Dining, Reviews

Tummy lovin’ brisket

Rudy’s Country Store & BBQ

Rudy’s BBQ…how I LOVE your super-moist brisket, your sweet creamed corn and your death-by-butter new potatoes. When I heard the franchise was opening a location in the DFW area, I was ecstatic. I drove to Waco and Austin many a time solely to visit Rudy’s and savor their juicy, tender brisket and bring home bottles of their original Rudy’s BBQ sauce–they have a sissy version for those of you with sensitive palates. I realize that the moist (fatty) brisket isn’t for every one (don’t ever order the lean brisket), just as not everybody enjoys watching their potatoes drowned in butter. If you don’t relish the idea of dying happy from the cholesterol-overload, then best to steer clear of Rudy’s. As for me, serve me up another pound of that fabulous moist brisket!

My rating: 4.0 stars
****

Technical

CHMOD and the recursive

I encountered an unusual situation in which a directory on the web server had exclusive permissions assigned to the root owner only. I had been attempting to ftp an image file to a directory on the server, but I had no permissions to do so, despite that the account I used had FTP rights. I couldn’t change permissions either via telnet (PuTTY) or another FTP client. It took me a bit of research before I figured out that I couldn’t change just the directory itself, but the entire directory including subs and files. To do this, I needed to add the argument “-R” (without the quotations) to recursively change the permissions of all files in all subdirectories of the directory whose permissions were being changed. What worked:

chmod -R 777 filenameordirectory

I had to log in as root via telnet to the server to make the changes.

Speculative

Yelping for Yelp’s sake

I confess. I like Yelp. I like that they have reviews and listings for businesses, restaurants and services when the big-name web directories are still 3-6 months behind in posting (think Citysearch and their offspring Urbanspoon). I believe Yelp’s timeliness is due to its very active userbase. Like most social networking sites, Yelp makes it easy to reach out to friends and families–this occurs through the power of reviews.

Much has been said about Yelp’s shady dealings and extortionist practices. More has been said about the low-brow shenanigans and unprofessional reviews. Scandals and lawsuits abound. Again, like the major social networking sites, Yelp was bound sooner or later to suffer negative publicity.

I imagine that some businesses will be hurt more than others. I imagine that more critics and review snobs will turn their nose up at Yelp. But it’s hard to deny that Yelp is a helpful resource…I am one Yelper who reads others’ reviews and take them into consideration before visiting a business. And sometimes I will go despite the one- to two-star ratings, to satisfy my own curiosity.

Yelp serves the local community. Its service is dynamic, ever-changing, always trying to catch up, thanks to the contributions of the masses. They have the listings that they do because their members are a vocal lot–they take the time to post. I feel that other search directories cater to businesses who have the advertising revenue…which unfortunately discriminates against the small businesses and local shops without the big ad budgets. Other directories also try to inflate their self-importance by claiming they have reviews “written by professional critics”–which we all know sometimes goes against popular consensus. Of course, I do prefer writing reviews minus the snarky editorials and blog-style blitzkrieg that some reviewers prefer–if I’m reviewing a restaurant, then I’m judging them on the merits of their food, ambience, service. I’m not going to pen some cutesy anecdote about my dogs just to add “flavor” to my criticisms.

Yelp. Love it or hate it. It’s just another MySpace, Facebook, Twitter…except with reviews by you and me. It’s about the power of choice. Though if Yelp started censoring my reviews, then I imagine it’s time to find the next great Web 2.0 social network. In cyberspace it’s easy to shift your loyalties…

Bites and Finds, Dining

Moose in my ice cream

Moose Tracks. The first I ever saw of it was in my local Tom Thumb grocer’s freezer section. The fiance informed me that it was a legitimate ice cream flavor, but I was rather bewildered by the number of options. I finally settled on taking home Extreme Moose Tracks by Safeway Selects…fudge, chocolate, and more fudge! No surprise that the gallon container I purchased didn’t last a week in my fridge.

So where did Moose Tracks come from and get its funky name? A Google search turned up the home site for Moose Tracks and Denali Flavors, who apparently makes ice cream products for several major grocery retailers. In their FAQ it states:

Like many brands, Moose Tracks is not meant to be a description of the product. Just like “Tide” is a brand that doesn’t describe that the product is a detergent or “Snickers” doesn’t describe a candy bar, Moose Tracks isn’t meant to describe the product it represents. It’s simply a brand name.

How was that name created? It was developed as a cute, quirky, fun name that would generate curiosity and interest in the product. This was then translated into our logo that includes both the moose (head) as well as the tracks (footprints) of the moose.

A crawl of their site reveals 11 combinations of Moose Tracks (including my Extreme Moose Tracks), 5 of which are limited availability. In Texas, Moose Tracks ice cream is branded by 4 different big-name grocers, so it won’t be too hard to find at the neighborhood store!