teas.
Anyway, it was after noon and we were hungry, so we went across the street to The Honeybaked Ham Company. Ham is good.
I got a Roast Turkey sandwich (ham is good, but so is turkey) and a cup of Ham and Bean soup. Raegan for a Cobb Salad, Erin got a ham and cheese, and Ian got a Prime Roast Beef Sandwich.
All of this was pretty good. The soup I got was really good. Ian frowned mightily at his, but ate most of it (they did not have cheeseburgers). The iced tea was good also.
Our check for the four of us was $30.
Tags: Honey Baked Ham, Omaha, The Tea Smith
Posted in Restaurants and Eating, Travel | Leave a Comment »
29 July 2009 by Bill Hensley
Today I met a couple work buddies at Backyard Grill for lunch. Backyard Grill is at 29th and Vickie in Del City. It’s been there for years. I have had many, many cheeseburgers there, and I have never had a bad one. I usually get a chili cheese burger there, and they are also really, really good.
But that’s not what I got today. The Backyard Grill has a number of other entrees, and today, I got Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo. You might be thinking, what the heck was he thinking? But it’s really, really good. You get a largish bowl of angel hair pasta, some chopped up grilled chicken (I prefer sauteed, but I dislike grilled-to-the-point-of-burned chicken, and it has never been at Backyard Grill), and a copious amount of alfredo. This is not canned or bottled, they make it right there. It has something in it that gives the usual cream-colored alfredo an orange-pink tint. It’s good!
I’ve had Chicken Parmesan there also, same result. Really, really good.
And then there are the cheeseburgers. Always well cooked, and never greasy. If you get chili on it, they do go overboard; that’s too bad! Yum.
The tea is always good also.
Tags: Backyard Grill, del city, Oklahoma
Posted in Oklahoma City, Restaurants and Eating | Leave a Comment »
28 July 2009 by Bill Hensley
I like driving out in the country. I can watch rolling plains, mountains, lakes, or other scenery rolling by for hours without getting bored.
I’ve driven from OKC to Omaha about 100 times. Literally. I’ve been all-the-way on the Interstate (I-35 to KC to I-29 to Omaha), straight up through central KS to York, NE, on US-75 all the way from Okmulgee, OK, on US-169, etc. I’ve seen the signs for the Flint Hills Scenic Byway many times, and last week decided to come down that way.
I had the family with me for a business trip to Omaha, which is one of my favorite cities. After finishing work on Friday morning, I got the rest of the crew from the Embassy Suites La Vista (recommended, BTW), got everyone fed, and headed out.
We drove down to Lincoln, and picked up US 177 for the trip south. At this point, it’s new road for all of us. We went through a number of nice small towns on the way south, like Beatrice.
A note: when we drive through a small town like that, we tend to find the downtown area, or any other interesting area, and cruise by it. You can never tell what diners, museums, and the like you might find. We have returned numerous times to a place we found in a small town to eat or enjoy a park. We enjoy it, YMMV.
South into KS, we hit Marysville. This was a nice town on the Blue River. We stopped for drinks, walked in a park, and checked out a small historical museum and a sod house on display. They also had a pretty cool Union Pacific locomotive, and a huge train yard.
South of Manhattan, KS we finally picked up the Flint Hills Scenic Byway. If you like looking at rolling hills stretching away into the distance (and I do), you will like the drive. It’s a fairly narrow two-lane road just south of I-70. There’s not much traffic, and few towns or gas or restaurants.
We followed the Byway south to Cassoday, the southern terminus of the Byway, and where we hoped to eat. No luck, the only meal would have been had if we went and knocked on a door and asked to be invited to supper.
So instead, we hit the nearby KS Turnpike and flew south to El Dorado.
We drove the Byway in the late afternoon, with a west sun casting a really nice, soft light on the hills. It was also really green, both the hills and the fields, and really pretty. I was really surprised at how green it was for late July.
The northern end of the Byway is at the intersection with I-70 south of Manhatten (between Topeka and Salina, KS).
It was a nice drive.
Tags: Byway, driving, Flint Hills, Kansas
Posted in Outdoors, Travel | Leave a Comment »
The Vote in Maine on Same-Sex Marriage
7 November 2009 by Bill HensleyI am very disappointed in my fellow citizens in Maine. The vote to overturn the Maine law allowing same-sex marriage is a spit on the US Constitution.
I saw a few of the ads run in opposition to same-sex marriage. There were a lot of out-and-out lies (the claim that the Maine law would “force the teaching of the homosexual agenda” in schools comes to mind). So assuming that the people running the ads are christians, I guess it’s OK with them to lie in support of advancing their agenda – a direct law (thou shalt not bear false witness) being overridden by fear of gays.
If supposed pro-marriage supporters want to protect marriage, why don’t they focus on the 50% of marriages that fail? Why don’t they make divorce illegal or really hard to get?
I guess it is easier to lie and promulgate anti-gay fear than it is to work to solve the big problems with marriages. Not to mention ignoring and spurning the Constitution.
Tags: gay issues, Maine, marriage
Posted in General Commentary | Leave a Comment »