Dinner: The last time I ate at an Applebee's was in August of 2007. I've never really enjoyed their food, but sometimes the choices for dinner are so slim that it can't be helped. Working late, I lost track of time and by the time we left the house, it was nearly 10pm. Not much was open and Applebee's was one the few places still serving food (they open until 2am on weekdays). After 9pm, they have half off most appetizers, so we got a few appetizers for dinner.

Buffalo Chicken Wings. dry

Wonton Tacos. a bit too sweet and too salty

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What I Ate: May 10, 2010 (Applebee's)

I realized that I do a lot of Wikipedia searches each week looking up random stuff. I thought it would be interesting to document some of them each week.

May 4, 2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_tax_in_the_United_States - If you gift too much money in a year (each year is different depending on the current law), the excess comes out of a gift tax exemption (after 2011, unless laws change, has a lifetime maximum of $1 million) which in turn is subtracted from the estate tax exemption; During 2010, the estate tax in the US has been repealed but will be reinstated in 2011 automatically if no action from Congress is taken

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Wikipedia - Estate Tax, AK-56, Spartacus, Formula One, Six Flags, Sea Pineapple, 4581 Asclepius, Craig Parker

Dinner: I prepared a three course dinner tonight. I started with a root vegetable salad - carrots and two kinds of beets cooked sous vide at 84°C (183¯F) with arugula. I prepared a dressing of mayonnaise, sesame oil, and lime juice to go with the salad.

For the second course, I prepared fettuccine with sweet peas and morels in a butter, garlic, and shallot sauce.

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What I Ate: May 9, 2010

Lunch: I had to go to Altex to get a new hard drive for one of my computers (stopped spinning sometime during the night), but by the time we got to Ryu of Japan for lunch, they had closed (we arrived at 3:10pm and they close up for the afternoon at 3pm). I drove over to Asia Cafe where we ordered a bunch of food and found it mostly disappointing.

Szechuan Hot & Spicy Rice Jelly - the rice jelly was not as tasty as we've had in the past. The spicy sauce wasn't really - it felt kind of watered down. We left most of this dish.

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What I Ate: May 8, 2010 (Asia Cafe)

Lunch: Leftover Jambalaya from BJ's

Dinner: Seafood Alfredo from Olive Garden. They generally underseason (to my taste) so I have them shave a bunch of romano cheese on, then ask for their pepper grinder and grind a bunch of fresh ground peppercorns over it, and top with a little more table salt. After mixing it up, it's usually pretty good. Tonight was no exception.

Dinner: While walking the dog, we ended up talking to several neighbors for a while, so we didn't get to go out to grab food until after 10pm. I had planned on going to Red Robin since I thought they were open until 11pm, but I was wrong (they close at 10pm except on Fridays and Saturdays when they open to 11pm). We went next door to BJ's Brewhouse since their kitchen was still open (until 11pm).

We started with a Fresh Basil with Italian Sausage Flatbread Appetizer Pizza which we liked a lot for it's crispiness and flavorful toppings.

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What I Ate: May 6, 2010 (BJ's Brewhouse)

Dinner: Tina and I met up with a few of the Fearless Critic Austin council members for a dinner at Austin BBGo next to the Han Yang Korean Market (6808 North Lamar Boulevard, Austin, TX‎). This Korean restaurant is small and serves bibimbap buffet at lunch (and possibly dinner). We squeezed into a side room where they had a long table and started ordering various dishes to try out. We tried to order the Sea Squirt, but the waitress said it wasn't for us and only Korean people like it… all the more reason to try it! So, we said, that's exactly what we wanted. Later she came back and told us they were out of Sea Squirt, so we didn't get to try it. We did get to try everything else we ordered and it was all pretty good.

Seafood and Green Onion Pa Jun - crispy on the outside and just a little gooey on the inside. Very good.

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What I Ate: May 5, 2010 (Austin BBGo)

Recently, I installed a tablet device (in my case, it was to test the Hantech Tablo but I've heard of this happening when installing Wacom tablets) and after that, whenever I press a Ctrl, Alt, Shift, or Win key on my Windows Vista machine, a little caption pops up in the middle of my screen with whatever modifier key I was holding down.

It's not really a problem except that it's distracting and not real useful when not using the pen device. After removing the device, it continued to occur and was starting to get on my nerves. Unfortunately, it's not obvious how to remove this "feature" on Windows Vista. To fix it, go to the Pen and Input Devices control panel. You can reach it by clicking on the Start button and typing "Pen and" into the search box and select "Pen and Input Devices" OR load it from the Control Panel (search for "Pen and" in the control panel). Once it's loaded, go to the Pointer Options tab (should be the second tab).

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Ctrl, Alt, Shift, and Win key pops up a message or caption when pressed on Windows Vista

Lunch: I had leftover blackened catfish with rice pilaf, grilled broccoli, and mashed potatoes.

Dinner: We watched a performance of Stomp at The Paramount in downtown Austin and afterward tried to go to the Me So Hungry Cuban/Vietnamese Food Truck, but they weren't at their 5th street location. We drove over to their East 6th street location and they were closed. So, we headed back on 6th street to Casino El Camino (517 East 6th Street, Austin, TX‎ - (512) 469-9330‎) to try their burgers.

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What I Ate: May 4, 2010 (Casino El Camino Bar & Grill)

Hey, everyone out there who lives in Austin or plans on visiting or has friends and family out here - the latest edition of The Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide has just been released and is available at bookstores as well as online at Amazon.com. I spent the last year with the 2nd edition in my car and used it extensively while Tina and I tried out new restaurants. Our experience with the 2nd edition is that the Fearless Critic doesn't pull any punches. If the place is a local favorite but the food is mediocre, the review says so. Everything is rated on an absolute scale unaltered by nostalgia or "just wanting to be nice" (unfortunately, a problem that exists with the restaurant reviews I find in the newspapers here in Austin - how can Get Sum Dim Sum be great dimsum???). Occasionally, our opinions will differ from those of the Fearless Critic, but those slight deviations come down to personal taste. We're always in the same ballpark, so I thought 2nd edition was a great reference to have.

This new edition covers 75 additional restaurants and updates the reviews of pretty much all the restaurants previously included (unfortunately, some restaurants got worse over time) for a total of over 500 restaurants. I'm proud to say that Tina and I contributed somewhat to this edition by being one of the "local critics" that provided reviews and input into which restaurants were good (personal favorites this last year were Ryu of Japan and Zoot) and which were bad (worst experience was Romeo's - a very popular and supposedly "romantic" restaurant that was just the worst food we've had in Austin and more cheesy than romantic. If you read my review and then the 3rd edition Fearless Critic review, you'll see where my input went).

If you want to have a great restaurant guide that tells you the plain truth about Austin restaurants, then $11 (on Amazon; $16 at the bookstore unless it's on sale) is a small price to pay to make your restaurant dining choices a little better. Click here for the 3rd Edition Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide on Amazon.com.