Month: August 2002

TGI Friday’s

Ashley BischoffLeave a comment

As I was looking around for some TGI Friday’s links for yesterday’s entry on the MetaFilter Meetup, I came across this history/critique of TGI Friday’s:

The result is bland food, hyped like the Second Coming, and delivered by an absurd cheerleader. Portions are huge, and up-selling suggestions from servers and table trees encourage you to pile on the extras. After a couple of beers, it all starts to make sense, and it's a lot of fun to drop $6.49 on a half-pound “Tuesday Burger” within a stone’s throw of McDonald’s (another chain famous for its consistency). […]

In some ways, I think TGI Friday’s gets a bad rap. Sure, their prices aren’t always cheap, and sometimes you can get better tasting food elsewhere. But, it’s still pretty tasty, and I know what to expect there.

Also on ArborFood — where I got that earlier link — is this article titled “Chain Gang”, comparing various chains in the Ann Arbor area (including TGI Friday’s, Applebee’s, and Chili’s. According to that article, it looks like Max & Erma’s came out on top, so I’ll have to keep that in mind (for instance) when voting on future Meetups.

Meetup gone Awry

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

I had planned on attending the MetaFilter Meetup this evening. So, after getting home from the gym around 7:30pm, I soon headed off to the TGI Friday’s on North Market street. I got there in good time, put some quarters in the meter, and walked inside. I asked the server about the “MetaFilter Meetup Group”, but he hadn’t heard of that. But, he assured me, he’d let me know if any groups arrived under that name.

So, I just sat on a bench in the lobby and waited. And waited. Eventually, my watch read “8:30”, and I headed home. I quite enjoyed the Slashdot Meetup (I’ll have to remember to write about that), but this particular Meetup didn’t go so well :-/.

PC Injury

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I was woken at 6am this morning by the Bwee-Bwerp Bwee-Bwerp of my slot-loading DVD-ROM drive continually trying to eject a non-existant disc. I knew something wasn’t right, so I got out of bed and walked over to my PC. I shook the mouse to de-activate the screen saver (as I normally do), but the screen remained blank. I tapped on the keyboard, but still nothing.

Figuring that something was definitely wrong, I hit the reset button on the front of the box — nothing. Finally, I held the power-button to power it down before going back to bed.

Once before, I had problems with this box. Previously, my CDR drive had aparently gone bad, and was mucking with the system’s stability as a whole. That time, I just unplugged the CDR drive’s power cable, and the system returned to normal. So, after getting up and having a shower, I tried that trick once more. One by one, I unplugged the power cables from my various drives, trying the power switch after each one. But, the box still wouldn’t come to life.

Running out of options, I figured that the power supply itself may have died. So, I put my hand up to its output-fan to check for a breeze: nope. Curiously enough, the internal fans in my case were still spinning, so I wasn’t certain if the power supply was dead.

I headed off to Fry’s to look for a new power supply. Pleasantly, they had almost a dozen to choose from. So, I asked one of the employees about the differences between them. He mentioned that, with the more expensive ones, you’re mostly just paying for the brand name. But, after telling him my story, he suggested that I could try a power supply tester to see if it really was the power supply that had gone bad.

The power supply testers were only about $12, so I decided to give that a try. “Besides,” I thought, “if it turns out that the power supply is ok, I can always make use of Fry’s 30-day return policy.”

Once back at the apartment, I plugged my power-supply into the tester and, sure enough, it was dead. So, I drove back to Fry’s once more. Still not entirely sure about which power supply would suit me best, I picked up one from JGE — it was 300 watts (just like my old one) and AMD Approved (which was reassuring).

I drove back to the apartment and, before installing the new power supply, I tested it with the power supply tester (both to check on the power supply but also to make sure that the tester was working properly). The little LED on the tester lit up green, so the power supply looked to be good.

I installed the power supply into the case and, after a gathering of courage, turned on the machine. Success! So, once again my machine is alive and well. Whew.

DART: Mostly Harmless

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

After my adventures with Airtran yesterday, I still needed to get home from the airport. Of course, Amanda had offered to give me a ride. But when I heard that I had missed my connecting flight to Dallas, I didn’t want to burden her any further with picking me up the next morning.

So, I figured I’d just make use of DART, specifically the “Trinity Railway Express” — a rail line from the airport to downtown (where I could catch an ordinary transit train). I wasn’t concerned about this, as I had previously used the Trinity Railway Express when I went to visit my parents over the winter solstice. And, I knew that there was a DART bus that would take me right to the Trinity Railway Express station, just a short ride away.

So, I followed the signs in the airport for the “Ground Transportation”, and from there to the specific Trinity Railway Express bus-stop. My flight landed just after 2:00pm, so it was probably about 2:30pm at this point. I waited about half an hour, and a yellow DART bus came along. I checked its window-sign, but it turned out to be just an ordinary DART bus (not one that would take me to the Trinity Railway Express station). However, as 3:30pm rolled around, I became concered — “Are the Trinity Railway Express buses really that infrequent?&rdquo, I thought.

So, I used my mobile phone to call the DART number that was listed on the bus stop. After pressing just a few buttons to navigate through the voice-menu, I was able to speak with a real human. And, she sheepishly informed me that the bus from the airport to the Trinity Railway Express station doesn’t run on Sundays (bah!).

However, the DART-lady was happy to calculate a route — using other DART transportation — that could get me home. It would only cost me $4 for an all-day pass, so I figured I’d give that a try. And, as it turned out, the first segment of my journey was at 3:46pm (which was only a few minutes away at the time). For those curious, here’s how the route I took on DART:

  • At 3:46pm, catch the 202 bus going downtown. At 4:55pm, get off at the West End station.
  • At 5:07pm at West End, catch the Red Line train towards Galatyn Park Station. Then, at 5:27pm, get off at the Park Lane stop.
  • Lastly, at 5:34pm, get on the “501 Mockingbird” bus, and that should take me where I need to go.

I received the complete directions, including arrival and destination times, right over the phone. And, DART was on-time as well — I could just about get-on or get-off based on the current-time alone. I ended up getting back to my apartment at about 5:45pm, which wasn’t that bad for $4.

My take is that DART may have some knuckleheads in the planning department (no Trinity Railway Express one-seventh of the week?!), but their “ground troops” can be rather helpful.