Five Guys Burgers and Fries
3208 B Guadalupe St
Austin, TX 78703
Tel: 512-452-4300
Cheese Burger
Good, but not spectacular. Meat was well cooked and the lettuce was crispy. The bun was above average, better than the standard balloon bread bun you get at most places.
Bacon Dog
I was disappointed, but it’s not what you think. I was expecting a hot dog, but what I got was more of a brat, or a polish. Now, I love both of those, and this one was good, but it was not what I was expecting. The bacon was perfect, but on a brat, it was a bit much. Next time I will try it without the bacon, and there will be a next time.
Large Fries
Five Guys delivers their fries in a cup…well, sort of. All Five Guys orders come in a bag. They don’t ask if it is to go, they just deliver it in a bag. After putting your burger in the bag, they fill a cup with fries and put that in the bag, but then they also fill a small metal bowl with fries and toss that into the top of the bag. It was a very large order of fries.
And, they were hot, almost too hot. Even after walking out to my car, they were extremely hot. They were well salted too. Now, that is a big deal to me. Fries without salt are bland…well, let’s be honest, potatoes without salt are bland, no matter how you prepare them. So many places have gone to minimal salting that I almost always ask for salt when I order fries. I think it is some health conscious lunacy that causes it.
If I were health conscious I wouldn’t be eating fries.
Now, don’t get me wrong, they weren’t over salted, something which I am somewhat prone to doing. They were well salted, and that is a good thing. I grabbed some salt on my way out, but I did not use it. So, back to being very hot. They were tasty, large cut fries with the skins on. Now, I am not a huge fan of skin on fries, but I don’t mind it, except for the occasional fry cut from the edge of the potato.
I also judge fries on how well they travel. Almost all fries are good when they are hot and fresh, but some remain tasty for a few minutes. McDonald’s fries are among the best, but they do not travel well. 5 minutes later, they are bland, soggy, strings of potatoe. On the other hand, Wendy’s fries are not quite as good when fresh, but they travel well. 5 minutes later they are still pretty good.
Five Guys fall somewhere in between. Well, when fresh. The fries were good, but again, like the burger, not spectacular. Unfortunately, they did not travel well. 5 minutes later they were greasy, soggy, and barely recognizable as edible potatoes. I won’t be ordering the large fries again. A small cup will be more than enough.
My conclusion? Good, but not spectacular. I will go back, but not all that often, because they don’t have a drive thru…at least not on Guadalupe.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
What I did at work today...
a photo essay.
So, we are deploying new computers at work...lots of new computers.
Yes, that is them all in their pretty boxes. Please, no comments about them being from HP, that wasn't my decision. I am just the lowly peon who deploys them...well, one of the peons.
As you might imagine, we aren't going to let those poor unsuspecting users open up the Christmas boxes and gaze at all the goodness inside, no, we are going to keep that fun for ourselves. I got to unbox a few earlier in the week, but someone else is handling most of that. So, then they look like this.
Obviously, there is more in the boxes than this. There's foam.........but that's not my department, so this is the next stage in what I did today. Now, the real work begins.
This is the Assembly line...well, not exactly, but this is the staging area. Four at a time...you'll see why later. Next, they need to become part of the Inventory, and that means tagging. Yes, I've blurred out all the juicy bits. This is the form that brings them onto the Inventory, and the little white tags are the White Tags of the document title. Neat how that works, huh?
In case you cannot guess, there isn't an ounce of originality or creativity in the entire building, but oh well.
Next, the tags go on to the systems and numbers get written down.
After the number writing, other numbers get added to a spreadsheet, so that someone somewhere will know that each HP tracking number also has another tracking number.
Now all the number and tag stuff is done and I can get back to the computers. I can barely contain my excitement. The covers are removed, and then the hard drives are removed.
Now, we have a special software build where I work, we call it Bro 2.1. Don't ask me why, I didn't get a say in the naming. If I did, the build would be called Camaro, but oh well. So, to get the software we want onto the drives, we use a Kanguru. Yes, that is spelled correctly, check the picture. Now, this copies one drive onto four drives. See, I told you I would explain it.
Two source drives because we have two images. There will be a third later, but that is a story for another day.
Now, the duplication takes 2-4 minutes, then I put the drives back in the systems and the sides back on...sorry, no pictures. You can scroll back up if you really want to, but it's not that exciting.
Then, I carry them over to the pallets where they await their deployment next week.
The stack on the left is ones that I did....well, most of them....yesterday, and the stack on the right is the ones that I did today. There are 39 in that stack, and I did 36 of them.
So, now you have a glimpse into the utterly fascinating world of the IT professional.
Sorry, no autographs.
So, we are deploying new computers at work...lots of new computers.
Yes, that is them all in their pretty boxes. Please, no comments about them being from HP, that wasn't my decision. I am just the lowly peon who deploys them...well, one of the peons.
As you might imagine, we aren't going to let those poor unsuspecting users open up the Christmas boxes and gaze at all the goodness inside, no, we are going to keep that fun for ourselves. I got to unbox a few earlier in the week, but someone else is handling most of that. So, then they look like this.
Obviously, there is more in the boxes than this. There's foam.........but that's not my department, so this is the next stage in what I did today. Now, the real work begins.
This is the Assembly line...well, not exactly, but this is the staging area. Four at a time...you'll see why later. Next, they need to become part of the Inventory, and that means tagging. Yes, I've blurred out all the juicy bits. This is the form that brings them onto the Inventory, and the little white tags are the White Tags of the document title. Neat how that works, huh?
In case you cannot guess, there isn't an ounce of originality or creativity in the entire building, but oh well.
Next, the tags go on to the systems and numbers get written down.
After the number writing, other numbers get added to a spreadsheet, so that someone somewhere will know that each HP tracking number also has another tracking number.
Now all the number and tag stuff is done and I can get back to the computers. I can barely contain my excitement. The covers are removed, and then the hard drives are removed.
Now, we have a special software build where I work, we call it Bro 2.1. Don't ask me why, I didn't get a say in the naming. If I did, the build would be called Camaro, but oh well. So, to get the software we want onto the drives, we use a Kanguru. Yes, that is spelled correctly, check the picture. Now, this copies one drive onto four drives. See, I told you I would explain it.
Two source drives because we have two images. There will be a third later, but that is a story for another day.
Now, the duplication takes 2-4 minutes, then I put the drives back in the systems and the sides back on...sorry, no pictures. You can scroll back up if you really want to, but it's not that exciting.
Then, I carry them over to the pallets where they await their deployment next week.
The stack on the left is ones that I did....well, most of them....yesterday, and the stack on the right is the ones that I did today. There are 39 in that stack, and I did 36 of them.
So, now you have a glimpse into the utterly fascinating world of the IT professional.
Sorry, no autographs.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Password Foo
I seem to spend my life changing passwords. If it isn’t my own, then it is all those I deal with at work. I spend part of every day resetting passwords. The best part of it is the folks who ask why their password has been changed. That’s when I have to bite my tongue. People forget their passwords, but they can’t admit that they forgot. Actually, I think some of them honestly believe that they remember it correctly.
Passwords don’t change on their own.
Remember that the next time you think you remember a password correctly, but it doesn’t work. A computer is less likely to forget a password than a human. There is no secret army of password changers out there. The funniest part is that it is same people over and over again who claim that they remember their password it just doesn’t work.
No. You forgot it again.
But that is only part of my password annoyance. The problem is all the various password rules. We only use about a dozen different systems at work and quite a number of them have different rules for the passwords. Some want only 8 letters, no more, no less. Some want a capital letter, others a special character (# & - *), others want a number. It gets so confusing I want to scream.
It gets worse away from work. So many passwords on so many sites, and each one has what they think is the right way to make a secure password. Not only do they have the same rules that I mentioned above, but some don’t want you to use a special character. Six character minimums, eight character minimums…it’s enough to drive you nuts.
Someone needs to publish the Ultimate Password Rules, and since no one seems to want the job, here goes.
- Passwords must be at least 8 characters long. All you six character password people must get with the program.
- Passwords must have at least one of each of the following:
- Uppercase letter
- Lowercase letter
- Number
- Special character, ~!@#$%^&*()_+`-=[]\{}<>/
- Uppercase letter
- Passwords do not need to be changed more often than every 90 days.
- Past passwords should only be remembered to the number of 6. It’s hard enough on people to come up with 6, 10 is just plain cruelty.
- Passwords rules will not include idiotic rules about repeat characters, except for 3 repeated characters in a row, or more than two sets of repeated characters in one password.
- Don’t use the same password everywhere. It is stupid, and it can lead to someone being able to access virtually every account that you have.
- It’s okay to sync all your passwords, if they all expire, or if you change them when one of them expires. Even if your passwords are weak, they get stronger when they change regularly.
- Don’t add a 1 to change a password. I’ve been guilty of this one too, but it is pretty stupid.
- Do change a letter to a number to change passwords. Tower can become T0wer or even 70w3r. If that doesn’t make sense, then ask your kids or grandkids, they can explain it.
- Don’t make them easy to remember. That generally makes them easy to guess.
- If you write them down, don’t leave them on your desk. If you must write them down, then put them into a small notebook, and carry it with you, and don’t brag about where you keep it.
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