RSS FeedBurger Wars
A couple weeks ago at work, Brian and I came up a plan to try and find the best burger in town. We then narrowed that search down to best burger in town for around $10 and it had to be a place we could get to from the office within time to drive there, eat and get back within the span of a lunch hour. We opened it up to the entire company and asked for people to nominate their favorite burger or burger place. We then picked the top 5 vote getters, invited some people to go along as judges and we set out to have a burger a day at lunch for a week. Thanks to a couple scheduling issues, we stretched it out over 2 weeks and ended up visiting 6 places total.
I had printed out score sheets that we handed out to each judge while we were at each restaurant. Each judge scored the burger on the following criteria:
Taste: max 20 points, most important part so it’s worth the most points.
Size: max 5 points, were you able to eat the whole thing and were you still hungry.
Prep-Time: max 5 points, did you have to wait a long time for the burger.
Distance: max 5 points, how far away from the office,
Value: max 5 points, total overall value based on size, taste, distance.
Bonus: max 5 points, pretty much anything you wanted to give it bonus points for.
After all the burgers had been eaten and the votes had been tallied, Here is how they fared.
#6) Claim Jumper, The Widow Maker (average score: 26.9)
The Widow Maker was big, the place is pretty close, they cooked it pretty quick, but the taste just wasn’t that great. It wasn’t bad, just not really a contender for the Best Burger.
#5) Nikki Lee’s, Pizza Burger (average score: 27.2)
If there was a category for messiest burger, this would win hands down! The Pizza Burger consists of the burger with marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese. I was expecting a little more creativity.
#4) Yard House, Western Burger (average score: 28.8)
I gotta say, I was expecting the Yard House to do better in this competition. I had eaten here before and had the chicken fingers and they were excellent. This burger was pretty average in the taste category.
#3) American Grill, Cowboy Burger (average score: 31.8)
This was a good burger! It had bacon, cheese and an onion ring plus some BBQ sauce. The sauce had a bit of a kick and that turned off a few of the people causing it to score a bit lower. It’s because of the American Grill that we threw in the bonus category. While we were waiting for our food they brought out 2 plates of chicken wings and a plate of chips with melted bleu cheese.
#2) Burger Bar, American Kobe Burger (average score: 33.4)
We almost disqualified the Burger Bar because of the cost. Burger, Fries and a soda ended up costing about $25. The quality of the beef on this burger is second to none. It really is a great burger. Cost, prep-time and the difficulty of getting to it quickly during lunch is what stopped it from winning.
#1) Steiner’s, Kobe Burger (average score: 38.4)
Let me start with the one downer about the burger, it didn’t come with fries. Other than that, this burger is nearly perfect. The cost was reasonable at $11.99, the place is less than 5 minutes from the office, we were served quickly and we all walked away plenty full. I will definitely be adding Steiner’s to my regular rotation of lunch spots!
Next time I go to Steiner’s I’ll make the following changes to the burger; grilled onions, add bacon. I think those two minor changes will make this the heavyweight champion of lunch-time burgers!
Next up, Pizza Wars. I’ll keep you posted.
Recent gaming overload
Over the past few weeks, I’ve really stepped up my gaming. To start, we’ve visited the Pinball Hall of Fame once or twice a week for the past couple months. Honestly, I don’t see that stopping any time soon. No where else in Vegas do I know of where the entire family can go spend less than 30 bucks for 60 - 90 minutes of entertainment. If you know of a place, please let me know!
My current obsession with the pinball game Creature From the Black Lagoon remains in tact. The current grand champion on the game has just over 1 billion points. The next score is around 750 million. I hold the final 3 spots on the leader board at 620, 440 & 420 million. The 620 came this past weekend, but I gotta tell ya, I’m not giving up until I have that #1 spot. On my way home from the last visit I came up with a plan on how I think I can achieve the score. Unfortunately it’s going to be 2 weeks before I can get back to test out my plan.
Next up has been Rock Band. First I went out and bought a set of drum pads to help quiet the noise made by the sticks hitting the plastic. I had been using a set a guy at work made, but these are way better. They have cut the sound in half. Plus, these have the added benefit of deadening the vibration, so you are better able to hit all the notes in rapid succession. Next I went and bought some new sticks from Guitar Center. It was a funny conversation when I told the guy that I don’t actually play drums, but just played Rock Band. Apparently I wasn’t even close to the first person to come in looking for replacement sticks. The new sticks I bought are a little bit shorter (which I don’t care for) and a bit lighter (which I love) than the set that came with the game.
With the new equipment in place, my son and I set out to conquer the endless set. This is a 58 song set that you can’t stop and restart. Once you begin, you can push pause, but that’s it. You have to finish all 58 songs to get credit for any of it. So, he played guitar on hard and I played drums on medium. I went with medium because there are parts of Run to the Hills and a few other songs that I just wasn’t positive I could make it through. I would have hated to play for 4+ hours and then have to quit because I couldn’t get through a song. But, on a Friday afternoon we started around 4:50 PM and ended just short of 10 PM. We made it through the set scoring 5 stars on each song. It was challenging, but a ton of fun. Unfortunately we didn’t earn any new fans because I was playing on the lower level. We have already capped out the amount of fans we can earn on Easy, Medium and now Hard. To earn any new fans we need to play on Expert. To think that only a couple months ago I had never played drums before (other than just screwing around), I’m pretty pleased with my progress.
Speaking of drums, I saw the new drum set that’s going to come out in the new Guitar Hero 4, World Tour game. Just.Wow! 2 Tom-Toms, a snare, 2 cymbals and a bass drum. Apparently they are going for the most realistic video game drum set ever. So basically, if you can play drums on the harder levels of the game, you should be able to hold down a beat on a real drum set. I’ve heard that before, but don’t know that I really believe it. Yeah, I can play some songs on expert on Rock Band, but seriously, I’m just good at following the dots on the screen and hitting at the right times. That’s just years of video game play helping out. Last I checked, on a real drum set, there is no screen with scrolling dots telling you what drum to hit and at what time.
Back to pinball. My brother-in-law had been telling us about a game he’s been playing on the PS2 called Pinball Hall of Fame: the Williams Collection. I picked it up over the weekend and holy crap is it fun! First off, the list of pinball games they have in the game is fantastic. Funhouse, Black Knight, Pinbot, Taxi and 5 or 6 others. The game play is amazingly realistic. The bounces, gravity and even some of the nuances of the game are all accounted for. I just saw that Amazon.com has it available for the PSP. I may just have to buy it as well. This would be a fantastic game to kill time on a plane or in a waiting room.
I also recently picked up the game Lost: Via Domus based on the TV show Lost. I quickly realized something. I do not have the patience I once had for video games. Wow, I really suck at the game. I’ve made it through the first “episode” of the game, but am now at a point where I have to walk through a pitch black cave using a torch for visibility. I have died by falling in to the same pit several times. Thing is, it takes me 5-10 minutes to get to this point and then I have to start over after I fall to my death. As cool as the game seems to be, I think this one is bound for the dust collecting shelf.
Best Buy-100: Me-0
Well, once again Best Buy has defeated me. Last night after I left there I thought it was me who won this round… But alas, I was mistaken. Here’s what happened.
A few weeks ago one of my video cards decided it was time to die. On the way home from work I decided I had lived long enough with only 2 monitors and headed on over to Best Buy to pick up a new video card. In my mind I was 100% certain that the card that died was an AGP card. When I arrived at the video card isle I found that they had only 1 AGP card. I don’t mean 1 “type” of card, I mean they had one lonesome AGP card TOTAL. It was more than I wanted to spend ($139.99), but I caved to the pressure of not wanting to drive around town to find a cheaper one. I bit the bullet, picked up the box and headed out.
When I went through the check-out line I was very pleasantly surprised when the card rang up at $45.99. No, I didn’t bother to tell the girl with multi-colored nail polish that it was supposed to be nearly 3 times that amount. Instead I gleefully sprinted from the store before they could realize their mistake. Bwhahahaha! I won!
Or so I thought.
When I got home I took apart the machine and before I could do remove the old card I needed to use an air blower to remove the half inch of dust that was caked on every flat service in the case. I then removed the dead card and set it aside. I unwrapped the new card and that’s when it hit me. The slot is not AGP. It’s PCI Express. I’m fairly certain I heard Best Buy laughing at my right then. I checked my back to see if they had stuck a “Gotcha” sign to me on my way out the door.
This afternoon I went to return the wrong card and purchase the right one. When I entered the store nobody pointed or stared, but I know they wanted to! I went to the return counter and the nice girl behind the counter asked if anything was wrong. I thought about explaining how Best Buy always wins and this was just another case of me being the victim, but instead I just told her I was a bonehead and got the wrong card. I went back to the video card isle and found that the least expensive PCI Express card they carry is $79.99. My only hope is that it rings up incorrectly, too. I returned to the counter and sure enough I was hit with the news that I owed an additional $36 bucks. I paid the balance and slunk away in defeat.
As I exited the store, the guy who removed the security chip from the box said, “Nice try sir, maybe next time.”
At least that’s what I heard.
Rock Band Foot Pedal Reconstruction
Last Friday I got home from work and played a few songs on Rock Band. Right as we were finishing up the rock star ending on a song, the foot pedal on my drum kit broke in half. It was a sad, sad day.
Over the weekend I made a half-assed attempt at finding a replacement drum kit. When that didn’t work I resorted to the answer to most every problem… eBay. Within minutes I found a repair kit for the foot pedal. As it turns out, I’m not the only one who has broken their foot pedal. OK, I knew I wasn’t the only one. I saw postings about broken drum kits within the first week of Rock Band’s release. Honestly, I’m surprised mine lasted as long as it did.
So, here’s some before and after shots of the food pedal:
Broken in half.
Replacement parts to the rescue.
Take the foot pedal apart.
9 screws later, we are ready to rock.
Thanks to eBay seller rasehead for an excellent product that’s priced right! Twenty Six bucks including shipping and I’m back to rocking my face off. Woo Hoo!
Rock Band and xBox 360
After all the delays waiting for the PS2 version of Rock Band, not to mention all the features that I would have been missing had I got the PS2 version to begin with, I went ahead and bit the bullet tonight. I went out and bought an xBox 360 and Rock Band. I’m so stoked.
The store was out of the middle of the road sized xBox 360, so I ended up getting the Halo 3 Special Edition. It comes with a couple games (not Halo 3, which I thought was odd) a battery charger and the unit itself is green and has some Halo 3 markings. I doubt it was worth the extra bucks I plunked down, but I was on a mission… they had me by the short and curlies.
After getting home with the goods, it took roughly an hour to unbox, unwrap and hook up all the pieces. The first thing I did was set up the video camera to capture the first time I played drums. I played on the easy level and I wasn’t entirely horrible. 92% playing Celebrity Skin by Hole.
I then played a few songs with my son. We switched back and forth between drums and guitar. I tried hooking up the microphone, but it didn’t seem to be working. Turns out, if you read some instructions once in a while, sometimes they have valuable information. I didn’t figure that out early enough, so I haven’t sung any songs yet. But, there’s always tomorrow.
I asked my wife if she wanted to play the drums. She played a couple songs and enjoyed it. She even mentioned playing some more in order to get better at playing. This makes me happy.
I sure hope I’m not too sick tomorrow and not able to make it in to work… That would be a real shame. OK, fine. I have 9 days off in row starting Saturday… I guess I can wait until then to rock my face off.
We’ll see.
Out of the Office notifications
At work we have an email account that sends a copy of all messages sent to it to everybody in the company. If somebody is going to take a day of work, they send an email saying that they’ll be out of the office, list the day(s) they’ll be out and will usually give information about who to contact in their absence. During the holidays there have been quite a few of these emails going around. They all look the same… boring!
Since I will be taking off a few days next week, I decided to entertain the crowd with a geekier version of the OOTO message. Mine looked like this:
<?php
while ($date > “2007-12-25″ && $date < "2007-12-29")
{
$user = "John Hawkins";
$mode = "Vacation";
$contact_for_help = array ("Angelo", "Rebecca", "Mel");
$emergency_phone = "702.xxx.xxxx";
}
?>
The fact that I received 3 instant messages and 8 emails filled with “LOL”s, I’d say my stab at humor worked.
Good times.