July 27, 2007 by chad.

I have formulated some questions that I believe people have wanted to know, but since nobody says anything but me on this blog I am only punting here.

Why would anyone feel they have the qualifications to call themselves a restaurant reviewer or food critic?

Well, that’s a fair question. I guess it stems from the fact that I like to eat. Not so much eat as in fill the machine with fuel so I can make it through another day, but eat to taste. Every subtle nuance of a food item is of interest to me. How does it feel on the front of my tongue,  what taste buds are affected, blah blah blah.

I have been both officially and unofficially reviewing restaurants for 12 years now. I kind of know what should be expected because I have worked for a few different restaurants back in the day, including Applebee’s and Olive Garden.

When I was a college student my roommate was the editor of the college paper, the St Cloud State Chronicle, and he desperately wanted me to write for the paper. I told him I wanted to be a food critic of sorts and the rest is a little known piece of history. I began writing a weekly column called Grub where I managed to piss off a few businesses with with my honest opinions on the categories of Cleanliness, Food, Price, Atmosphere, and Service. Since then the review process has evolved, dropping the Cleanliness and Price categories. More so, they are still valid criterion, only absorbed by Atmosphere and Food respectively.

Everyone has opinions about the places they eat, sometimes they share them and sometimes no. Ted Brown my home stay father from England when I studied abroad had a good way of putting it. “If we have a bad experience eating someplace we won’t complain. We just won’t eat there again.” Also, if you are in the food industry there is a disproportionate number of customer comment cards that complain with little detail when the diner’s experience isn’t up to par, but there is often not enough emphasis on the things that they do do right overall. That is why I review. It’s not to bash, but to constructively look at the experiences I have to give two populations the chance to take something away from it. On the one hand the potential customers will know what to expect. On the other the business owners…should they ever read my blog will see what fell are the relative strong and weak points of their dining presentation. Very few restaurants can pull all the pieces together to really impress me anymore. That I can fully blame on the gig writing for the Chronicle because I never looked at dining the same after that year. I couldn’t. The analytical mind took hold of that segment of life and has kept a grasp on it ever since.

Has this really answered the question about my credentials? Probably not. I will say that eating is something all of us do so we are all welcome to formulate our own opinions about the swill we shovel into our mouths every day. I just approach it from more of a detailed analysis rather than a feeding frenzy. end of line.

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July 26, 2007 by chad.

Sometimes whit can be a hard thing to produce. They say the mind is like a parachute, it won’t work unless you open it. Therefore I want to just spill some thoughts out on the page and encourage any of you good webizens to respond.

I am starting to think that the magic the Minnesota Twins were able to produce after the All-Star break last year is just not there this year. When one thing works another does not and we cannot rely on 3 people in the lineup to produce all the runs necessary to keep one in the win column. The big discussion I am seeing in Twins blogs as of late is whether the Twins should be considering being sellers this year rather than buyers because the piece they need are significant enough that they are unlikely to make it to the play-offs. I love Tori Hunter and what he has done for this team but there is no way the Twins can afford what he’s worth in a new contract. This being the case I am sadly reconciled to the thought that he should be traded away before the end of the no waiver trade deadline. If I mentally write off the rest of the season, I see that the best thing we can gain by losing him would be some “ALMOST READY for the majors” minor leaguers. A bunch of them would be nice, but I think that most teams would not go that far knowing that they were basically just renting Hunter for the remaining two months of the season. Then how about Castillo and Nathan. We have Casilla who is the heir apparent to Castillo after this year. Nathan can probably be replaced by our home grown Pat Neshek. Who could replace Hunter for the remainder of the year? That’s the big question…and sadly it will be one I will have to discuss later as I need to go sell some CLearwire.

By the way, check out the GroetschTech website and tell me if you like the new music loop. I wanted something a little more edgy and industrial, but I wonder whether it is a little too much for representing GTG’s web presence.

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July 25, 2007 by chad.

Will this be a regular feature or not? I have no idea, but I have scoured the internet news feeds to bring you a few things I found interesting this morning. Since almost a thousand visitors have visited this month, I figured you need some new and exciting content.

Looks like MySpace has some more trouble. The previously reported 7000 sex offenders banned from their service has expanded to 29,000. Duh! I am continually surprised by the stupidity of some people who think that the internet will not be exploited by every predatory population in the world. In most cities and towns where do pedophiles hang out? The parks and places children are at. Why would they not be gravitated to a place with such a massive population of young kids. It’s insane! Hucksters, con artists, and all sorts of seedy types go to these places because its a huge repository of easy targets. It’d no different than the porn industry embracing the internet.

As most of you know, I stride the political fence because my socially liberal and fiscal conservative nature makes it a tough sale to adhere to any party. Today’s target is the Republicans of New Hampshire. They have a fundraiser that allows supporters to fire machine guns for a small fee. My favorite part is the pull quote from Jerry Tibodeau. “It’s a fun day. It’s a family day.” Come here, Billy, and lets fire off an Uzi and a military assault rifle. Does anyone else think this is a little troubling?

And this last one is for your viewing pleasure. Somehow a deer got stuck on the roof of a university building in Nebraska. Uh…how did it get up there? Sorry, no time to link it right. I gotta bolt.

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July 24, 2007 by chad.

Some say you can never go home again. I prescribe to the belief that you can go home again… you just can’t stay there. As we march forward through life we are irrevocably changed. Some times for the better and sometimes for the worse, but it is impossible to truly ascertain which which is which.

While change is a constant, we need to continue to hold on to the things we hold dear. This may be a solid object like the teddy bear my grandmother made for me when I was a child. It can also be the friendships we made with the people who most profoundly affected who we are now. Those are the benchmark moments in life that need to be remembered and even maintained. I have been able to keep a cursory contact with a lot of the great influencers in my life because it keeps me whole and grounded. It gives me strength. There have been a few who have fallen away from contact.

While I have found it easier to beat myself up about the people I have lost, I have come to realize that communication is a two way street and you cannot discard that which also moves away from you on it own. Case in point, today I went to Google to try and find a friend that I have not had contact with in 14 years. I have tried this trick before only to end of disappointed by the results. Two good friends from growing up that I have never been able to find had to be out there somewhere. Well, I think I may have found one today. We will have to see if indeed he is the Derek Dysart of legend. I sent him an email so hopefully I will know soon whether that lost connection…that long ago lost piece of my childhood is attached to my otherwise fortunate life.

Always remember your friends. I do not place the mantle of friendship on just anyone. These are the remarkable people who for their part have brought out the best and worst in me. They have stoked the fires of ingenuity, boiled the pot of passion, and consumed the mana of life. Thanks, friends, wherever you are. Know that you continue to live within me as part of me….blah blah blah. I think the mushy wagon is leaving grand central right now, so I best get on it.

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July 24, 2007 by chad.

I just spent the last 20 minutes or so on YouTube just browsing about and seeing what there is to see. As I flipped through Simpson’s videos, humorous animations and parody commercials I stumbled upon someone’s video log. Now, this video log belongs to a woman…no dirty thoughts here…and she kinda uses it as a sounding board in her life. What I found amazing about this vlog is that she totally leaves her thoughts and feelings out there for the world to see. The passion is there the excitement and fear as well. This is amazing! Forget that this society becomes more and more intrusive every day with “reality” programming and video cameras all over town tracking the goings on of the average person. Forget about the whole conception of having a personal diary, as it were, to vent…to feel…to internalize what affects our lives. This is something that she is offering up for anyone to view. This is powerful! This is immense. I can type what I want here and cautiously edit the content as I fell, but video does not lie. Oh, sure, you can approach it the same way, but you can see when video has been edited. She just lays it out there in almost one take. You can see her looking down at some notes to keep herself on track. YouTube always seemed to be just an amusement, but it can be so much more. A message can be broadcast everywhere and anytime. You could present a thought one time and have it seen in a million different places.
Strange but true, this opens a whole other world for me. Our lives…my life seems rather insignificant to this 21 year old and her experiences splashed out on the web. I know that is not true as I do a lot for this community and a lot for my friends. My missions and goals remain the same and this feeling will pass. Its just incredible how our technology can bring so much together. That this young woman can show me something new and exciting is wonderful.

I know…I know, you want me to link to her YouTube presence. That is actually irrelevant. Go to YouTube or any one of a number of online video log houses and see for yourself if you have not already ventured out there. The growth is in the experience not in the person. Time for lunch. end of line

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July 20, 2007 by chad.

I have been under the hood of a lot of computers in the past 7 years, but very few of them have had the telltale sign of a smoking harddrive. I wish I had a camera when I went on the service call because one of the chips was half melted around the bottom of the spindle. Some of the green board was was well scorched. The smell of burning computer innards is an unmistakable smell, not unlike the smell of a freshly killed skunk on the road. It could be pitch black outside, but you would still know without question that it was a skunk. Enough about skunks because there’s one on the Sherburne county backroad we live on now..and he’s a freshy.

This hard drive was definitely the result of hardware failure although we can usually trace this kind of damage to a power surges from such things as lightning. Uh oh, gotta bolt. More on this later.

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