PJSquared

A friend and I headed out to lunch today and he suggested Wolfgang’s Restaurant in East Grand Rapids. I’ve lived in the Grand Rapids area for over 10 years now and I’d driven past the restaurant countless times, but had never eaten there until today. It’s not some fancy restaurant…more of a diner style atmosphere that cares more about great food and service than outfitting it with ornate woodworking or looking like your average chain restaurant.

The menu mainly consists of a few pages of breakfast fare and a page of lunch items. I had always heard great things about breakfast, and that’s what I was in the mood for anyway – so it was an easy choice…or so I thought. There were so many great sounding breakfast choices – it made for a difficult decision. I eventually decided on “Uncle Ron’s Skillet” – a conglomeration of red-skin potatoes, sausage, bacon, melted cheese and a little bit of onion – topped with a couple of eggs and a side of toast.

All I can say is “Wow!” The food was incredible and the size of the skillet was enormous. I wanted to eat the entire skillet, but just couldn’t polish it off. I had to at least finish off the eggs, they were cooked to absolute perfection, I just couldn’t resist.

I guess you could say it might be a bit pricey for breakfast (my skillet was just shy of $8)…but then again, the portions are huge and the food is excellent. I’m not sure if half-orders are available or not, but I think that would be about the perfect amount food so I don’t gorge myself next time

I’ll definitely be revisiting Wolfgang’s sometime soon, I only wish I hadn’t waited 10 years in the first place! Next time it will be with my family, and I’m sure they’re going to love it.

It’s been a few months since dropping our cable TV service in lieu of cheaper alternatives. The solution I came up with is a combination of over the air digital TV stations, Netflix streaming, and a piece of software called PlayOn that would allow me to stream Hulu (and a handful of other content providers) from a PC to my PS3 and Xbox 360 game consoles.

Well, we’ve survived so far, but it has been a bit frustrating at times. Picking up digital TV stations over the antenna has been pretty solid; only a few times during really bad weather that I’ve had any issues. Using Netflix has also been pretty solid when using the PS3 and the Netflix provided CD to stream video – I’m actually really impressed with the video quality so far.

That leads me to the last of the bunch – PlayOn. My first month or so of using PlayOn was great. I was able to watch Hulu using my PS3 and Xbox…and even stream Netflix to my Xbox without needing to have an Xbox Gold membership. I should have known it was too good to be true.

I ran through the 14-day trial period and decided to buy a license for PlayOn. It continued to work great for about 2 more weeks…and then all of the sudden…I had issues connecting to Hulu. That seemed to get resolved after a few days; however, it hasn’t been the same since. I’ve had nothing but problems with video lag, stuttering, hanging, audio and video being out of sync. To PlayOn’s credit, they seem to be releasing updates/patches to try to keep up with all of the bugs – I’ve had the “luxury” of downloading and installing at least 5 PlayOn updates/patches since installing the software a little over 2 months ago.

I’ve worked with their support staff for a couple of days trying to resolve the issue. Unfortunately,
I’ve pretty much lost hope after the last contact from their support said the following:

“This is often indicative of something such as Security or AntiVirus software killing the stream. That’s almost certainly what is going on here.”

I had already told them that I had uninstalled my anti-virus to eliminate that as the culprit – and I wasn’t running a software firewall; yes, I have an external firewall, but no changes have been made to it – AND let’s not forget, PlayOn did work fine initially for the first month or so.

So, I’m pretty chalking up PlayOn as a loss. Of course, your mileage may vary. I just don’t have the time or patience anymore. It has to be quite a challenge for the PlayOn developer staff to stay on top of all of the changes that the various video content providers make.

I’m thinking my best bet is to look at getting a small PC or Mac Mini to hook up directly to my TV, maybe slap a digital tuner in it, and call it good. I guess that would solve my DVR issue too!

Enough is enough already! I’ve watched my monthly cable bill keep increasing over the last several years (as I’m sure most of you have). Oh yeah, I’ve played the switching game to take advantage of the promotions: Comcast to Dish Network…back to Comcast…to Dish…to Comcast…and most recently to Uverse. I was simply tired of paying close to $80 a month for TV service. My most recent experience with AT&T Uverse finally did me in. Don’t get me wrong, I think they have a good product – their multi-room DVR pretty much sets the bar when it comes to the TV service offerings in my area. However, I couldn’t continue to justify the cost for the handful of TV shows that my family watches on a regular basis. This decision undoubtedly affects my kids more than my wife and I, as the kids programming is the biggest thing lacking (I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing though).

At any rate, we decided to stop paying that huge monthly bill by utilizing a combination of low-cost and free programming. I can’t say that it’s perfect, but it’s been working for our family for about the last 4 months.

So, what did I do? Well, the first thing I did was purchase an antenna to pick up over-the-air (OTA) digital channels in my area. I’m using a fairly inexpensive RCA indoor powered antenna (~$30), and am able to pull in about 20 digital channels – all of the major networks CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and PBS…with superb picture quality compared to pay-for services.

I was really missing the DVR capabilities to watch recorded/on-demand content, so that was the next thing to tackle. I found a product called PlayOn. This great little piece of software runs on a Windows PC and allows you to stream content such as Hulu, CBS, ESPN, CNN, YouTube, Netflix, etc to the three major gaming consoles: XBox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii (still beta). I tried the free demo for a couple weeks and decided it was well worth the $30. I have tried PlayOn on each of the three gaming consoles and in my experience, the PS3 is the best for both picture quality and ease of use. Using it on the XBox was a fairly close second…but the Wii was essentially unwatchable. So, now if I miss an episode of “The Office” or “House”, I’ll just fire up my gaming console and connect to Hulu through PlayOn to watch it on demand.

In addition to OTA and PlayOn, I decided to sign up for the basic Netflix account – no this isn’t free (it’s 8.99/month for the cheapest plan), but this gives you 1 DVD rental out at a time and unlimited access to their streaming media. Netflix doesn’t have a huge selection when it comes to movies (especially when it comes to new releases), but they also have a pretty big library of the previous seasons of several TV shows. I just recently opted to upgrade my Netflix account to add Blu-ray for an extra $2 a month, well worth it as far as I’m concerned.

As far as Netflix goes, there are several different options to play their streaming content (PS3, XBox, Roku, PC, Mac, to name a few) – the PlayOn streaming software even allows you to connect to your Netflix account to stream video. I prefer to use my PS3 for Netflix, the picture quality is much better than streaming through PlayOn….and the XBox 360 requires you to have a Live Gold account to use Netflix (c’mon MicroSoft, gimme a break!)….of course, this was one of the reasons I bought PlayOn – to use Netflix on the XBox without needing a Live Gold account.

I guess I do need to mention that I have a high-speed internet connection, which is really a requirement to do any kind of video streaming. I did keep AT&T Uverse for 6Mbps @ $35 a month….but hey, it’s necessary for my line of work anyway – and if you’re reading this, chances are, you have high-speed internet already too.

All in all, our family has been pretty happy with the switch. The “hardest” thing is a bit more inconvenience when it comes to switching between watching over-the-air channels and Netflix or PlayOn. Since most of our TV watching is over-the-air anyway, it’s not that big of a deal. Besides saving money, one of the other benefits we’ve found is that we don’t waste nearly as much time channel surfing anymore…and ultimately end up watching some crappy show because nothing else was on.

Some friends and I decided to try a new place for lunch, and decided to head over to The Filling Station in Comstock Park. We entered the restaurant and headed to the ordering line . It’s cafeteria style ordering, one person takes your order as you slide a tray down towards the other end to pay – the food is definitely not ready by the time you get to the end, I’ll get to that later.

The menu seemed quite large – both literally and the number of items. I didn’t have a chance to take it all in because I quickly saw what I wanted – a Philly cheesesteak sandwich – what caught my eye was the optional cheese whiz. I’d heard from a native Philadelphian that a “real” philly steak sandwich has cheese whiz on it…this just happened be the first time I’d seen it in the Grand Rapids area. So, I decided on the philly with a half side of onion rings. I can’t remember what the rest of my friends ordered other than a mix of burgers, fries, and onion rings.

The prices seemed pretty reasonable for the amount of food you get. After ordering, we grabbed a booth and waited (key word) for our food. I immediately noticed the decor, the dining area is adorned with old gas station type signs throughout. The dining area seemed clean and surprisingly quiet; it wasn’t empty, but not overly busy either.

It took a good 20 minutes for the first order to be called out…another 5 or so minutes later two more orders came out….and finally another 5 minutes later the last order arrived. And from what I can remember, the last order came out incorrect. This was by far the biggest complaint – TTGF (time to get food).

Anyway, when my order finally arrived, there was a heaping pile of battered onion-rings, deep-fried to golden perfection. Maybe not the best I’ve ever had, but pretty darn good nevertheless. Underneath these golden beauties was a delicious looking Philly sandwich. There were actually two “halves” about 6 inches each. The melted cheese whiz was oozing out over the very thinly sliced grilled steak and onions. I took my first bite….ohhhh yeah – the bun was toasted perfectly, everything in perfect harmony. It was like a party in my mouth. This was definitely the best philly cheesesteak I’ve ever had!

I can’t say that the rest of my friends had the same experience as me; one said the burger was “OK”…it looked to me like it was pretty overdone. I don’t remember anyone saying they wouldn’t come back; however, I think we were all in agreement that the speed and service had a negative impact on the whole experience. Overall, I’d have to give it a thumbs up for the great good food I had. Maybe next time I’ll try The Filling Station for breakfast or dinner and see if the service is any better.