The Park Cafe - Salt Lake City

Kelli just groaned about twenty minutes ago, rolled over in bed and dragged her laptop on to her chest. After scanning her email, she looked at me standing in the hall and said, "Where are we going for breakfast?"


"You pick," I said. She offered up Citris Grill or The Park Cafe. I picked the Park Cafe because Saturdays, or maybe weekends, are the only time they have my favorite, huevos rancheros.


And because I don't have to worry if the meal will be perfect. It almost always is at Citris Grill, it ALWAYS is at The Park Cafe. They are always busy but they seem to be able to accommodate me either immediately or after a not unpleasant wait.


The Park Cafe gets you in, gets you drinks, gets your food ordered and gets your food, at the perfect temperature be it blistering hot or icy cold, to your table in under ten minutes. Often closer to five. And it's perfectly cooked, nothing is forgotten, everything needing refills is refilled.


Yet even with this, I never feel rushed before I should feel rushed. I'm always allowed plenty of time to eat and drink and digest slightly. Only if you want to try for the five coffee refill, full newspaper morning do they start to give you a little pressure (I lost track of what I was doing until I noticed the polite but firm looks from the employees that it was time to toddle on).


So I don't normally offer up restaurant reviews before I actually go eat there, but I can state that you will not be unhappy if you eat breakfast at The Park Cafe. I have never had lunch there but would guess that it, too, was terrific. The breakfast, however, has never let me or anyone I've dined with or anyone around me who might have complained loud enough to hear which would be most anyone complaining in those smallish confines.


The only issue I can think of that needles me every time I go is parking. The official spots out front require me to tuck the Global Warmer in on arrival and then back it in to traffic on departure. That leaves the side streets east and west of the restaurants. There are usually spots along there and the neighbors seem to be neighborly about this intrusion as I've never gotten a ticket nor a dirty look nor seen those all to common, "Attention Customers, you CANNOT PARK IN the following areas" signs that bark at us from front doors and cash registers. As long as the neighbors don't mind, it's almost like parking in front of your own house and then going to the best breakfast place in town right next door.

SURROGATES (2009)

I liked it. I liked it a lot. But make no mistake, this isn't taking home best picture Oscar. It's a good matinee or Buck Palace option. Not 'date night.'


Surrogates was completely campy and fun, this is no Terminator.


It was almost a parody of this type of robots take over the world story line.


But well done and a lesson or two for us all in the movie - but hidden in there like little gems to be found or find you, not as in your face like Wall-E.

How long is that food REALLY good?

From the November 2008 edition of Consumer Reports comes this:

"Many date codes indicated when an item is apt to be fresh and flavorful rather than unfir for consumptioin. For information on how long products stay good enough to eat, go to www.fsis.usda.gov and enter the search term 'food product dating.'"

How to open MS OFFICE 2007 documents in an ealier version

If you use a version of Microsoft Office earlier than 2007 and you are having trouble opening 2007 documents you receive from others, the fix is simple. Simply visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en and download the file to your downloads folder (or your my documents folder). Once downloaded, run the file to complete the install process.


You will then be able to open the 2007's "X" format files.


If that link above does not take you to the page on microsoft.com for the 

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

then you should go to Google.com and "google" the above to get the correct link.

The best friend an IT guy could ever have: the maker of routerpasswords.com

Let me just say it loud and in public: this site has saved me HOURS of hassle. As a journeyman IT guy, I run in to dozens of routers a year where the person can't remember the password and needs it reset to the default or it is already the default and we don't know what it is.

It's always something silly like [none], admin for the username, password. Or root, [none]. Or [none], admin. Or [none], [none] - although that one is pretyt easy to figure out. Why, if they aren't going to be much more secret than "username" and "password" as the username and password, don't all router manufacturers agree on one set of rules - like it's "admin" and "password" as the default, end user can change either one or both. Boom! Easier on everyone, no?

But enough of that. Here's the issue: I never know, unless I've reset it myself, whether the default username and password is my goal or if it's something personal the client set that I would almost never be able to guess.

So in comes www.routerpasswords.com to save the day. I simply look up the router in question, try the default combo and if that fails, reset to default combo and off I go (hold the reset in for 15 seconds and sometimes pulling and replugging power almost always puts you back in default world).

So here's to you, the maker or makers of www.routerpasswords.com, that is one great timesaver of a site.

LAPOTP SCREENS: how to turn external monitors or projectors on or off

If you have a laptop and want to use an external monitor, here are some tips:

First, make sure you have the external unit turned on and plugged in when you start the computer. Older computers needed to "see" the monitor at startup or it was never going to work. This is rare now but if you're reading this, you're having troubles, right? So do this to humor me.

Once the laptop is started, and you don't see anything on the external monitor or projector, it is likely the Fn/external monitor setting that needs changing. Look for *LCD/CRT* (older laptops as we don't really use CRTs anymore) or *LCD/EXT* or *LCD/graphic that looks like a monitor* or *graphic that looks like an light monitor/graphic that looks like a dark monitor* up on the function keys (F1 - F12). Probably printed in blue on the F7 or F8 keys.

This is the key you need to cycle from laptop LCD only (normal use) to external monitor/projector only (for laptops with weak video cards that can't handle the external and internal at the same time) or both (the best choice if laptop can handle it; may require resolution change on laptop to match external monitor like when the projector can only handle 800x600 and your laptop is 1600x1200, for instnace).

To cycle through, press and hold the Fn key (lower left of your keyboard, probably in blue). Then tap the F7 ot F8 key or whichever one has the screen control on it. Wait. See what happens. It takes several seconds for the video card to change modes. Do you see what you want? If not, keep the Fn key pressed and tap the function key again. Now do you have what you want? Good! Off you go.

Pizzeria 712

Several months ago, my Designated Dining Companion and I went to The Tree Room at Sundance, her former favorite restaurant.

It was mostly bad. 

I happened to mention this to a friend who told me it was because the executive chef had quit and they hadn't gotten a new one yet so The Tree Room was floundering. My source then told me that the chef had gone to Orem and opened Pizzeria 712 and it was great.

It took a while to get there, since I don't get down to those parts often. However, as luck would have it, I was asked to perform a wedding ceremony in Pleasant Grove on Sunday the 2nd of August. So on Saturday the 1st of August, Kelli and I met the happy couple for lunch to finalize the details. We attempted to go to Bombay House but as luck would have it, it was closed and I remembered Pizzeria 712 and off we went. 

Pizzeria 712 was not only open for lunch on this Saturday, it was fantastic. I cannot say enough good about this place.

Kelli and I split a ham sandwich which was one of the best we've ever eaten as well as an all meat pizza which would normally be my last choice but it tempted us and was stunningly good. The happy couple also had a pizza that they, too, loved (they had been a few times before and told us the menu changes frequently and is always terrific).

P712 also serves not only Coke, fountain-style, but our favorite bottles of Coke from Mexico which contain real sugar rather than the deadly and less tasty high fructose corn syrup of US made Coke. If you have too many, I recommend the men' lavatory. It was another in growing list of restaurants that take great pride in their water closets. 

And the cost? Also nice - a mere $38 and change for four of us to leave stuffed.

Orange Bang: like a Creamsicle in a cup

I have always loved Orange Bang.

Unfortunately it usually comes in one of those bubbler dispensers - you know, where you can see it all churning around in the plexiglass tub. I say "unfortunately" as whenever I would have a delicious cup out of one of those machines, it would break my fluid separator (for those who don't know, this is the organ in the body that sends the fluid to the bladder and the solids down the intestines - and when it breaks, you get the diarrhea).

I have long suspected that it was not the Orange Bang itself but those sketchy bubblers. It looks like a germ trap to me and how often do they really get cleaned? Like, never? Mold city, baby.

About ten years ago I pretty much gave up drinking Orange Bang because of my reluctance to stay new a lavatory for seventy minutes following my final sip of the sumptuous beverage. On rare occasions I would have it when there is a safer dispenser but it seems to come out room
temperature and requires a ton of ice so I also like to have a big cup and free refills making my happy OB experiences few and far between.

BUT I'M BACK!

Every day for the last... well, three (and counting) I have had a giant cup of it and my fluid separator remains intact!

Kelli, also a fan, and I discovered the 7-11 on 3300 S and 2300 E has Orange Bang as a choice in the big Coke/Pepsi/drink dispenser. It's taken me seven years to notice (or it's new, perhaps) as there are two Sevs closer to us than the 2300 E one but it's still close enough for the daily drink stop.

Just be sure to get the Double Gulp and fill it to the top with ice. Then fill with the frothy, warm liquid and wait a few minutes. YUM!

Still on the fence about Summerween?

It's going to have the largest inside portion in all the years I've been going. OK, it's really more of a number than "all" - 4 years I think. Anyway, this year there is a HUGE inside section (in case the noise annoys the neighbors of that thunderstorm shows). Also a ton of open garage bays where they used to store the lumber. So don't worry about getting wet, DO worry about missing out. Get on over to www.summerween.com and call and email away until you get someone to get you a ticket. I have two I can sell up until noon ($50), then I'm headed to Park City. If you're in SLC and you need a ticket, email me at davidcharlesbaker@gmail.com - here's a little video to show you the scale of the thing. Also see pictures of setup, watermelons and more at http://baker.phanfare.com

Frogbat gets shot to hell

Ahhh... nice. Much fancier than in high school when DAP, JSB and I would just shoot propane tanks wrapped in flaming rags (it doesn't explode, you know, it just makes a fire ball - perfectly safe).

Is there a health reason not to use hot water from the tap to speed boiling?

I have a vague memory of dad telling me to always use cold water and not hot water to fill the pot for making spaghetti or boiling those lobsters (hey, I was young and grew up in Vermont, I didn't know they were tossed in alive - I don't eat them any more!) or for whatever it was we needed a big pot of boiling water. Something about it being fresher, I think. Or it could have been his aversion to running the tap and wasting water to get to the hot.

And I seem to remember seeing on various labels over the years something like, "start with fresh, cold water, do not use hot" to make whatever it is. Although I can't quite recall on what exactly.

And I don't know why hot water isn't fresh if you use a modern hot water heater and use a lot of hot water. We run it out at least every other day. That makes it pretty fresh.

My question is, is there any health reason not to use hot water? Here at Chez Baker we use a ton of hot water. And the heater is set to almost the highest temperature (yes, I know it wears out the water heater faster and wastes gas if you don't need the super hot; we need it!). And the water heater is about 5 years old so it shouldn't have a lot of poisons in it, we hope.

When I want spaghetti, as I do for lunch today (at 2:27 PM), I want it right now! I don't want to wait - so I like to fill the pot with hot water or, at least set it to hot and run the cold out the lines until I get to the hot. No wasted water and I get it all boiling in about a 1/4 the time of cold.

I mean, if it isn't bad for you health-wise it almost seems like it would save money since the hot water heater is on cheaper gas and the stove runs on electricity. Save ten minutes of electricity for a little bit of gas and get your noodles in faster, right?

OUTLOOK: how to change security settings to allow attachments

Are you having trouble opening attachments in Outlook? Here's what to do:

Click TOOLS, MACRO, SECURITY.

Then set the level to MEDIUM.

LOW is too risky, do not do it unless you are really, REALLY foolish. MEDIUM is the sweet spot. 

To see screen captures of this process, see http://baker.phanfare.com/4190141_4564228

And use you head - be careful what you open. If you aren't sleeping with your insurance agent and she sends you a document called "I LOVE YOU" don't open it. It's almost surely a virus. If you're trying to open a "JPG" but it won't show you any picture, it could be a virus (or you're still using AOL in which case, stop reading - even these lessons are too advanced for you).

VERY IMPORTANT: You can open AND VIEW ONLY or FORWARD and UNCHANGED attachment.

BUT, and this is VERY, VERY, VERY IMPORTANT: If you are going to print or change the attachment, SAVE IT TO YOUR HARD DRIVE FIRST! This allows your antivirus (you have that and it's up-to-date, right?) to scan it and it keeps your system from crashing. Printing without saving is a possible crash, editing the document without saving it first is a nearly guaranteed crash.

Why? Well it sort of makes sense if you realize that an attachment is sort of out there in space when you first get it. It was on another person's hard drive and it was sent to you as an attachment. But until you save it to your hard drive, it's just hanging in the air as a temporary file (you know, those "temp" files you're always hearing about). If you try to print it, Windows has to hold the file in the air as a temp file and try to send it to the printer at the same time. If you also change it, it's just too much. It can't keep track of the file and your changes and everything just crashes.

Imagine if I tossed you three books and said to juggled two with one hand and run a highlighter over the titles of each chapter and then photocopy the 3rd book without dropping the other two. Hard, right? Same with the computer if you try to change an attachment and then print it without saving it.

But if I said you could put down two for later and use both hands and a table to do the work on the 3rd one, easy, right? That's what you get when you save to the hard drive first. The computer gets to use both hands and a table to make changes and then print.

HAVE A QUESTION ON ANYTHING WINDOWS or WINDOWS RELATED? Hardware and software questions of all sorts answered with anger and arrogance but also from incredible experience and expertise as a paid consultant since 1994 and starting out on the PDP9 at Dartmouth College circa 1977 (yup, the paper tape days - but I was 12 so it was just to play space war).

Fire Dance Element 11 09'

Here's the video Silky made of www.element11.org's main fire show. It's on the way to Burningman HQ for consideration for the Utah Fire Conclave to be accepted to perform inside The Great Circle before The Man burns on 5 September 2009. Check back in a few weeks to see if the group was accepted. If they were, look for Kelli spinning a fire hoop and me holding a wet towel somewhere in The Circle on the big night. Wooo wooo!

PHANFARE.COM: winning the image storage war

Phanfare seems to be winning the battle. http://picasaweb.google.com/davidcharlesbaker is a good site and they give you a fair amount free, 1 GB I think, but charge a ton for extra space. Others like Flickr and Shutter someting and sites like Facebook have terrible upload processes and can be restrictive.

Phanfare charges $50/year for unlimited storage of images and videos. While their presentation options are terrible, they seem to be working on that (recently allowed name.phanfare.com, for instance - see http://baker.phanfare.com). And so far the "umlimited" seems to be umlimited.

Phanfare also has really stepped up with plug ins for programs and import features from other sites. They appear to be doing all the right things to dominate this market in terms of heavy weight programming muscle but don't appear to have hired anyone to handle the useability and look and feel side. URLs are confusing and long and don't function in a friendly way. But hopefully that will be fixed.

Things that stink:
Free version is apaltry 250 MBs.
Settings are all over the place and you need to go to all sorts of pages to change settings - best to use the downloadable utility to manage site, do not try to do it online,
Sharing individual images or vidoes is nearly impossible.
Sharing of galleries is cumbersome and it's a long, confusing link rather than a nice, sensible link like on Picasa.
Lots of little bugs here and their and bad programming (for instance, you get an email that there are new comments on your site but the email doesn't include the comments, you must log in to your site to see them).

Your next counter top

My mother is redoing the kitchen on her new house (and every other room it seems) and she is using Ice Stone for the counters. I'd never heard of it - but then I've never remodeled a kitchen. Looks cool and it's recycled stuff so if you need a counter top, get this: http://www.icestone.biz/

STAR TREK (2009)

I finally saw this on Monday on the big Imax screen and it was GREAT. It is rip-roaring fun from start to finish with very few bogus moments. There are a couple "oh, come on" scenes like the Augustus Gloop moment when Scotty is going through some pipes where he surely would have been severly injured and when he's ejected it woudl have flooded the place. And the Jurassic Park meets Star Wars scene where Jimmy is being chased on an ice planet was lame leading to the most confusing part with the whole time travel nonsense. 

But with only a few clunkers, the movie is terrific. Lots of little references to the original show but all fresh, new and fun. Those who are all complaining about it not being "true" to the orginal series are crazy. In fact, one of the other bad parts is the shocking appearance of "old Spock" and his bizarre time travel stuff. I'm not sure how this could have been done better to tell the same story but how they did it was bad. I'm still not entirely clear what happened but I was completely entertained and can't wait for the next installment. I think they should keep the new cast and never, NEVER let any of the original members near the set. And keep it "real" - no more five minute fights with monsters that couldn't possibly have been survived leading to creepy, craggy "old Spocks" in ice caves on random planets. That stuff is B O G U S. Make it "believable" in Star Trek terms.

DOCX support in earlier versions of Microsoft Office

To be able to read DOCX (Office 2007) in earlier versions of Office, you need to download and run FileFormatConverters.exe from this MS page: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en Or, if that fails, go to Google and search for "docx plugin" and go to the link marked, in part, "Download details: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word..." and then download and run the file.