When something works, do more of it. When something doesn’t, don’t.

Not that I am someone that should be handing out advice, but this one seems to make sense.

I was calling BS, but sure enough, we have snow today here in Austin, TX.  So far we have about an inch on the ground here in Westlake Hills. The snow flakes are huge…everything IS bigger in Texas.  I think you are obligated to take a video when there is snow in Austin, TX.

So, you have to be good or lucky to find a nice place to eat two weeks before Valentine’s Day. This year, I may have had a little bit of an excuse as we just moved 1,700 miles to Austin, TX a few weeks ago.  Well, I think we got lucky. I found a table available at Paggi House on Open Table at 7pm on Valentine’s Day…with less than 2 weeks notice. I immediately check out Paggi House on Yelp before making the reservation and it seemed like everyone had good things to say about it.  Lastly, I went to Paggi House’s website, checked out some photos, the menu and most importantly, the wine list.  Danielle and I enjoy many Italian reds (namely Sangiovese and their Tuscan siblings), and I spied a bottle (2004 vintage) that we enjoyed on our honeymoon there and the deal was sealed.  One strange thing did happen a few days later when I received a call from a very nice young lady from Paggi House. She explained that we would be seated in a tent outside (and here is the strange part) because I made the reservation so late.  Now, I am not sure if she wanted me to feel bad about making the reservation less than two weeks from the big day, or if she really didn’t meant to tell me that part, but I don’t think that information was necessarily something she should have conveyed. I would rather her simply ask if sitting outside in a heated tent would have been a deal breaker for me.  No harm, no foul, let’s move on.

We showed up right at 7pm on a very windy, dry  and cold evening.  Paggi House is a block off of Lake Austin (aka the Colorado River) and it was pretty darn cold. We walked up the stairs from the parking lot after the Valet (complimentary) took the car and noticed that the tent to our left was dark end empty.  We walked inside and found the hostess who asked our name and then checked the computer which was located outside the front door. We waited inside because it was freezing out there. A minute later, she came back in, grabbed a couple of menus, headed inside the restaurant and said, “follow me.” We both shrugged and followed her into a lovely room with a fireplace to the left and then were seated at, what I would consider to be, one of the best seats on that side of the restaurant looking out a window and 5 feet from the fireplace. Disco!  There must have been a bunch of cancellations as the 7/7:30p seating left one or two open tables.  On to the important stuff.

Beverages

Danielle started with a “Red Bud” cocktail…some kind of Tito’s Vodka based drink that reminded both of us of Gazpacho. Not my cup of tea, but Danielle loved it.  I fired up a glass of the Long Boat Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough.  I think it was sitting open a big long (in the bottle), but I took it down. I am not sure it was a great representation of what Marlborough has to offer, but it worked.  We then splurged on a bottle of the 2004 “Tenuta Nova” Casanova di Neri Brunello di Montalcino.   This is a special bottle of wine and while I did not enjoy it as much as the 1999 or 2001 vintages, it was still great.

Appetizers

The Valentine’s Day offering was a set menu, but it had many things right up our alley.  Danielle opted for a salad of Arugula, Pears and Asparagus and I man’d up and went for the Wagyu Beef Tartare.   Danielle loved hers, but I was clearly the victor. The tartare was a standout topped with a raw yolk over beef with some capers mixed in.  The beef was amazing and it was reminiscent of poke tuna in its texture…amazingly good. Served with a long crostini and some pepper sauce that I sopped up in short order.

Entrees

Round two started with Danielle’s Sea Bass that I believe was poached in Sake.  I knew Danielle was excited as it sounded similar to a dish she loved at Three Seasons in San Francisco.  She really enjoyed the bass and it was a very large portion.  I opted for the mushroom Risotto.  The portion was very nice, and while the flavor was dead on, it came out a bit runny. I am not sure if the chef intended it to sit and setup for a few minutes first or if it just came off a little too quickly. By the end of my 2nd course, it was in perfect shape. I would order it again if I found it on the menu, but I would probably mention my experience to see how it came out this time.

Dessert

Score another victory for me this round with my deconstructed cheese cake.  The cheese component was a liquid, there were two graham cracker/smap type cookies, some graham cracker dust and some (what I think) cranberry raisins.  Delicious. Danielle opted for the chocolate fondant. While not her favorite (she is the molten chocolate cake type), she took it down happily.

Overall, we were very happy with our dinner at Paggi House and will definitely be returning soon. I just learned that they offer half-priced appetizers and glasses of wine daily from 5 to 7.  They also have a great deck (where the tent was situated, that would be a great place to eat outside and look at the lake and downtown skyline, weather permitting.

I have been delinquent in posting parts one and two of my quest for digital cablecards with Time Warner Cable here in Austin, TX…but, they weren’t very exciting anyway. Then again, part three really wasn’t very exciting, but things are looking better.

Cablecard Install Part I

Part One was actually an eye opener for me. I arrived in town on a Tuesday (I think, it is all a blur right now). I called TWC on Wednesday and ordered the triple-play (or whatever they call it here) bundle. The dude on the phone said they could have someone out some time the following week. I asked him if there was a way to do it sooner and he said he could have someone out tomorrow probably if I paid the first month with a credit card over the phone…DISCO.

Cablecard Install Part II

Part Two was the next day when a very nice, name undisclosed, installer showed up at the house. He is a super nice guy, but I am not sure he is playing with a full deck…and that is not to say that he was crazy, just that he might only be working with 4 of 8 cylinders. He only had multi-stream cards with him and my Hitachi plasma needs a single stream card and the ATI DCT (Digital Cable Tuner) that I have needs a single stream card as well.

It was cool because the reality is, the only piece of equipment I had was the plasma…the rest was scheduled to arrive the next day. I followed up with “the installer dude” the following week and that is when it got kind of crazy. I don’t want to disclose exactly what happened over a series of 4 phone calls, but suffice it to say that I was seriously considering calling up the main shop and telling them about what had transpired with “the installer dude.” Fortunately for us, he is on vacation now and I was re-scheduled for the following Tuesday (today) because as it turns out, they were out of single stream cablecards.

Cablecard Install Part III

Part Three kicks off with my phone call into TWC this morning to find out what my window was for the installer. It turns out they don’t use windows, they just give you a one hour “heads up” before the installer is going to be at your house. Well, I get a call from “the 2nd installer dude” today around 11:30am and he tells me that he is going to have to reschedule the install appointment until tomorrow because the only tuning adapters they have in the warehouse are refurbished and according to him, “they never seem to work right.” So, yeah, I don’t want those. We’ll see in Part 4 (aka: tomorrow) if they are going to have all of the equipment needed to make this install happen after 3 weeks.

Danielle asked me if we could scan a document to PDF recently and I forgot I had a nice “old” Epson Perfection 1650 flatbed scanner laying around (well preserved).  I have been spoiled in recent times because we had a very nice enterprise level printer/scanner at the office with a 50 page document feeder on it. It would man handle a 2 page document and email it to me almost faster than I could make it back to my desk.  These days, we are rollin’ with the Perfection 1650 flatbed…OG style homey.

The Search for Free Scanning to PDF Files Begins

I start with the standard Google search for “scan to pdf” and it brought up a number of different applications, all commercial, with some free offerings.  Most had some kind of free PDF creation application that tied into Windows’ printing function…allowing you to select a PDF “printer” just like Adobe Acrobat does….except without the big price tag.  All of the top Google results did not have a free scan to pdf application…some had trialware, but they all watermark the the image that is created so that you will buy the application…and, I am being cheap today.

NOTE: I am not going to mention any of the sites I visited that watermarked because one ticked me off so badly by saying it was a full functioning version and when I went to print it a big black stripe went across the pdf image I was looking at and prompted me to buy the full version if I wanted to print watermark free images.   I will say that CutePDF has a free version that people like and that is what I use to print out/generate PDF files in my solution…

The Free Scanner to PDF Solution: iCopy + CutePDF

I finally came across an article on scanning on About.com that listed an open source project called iCopy.  I copy is being billed as a “free photocopier” and that is pretty much how I see it.  All of the applications I installed to scan items, watermarked scans that were output to image files as well as those output as PDF files.  iCopy outputs everything to an image file and then I use the free CutePDF creator to “print” to a PDF. Let’s look at the process…

How to Use iCopy

When you first install iCopy you have the option to let the button on your scanner “notify” iCopy of the coming scan.  None of the other applications that I used had this functionality (that I could see). iCopy makes it easy.  Once installed, the main iCopy application is small, clean and simple.

The main screen of the iCopy "photocopier" application.

As you can see, there is not a lot going on and only the necessary items are in front of you.   The first drop down box allows you to specify what the scanner should be looking for: Colors, Grayscale, or Text.  Using colors makes for a slower scanning pass, grayscale a little faster and text much faster.  Selecting the Printer drop down box, you will find two options: color or black and white.  The last drop down for Paper Size allows you to select paper sizes you know and have never heard of (and probably never will again)…let’s just say they have you covered no matter what you are scanning.

Configuring iCopy

The first order of business is to configure the scanner. I was fortunate to find a Windows 7 TWAIN driver for the Epson Perfection 1650 on the Epson website and clicking the “Choose scanner…” button revealed the scanner straight away.

The Epson Perfection 1650 was found by iCopy right away.

Next order of business is to configure the printer options.  Clicking the “Printer Options” button brings up the standard Windows printer selection window. I selected CutePDF Writer so that when I scan and print the documents, PDF files will be generated automatically.  NOTE: It can take a  bit for CutePDF Writer to spit out the pdf file depending on the resolution you select…be patient fast clickers.  This printer is saved as the default for iCopy NOT for Windows.

Selecting CutePDF Writer as the default printer for the iCopy application.

Last, we need to configure the image settings.  You can change the Brightness, Contrast, Scaling, Resolution and the JPEG quality (as it is creating an image when scanning).  I left the first 3 alone, but stepped up the resolution to 600dpi.  This made for pretty nice scans that were not outrageously big.  You can select resolutions from 75dpi up to 1600dpi.

Setting the resolution to 600dpi in iCopy.

One of the nice things that iCopy does on the main screen (see first image above) is show you what scanner and what printer you have selected.  Not something you normally find, but very thoughtful and useful.

Scanning and Making a Multi-Page PDF

Now that we have everything setup, it is time to make a PDF file.  A single page scan is easy enough to accopmlish, you click the big blue button on the main screen and iCopy starts the scan. Alternately, if your scanner has a scan button on front that iCopy can recognize, push that bad boy and away you go.  But, if you are scanning a document, chances are there are more than one page.  In this case you need to click the “Other Scan Modes” button found directly below the “big blue button.”  This brings up a window offering you two choices:  Scan Multiple Pages (Ctrl + M) or Scan to a File.  Option #1 is what we are looking for to create a multi-page file, Option #2 allows you to create an image file for a single page scan rather than outputting to a printer.  Selecting “Scan Multiple Pages” activates the scan process, so you will need to have your document in the scanner before selecting this.  Once the first page is done, you will have the below in front of you:

Add more pages or print the ones you have scanned.

If you have more pages to add to the file, click “Add Another Page,” otherwise, click the “Print Pages” button to output to a PDF using CutePDF Writer (or your PDF creation application of choice).

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a very workable and simple system to use if you are too cheap and too lazy to get a document scanner.  The PDFs I created using this combination were quite nice and worked well for our needs.

Rudy's BBQ is the Real Deal

Installment number one, of what will hopefully be a long, drawn out, series of reviews spanning decades (because there are so many bbq joints to hit in TX) reviewing BBQ spots in Texas.  This really should be installment number two, Green Mesquite, being number one, but Rudy’s is fresh on my mind so it goes first.

Rudy’s on 360, Austin, TX

Seeing how we live very close to Rudy’s on Loop 360 it got the nod today for our family BBQ outing.  We had planned on heading out to the famous Salt Lick, but seeing how it was 35 degrees at 1:30, we opted for something closer and that we knew had indoor seating.  I did a quick peek at some reviews of Rudy’s on Yelp and I quickly became very excited about our choice.  Rudy’s has some 27 locations spread across Texas, and from what I understand, they all have gas stations attached to them….clearly something that probably wouldn’t fly back in Cali.  We walked in and were greeted with a “welcome y’all” from one of the girls behind the cash register and while extremely friendly, it threw us off a bit. You see, there are cash registers to the left as you walk in, but there is an ordering corral (like the security line at the airport) weaving back and forth up to a counter manned by 5 or 6 people.  Danielle blurted out, “this is our first time here.” The girl told us to head up threw the line to our right and they will take care of us…she also mentioned that we should tell the person helping us that it was our first time.

The Order

Fast forward 4 minutes, we walked up to one of the expediters/cashiers and told him it was our first time.

Nice Rudy’s dude: “Where y’all from?”

Danielle: “San Francisco”

Nice Rudy’s dude: “We got two newbies from SAN FRANCISCOOOOOOO!”

I joined in to the whooping and hollerin’ that ensued.  After the theatrics were over, he told us he was going to walk us threw the whole ordering process and bring us samples of whatever we wanted.  We sampled the Extra Moist Brisket (da bomb), the Extra Lean Brisket (surprisingly moist considering it had no fat visible), the Smoked Turkey, and I sampled the sausage and jalapeno sausage.  The meats are sold by weight, most coming in 1/2lb increments, but they will break it down to 1/4lb if you are a weenie.   We fired up a 1/2lb of the Extra Moist Brisket, 1lb of the Pork Ribs,  1/2lb of the jalapeno sausage, some creamed corn, pinto beans and slaw.  They throw in white bread for you and have pickles and onions available next to the fountain drink area.

The Feast

They cut all of the meats to order, so if there is a specific part you are looking for, they will do their best to accomodate you. We just took what they gave us and we were not to be disappointed.  We sat down and covered the table with the pieces of butcher paper they give you to keep your spot tidy.

Pork Ribs

We started in on the pork ribs first.  One pound is about 8 ribs and man were they good.  From what I have seen on television (yeah, yeah, don’t laugh too hard) most Texas BBQ does not come with sauce on it. These ribs were very moist and had a nice, peppery rub on them (a little peppery for Danielle’s liking).  They were fall-off-the-bone cooked and the first words I muttered were, “man, these are really good” and they were REALLY good.  Great flavor, extemely moist, light smoke flavor, and just good. Will definitely be ordering these again. These are flat out a 10.

Extra Moist Brisket

First of all, let’s appreciate how Rudy’s has gone out on a limb with the name of this selection of brisket.  Now, if you are going to put something like “Extra Moist” next to your brisket, and you are in the middle of briskettown, you better have some f-ing moist brisket…and they do.  Man, this stuff is really good too. Very moist, on the verge of falling apart goodness.  Did not really get a lot of external rub/seasoning flavor, they just let the quality of the meat shine through.  Very good, I will definitely order this again. 9.5 to 10 on a 10 point scale.

Jalapeno Sausage

Seeing how I have a passion for encased meats, I had to order some kind of sausage.  The regular sausage was very nice, sweet and well flavored. I would order that, if they didn’t have something with Jalapeno in the name right next to it. Yoly and I split the sausage and it was great. Very moist, good flavor and a little jalapeno kick at the end…not heavy at all.  The casing was nice too, with a very nice snap.  All around, I would give it an 8 on the sausage scale of 1 to 10.

Sides

The creamed corn was a stand-out.  I will definitely order this again.  This is a signature item and probably a must order when you go.

The beans were also very nice. Good Pinto flavor with a whole bunch of pepper…a very nice compliment and something I really enjoyed as well.

The slaw was good and fresh.  I don’t really dig on cole slaw that much, so I won’t bother ranking it. It was very fresh tasting though and not all mushy. So, I have to give Rudy’s props for that.

I should also mention that I threw some of their sauce (aka: sause) on the ribs.  It was nice and sweet, not too thick and not too runny….pretty nice if you are a sauce freak like some people I know. But, the stuff is just not needed at this place, the meat is really moist and tasty.

Conclusion

Overall, I was extremely impressed with Rudy’s food (if you can’t tell).  To make things even better, the whole experience was great. Friendly staff, very clean dining area (impressive considering the number of kids and the lack of plates), and great food. Rudy’s definitely falls into the 9 to 10 range on a 10 point scale and tops my (very short) list of Austin BBQ joints.   Be sure to visit Rudy’s next time you make it to Texas.

I ran into an issue with my default php.ini maximum upload size being 2MB and the www.golod.com WP file being larger than 5MB…but that was an easy fix. For those of you trying to upgrade from a few single wordpress installs to one MU WordPress install, this might be a good workaround for you to import a large database into MU.

I know, this is a little sucker, but the damn thing would not die. They are perfectly content being perfectly flat.

Austin's smallest scorpion

Well, I have had one thing go my way so far today…I just discovered (I am slow) that there is an alternative to SecureCRT when it comes to an SSH client for Windows that has tab capabilites…Putty Connection Manager. I have been using Putty now for a year or two because it is free (I have bought SecureCRT before, but they don’t allow you to use your key on newer versions and you need the executible for the version you have the key for….and they don’t have them on their site for download). Anwyay, I now have a free, windows, tabbed ssh client. Suckit VanDyke.