Chris' World

Pictures from Toulon France

I spent a day exploring the town of Toulon in Southern France. Here are some pictures from the cable car, and a view from the mountain atop Toulon.

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Representing In-N-Out at White Castle

Today is the 2nd day of my drive back to San Diego from Washington DC. Passing through Indiana, I saw a sign off the freeway advertising a White Castle Burger at the next exit. I’ve always wanted to try White Castle, but I’ve never been in a region of the country that has them before. Well, I have to say that overall I was truly unimpressed by this burger. It seemed only fittting that i had one of my In-N-Out shirts on while taking this picture to represent what a good burger should be.

Washington DC Cherry Blossoms 2010

The annual Cherry Blossom Festival begins in Washington DC this weekend, and the blossoms are starting to bloom. Below are some pictures I took walking around the tidal basin by the Jefferson Memorial today.

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Snowy Monuments

So I was walking along the National Mall today — and came across two very cool snow sculptures.  A snow Capital building — and a snow Washington Monument.  Check it out, with the real Capital and monument in the background of the respective pictures.

Washington DC Snowpocalypse Pictures

Feb 6, 2010 — a historic day.  The day of the Washington DC Snowpocalypse.   Over 2 feet of snow.  The 4th largest snowfall in a single day in Washington DC History.  No video — as it’s really hard to shoot good video in a blizzard, but check out some of these pictures.

Cavalia — Horse Show — Mini Review

Yesterday I went to see Cavalia — which is essentially Cirque Du Soleil with horses.

I saw the Cavalia tent go up about a month ago — it’s right across the freeway from the Pentagon. You can see some of the horses just below the tent.

I thought it would be intriguing to see the show, but of course I was cheap .  But then to my surprise, in the elevator in my apartment was a sign that said “Come see Cavalia for 50% off this Friday and Saturday for residents.” Sweet!

I went to see the Saturday night show.  I bought one of the “blue” area tickets — normal price $100 — 50% off $50.

The first thing upon entering the tent is that it’s huge.  Really impressive to see such a tent on the inside.

The show started with some trivia — How many horses are in the Cavalia stables?  64.  How many are mares?  0.  All Cavalia horses are male.

The show alternates between acrobatics with horses, and acrobatics without horses.  The parts with the horses were pretty cool.

But why does every Cirque Du Soleil type show have to have girls twirling in the air?  How does this add to a horse show?

So was it worth the $50?  Sure.  How many times am I going to be able to see an acrobatic horse show after all?  Would it have been worth $100?  Not really.

66 Bobs Noodle

I was up in Rockville, MD today (10 miles north of DC) and had heard that Rockville is the “New Chinatown” for the Washington DC area.  So of course I had to stop and get some tastey chinese food. One of the places that garners the best reviews in the area is 66 Bobs Noodle — a Taiwanese noodle restaurant.

I have two benchmarks for a good chinese restaurant

1 – crowdedness — if all the tables are taken, and people are waiting to be seated, it must be good.

2 – ratio of asians to non-asians – if the restaurant is filled with chinese people, again it must be good.

Realizing that by eating at a “good chinese restaurant” I influence the ratio of asians to non-asians, it sometimes makes me wonder if when other people walk in, and see me eating in the restaurant, they think to themselves — “Oh no — a white person, this place can’t possibly be good!”

Another random observation that I made about this restaurant, is that it is Taiwenese owned.  How can I tell?  Well, after eating in a number of Taiwaenese establishments, it’s pretty easy to tell… How?  Just look around the restaurant for one person standing around, dressed fairly casually (jeans/sweat peants), and bossing around all of the waiters that are dressed nicely in dress shirts and ties.   66 Bob’s Noodle was no exception, as the owner was standing in back, wearing a polo shirt and jeans and “observing” his restaurant from afar.

So enough with the obversations — and on to the food.  Since the name of the place has “noodle” in it, I figured I needed to get noodles.  I ordered the Noodle Soup with Chicken, Pork, and Vegetables.  I asked the waiter whether they could add wontons to my soup.  It was at this point that the waiter looked very concerned — said “just a moment” — and walked over to the casually dressed guy in the corner (the owner!).  When the waiter came back he said “Okay… wonton $2?”.  I should sure — and 3-4 minutes later I had a bowl of piping hot soup on my table.  That’s what I call service.

The broth was quite good and rich… and the noodles had a good texture.  Total bill only $9.  Cheap Cheap Cheap.

The largest movie theater in DC

Today I went to see the newest Quentin Tarantino movie, Inglourious Basterds. Being new to the DC area, I had to do some investigation on what are the good/sucky theaters around… Because we all know that not all movie theaters are created equally. I ended up going to Loews Uptown 1 — the largest single screen movie theater in DC.

Definitely some history here — this is the only theater I’ve been in that has a balcony (which is where I am sitting and writng this blog entry). Sitting here brings me back to a time when theaters only had one ticket booth and the restrooms weren’t restrooms, but “lounges” with sofas.

The theater seats around 1,000 folks… and the screen is HUGE — so big that it curves in order to fit in the building.  Definitely a cool place to see a movie.

Blogging from my Blackberry with WordPress mobile app

While attending DEFCON, I had a lot of free time in 10 minute increments between talks and thought it would be cool to see what I can do from my blackberry besides just e-mail.

I installed facebook for blackberry, twitterberry to be on twitter, the gmail and google apps for blackberry. After all that, I thought it would be cool to be able to blog from my blackberry, so I poked around, and lo and behold there is a beta wordpress mobile application for blackberry.

This is my first post from the WordPress for Blackberry app, but so far it is pretty slick. It uses the wordpress XML-RPC interface to download all of the recent wordpress posts and comments. It also allows uploading of photos with the post and using the blackberry camera.

To demonstrate attachment of photos attached is the DEFCON 17 badge this year.

Smallest Finger Ever

So we went to the jewelery store today to have the ring resized. The “ring designer” at the store said that my fiancee officially has the “smallest finger ever of anyone to come in this store.”

What size you ask?  2.75

Compare that to my fat fingers