My city is finally going to recycle!

Is it weird that I am excited about my city launching a recycling program? Most people already live where their community picks up recyclables. Mine will start later this year as noted on the city website HERE. My fiancee and I have been driving our plastic, metal, and glass waste to the local satellite station.

I live in Hallandale Beach, Florida and up until now recycables have only been picked up from single family residents and not condominium buildings. The city sent out a memo a few weeks back about a meeting to discuss the new and upcoming recycling program. You can look up the demographics about my city on zipskinny.com or another similar site, but let's just say I was one of the younger people there.

I guess I am so interested in this whole change for a few reasons...the obvious one being the environment doesn't place in my top 2. It's the cost savings for our trash pickup that is most important to my building's residents. For the last year we have had to pay for 6 out of 7 days for trash pickup. After I implemented an improved newspaper recycling program we were able to eliminate 1 of the 6 days. You can find my previous blog post HERE. I am looking forward to eliminating another 2 day once we get our recycling dumpster...which translates into a few thousand dollars annually. Another good reason is that I can dispose of my recyclebable waste at the end of the hall instead of a mile away.

Another benefit is that we can get rid of the 3 newspaper recycle bins that do not match. We have been putting a fair amount of money and energy into making our building look better lately and we have these 3 crappy looking bins out front. The city wouldn't give me matching ones unless the existing ones were damaged. So we had to keep the green one, the blue one, and our latest one which is dark blue.

The hardest part will be to get the residents to actually start recycling. It shouldn't be too bad as many of them think we recycle now and dispose of these containers with their newspapers. They don' take the time to read my signs. Too many words. I learned my lesson though. Signage needs to be short and sweet and in multiple languages. For us that's English, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, French, and Polish. I'm sure I missed some.

The funniest thing about the recycling meeting was all the push back from some of the other attendees. They wanted to know why the city was making them recycle and if they had to participate. And where they would store the extra dumpster. They didn't realize that they would have about 30% less waste if they actually recycled. Or that they could use this to save money. I thanked the city and I'm just excited the time to recycle is finally here.

The power of search

The power of internet search engines motivate me to keep blogging...along with other factors. I like the idea of meeting others and sharing ideas through public blogging. But, I'm really fascinated that someone else can find my perspective. I understand the technology and it's not that I think it is surreal or something crazy. We as a society have just evolved really quick.

Now I just have to focus on the topics that interest me and start putting them down. And more importantly, the thoughts that I have.

Ollie's Trolley

I finally got around to eating lunch at Ollie's Trolley in Louisville, Kentucky. Or I guess I should say that I bought a burger there and ate it down the street at a table outside a local university. You can tell as you drive by that there is some history with Ollie's. Go to the website if you want all that. I'm going to speak to the food.

Well, when we got there a bit before noon there was a line out the door and down the stairs. But that is because only 3 to 5 people can fit inside at a time. You order at one window and pick up your brown bag a few feet over. I ordered an Ollie Dressed with cheese which included special sauce, pickle slices, lettuce, tomato, and onion. The regular Ollie burger only comes with sauce. The person I went with recommended the fries...and to order them extra spicy, so we did.
I'd have to say the fries were the best part. They had a cajun type salt mixture that I'd slate in between a Montreal steak seasoning, Zataran's Creole Seasoning, and my own rub, which is currently called Field Green's Blackening Spice. I only have 1 supporter of the name out of many fans of the rub. I'll get to that someday. Oh, the best part about the spice on the fries was the fennel. Small pieces of fennel.

The burger was okay and I'll most likely go back. Not much taste and they are all cooked medium well. Not to placed in my current top 10, but the experience floats it up a bit. The flat top griddle they were working with was filled with meat. There was only enough room for grease to bubble up in between. Anyways, good times as usual in Louisville.

And here are my current top ten burgers...(that I have devoured)

Le Tub - Hollywood, FL
Stage Left - New Brunswick, NJ
Radius - Boston, MA
Father's Office - Santa Monica, CA
Miller's Bar - Dearborn, MI
Kingdom - Miami,FL
Shake Shack - New York, NY
Red Coat Tavern - Royal Oak, MI
301 Bistro - Louisville, KY
Upper Deck Ale & Sports Grill - Hallandale Beach, FL

Ollie's slides in at 30 of the 35 that I have kept track of since I started ranking them a few years back.

What am I doing?

After admiring Sacha Chua's blog today, I realized I have to get off my butt and write a bit more. Worst case scenario I post public thoughts about not all that much and someone stumbles upon them in the years to come wondering why I even had a blog. But then I realized I need to pursue why I launched my blog in the first place...now why was that? Just Kidding, JK for the youngsters and texters.

I started this whole thing to connect with those who have similar interests and to grow my microscopic footprint on the internet. I want to meet other consultants who live in hotels. I want to exchange pics and addresses with other burger aficionados. I want to hear about you rad bicycle that takes you places. And did I say I want to connect with others? I want to learn and get better at what I do. I have switched from a technology consultant to a implementation consultant, to a senior consultant, to a managing consultant, to a wannabee web 2.0 / enterprise 2.0 consultant while laying the groundwork for a performance consultant...so yeah, I'm headed in the right direction. Or at least a path that makes me happy. But there is nothing wrong with getting better.

I'm going to step it up. Thanks for the pep talk Sacha. You can find her article on Magic Beans here if you want.

Oh, and I have been working on the mini garden my fiance and I have in ceramic pots too.

Googled or Binged

What if Bing became the new buzz? Would you still say Google it or would you switch your jargon to bing it? Or would we revert to search for it on the internet.

With website administrators and technologists creatively enhancing search engine optimization for their websites...which base off of popular search engines techniques...we will continue to be in a progressive mine is better than yours search engine battle. It's great that the internet gets better by the day. Isn't that the point?

I'm still going to stick to Google. If I wanted all of the extras I'd use one of the more consumer based sites like yahoo or now bing. I just wish advanced search techniques like quotes, tildas, and negatives were in the spotlight to speed up the process for others. Click HERE to see what I am talking about if you don't already know.

I was inspired to check Bing out for myself after reading Katherine Boehret's article today in the WSJ. It shed light into this new 'Bing ' while comparing and contrasting it to Google's search. Where will the search engine kings take us next?

My Cheeseburger at Vic and Angelos in Delray Beach

Hello burger lovers,

I ate last night with friends and family at Vic and Angelos on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, FL for Jazz on the Ave. Dinner overall was pretty tasty. I ordered a their cheeseburger...big surprise right.

The menu boasted of organic well fed beef for this select double cheeseburger. The presentation was solid. I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures, but I didn't expect an Italian restaurant to have a good burger on the menu and therefore was not prepared. It was served with a plastic spike through the meat sandwich and at the top of this spike was a Cornichon (baby pickle), which I added to the burger's condiments underneath the roof of the bun. It came with some well seasoned fries with a lot of skin still on them and some grated cheese sprinkled atop for extra flavor. The fries were surrounded with 3 mini stainless steel cups of ketchup, mustard, and relish for those with varying taste buds. I sliced my burger in half and ate it as it came. This cheeseburger was comprised of two thin perfectly medium-rare cooked patties adding up to a healthy portion, with tomato, onion, a bunch of lettuce (I think it was iceberg), and then the lightly toasted bun had their own sauce which resembled thousand island. Overall, the burger had a good taste, but my bottom bun seemed to serve as a sponge for all of the grease and juices and more or less disappear. It was a quality burger, but not one of my top 5 (or 10) ever. I was wondering about the burger's cheese the whole time though. The menu stated Gyuere cheese, but my taste buds were either overwhelmed with other toppings or it was substituted for cheddar or American. It was melted perfectly like a hamburger wrapper so it was hard to tell.

Go try it for yourself.

College Football starts in...

Only 121 days left until Gator Football starts for 2009. There are 10 games the preceding Thursday and Friday.

You can find schedules here:
Gator Football
All NCAA Football

Start counting ladies and Gentlemen, start counting. It's just too bad congress can't change the BCS before we kick off.