Greta’s Gourmet, Lincoln NE Review
Friday I packed my lunch and intended on eating it at work, but that all changed once I smelled coworkers warming up things in the microwave. Browsing my stream on Google+ I noticed Brian’s postabout a great Friday burger deal from Greta’s Gourmet here in Lincoln. Since this was fairly close to work I decided to give it a shot.I walked in and ordered the Greta Burger, which was the house ground beef patty with bleu cheese crumbles mixed in with the meat, seasoned with KC Steak seasoning. This was served on a toasted gourmet bun with tomato, onion, and mixed greens. I am a bleu cheese fan and have had several other bleu cheese burgers around town, but this one tops them. It was very flavorful; every bite had a great bleu cheese flavor to it. It was a juicy patty that was cooked perfectly, with a hint of pink in the middle. It was seasoned nicely and the onion was a great addition. One of the problems with other restaurants bleu cheese burgers is that they are always messy. Sometimes they crumble from too much bleu cheese or the bleu cheese just falls off the top. Since this one was mixed in it had none of these problems. I had Sweet Maui Onion kettle chips, which were similar to a more subtle sour cream and onion flavor. They were a good fit for the Greta Burger.
The atmosphere of the shop is nice. It is a butchers shop so the cafe takes second place, but there are tables up against the window and some nice butcher block tables in the center. It reminds me of a kind of deli that you would see in a place like NYC. It has a good lunch spot vibe.
For a total of $6.40 after tax I got a good sized gourmet burger, kettle chips, and a large iced tea. I thought this was a pretty good deal. It was cheaper than “Value” meal choices at the chain fast food places and much better food. Compared with other gourmet burger places in South Lincoln, for what you get it was a great deal. I plan on going back to try the other things on the menu. They have a lunch special every day that ranges between $5-6 and chef specials on the weekend that they post to their Facebook and Twitter pages.
GUP Kitchen, Lincoln NE Review
GUP Cuban
WOW! is the one word way I would describe my experience for lunch on Sunday at Lincoln’s newest food truck. I found out about GUP Kitchen from friends and social media (both Twitter and Facebook). Their location hasn’t been convenient for me in the past, but on Sunday it did and I knew I had to give it a try.
GUP, stands for Ground Up and is a concept for both the food and way of making it. It comes from the idea that you should know where your food comes from; “literally from the ground up.” The reality is that everything you will eat is seasoned with hand-ground and custom-blended spices and sauces. Chef and Co-Owner, Erik Hustad studied Culinary Arts at The Art Institute of Seattle and came back to start GUP with cousin and co-owner, Gabriel Lovelace. http://eatgroundup.com/the-story/
GUP is a modern take on a food truck. It is actually a large trailer pulled behind a pickup truck. The white outside is decorated with their logo, website, twitter address, Facebook, QR code, etc. The menu is on a flat panel monitor too, pretty neat. From word of mouth I had heard that the Cuban Spiced Pork sandwich was fantastic so that is what I got along with the Mac n’ Cheese (More on that in a minute). Ordering was simple and quick.
From the first bite of my Cuban Sandwich I knew it was going to be good. The sauce makes this sandwich stand out from your average Cuban. There is a reason GUP calls it awesome sauce. It was a mayo based sauce with some unique spices. I could taste garlic, a little sugar, some citrus, and other flavors I could not really pick out distinctively, but that doesn't matter, because it was amazing. The pork meat was very tender and juicy. It also had onions, lettuce, and small sweet peppers on it. I was a little surprised not to find pickles since this is pretty traditional on a Cuban. All of this goodness was served on a ciabatta roll from Le Quartier. I happened to eat this at my parents house and my dad wanted a bite. His response was that it was as good of Cuban Sandwich as he has ever had. I have to agree.
I had originally ordered Potato Salad with my sandwich but at the last minute decided to go with the Mac n’ Cheese because it had bacon in it. Typically Mac n’ Cheese is not something I order. It is never something I crave, but this was pretty good. This was a rich Mac n’ Cheese made with cheese, onion, and bacon added in. The bacon added something but not quite as much as I was expecting. With bacon the more the better right?
Service was fast and I enjoyed talking with the guys in the truck as they assembled my meal. They explained that it is tough to find locations where they can operate (Private Parking lots) because Lincoln’s laws do not allow them on public property or on in a parking place on,say, O street in Downtown Lincoln. Prices were very reasonable for the amount and quality of food I received. I paid $6.95 for a sandwich and it must have included a side as well because I was not charged for the Mac n’ Cheese. Portions were good, not huge but not small. I would put the value ranking higher than other “Fresh Local” food places in town with expensive overhead (Review of that place to come someday).
In conclusion I hope these guys continue to have success. Going in to the dark months of winter won’t be easy but their food is worth a trip into the cold outdoors to get. The food is outstanding, and I am happy to support young entrepreneurs in a family business venture. I will be going back and trying the Chicken Salad for sure and some of the other sides. I encourage everyone to find these guys (social media is the best way) and try them out.
GUP Kitchen Facebook Page
GUP Kitchen Twitter Page
GUP Kitchen Website
Pepperjax Grill, Lincoln NE Review
On 11-22-11 I visited PepperJax Grill (2801 Pine Lake Road, Lincoln NE) with my family at 6:30pm for dinner. This is a new Philly sandwich place very near my house. I would call it custom made to order fast food, similar to the way Chipotle makes their burritos. The line was long, way past the queuing area, past the front door and bending into the dining section. There were roughly 64 people in front of us when we got in line. To be honest I am surprised we waited, as there are other good options nearby (Crave review to come sometime soon I hope). It took about a half hour to get up to the first station where you place your order.
The Food:
Your choices at the beginning are your choice of meet (beef, or chicken), single or double meat, and then your choice of vegetables that are grilled along with the meat (onion, mushroom, green pepper). Your food is grilled in front of you as it moves down the assembly line. At the end they slap some cheese on the meat and pile it into a slightly toasted 12” hoagie roll.
The sauce table follows the cash register and is filled with lots of great stuff. They had several liquid sauces such as Au jus, mushroom sauce, and creole. Then they had toppings/sauce such as Spicy Ranch (my personal favorite), ranch, hearty steak sauce, bold steak sauce, salsa, mustard, ketchup, and many more.
I experimented and found that my perfect mix that night was a bit of au jus, followed by some bold steak sauce inside, followed up with a bit of spicy ranch in place of mayo. This combination proved to be very messy but good. Probably not the best food choice for a first date, but it would be a fun date place because of all the different choices and things to try. I really enjoyed the French fries. They were thin, straight cut, and fried to a perfect crisp. Portions of fries were small by most places standards but with such a large Philly I found that it was about the perfect amount. All of the toppings/sauces were great for dipping too.
Decor and Atmosphere
The place had a nice feel with bright colors, stainless steel, etc. The décor on the walls was neat too. It was many historic photos of Lincoln from the 1950’s and older. It was neat to see the evolution of town while waiting in line. They also had flat screen TVs in a few places as well.
Value
This place is a good value. The sandwiches are large (See picture below) and could easily be split for 2 meals if you ate a portion size with some fries. I believe the cost was about $5.50 for the beef, fries were an additional $1.50 or so. I am guessing that this place will be busy at lunch because of the good value and large portions.
The Cons
There were a few things that do need improving though. This is a new place and it was obvious that staff was still being trained on what their responsibilities are, so I am really hoping these problems will improve with time. The lines were long, and slow, let’s hope that the hype of a new place dies down and the employees are trained. While the grill team had multiple people, it was essentially made one at a time. I think they will need to improve on the workflow to speed things up to reasonable standards (10 min). The floor was dirty, lots of crumbs, some used napkins, etc. Tables were relatively clean though. I am sure this is just because they were super busy.
To sum it all up, I enjoyed my time at PepperJax Grill. I really think they will smooth out the few problems and have a lean, fast operation up in maybe another month. The food was good for fast food, and a great
MEElectronics M9 Review
Intro
Last week I made a bit of an impulse buy. I was not really in the market for new in hear earbuds/monitors but I bought some. Previously I had been using the older of my 2 pair of Sennheiser CX300s. I have had these for probably 4-5 years and really liked them. Recently I thought one ear as not outputting as much sound as the others and they had become more muddy in tone. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks recently so it was still ok. Well I was browsing around on Slickdeals and saw a thread all about new in ear monitors in this under $30 price range. Recently it seems that there are a lot of new upstart companies that are making fantastic sounding products for fractions of the price.
Build Quality
The build quality of the M9s are quite good. The heads are a hard metal shell and the metal looks to be anodized. I ended up with the silver buds because they were a little cheaper than black. The cord seems pretty sturdy. It is kind of slick feeling so hopefully this helps avoid knots. The cord is in a Y configuration. This is a personal preference but I much prefer the J cord style of the CX300’s. This will take a little getting use to. The plug end is bent at a 45 degree angle and I think this will work well for people who wrap the phones around a device or put the device in a pocket while using it. For my devices its a nice tight fit that really clicks in. The one area I can ding build quality is the speaker grill area. On my CX300’s its made of a wire mesh, on the M9 it looks to be a cardboard cover. I am a little concerned with how this will hold up over time, especially with sweat. I like to wear my IEM while biking.
Sound Quality
I would categorize myself somewhere between enthusiast and audiophile. I don’t have the budget to spend thousands on speakers and headphones every year but do enjoy quality. I would say I favor bass but like crisp clear full range either. Muddy strong bass for me is a pass. I tested with a variety of music. I am recently into electronic,dubstep, house stuff, but balanced this with Tech N9ne new album “All 6’s & 7’s” because of the hard hitting base but sharp clear fast lyrics. I also used Silversun Pickups, Incubus, and John Mayer. The later because this is an excellently mastered album with fine detail in the guitars.
The M9’s are advertised as for bass heads and I would not argue with that. The bass is strong but not overpowering for my taste. The bass improved as the headphones burned in (See below) the bass becamse more accurate and cleaner. The mids and highs are very crisp, with the highs maybe being too crisp and strong for my liking. This can be improved with EQ but isnt a huge thing. I think I will get use to it the more I listen. I prefer the crispness to the not as crisp mids and highs of my CX300s.
The soundstage is pretty good for in ear ear buds. Its no where nearly as large as my Sennheiser 595 cans but there is several factors of price difference too. The soundstage is large and improvement over the cx300’s.
These headphones do need a burn in period in my opinion. I was not impressed with them on first listen but I played music through them over night for 2 nights and the phones improved quite a bit. Tones mellowed out and some of the harshness of the mids and highs wore off. I would think the more I use them the more this will improve.
Fit/Noise Reducing ability
Many people do not like in ear headphones because of the fit. They say they the sound quality is poor. This is 100% down to fit. Companies need to really stress this in instructions. Without the proper fit all in ear earbuds will sound terrible. The proper fit transforms them. This said I am still experimenting with the fit of my M9’s. I really want the double flanged versions to work for me but I don't think it will for me because they are a bit large. I do wish they had a couple of sizes of the double flanged versions but for the money your still getting a great value.
These are a ported design. The port is directly opposite of the speaker driver. It is a small hole in the metal housing. My CX300s were sealed and this worked great for noisy things and riding my bike into the wind. The ported design of the M9 still seemed to work pretty well when mowing but I did have some trouble when riding my bike. The wind noise was more noticeable than I expected. I may stick with my second pair of CX300s when riding at windy times.
Other
The amount of extras these come with is impressive for the price. The case is nice, I don't see using it much as its not big enough to put a phone or ipod touch into, but you could fit a shuffle easily into it. The airplane adapter is super nice. I have always wanted one of these but don't travel enough to buy one. Looking forward to trying it out. They came with 3 sizes of one flange ear tips in the bass boost (black) silicone, 1 size of double tip bass boos material. Also 1 pair of double flange tips in a balanced silicone (gray). I found the little covers a little hard to fit on but they all seem to stay.
Comparison to the CX300’s
My CX300’s have been my old reliable workhorse. I do everything in them without worry. I accepted their falts of having some muddy sound (Part of this was due the excessive wear I think I might have on my original pair). I must say that the new M9’s are better just about everywhere and I wont hesitate recommending these to anyone in the market for in ear buds for $20.
Conclusion
I bought my M9’s at Amazon for $16.99 and for the money I would say these are a fantastic value. These are so much better than any of the included headphones that come with any music player it really should be an automatic upgrade for anyone. While I have not experienced the really high end in earbuds and IEM’s I can say that the M9’s as a whole are the best I have heard. They are not without falts but I think I will get use to some of these. Time will tell how much I end up using them in the next few months. For less than $20 its very hard to go wrong.
Will update with a photo tonight.
How to make Tinto De Verano
The list of ingredients to make a Tinto de Verano is very short and simple. The main ingredients are red wine and a carbonated lemon soda.
The Wine:
While in Spain I asked about learning to make this and it was explained to me that any red wine will work to make the drink. They also said the wine the better usually. In Spain we bought Liter boxes of wine for just a few Euro that worked great. This is a great way to get rid of red wine that you don’t care for is just cheap. Shiraz, Malbec, and blends containing Merlo and Cabernet Sauvignon also work well. The wine variety is really unimportant.
The Soda:
In Spain two of the most popular sodas are La Casera Gaseosa which is low sugar lightly carbonated lemonade type drink. The other popular choice is Lemon Fanta. The problem with these is that they are not widely available in the United States. For example Lemon Fanta in the USA is not made with real cane sugar. Anyone who has had a Mexican or European Coke will tell you there is a huge difference, the same is true with Lemon Fanta. I will explain what I use to make the drink in the US below.
What I use to make Tinto De Veranos myself are Trader Joe’s wines. The store recently opened in my area and they sell a couple varieties of house red wines under the label Charles Shaw. It sells in my area for $2.99 a bottle so it sure fits the cheap criteria. For the soda I have found that Sunkist Lemon soda works really well. They also have a diet variety that tastes good too. I have read that a lemon lime soda like Sprite or 7-up also works but since these are sweeter and have lime with them it changes the flavor a bit. I have not tried these as much.
If you want to make the drink a bit stronger you can easily add a shot of white rum. Be careful as this drink does a good job of masking alcohol so things can get out of hand pretty easily.
So now that you know about the drink here is how you make it.
Instructions:
Using a high ball glass fill the glass with several large ice cubes.
Fill the glass about 1/3 of the way full with red wine, add optional rum.
Fill the remaining glass with the Sunkist lemon soda that has been chilled.
Stir and enjoy.
The drink should be light, refreshing and bring the fruit flavors out of the wine. Depending on the wine being used it is acceptable to use a little bit of simple syrup or sugar to make the drink a bit sweeter if desired. Optional garnishments include a slice of Lemon or Orange.
Below is a photo of a Tinto De Verano I made last year.
Pinball Deluxe – Best Android Game to date
Pinball Deluxe is a Free Game for the Android platform. The game contains 3 different pinball machines each with their own different theme. Each pinball board contains a mini game which I have not seen in many other pinball games before. Its a neat little thing to set it apart from the others. The game has your classic flippers at the bottom of the board and then on some levels middle flippers higher up as well. This game runs very well. It is super smooth on my Droid X and looks great while doing it. It is safe to say this is the best looking Android game I have seen. In addition to the game running well the designers have really thought it out. You can pause and resume your games so you can come back later. It also asks you on start-up if you want to enable sound. This is a must have feature as far as I am concerned. I often like to pull out my phone if I am in line and the last thing I want is the opening music to come blaring on. Since Android has different volume levels for different items its easy to leave your phone on vibrate but have the media volume on a high level. I have heard stories of people in public places where they probably should not be gaming on their phone (Church) and they suddenly hear the Angry Birds theme song start up someplace in the room. I am sure this happens in college classrooms across the country as well. So this game prevents that.
The Physics in the game seem to be very accurate. The ball and paddle behave the way you expect them too. Different surfaces and materials behave differently and velocity seems to be accurate as well.
The only negative I can come up with is with the ball Launcher/Plunger. I would like some type of power meter here so I can tell how powerful the launch will be. Currently it shows a spring that compresses but
Conclusion: At a 7.6Mb download and a price of Free this is a great game that all Android users running 2.1 or higher should try. In my opinion the developer could easily add additional boards and charge for them. You can download it in the Android Market here https://market.android.com/details?id=com.greencod.pinball.android&feature=search_result
Below are a few screen shots from the game on my phone. I will try to get a few better ones.
Adobe Reader X Quick Review
Last week Adobe released a new version of Adobe Acrobat, version X. This is a new version of the program that many of us use every day. In the past people shied away from new versions of Acrobat reader because over the years the program had become bloated and slow. However this new version offers important security benefits and speed improvements that make the upgrade worth it.
As many people know Adobe Reader has become one of the favorite attack vectors for hackers and malware over the past few years for a number of reasons including.
- The install base is huge! Most new PC’s come with it preinstalled, if not almost everyone needs a PDF viewer and Adobe’s is the most popular.
- Quarterly updates that Adobe releases are too slow and infrequent, Only if an exploit is really bad does Adobe decided to do an out of cycle update. Even with these updates few people know that the program needs updated. The automatic updates in version 9 have been better but still seem to fail most of the time. Manual updating seems to be required.
- The ability to run things such as Javascript in a PDF exist and are on by default. Just about everyone does not need this feature and it represents a large place to exploit.
Security
The biggest feature of version X is the introduction of a Sandbox. A sandbox provides isolation of the program from the operating system, to lessen the chance of security exploits. Adobe does a great job in explaining all about the sandbox features in these two blog posts, Sandbox Post 1, Sandbox Post 2, Sandbox Post 3, Sandbox Post 4. This is such a big thing from a security angle that the SANS institute has recommended that everyone install Adobe Reader X to get this feature. https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=9976
Speed
Surprisingly this new version is faster than the old version 9. It appears to be less bloated and quicker responding.
Other changes
I noticed the voice that will read text to you if you want seems to be more like a human. The flow is greatly improved. The interface has been tweaked slightly to have more of a beveled edge, silver stainless steel look. I like it. Its nothing revolutionary but a nice, clean change. The updater also now allows for you to set it to automatically download and install updates. Hopefully this works well and allows the program to stay up to date without much user intervention. I do hope Adobe changes their company policy and moves to a monthly update policy on the second Tuesday of the month, like Microsoft. This will make the task of corporate administration much easier on the administrator.
By default two security settings are on, when they should be disabled for increased security. They pertain to features that a very, very small percentage of users actually use. If for some reason you needed these someday you can easily turn them on, but for maximum security they should be off. Adobe has even recommended doing this when the program has had problems in the past.
The second option that needs changed is under this same menu. Choose Trust Manager on the left hand side of the page, then at the top of the page uncheck the box that says “Allow Opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications”
The other bad thing is that despite these new security features the very people you are trying to keep out are trying to take advantage of this new release to push their spamware most of it dubbed “Adobe Acrobat 2010” THIS IS FAKE and Malware, DO NOT INSTALL. The SANS institute has a nice post about this as well, even with photos! https://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=9982
In conclusion when combined with the new security features and increased performance this seems like a great thing to have if you like the official client. Here is a direct download for Windows ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/reader/win/10.x/10.0.0/en_US/AdbeRdr1000_en_US.exe
Offutt Air Force Base Air Show 2010
The annual Offutt Airshow this year was on August 28th and 29th. I went on the 29th with @Rossnelson and had a great time. Security was really tight, we had to go through metal detectors and then most people were wanded after, they did not give second chances of removing more metal to go through again. They were also not allowing bags in so I had to carry my camera around my neck the entire day and only bring one lens. I brought the 70-200 and was glad I did. One last thing about the security was that Ross was wearing a t-shirt from the band Bad Religion and he got a talking to going through security about it. The guard thought he might be trying to make a political statement and said he may have to turn it inside out if asked to do so. Luckily other service men knew of the band and let us through. Security was nearly as tight as an airport. I guess this was because we were on an active air force base.
The day was long and hot, people took cover as the day went on under the wings of aircraft. I loved seeing people sitting in lawn chairs under the huge wings of a B-52 or under the fuselage of a B1. We walked around and saw all the static planes which were too many to list. We then watched the aerial show which was good. My favorite by far was the F-22 Raptor. It was such an impressive fighter plane. The thrust vectoring really made it very maneuverability and agile. It also was so stable at any speed it seemed.
This was the first time shooting anything similar to sports on with my Canon 7D. I used Al Servo and a combination of Auto focus Expansion when on the center point. It put emphasis on the center point (or where ever you wanted it) but also included one above, below, left and right. It worked well. for slower moving planes. For the really fast ones I used the new zonal function AF selection and choose the center group. This grabbed the center 11 points and used them. As long as you kept the points on the object and the AF drive engaged (I did this manually with the AF button) it worked well. I was amazed at how well it would track planes coming at you quickly or going away from you. The hardest part was panning quick enough to keep it in frame. For sports this camera is a huge step up from my old Canon 20D.
Here are a few photos from the day more can be seen at Flickr in this set here.
More can be seen at Flickr in this set here.