(SF) Pretty good Pan-Asian

Review of: Citrus Club

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 3

Read review on Judy’s Book.

I went to Citrus Club with some friends this weekend on a trip down to SF. It’s at the park end of the Haight, not more than a block or so away from the McDonalds.

The wait was a bit long, and the tables were pretty close together. Not the best place for a claustrophobic to eat.

I had the Peanut Noodles, which while good, were still a bit plain and bland compared to peanut sauce dishes I’ve had elsewhere. Not too spectacular.

What was spectacular however were the edemame tossed in a garlic soy sauce mix. These were so amazingly good, I’d consider coming here for a double or triple takeout order of just them.

UnWired Buyer is a Bad Way to Snipe eBay Auctions…

Review of: UnWired Buyer

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 1

Read review on Judy’s Book.

This is called sniping. There are several web sites where you can do the exact same thing without the need to interact at auction end. UnWired requires you to respond to a phone call to win your auction; what if the auction you like ends at 3AM your time. Do you want a phone call THAT badly…?

Also, the sniping web sites let you set up bidding groups, where you can place multiple auctions in one bid group, and as soon as you win one, it stops bidding. That way you’re not limited to one or two specific auctions like you are with UnWired.

The sniping sites may charge per auction won, but the features they offer above and beyond UnWired Buyer are worth the cost.

All in all, I’d say UnWired Buyer might be worth the $20 Paypal bonus, but it’s feature dry and not worth using once they’ve given you your cash.

See the Wikipedia definition for sniping ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_Sniping ) for a list to over a dozen sniping sites.

(SF) Slugs Beware! Uphill Both Ways is Coming For You…

Review of: Dark Room Theater

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 4

Read review on Judy’s Book.

The Dark Room Theater is very quaint. Smallish, but it makes for a great intimate experience. It’s close to the BART, and there are a ton of palces to go before and/or after for food and drinks.

We saw Uphill Both Ways’ newest show, “Fastest Slug in the West.” It’s is an incredible, edge of your seat laugh fest. The skits flow beautifully and the comedy is never-ending.

Colin has great expressions and Dave has amazing breadth. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was looking at part of the next “Who’s line is it” crew…

Go to their site, or better yet, go to the the Dark Room Theatre at 2263 Mission St (@19th) every Friday at 10PM until Aug 4th. ( http://www.uphillbothways.com/ )

Just don’t take their picture, you won’t want to see what happens to them if you try…

(SF) Stern Grove Concert Series

Review of: Stern Grove Festival Association

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 5

Read review on Judy’s Book.

What an amazing place and an amazing idea. Thank you so much for having this. The setting is so idyllic and tranquil.

You walk in under the banner and down a long slope with beautiful trees and undergrowth surrounding you. If it weren’t paved, we’d have thought we were walking through a forest.

If you are disabled or handicapped, don’t let the slope turn you away. Their is a shuttle before and after to shuttle folks up and down the slope. How thoughtful is that!

Once you reach the interior of the park, you’ll see the recent renovations were spectacular. The stage disappears into the backdrop, the lawn is meticulous, their is ample sitting room, and the acoustics are pretty darned decent as well.

We took the M down and the K back. Those street car transits are perfect if you have a stroller, as you can just walk right on with them. There are other transit options, but these work best for a family.

Bring a blanket and layer your clothes like anywhere else in SF. The blanket stakes your space. As long as one person is always there, you’ll be fine. I missed the other review until it was too late, but follow what it says and call in at 9AM the Monday before to get reservations for the picnic tables up front.

There are handicap accessible restrooms in the bottom portion of the park. There are also food stands if you want to travel light.

This is THE way to see music in a city. You HAVE to come and experience this.

Mashup Camp 2

Originally uploaded by Chris Radcliff.

Wooden nickel

Originally uploaded by shaneahern.

(SF) Puccini & Pinetti - Mediocre at best.

Review of: Puccini & Pinetti

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 2

Read review on Judy’s Book.

The only thing this place really has going for it is a modicum of kid friendliness. And by that I mean the waitress asked us w/o any prompting if our toddler wanted her food first (that got them an extra star.) That’s about where the good times ended.

Parking in this area of the city is horrible; as a touted kid friendly place, do they expect families to take MUNI in to visit?

The pasta I had was incredibly gamy and undercooked. The beer was slightly soapy tasting - bad carbonation levels. The booth we were placed was right behind the hostess station. They placed the menus on top of the backboard that was my seat back. I got popped in the back of the head by menus several times.

I was very much underwhelmed.

LaLa is More Than Just a Tune

Review of: LaLa.com

By: Myk OLeary

Rating: 5

Read review on Judy’s Book.

I’ve got a lot of music that I don’t listen to anymore due to changing interests. I’ve got a lot of music I want back that got stolen from our car 5 years ago after our honeymoon.

How can I do this legally w/o paying buckets of money? You’d be hard pressed to find a good answer. I’ve got one for you (and no, it is not allofmp3.com, as their distribution deals do not cover distribution to the USA…)

LaLa.com ( http://www.lala.com ) You pay just $1 and $0.49 S/H for every CD you receive. You pay nothing for CDs you send. Every month, they tally the charges and hit your credit card. It’s CD trading at its easiest. I couldn’t possibly get a CD cheaper.

I have had one CD that took 3+ weeks to arrive, and one that still hasn’t; but LaLa lets you mark CDs as not arrived after two weeks and they jump you to the top of the hopper for a replacement. So far, I’ve got 32 trades under my belt - split pretty evenly between sent and received. All my receipts have come in great condition, most with cover art.

If you don’t have cover art, don’t worry, you can still join and trade (thank goodness, since I threw away all my jewel cases years ago…)

I love the ability to just throw a bunch of CD wants into a list and have them trickle in a la Netflix for just a small sum and the effort of sending some of mine out as well.

The only down side is it takes a while to enter a CD collection, but they have a fairly snazzy UI to minimize this effort as much as possible.

There is an iTunes visualization plugin that has some nice circular navigation to help you add CDs to your want/have lists with great ease. They’ll even throw your recently listened list to a sidebar on your profile page.

Well worth the try. You can join w/o an invite, but if you’re a friend and want to try it out, let me know and I can send an invite anyway. This will connect us automatically over there, and if you become active enough to trade, I’ll get a snazzy t-shirt as a thank you (they have 7 total so you can press your friends to join too…

BTW - even w/o the t-shirt catch, I’d still be writing this review, I love them that much…