You can’t improve on Perfection

Posted on 21 April, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

Yesterday my wife and I visited one of our favourite pubs, The Bridge in Waterbeach. I was looking forward to have my favourite dish on their menu: the Aberdeen Angus Burger with Stilton and mushroom topping. Besides tasting great this burger doesn’t leave you hungry.

When we arrived in the pub we discovered that the menu had changed … which is always a bad sign. I studied it anxiously and found my worst fears confirmed: the burger was no longer on the menu.

I told myself not to panic and searched the menu for a replacement. I found the Rumpsteak Burger and ordered it with the Brie and mushroom topping. I tried to keep the hope alive that the new burger might be as good as the old one.

Unfortunately it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad burger. But there was no way it could compete with the Aberdeen Angus Burger. The meat wasn’t as delicious, the Brie cheese was too greasy and the bun tasted a bit wishy-washy. In the end I left the pub somewhat disappointed.

I really hate it when that happens. I find something I like and they improve it or stop making it for no good reason. 🙁

Posted in Cafe's and Restaurants, Real Life | 1 Comment

One of those weeks …

Posted on 13 April, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

This week started really nice with a Bank Holiday on Monday. Another chance to sleep late and relax during the rest of the day. But the universe was already preparing to get back at me. 🙁

It started with a mistake on my part late in the evening. Fixing it required restoring data from the last backup of my server at home. When I was finished it was past midnight which meant that my wife and I would suffer from sleep deprivation the next morning.

And the week had more pleasant surprises in stock for me:

  1. I had to diagnose a Windows problem via phone.
  2. My wristwatch broke.
  3. My bicycle got a flat tire.

As if by a miracle I managed to survive up to the weekend. But I still have to bring my wratch to a watchmaker which is probably beyond repair anyway. And I bet that I’ll have to wait until the week after next week before the people at the cycle centre have time to service by bicycle. 🙁

Posted in Real Life | 1 Comment

Super Size Mac Pro

Posted on 5 April, 2007 by Matthias Scheler

Shortly after Intel introduced Quad Core Xeon CPUs people tried to install them in Apple’s Mac Pro. Because the upgrade worked without any problems it was only a question of time until Apple would offer such a machine.

Yesterday the time had come and Apple officially announced the 8-Core or Quad-Core Mac Pro workstation. Because the CPUs are clocked at 3GHz it should run single-threaded applications as fast as the previous high end model. The home grown Quad Core machine I’ve read about was only equipped with 2GHz Xeons. As a result it was considerably slower in most benchmarks because only very few applications could take advantage of 8 cores.

That raises of course the question who needs an eight core workstation? Well, I don’t … but I would like to have one of those Mac Pros nevertheless. 🙂

Posted in Mac | Comments Off on Super Size Mac Pro