Mattazuma's Revenge

The Bacon Post

Two bacon-related items:

Chicken Fried Bacon.  Must have at some point.  Here's a video:

Bacon Salt.  "Everything should take like bacon" Too bad it isn't really made from bacon.  Might get it anyway.

Google Street View is Coming to Chicago

I saw the Google Street View car by Michigan Ave today:

Wonder how long it will take them to get the pictures on line.

Multiple Woot.com shipping issues :(

I like Woot. 

I really do.

That's why I am a little disappointed I have to write this blog post.

I've had two shipping problems with Woot in the past few weeks that really aren't resolved.

I ordered some of the Woot t-shirts from the June 1 woot-off.  They were shipped via FedEx smart-post, which is kind of a bulk shipper.  They deliver to a regional USPS office and then, theoretically, the USPS delivers the package to me.  Well, after six weeks of waiting for my package, I contact smart-post & Woot to figure out what happened.  It appears that somehow 8% of the packages in the smartpost shipment to Chicago that contained my shirts got "lost".

The Woot customer service people sent a replacement batch of shirts.  I received them a week later & they are the wrong size.  I wanted large but received XL.  I'm not shipping them back to Woot, I'm going to live with the too large shirts.

On July 11, I ordered some wine from wine.woot.com, another great site they run.  The following Monday (7/16), I get a UPS tracking #.  Ever since then the tracking page has said "Billing info Received", which basically means that the package has never been given to UPS.

On Sunday (7/22), I sent Woot customer service an E-Mail asking what's up with the shipment.  This morning they reply with a canned e-mail and a link to Woot's shipping policy.  Basically, to protect the wine woot doesn't ship to the midwest on Thursday or Friday, which is a good thing.  But that doesn't explain why the wine didn't ship Monday-Wednesday of last week or yesterday for that matter.  I am assuming that if it doesn't ship today (7/24) they are going to wait another week so the wine doesn't sit on a UPS truck over the weekend.

Here's the current tracking info:

Woot's summer wine policy states that they will ship UPS 2nd day air in some circumstances.  I wonder how many weeks it's going to take before my shipment gets upgraded.

I still like Woot, and I'll still buy stuff from them at times.  I'm just frustrated with the shipping & customer service problems.

I don't think this is what Al Gore had in mind

Yes, it's the first environmentally responsible tobacco company!!!

Yup, saving the world one pack at a time.  They are reducing their carbon footprint, some of it goes back in to the ground whenever one of their users dies.

I have to give them credit, this is a great ad.  I love the sunflowers & windmills.  It's glued into the new issue of Esquire.

Starbucks Iced Tea for 75% off

I guess this is something of a Starbucks hack.

Yesterday morning, A nice Starbucks barista told me to bring my ice tea cup back when I wanted my afternoon glass.  She mentioned something about a discount of some sort but I didn't catch everything she said.

So, when I came back down in the afternoon with my cup, they initially were going to give me a 10 cent discount for cup reuse, but then the lead guy asked if I was drinking iced tea.  I told him I was and he rang up my tea as a "refill".  My venti iced tea is normally $2.21 with tax, but the refill was only $0.50.

So, not only does Starbucks have great iced tea, it's now cheaper than drinking soda.

Save your cup & save a bunch of money at Starbucks!

Three More (good) Beers

Once again, thanks to a gentle shove by the guys at BeerSchool.com, I'm picking out beer at random to drink.

This time I have two German beers and one West Coast beer.

First up we have Bitburger, "Germany's #1 Draft Beer".  It's very bitter and refreshing, I couldn't taste the hops at all.  The big 500ml can keeps the beer fresh in the long trip over from Germany.

Well, over the last six months I've become a big fan of hoppy beer, but this is a very good beer, despite the lack of hop taste.  I much prefer this to pretty much any big mass produced American beer.

Up next is a beer from the "oldest brewery in the world", Weihenstephaner:

This is a really good beer.  There is some of the bitterness of the Bitburger but there is a noticeable amount of hop flavor as well.  These guys better know what they are doing, the brewery has been around since 1040.

Ok, the last beer for tonight is Sierra Nevada India Pale Ale.  I first had this beer at Bouchon restaurant in Las Vegas.  For some reason, it's not listed on the main Sierra Nevada beer page.

This is one of the best IPA's I've ever tried.  Lots of hops, but with enough other flavors to not be too overwhelming.  It's not quite as good as the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA, but that's the best IPA I've ever had.

Hey - Get out there and try some new beers!!  What's the worst thing that can happen?  You spend $10 on a six pack and you don't like it, what's that, 3 of those Starbucks latte things?

Also, go check out the beerschool.com podcast, the shows are a bit uneven, but the good ones are worth slogging through the ones that aren't so great.

Hands-on With the iPhone

So, I went to the Apple store to play with the Jesusphone iPhone.  Well, from my 5 minutes of playing with it, I think I have to get one.  They had both models in stock, too, so don't necessarily believe what the Apple site tells you about availability.

One bit of good news I learned is you can sync the phone to multiple computers, as long as they are all tied to the same Apple account.  I have my music at home and my contacts at work, so I really needed that.

Here's a picture of the blog on the iPhone I took with my Treo:

I typed the URL in using two thumbs & I didn't make any mistakes, so the keyboard seems to be Matt compatible.  It must be my two years using the tiny keys on the Treo 650. 

I had been telling myself that I would wait until August to get one.  I'm now hoping I can hold out for a week before my willpower breaks down.