Life « Modern Toil

Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Lehigh Valley Chipotle = OPEN!!!

Jun 5th, 12 / Comments Off

The day has finally come, Chipotle’s location at the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall, PA is open for business!

If you’ve eaten at a Chipotle before, you’re probably not even still reading and already on your way there, but for those that haven’t, Chipotle offers the very best burritos, tacos, bowls, and salads.

Chipotle strives to serve what they call “food with integrity”, which I’ll use their own words to describe:

“It means serving the very best sustainably raised food possible with an eye to great taste, great nutrition and great value.

It means that we support and sustain family farmers who respect the land and the animals in their care.

It means that whenever possible we use meat from animals raised without the use of antibiotics or added hormones.

And it means that we source organic and local produce when practical. And that we use dairy from cows raised without the use of synthetic hormones.

Food With Integrity is a journey that started more than a decade ago and one that will never end.”

I appreciate/respect all that, but what I care about most is that their food is DELICIOUS/FAST/REASONABLY PRICED. If you live in the Lehigh Valley, stop reading and start eating:

Chipotle Mexican Grill
837 Lehigh Lifestyle Center
Whitehall, PA 18052

Phone 610.465.9526
Fax 610.264.2560

Open: Mon-Sun 11am-10pm

You can even order online.

I went around noon today, and the line was approx. 10 minutes long. They’ve got seating for around 30 people inside with more seating outside. And yes, it was delicious

Food, Life

DIY: Wooden Tie Rack

Jan 29th, 12 / 1 Comment

Recently I’ve had to start wearing ties to work, and the two total ties I previously owned just wasn’t cutting it. I harvested the ties my father used to wear, which rounded out my tie selection quite acceptably. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that while having two ties in your sock drawer works just fine, having fifteen in there doesn’t.

I headed out to my trusty local Wal-Mart to pick up a tie rack, but alas, they had none! Mind you, they weren’t out of them, they simply didn’t carry them. Sure, I could have ordered one online, but that meant waiting, and patient I am not. So, I bought a few vertical wooden hangers that came with hooks meant for belts and headed home.

At home, I pulled out the hooks from the vertical wooden hangers with locking pliers and made a simple plan to build my own rack:

The tie rack is 22″ wide, and 4.5″ tall, a good size to screw to the inside of most closet doors.

I made mine out of 3/4″ pine and sanded a nice round-over onto the edges. I marked everything with my 1:1 paper template, and drilled out the holes for hooks. I pounded the scavenged hooks into the holes with a mallet. You could just as easily makes the hooks from wooden dowels or cut lengths of aluminum rod.

I’m pretty happy with the result, and thought I’d share the plans.

Below is a PDF of the tie rack plans. It prints onto 3 sheets and each page overlaps the next by 2″. Make sure your printer is NOT set to shrink to fit, or it won’t be the full 22″ when you cut and tape it together.

Tie Rack Plans – 1:1 PDF Template

Enjoy!

DIY, How-to, Life, Work

Lockdown: EXCELLENT article on rights around the Internet and general computing

Jan 12th, 12 / Comments Off

Wow! Cory Doctorow did a tremendous job putting together a keynote speech for the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin, entitled “The coming war on general computation.” He then turned it into a full-blown article titled “Lockdown” and published it here:

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

Go read this, now and tell all your friends as well. This guy put into words what all of us geeks that understand the inner workings of the internet and PC’s have been saying for a long, long time in a way that’s fairly easy to understand and makes a whole pile of relevant points both technologically, politically, and practically.

Hats off to you Cory!

This is about real issues that as the prevalence of technology grows year after year mean more and more. If we don’t figure out how to properly prevent regulation in areas it doesn’t belong, we’ll be paying the price in the future in ways we haven’t even thought of today due to stifling innovation, control, etc.

Life, News, Opinion

I don’t mind admitting I could really use one of these right about now.

Dec 23rd, 11 / Comments Off

Life

Strike Back! Report merchants for requiring a minimum purchase when you pay with your debit card!

Sep 12th, 11 / Comments Off

We’ve all been there. You need milk, bread, or maybe even just a drink. You stop at a convenience store, stand in line, and when it’s your turn to pay, they won’t accept your debit card unless you spend $10 (or some other arbitrary amt. of money).

Beware that merchants (convenience stores, shops, etc.) *CAN* impose up to a $10.00 minimum for credit card transactions, but they *CANNOT* for debit cards. You could use your debit card to pay for a single piece of penny candy if you so desired. Though, good luck finding penny candy anymore

Most debit cards can also be used as credit cards, but this doesn’t matter. As long as you can use your card as debit, and enter a PIN for the transactions merchants cannot refuse to accept it for any purchase amount.

What can you do?

Strike back! VISA has a form on their site to report merchants that impose minimums for debit transactions. Even if your debit card is issued through another provider like MasterCard, you can *still* use the form on VISA’s site, as long as the merchant accepts VISA.

Here’s the link:

https://usa.visa.com/checkoutfees/contact.jsp

Tell your family, tell your friends. Unless consumers report these merchants, their policies will never change.

I for one am TIRED of getting denied at checkout when all I want to do is pickup milk, and get home.

Want more info?

Here’s the bill that makes this federal law. Page 698 has the relevant info:

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr4173enr/pdf/BILLS-111hr4173enr.pdf

How-to, Life, News, Opinion

Get the BEST price for your used DVD’s and Blu-Ray’s online with this free tool I created!

Aug 24th, 11 / Comments Off

I sold my DVD collection a little while back and was intensely frustrated by the WIDELY varying prices offered by various purchasers.

So, I wrote a tool to do all the hard work for me by heading out to each of the popular sites, poll their price, find the best, and report back.

I just customized it into something I can share on the web that does one disc at a time, based on the UPC code. The form submits are all custom injected with curl, sourced from RAW capture between my testing browser and the purchasing sites. Enjoy the fruits of my labor

If you have a ton of discs you want a report on, contact me and I’ll see what we can work out.

The site for the tool is:

http://dvd.netmagi.com

and the sites it checks at the time of writing are:

EagleSaver, DVDPawn, SellDVDSOnline, SecondSpin, MightyBuyBack, and Abundatrade

How-to, Life, News, Tech

Trial by combat!

Aug 18th, 11 / Comments Off

Notch, founder of Minecraft asked for “Trial by Combat” in response to a recent lawsuit by Bethesda over the naming of their most recent project, “Scrolls”. They feel it infringes on the name of their “Elder Scrolls” game.

Check out Notch’s recent blog post to see for yourself:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/9038258448/hey-bethesda-lets-settle-this

I suppose this in itself isn’t that exciting, but it got me wondering, and I did a bit of digging. Check out these excerpts from wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat#United_States

“Because the British did not abolish wager by battle until Parliament’s 1819 response to Ashford v Thornton(1818), and because no court in post-independence United States has addressed the issue, the question of whether trial by combat remains a valid American alternative to civil action remains open, at least in theory.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#.22Just_Plane_Smart.22

“Shortly after Southwest started using the “Just Plane Smart” motto, Stevens Aviation, who had been using “Plane Smart” for their motto, threatened a trademark lawsuit.

Instead of a lawsuit, the CEOs for both companies staged an arm wrestling match. Held at the now demolished Dallas Sportatorium (the famed wrestling facility) and set for two out of three rounds, the loser of each round was to pay $5,000 to the charity of their choice, with the winner gaining the use of the trademarked phrase. A promotional video was created showing the CEOs “training” for the bout (with CEO Herb Kelleher being helped up during a sit up where a cigarette and glass of whiskey (Wild Turkey 101) was waiting) and distributed among the employees and as a video press release along with the video of the match itself. Herb Kelleher lost the match for Southwest, with Stevens Aviation winning the rights to the phrase. Kurt Herwald, CEO of Stevens Aviation, immediately granted the use of “Just Plane Smart” to Southwest Airlines. The net result was both companies having use of the trademark, $15,000 going to charity and good publicity for both companies.”

Imagine if this became more popular?

Life, News

Car Bras – Seriously?

Jul 25th, 11 / Comments Off

I’m at the mini market today in the parking lot waiting for the wife to return some DVD’s to the aptly named “Red Box”. The car next to us had a bra. A BRA. I had to unlock my iPhone to check the date and make sure it was still 2011.

God for bid you found this blog post while googling thinking about getting one, here’s 3 reasons WHY YOU SHOULDN’T:

1) Ugly as sin

2) Dated. Nothing says 1997 like a hunk of vinyl stretched across the nose of your car.

3) Protects NOTHING. If anything it DAMAGES your car trapping in fine dirt particles that scratch up your ride with movement.

JUST SAY NO.

Life, Opinion

Epic week for “I Quit!”

Aug 10th, 10 / 1 Comment

It’s only Tuesday, and there’s already 2 epic tales of regular everyday working class folks throwing in the towel with more class (or lack there-of) than most of us could dream about.

First, there’s Steven Slater from Queens who, after a verbal engagement with an obnoxious passenger, grabbed a couple brewskis from the beverage cart, popped the emergency chute, cursed over the PA, and slid to personal freedom while the plane was still moving (only to be picked up by the cops later):

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/08/09/2010-08-09_talk_about_turbulance_jetblue_flight_attendant_drops_intercom_fbomb_bolts_down_e.html?page=1

If that’s not enough, a woman, Jenny, allegedly quit her job, for being referred to by her boss as a HOPA, by mass-mailing everyone at her company a series of pictures featuring her and a dry-erase board:

http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/

UPDATE: Dry-Erase girl is confirmed a hoax. I knew it was too good to be true!

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/11/elyse-porterfield/

Life, News, Work

Your Memories: AGAINST THE RULES!

Aug 9th, 10 / Comments Off

The photograph to the left is “against the rules”.

That’s right, I took it in the Lehigh Valley Mall, which expressly prohibits any and all sort of photography on mall property. I know this, because I’m the photographer in this case, and while wielding my iPhone 4, a mere 12 inches from my daughters face, I was approached by mall security and told to immediately cease what I was doing.

Shocked, I asked for an explanation, and was told all forms of photography and videography have been illegal in the mall since “9/11″, with security instructed to confiscate film and delete photos when witnessed.

That’s right, a couple terrorists, upset at our freedoms and beliefs managed to get photography banned in a mall. I think I could have let it go if she said folks had complained about creeps following them around with 500mm lenses or something, but no, the reason given was “9/11″. We’ve got men and women thousands of miles from home, giving their lives everyday to protect basic freedoms, but I can’t take a picture of my daughter from 12 INCHES away in a mall on a Saturday.

I guess I didn’t look to pleased with the explanation given, since the security guard went on to state that they had found friends posting pics of each other in the mall on Facebook, flickr, etc. and it’s “just not right”. Yeh, I agree . . . It’s “just not right” that those kids, pockets full of their parents money and plastic would want to go to the mall thinking it’s trendy and chic like everything else they do because they saw it in a picture on Facebook. Thank god the brick and mortars of the world aren’t willing to embrace the free benefits of social networking. The online business of merely tracking the effect of social networks on purchasing decisions across all age groups per day is probably larger than what the entire Lehigh Valley Mall grosses in a year.

I love this country, and it’s rich history chock full of freedom and independence, but common sense, today, is all to often lacking.