We've been busy the last couple of weeks. We celebrated both of our birthdays. The weather has gone from cool and rainy to disgustingly hot and humid to what could only be described as beautiful summer weather (78-85 with lower humidity...good stuff I tell ya!).
For our birthdays we went mini-golfing and to a couple of movies. We went shopping and out to eat. They were nice quiet celebrations at home.
A few photos from our B-days:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahjanesetnes/sets/72157620635733791/
This last weekend we went to the Des Moines summer arts festival...which seems to be this odd contradiction of sorts. It's a celebrated artsy community event...but it draws mostly upper class suburbanites--because the art is very expensive. I was used to the arts fest in Brookings, SD which is like a county fair without the rides but with lots of arts and crafts and antiques. It's a good time in the park--lots of people and music and fun...It's a fun family event...and the artists are very talented but charge considerably less. The Des Moines arts festival with its Jazz and Wine pavilion...is not really my style. Nevertheless, we had a good afternoon looking at art and I had a delicious gyro and came home with a couple of small prints and a bag of kettle corn. :)
A few pictures from the arts festival:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahjanesetnes/sets/72157620562406227/
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Des Moines's Best Onion Rings
Each year Cityview (a free local publication) puts together a list of the metro's best everything (from restaurants to minigolf). The readers vote, and an issue in February releases the results.
Cityview's Best of Issue:
http://www.dmcityview.com/best_of/index.shtml
We were interested in the restaurant results because we hadn't heard of most of them. Our favorite asian restaurant won "runner-up" for best Vietnamese, and that was pretty much the only one we had been to. A West Des Moines restaurant called Maxie's Lounge won best onion rings and runner-up in several categories including best hamburger and best overall restaurant. So, we thought we'd give Maxie's a try.
From the categories that Maxie's won in, I was expecting a diner. But it was a nice sit down restuarant with a full bar. The night that we went was all you can eat spaghetti night. Rob had the spaghetti that came with a salad and some bread for $5.99. I had a hamburger and the infamous onion rings which goes for 7.99. These were some of the least expensive things on the menu. They had a wide range of dishes including steak, ribs, and lobster. Overall the food was good, but not great. The service was friendly, though a bit slow (they were busy because of the spaghetti supper). We will definitely go back again to try more items from their menu.
But, on the matter of the onion rings, I must flat out disagree. The onion rings from Cheddars are far better. The onion rings at Maxie's are pretty good. They very thinly cut strips of battered onion. They were so thin, though, that they were difficult to eat and needed to be scooped up in handfulls.
Our next stop for onion rings--The Drake Diner (they were runner-up).
Cityview's Best of Issue:
http://www.dmcityview.com/best_of/index.shtml
We were interested in the restaurant results because we hadn't heard of most of them. Our favorite asian restaurant won "runner-up" for best Vietnamese, and that was pretty much the only one we had been to. A West Des Moines restaurant called Maxie's Lounge won best onion rings and runner-up in several categories including best hamburger and best overall restaurant. So, we thought we'd give Maxie's a try.
From the categories that Maxie's won in, I was expecting a diner. But it was a nice sit down restuarant with a full bar. The night that we went was all you can eat spaghetti night. Rob had the spaghetti that came with a salad and some bread for $5.99. I had a hamburger and the infamous onion rings which goes for 7.99. These were some of the least expensive things on the menu. They had a wide range of dishes including steak, ribs, and lobster. Overall the food was good, but not great. The service was friendly, though a bit slow (they were busy because of the spaghetti supper). We will definitely go back again to try more items from their menu.
But, on the matter of the onion rings, I must flat out disagree. The onion rings from Cheddars are far better. The onion rings at Maxie's are pretty good. They very thinly cut strips of battered onion. They were so thin, though, that they were difficult to eat and needed to be scooped up in handfulls.
Our next stop for onion rings--The Drake Diner (they were runner-up).
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friend Feed.
I started an account on Friend Feed because Leo Laporte uses it and because I'm easily suggestable when it comes to trying new stuff on the internet, and because I trust Leo's opinions on computer and technology stuffs.
Friend Feed is a cool website that allows you to mash together all of your feeds...from everything: Twitter, Google Reader Shared Items, Facebook Updates/Links/Notes, pretty much any Blog, Bookmarking/Posting Websites like Delicious, Digg, Pandora, Netflix Ratings, Flickr Photo feeds etc....
You have one feed to show your friends and you can see all of their feeds in one place instead of hopping from site to site. There are really only two problems with this. One--your friends need to have accounts in order for it to be worthwhile. And two--it kind of makes me feel like I've slathered myself all over the internet...and not in a good way.
So the jury is still out....much like it is for Twitter--which I only have an account on because so many companies and celebrities are using it now--I think I am following 5 people that I actually know. Part of me just wants to delete every account I have except facebook and my blog...and email...and...damn, there's no way out is there? :)
Friend Feed is a cool website that allows you to mash together all of your feeds...from everything: Twitter, Google Reader Shared Items, Facebook Updates/Links/Notes, pretty much any Blog, Bookmarking/Posting Websites like Delicious, Digg, Pandora, Netflix Ratings, Flickr Photo feeds etc....
You have one feed to show your friends and you can see all of their feeds in one place instead of hopping from site to site. There are really only two problems with this. One--your friends need to have accounts in order for it to be worthwhile. And two--it kind of makes me feel like I've slathered myself all over the internet...and not in a good way.
So the jury is still out....much like it is for Twitter--which I only have an account on because so many companies and celebrities are using it now--I think I am following 5 people that I actually know. Part of me just wants to delete every account I have except facebook and my blog...and email...and...damn, there's no way out is there? :)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Apparently, We Didn't Know What We Were Doing
This weekend we received a bunch of fun items in the mail. Starting on Friday with my shirt.woot t-shirt that I'd been waiting impatiently for. Followed by a box from Newegg with computer parts that Rob revealed I was getting as part of my birthday present....and then on Saturday more computer parts and a Roku Box (which was going to be a birthday present that I would have to wait until my birthday for, but it came in a box that said Roku all over it...so the cat was out of the bag).
So on Saturday we started by setting up the Roku Box--which was a piece of cake, mostly. It has a wireless internet receiver so that we don't have to run cords all over the living room (yay!). Unfortunately that meant we needed to know our WEP Key/Password thingy for the wireless router. Rob set that router up with his old computer and we couldn't find the password anywhere (even after trying to install the software for the router on both of our computers). So when Rob set out to upgrade my computer with the parts we received (1G graphics card, additional 2G RAM, and a new power supply to support them) we plugged his old computer into my moniter....and realized that the hard drive had crashed and we couldn't get into windows on his old box. Rob got my computer upgraded with only one little hitch (he had to open it back up because of a loose cable)....then he reconfigured the wireless router so that we could get a new WEP Key which we promptly got entered in to the Roku Box setup screen....and then we lost internet. So here we were with these two new toys that we couldn't even play with. We were without internet all Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Of course the story doesn't end there.
On Saturday evening we called Mediacom to see if it was an outage or if something had gone wrong when Rob was changing the wireless router. The message indicated to us that there was an outage in our area. So we occassional reset our cable modem to reboot the system to check if the internet was up and running. When we still didn't have internet access at lunch time on Sunday, Rob called again and found out that there were no more outages. So he had to go through a ten minute long automated program that asks if your modem is plugged in and if you've tried resetting it and all that fun stuff for people who have no idea what they are doing. After a good ten minutes, the automated program informed him that because he had called in on the digital phone (from Mediacom) that he would have to hang up and call in with another phone. So we called with the cell, and 15-20 minutes later, finally got to talk to someone, who told us that we had bumped our standby button on the front of our modem. Sure enough....we both felt like idiots. I wondered why that particular question wasn't part of the automated program for people who don't know what they are doing...cuz we sure felt like we didn't know what were doing after that.
On the plus side, everything is working now. My computer is awesome...and can now play games smoothly that were chuggy before. The Roku box is fantastic--if you're already paying for Netflix...I WHOLE HEARTEDLY recommend getting one. It's easy to use, the video and sound quality are as good as watching the show on cable, and it sure beats sitting at the computer to watch stuff.
So on Saturday we started by setting up the Roku Box--which was a piece of cake, mostly. It has a wireless internet receiver so that we don't have to run cords all over the living room (yay!). Unfortunately that meant we needed to know our WEP Key/Password thingy for the wireless router. Rob set that router up with his old computer and we couldn't find the password anywhere (even after trying to install the software for the router on both of our computers). So when Rob set out to upgrade my computer with the parts we received (1G graphics card, additional 2G RAM, and a new power supply to support them) we plugged his old computer into my moniter....and realized that the hard drive had crashed and we couldn't get into windows on his old box. Rob got my computer upgraded with only one little hitch (he had to open it back up because of a loose cable)....then he reconfigured the wireless router so that we could get a new WEP Key which we promptly got entered in to the Roku Box setup screen....and then we lost internet. So here we were with these two new toys that we couldn't even play with. We were without internet all Saturday evening and Sunday morning. Of course the story doesn't end there.
On Saturday evening we called Mediacom to see if it was an outage or if something had gone wrong when Rob was changing the wireless router. The message indicated to us that there was an outage in our area. So we occassional reset our cable modem to reboot the system to check if the internet was up and running. When we still didn't have internet access at lunch time on Sunday, Rob called again and found out that there were no more outages. So he had to go through a ten minute long automated program that asks if your modem is plugged in and if you've tried resetting it and all that fun stuff for people who have no idea what they are doing. After a good ten minutes, the automated program informed him that because he had called in on the digital phone (from Mediacom) that he would have to hang up and call in with another phone. So we called with the cell, and 15-20 minutes later, finally got to talk to someone, who told us that we had bumped our standby button on the front of our modem. Sure enough....we both felt like idiots. I wondered why that particular question wasn't part of the automated program for people who don't know what they are doing...cuz we sure felt like we didn't know what were doing after that.
On the plus side, everything is working now. My computer is awesome...and can now play games smoothly that were chuggy before. The Roku box is fantastic--if you're already paying for Netflix...I WHOLE HEARTEDLY recommend getting one. It's easy to use, the video and sound quality are as good as watching the show on cable, and it sure beats sitting at the computer to watch stuff.
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