A few days ago I finished a book by Robert I. Sutton PhD, The No Asshole Rule. The title may be a little off-putting for some folks, but as the author explained in an interview, there really isn’t a polite word that has the proper connotations. (I’m paraphrasing from memory, sorry.)
This book is primarily concerned with how to deal with assholes at work. It’s a fast little read, and I’d definitely like to get other people’s opinions on the book. (Especially my coworkers’!)
An article in the Sacramento Bee last week highlighted a couple of locally-owned sandwich shops:
I haven’t been to either place yet, but I wanted to get the information up here so I’ll remember to check them out.
My buddy, Andy, has been urging me for months to try the food at this Lebanese place he likes. But I’ve been coming home for lunch most days, and I wasn’t going to take my family there for dinner without Continue reading ‘Maalouf’s Taste of Lebanon’
While we were visiting San Francisco yesterday, we heard a band playing out in front of Pier 39. They sounded pretty good, so I picked up their CD on the spot: “Funkiest Man in Africa” by AfroFunk. (The band is actually named “Sila and the AfroFunk Experience”, but that’s a mouthful. Besides, the back of the dude’s jacket is labeled “AfroFunk”.) With 10 guys, it’s a big band, and they were puttin’ on the full effect yesterday–a lot of texture to their music, and a helluva lot of soul. I’m looking forward to more from this group.
Dance like no one’s watching,
Sing like no one’s listening!
– “Got No Money, Get No Respect”
Added bonus: when I searched the ‘net for these guys this morning, I found that the front man, Sila, has a blog. (WordPress-powered, even!) He’s not writing much lately, which is a shame because it looks like he’s got a lot of important stuff to say.
Barb introduced me to Tokyo Fro’s sushi bar several months ago. It was pretty good, but I just haven’t had a chance to go back there. A few days ago Andy suggested sushi for lunch, and Tokyo Fro’s is conveniently close to Sac State, so off we went.
We arrived about 10 minutes before noon. The place was busy, but not packed. The service was pretty slow, which the waitress said was due to our arrival during the middle of the lunch rush. (The place opens at 11:30, so you’d think they’d be expecting people to drop in for lunch, right?) We ordered cucumber salads, which were excellent but took inordinately long to get to the table. We also ordered three sushi rolls:
After visting Tokyo Fro’s with my wife I was pretty happy with them, but if this had been my first experience I wouldn’t come back. I’ll give them one more chance to see if they had an “off” day.
Boulevard Coffee is yet another one of the businesses I frequent that doesn’t have a web page. Their coffee is always freshly roasted, and they have an excellent selection. My personal favorites are Boulevard Blend, a good crowd-pleasing medium blend, and Celebes, a dark-roast that may be too intense for some folks. They also have quite a selection of teas and there are always some very tempting desserts on display, but personally I just go for the coffee.
The shop interior is done in a very nice mission/arts & crafts style. Between the coffee, the beautiful interior, and the friendly staff, it’s a wonder I ever leave the building!
7901 Fair Oaks Blvd
Carmichael, CA 95608
916-944-0266
One of our recent Netflix rentals was The End of Suburbia. I’ve been reading quite a bit on urban planning lately, especially New Urbanism, and somewhere along my journey I found a pointer to this movie. I’ll hopefully write about New Urbanism later, but for this post I want to focus on the movie and my family’s reaction to it.
A few weeks ago, we had a bit of a wind storm here in Sacramento. Afterwards we discovered that nearly all the posts of our back fence had failed.
I was hoping to avoid replacing the fence until after we ran new water and sewer pipes for our remodeling project. In fact, I wouldn’t have worried about the fence at all right now were it not for the fact that one of my neighbors (the one without a fence, of course) has a dog. Oh well…
I called around and got several verbal quotes yesterday. I needed about 75 linear feet of fencing installed, and most places were quoting me $1,000 to $1,500 for 4-foot high chain link fencing, not including removal of the old fence. One of the places I called, All Fence Design aka All Steel Fence Design, was just finishing a job and offered to drop by my house to do a written quote, since it was right on their way. They quoted me $1,150 — not the cheapest, but far from the most expensive. They were using the same high-grade materials that the expensive places were quoting me, and they were willing to haul away the old fence! To top it all off, they’d had a job fall through so they were available the very next day. It sounded good to me, so I gave them a deposit on the spot, with work scheduled to begin at 7:00 am the next morning.
They arrived about ten minutes early this morning and got right to work. After making sure they had everything they needed, I went off to my own job. I came home a bit early and they were just finishing up.
Casey (between the open gate and the telephone pole above, with his back to the camera) and his crew did a great job. They got the fence installed in one day, including hauling away the old fence. Galvanized chainlink fencing isn’t a particularly aesthetic material, but these guys made it look great in spite of that. It was good workmanship, quality materials, and a fair price — you can’t ask for better than that! If you need fence work done in the Sacramento area, I strongly recommend that you get a quote from All Fence Design.
When we first moved back to Sacramento a few months ago, one of our first priorities was finding a purveyor of that great American staple–pizza! We checked the yellow pages and found a Round Table nearby, so we tried them. The place was nearly deserted, and we soon found some of the reasons: the service wasn’t very good, and the pizza was worse. Thinking that maybe they were having a bad night, we gave them another chance about a week later, but they blew that one also. The staff was too busy chatting to take our order when we walked up to the counter, and then they brought us a pizza that wasn’t fully cooked. 
A few days later my wife and I were driving around the neighborhood. Tucked into a corner of a nearby stripmall I noticed a sign, “Wenelli’s Pizza.” It looked kind of quirky and interesting, so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be the most incredible pizza place I’ve ever tried! It’s a small family-owned place with space for about 40 people, and it’s usually pretty busy, although we’ve never had to stand around waiting for a table. (Now we know why Round Table down the street is always empty.) The pizza is excellent and the service is friendly and personal. They have some good beers on tap, as well as Budweiser and Coors Lite. 
Wenelli’s Pizza
4215 Arden Way (map)
Sacramento, CA 95864
(916) 482-1008
Just finished watching Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. (The link goes to Netflix, but I borrowed my copy from the Sacramento Public Library.) If you haven’t seen this show, I strongly recommend it. It totally skewers Fox’s “Fair & Balanced” hype and exposes their organization as right-wing propagandists.
I especially liked the “behind the scenes” featurette on the DVD. This film was made with the help of several volunteers who collectively watched Faux News 24×7, looking for the most egregious examples of yellow journalism. After these volunteers finished their work for Outfoxed, they wanted to continue their efforts; thus was born the News Hounds blog.
Another project associated with this movie is Free Press, a “nonpartisan organization working to involve the public in media policymaking,” which is becoming more and more critical as the centralization of news reporting continues. Please, if you’re an American citizen, do your country a favor–watch this movie, and check out the links above.
