I miss stock classes in autox before this street class crap. I wanna run sticky tires on a otherwise stock vehicle. Why should I do all the work making the car better when I can just lean on race tires to get it done for me lol.
I miss stock classes in autox before this street class crap. I wanna run sticky tires on a otherwise stock vehicle. Why should I do all the work making the car better when I can just lean on race tires to get it done for me lol.
In reply to Duke :
I've had the soup at their sandwich shop. It's not bad which is why I paid a ridiculous amount of money for their prepackaged soup at the grocery store. There is no similarity between the two. I was a little disgusted by that. The sad part is the container of chicken noodle in the office fridge I'm planning to eat tomorrow. You can bet I will be better prepared with an assortment of seasonings and if necessary I'll heat it long enough for it to actually be cooked.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
In reply to Toyman! :
Never had the potato soup either place, but the grocery store version of the Panera mac n cheese is pretty much as good as the restaurant version. But still very expensive for what you get.
Appleseed said:Mandatory Saturdays until the end of the year.
But, but, think of all that money you'll make.
Motherberkeleyer, I can't spend any of it if I'm burnt out, numb, and unconscious.
At least you get paid extra for working "extra" hours. Here, management can overpromise whatever and we get to work nights and weekends for ... the sense of accomplishment I guess.
Duke said:In reply to Toyman! :
Never had the potato soup either place, but the grocery store version of the Panera mac n cheese is pretty much as good as the restaurant version. But still very expensive for what you get.
Seriously? I thought it was pretty disgusting. Had to load it up with parmesan.
Not trying to start something here. I really thought it was bad.
You're right though. The food is fine. I get fired up over it because I get it far more often than I'd like. My wife and her best friend love it, and Panera are very good about allergies. I just don't like overpaying for average food and the dining experience itself is not an enjoyable one in the restaurant for me.
mtn said:Duke said:In reply to Toyman! :
Never had the potato soup either place, but the grocery store version of the Panera mac n cheese is pretty much as good as the restaurant version. But still very expensive for what you get.
Seriously? I thought it was pretty disgusting. Had to load it up with parmesan.
Not trying to start something here. I really thought it was bad.
You're right though. The food is fine. I get fired up over it because I get it far more often than I'd like. My wife and her best friend love it, and Panera are very good about allergies. I just don't like overpaying for average food and the dining experience itself is not an enjoyable one in the restaurant for me.
I think Panera's mac n cheese is fine, but certainly not the best. I could see why you needed to point it up a bit. When I make my M+C I tend to use whatever ends of cheese are hanging around in the fridge, so it's rarely exactly the same twice, and generally tends to be sharper. I like mine better.
Panera does tend to occupy a price point above "cheap and quick" and closer to "actual restaurant experience". So, yeah, if you have time you can get better bang for the buck by moving up a notch.
True minor rant:
I'm trying to be smarter this year about printing stuff for Christmas presents (we don't exchange 'real' gifts with most of the adults in our extended families, just inexpensive or joke gifts and printing stuff works very well for this) since last year I didn't get one thing finished in time, so I'm printing out a bunch of sets of a game I think the families with children will enjoy, and earlier this morning kicked off a ~20 hour print of parts for the games.
No less than half an hour before I hit 'start' and confirmed that it seemed to be behaving, I got a notice that the new printer I had ordered had been delivered. I planned on initially assembling it on the table next to the current printer since there's barely enough room for it (though it will eventually be living out in the garage where I can print with materials that put out more noxious fumes than I want to be sitting next to inside the house)- but with the other printer running, I don't dare do that for fear of bumping it and ruining hours of printing.
Somewhat relevant based on the discussion of Panera, a place I've never been tempted to try, but this has been on my mind for some time and exacerbated by my most recent experiences.
Is takeout food getting worse, maybe more processed, saltier, who knows what? This has been somewhat ongoing, but my last handful of takeout experiences have been pretty bad. The food's not terrible when I'm eating it, not great either, but after I'm done, I'm usually left feeling regret, and wishing I'd done something different. I know I'm a little more sensitive (for lack of a better word) to overly processed and salty foods, but is this just me getting older and less able to tolerate it, or is the food actually getting worse?
Secondary rant: I was recently on the road for seven hours and had only eaten breakfast before I left. Not wanting to go through another regretful experience, I thought, a sub, how can you berkeley up a proper old school sub? So I stopped into a sub chain of choice, and looked at the menu. $9.50 for a sub? Sorry, can't do it. I waited till I got home and heated up some rice and beans I had in the fridge. That meal I did not regret.
In reply to Duke :
I'm happy to report that the chicken noodle soup is pretty damn good. Not perfect, but definitely repeatable. It was seasoned lightly with detectable amounts of oregano and other seasonings. I did add a bit of salt and pepper to it but I do that with every prepackaged soup. It was cooked until the noodles were firm but not disintegrating and had reasonable-sized chunks of chicken, celery, and carrots in it. All in I'd give it a 8 out of 10.
In reply to Peabody :
There seems to have been a shift by me during the pandemic where places have either gotten better, or much worse with little in between. A diner I used to really like now just heats up frozen stuff they get at restaurant depot, while the little deli around the corner from me got in to doordash, hired a couple kids from the culinary institute and turns out all sorts of good food.
berkeley Doordash.
Last night we ordered from a local restaurant that just started using Doordash. Between the marked up menu, delivery charges and charges charges, Doordash would have turned a $25 meal for two into a $50 meal for two... to deliver 3 miles. We ordered direct and picked up the food ourselves.
Rodan said:berkeley Doordash.
I've never used any of those services and can't understand how they exist.
Peabody said:Rodan said:berkeley Doordash.
I've never used any of those services and can't understand how they exist.
I know it's been a successful (albeit controversial) business model, but I agree completely. I would only use Doordash if I was on my deathbed and wanted a particular meal one last time before I went.
Even without the heavy extra cost, the loss of quality after an unpredictable delivery time in the hands of an unpredictable delivery person would be a deal killer.
Duke said:I know it's been a successful (albeit controversial) business model, but I agree completely. I would only use Doordash if I was on my deathbed and wanted a particular meal one last time before I went.
Even without the heavy extra cost, the loss of quality after an unpredictable delivery time in the hands of an unpredictable delivery person would be a deal killer.
Thing is, it's not successful, at least in terms of showing a profit, which is pretty crazy considering the fees. I suspect these "disruptive" companies are mostly designed to make money for their executive board and the pre-IPO investors, and no one else.
I only use food delivery apps when I can combine a coupon and a credit from my credit card perks. This makes it actually less expensive than picking up. Maybe people like me are contributing to their lack of profits haha
The booster shot I got yesterday is kicking my ass today.
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
Shingles? You need two vaccinations and both kicked my ass in different ways.
In reply to Duke :
I noticed in a recent update that I can order taco bell through their app, and it delivers through door dash. So I did some comparison pricing.
It worked out to be cheaper, like $4-5 cheaper, to order the exact same thing through the taco bell app and have it delivered through door dash than to order through doordash itself.
I use it for lunch on occasion, because I get 8mpg in the excursion, and a majority of the food places are 9 miles away, so either way I'm spending $7 extra just for lunch.
Duke said:Peabody said:I've never used any of those services and can't understand how they exist.
I know it's been a successful (albeit controversial) business model, but I agree completely. I would only use Doordash if I was on my deathbed and wanted a particular meal one last time before I went.
Even without the heavy extra cost, the loss of quality after an unpredictable delivery time in the hands of an unpredictable delivery person would be a deal killer.
It can be done, and done well, but maybe not the way they do it. I lost a fair chunk of my misspent youth driving from restaurant to house to restaurant to office to restaurant to hotel, etc., with an independent mom-and-pop delivery service, long before Doordash existed. The way it worked was that the restaurants we had contracts with took the orders over the phone and called our dispatcher to coordinate a pickup time. The dispatcher then radioed a driver to pick it up. The company charged the customer a flat fee and paid the drivers (independent contractors) to make the delivery. It worked really well. Food quality was typically better than you'd get picking it up yourself because we used insulated bags and did a really good job of getting the driver to the restaurant just as the order was coming together.
Looking at the Doordash website, they don't seem to have much of a presence in that town, while the old outfit I worked with is still going strong with around 25 restaurants. I guess there is something to be said for their business model.
Peabody said:Rodan said:berkeley Doordash.
I've never used any of those services and can't understand how they exist.
I think it was better before, Uber Eats was like....$4 to get it to my door and that was fine by me.
I also drove for them for a bit, it was decent extra money
The independent pizza place we go to has drivers on staff (and has for a long time) but their delivery rates have been slowly going down since Doordash and the like have been in operation. Doordash and the major chains have tons of money for advertising and coupons, while the indie place has to rely on much smaller marketing budgets and word of mouth. Doordash and the others are working because they're an all in one search engine for food you can get delivered. It used to be the local places would flyer college doorms and hotels and the like and count on getting X number of clients that way. Now, people just go to the app, look at reviews for dozens of places, pick what they want, order and it shows up.
Hell, I know somebody that ordered McDonald's from Doordash because they had a craving while watching Monday night football, but felt they were too buzzed to drive.
The indie pizza place is considering jumping on the Doordash bandwagon, they're just making sure that they can pass the costs on and don't have to absorb any themselves.
Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) said:The independent pizza place we go to has drivers on staff (and has for a long time) but their delivery rates have been slowly going down since Doordash and the like have been in operation. Doordash and the major chains have tons of money for advertising and coupons, while the indie place has to rely on much smaller marketing budgets and word of mouth. Doordash and the others are working because they're an all in one search engine for food you can get delivered. It used to be the local places would flyer college doorms and hotels and the like and count on getting X number of clients that way. Now, people just go to the app, look at reviews for dozens of places, pick what they want, order and it shows up.
Hell, I know somebody that ordered McDonald's from Doordash because they had a craving while watching Monday night football, but felt they were too buzzed to drive.
The indie pizza place is considering jumping on the Doordash bandwagon, they're just making sure that they can pass the costs on and don't have to absorb any themselves.
Yep, it's really tough to compete with the near-monopoly that that search engines and national advertising create (which is really a minor rant in and of itself). The outfit I drove for might not be around today if they had not established themselves long before everybody had the entire internet in their pocket. We distributed paper menu guides to all the hotels who would take them and made sure that all of our restaurants had them in plain sight for walk-in customers to see and take home. In a lot of ways it was a different time.
There's always going to be a cost to the restaurant. I think we were reimbursing our restaurants at a percentage back of the price the customer paid. It's just a question of how much extra business you can pull in, and how much extra exposure and market penetration our service was providing. Sounds a little dirty when I say it that way...
Edited to include a minor rant: the damn low-beam bulb retaining clips in our 5 are probably a piece of cake when you have unlimited access, but in situ, with junk in the way, when you're trying to shove the blessed thing back together and get a four-year-old to the Haunted Hayride on time, they're significantly less than ideal.
Every year the media is flooded with stories about Halloween candy, and how to minimize how much the kids eat. I heard an 'expert' this morning on the TV recommending handing out candy that you don't like. 
It happens once a year people, let the kids eat too much candy for one day. It's not going to kill them.
Upper thigh chafing.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Give out the crap candy to kids with half-assed costumes.
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