Headed to see Charles Prince of Oracle and talk about the opportunities in Cloud computing, and found this great coffee shop. I am crazy about coffee and love perfect foam. This place is excellent. Parking is terrible; Atlanta downtown is pretty dodgy with bums and such – but it is worth it.
Best part – everyone is brainstorming and creating – great vibe for thinking through exciting ideas!
If you are in the area check it out.
Octane Coffee Bar & Lounge
www.octanecoffee.com
1009 Marietta St NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
(404) 815-9886
Get directions
UPDATE: As all my readers can see… the company that manages the Capital Grille has stepped up and replied to my disappointing experience. I called the gentlemen back and we had a great conversation. I detailed all the problems and he was very open to hearing the criticism and making it right. It says a lot about an organization that 1. Keeps an eye out for such slips in service, and 2. Taking the time to salvage a customer. I intend to return in a month or so to try it again – without clients, and will post my new experience.
As everyone who reads my writings knows, I travel a lot. I eat out about 80% of my meal with clients and so have a good sense of what is terrific and not. To give context last week I had the fortune to eat at Chops here in Atlanta, and it was great. Service was spot on – lots of attention without feeling the table conversations being interrupted. We were in a fairly busy part of the restaurant, but NEVER were bumped or disturbed. In addition, the meal was perfect – timing; meat temperatures; and the bill was correct.
Needless to say Capital did not meet these tests. The service was spotty… napkins were taken away appropriately to match the type of pants being worn by the guests, but didn’t show up for 20 minutes! We had to flag down a waiter to get our waiter so we could order wine and the meal. When the food finally started showing up the problems continued. The food was not presented to all guests at once, but rather several minutes passed “because I don’t have enough hands” – never heard that before. The steaks were not all the correct temperature, and when the bill finally came they had added someone elses’ bar tabs – almost $60 bonus.
Bottom line: It will be a long time before I; my clients; my company; my family; and friends go to The Capital Grille in Atlanta. Chops is a superior experience.
Happy eatting to all! (Why no post on Chops? Simple; this class of restaurant is supposed to be great – if they are not then it should be known to all)
I have bought and sold 5 cars over the last few years (for myself and friends / family), and have always posted it in the local newspaper. I have also used CraigsList. The end results are as follows:
Atlanta Journal Constitution (Atlanta Paper): Cost me approximately $50 per vehicle (5×50) or $250 and produced ZERO purchases. I received on average 3 calls per ad from the AJC posting (which is terrible).
CraigsList: Cost me NOTHING for all 5 postings and produced FIVE purchases. I received on average 12 calls / emails of qualified persons with nearly 4 test drives each.
Bottom line: I don’t know if the buyers have moved away from the Classified listings or the platform of Craigslist is that much better – whatever the reason, I will no longer waste my time with the newspaper classifieds.
Also – I have bought 3 other items off of CraigsList with no hassles for items that were not even listed on classifieds.
Caught the Braves game Friday night with the wife, and had awesome seats! Check out the camera angle to the homebase. Row 11 from the field!
Braves won over the Nationals, there was some fool who ran on the field, tackled a security guy, and was promptly handcuffed by a police officer (the security rent-guard was down for almost 10 minutes after the hit). There was also awesome fireworks afterwards. Definitely recommend staying if they have them again – comparable to most 4th of July events, but you are sitting back in your seats finishing up your peanuts.
Guy moderated / posted this discussion for the Churchill Club. Energetic and informative for all those interested in starting a venture. It is definitely the successful side of the risky venture world, but still inspiring.
Rarely has there been time to play with toys, but there are a few that I have my eyes on.
First off – I LOVE NYC. In this case I love REGAL CINEMAS. They have introduced a “Regal Guest Response System” where you may click a button and summon a company bouncer. Perfect for parents who don’t realize being a parent means taking care of the child – a rated R movie at 10pm does not qualify, or those annoying individuals who bring burritos into the establishment.
Second – Microsoft introduced something called Surface. Really cool technology, and I am glad it is in production. I do not buy their timeline on how it was developed, because I recall seeing demonstrations by non-Microsoft persons with this same tech. As I said, happy it is out and welcome the shift.
Google Developer’s Day just “completed” and announced Gears! Offline access to your wonderful online applications. It is an open source API, so this means ALL web applications can be made available offline with a bit of programming magic. Be aware this is still in beta, but probably pretty rock solid as other Google launched applications. (Gmail, Reader, etc…) Here is a nice review
Finally – I started this post off with toys, and none better than Blizzard’s long awaited STARCRAFT II. Looks like it is finally time to upgrade to some rocking hardware (vista won’t make me upgrade, but Blizzard gets my vote)!
So, I have been a videophile for a longtime and greatly desire to have my digital media made available to my television. I have tried connecting my PC and my Mac to the televisions, and despite the functional usage it is not elegant nor likely to last given the extreme manual effort (and the incredible overkill of using a $$$ multi-gigabyte and multi-processor machine) to do what a $50 dvd player from WaloMart.
Apple iTV is close to being the perfect solution except for two concerns – 720p is a bit weak in quality for my movie playing enjoyment, and what about my non-itunes media? The hard drive size is a bit small too – considering a single movie can be several gigs in size.
Crafty folks have gotten iTV to boot on a MacBook:
It seems that some brilliant folks have determined a way to upgrade the hard, and the ability to run divx files. So, is there any hope for upgrading the HD output to 1080? I will keep my eyes out, and this may be the straw that broke my self-control (2 out of 3 addressed – play any files, upgraded hard drive and only lacking on the HD output).
If anyone has any new upgrades or mods, please add them below. I will update this post as I find new information.
One thing that would be incredible and maybe really enhance the experience would be to place the appletv os on a mac mini. Greater drive size, more horsepower, better graphics card (?), better expandability… albeit more expensive.
Yesterday, Sunday, Jill and I completed our second half-marathon. The race was the ING Inaugural Georgia Marathon-Half-Marthon here in Atlanta GA. Overall they did a great job, except for the lack of structure at the start. The start was huge blob of runners (marathoners and half-marathoners and walkers merged into one huge block) that spanned over 5 city blocks. The problem was we were stuck in the back of the pack, and there were a huge number of walkers. Jill and I spent the first 3 miles weaving around this group, and finally around mile 4 hit a really quick pace.
Our time finished at 2 hours and 3 minutes which averages around 9:23. This was faster than our goal, but does not do justice to our race, because we were cruising at a great clip. Moving forward we will be switching to cycling with some running during the week.
The race is scheduled to start at 7am (we will send an update on Saturday if we hear different), and we will cross the finish line a wee bit before 9am (optimistically) – we’ve been training for a 9 minute mile.
For those that cannot make it to the race at 7am there is (geek heaven) an online tracking system that shows our progress throughout the course. Technical info: We will be wearing RFID tags and as we cross certain points in the race they will update their live race map. Here is the link
This weekend we decided Crown Molding in the first floor bathroom would really enhance its look and feel. It also made it consistent with the rest of the downstairs. So, armed with YouTube, a few home improvements sites, a magazine, a Ridgid mitre saw, air gun, an Angle Projector, and two dogs I got the molding cut and up on the wall with no major issues. Of course measuring and cutting are only half the battle, the real talent comes with chalking and painting to make two generally flush pieces of wood look like a single clean piece. Total project time was 5.5 hours.
Overall the only tips I would impart are:
Make test pieces!! These were by far the best validation of the angles needed for each corner
When you purchase the wood it will say the angle it is cut for (this will make sense after you read up on this process), and then simply set your mitre saw w/ bevel edge – done
Find and mark the studs on the wall and the joists – no fun making extra holes while balancing on a ladder with a 7 foot piece of wood ‘perfectly’ placed on the wall and thumbing around for the trigger on the nail gun.
Here are the sites I referenced that I thought were helpful in this process:
Site 1 – good tutorial site, small pics, decent text
Caught the Braves game Friday night with the wife, and had awesome seats! Check out the camera angle to the homebase. Row 11 from the field!
Yesterday, Sunday, Jill and I completed our second half-marathon. The race was the ING Inaugural Georgia Marathon-Half-Marthon here in Atlanta GA. Overall they did a great job, except for the lack of structure at the start. The start was huge blob of runners (marathoners and half-marathoners and walkers merged into one huge block) that spanned over 5 city blocks. The problem was we were stuck in the back of the pack, and there were a huge number of walkers. Jill and I spent the first 3 miles weaving around this group, and finally around mile 4 hit a really quick pace.