The Blog with No Title

I previously reviewed the Braeburn apple. Read this first if you want more information about why I review apple cultivars.

I recently bought some Red Delicious apples because they were on sale. They were really quite bland. I mean, they were not that juicy and they did not have a strong flavor. Maybe I got a bad batch, but this goes toward confirming everything that I have read about Red Delicious apples being inferior. I must admit that they are beautiful though, being the iconic apple and whatnot.

But really, thinking back, I cannot remember the last time I had a Red Delcious apple and thought “wow, this is excellent, I need to go out and buy more apples soon”, it is more like “oh, cool, there are apples around, I will eat them before they go bad”.

I don’t often mention this, but I have developed a passing interest in apple cultivars after reading way too much on wikipedia about the subject one day. I think the most interesting thing about them is that it is possible that what is considered a good apple now will be completely replaced in the future by an even better variety. Anyway, I had a Braeburn apple for the first time (that I know of) today.

In the interest of education, here is some information on the Braeburn apple.

The Braeburn is a cultivar of apple that is firm to the touch with a red/orange vertical streaky appearance on a yellow/green background. Its color intensity varies with different varieties.

It is believed to have been discovered as a chance seedling in New Zealand nearly fifty years ago. It is thought to be a cross between Granny Smith and Lady Hamilton. The apple itself is named after Braeburn Orchard where it was first commercially grown.

Braeburn apples have a unique combination of sweet and tart flavour. They are available late April to mid October and are medium to large in size. They are a popular fruit for growers because of their ability to store well when chilled.

I thought it was pretty good. It is not my favorite apple, but the sweet and tart mix of flavor is nice.

I was running low on SweetTarts (part of the trifecta of SweetTarts, Orange Slices, and Pepsi) lately so I happened to see that Food Lion had SweetTarts Hearts on sale for half-price (maybe even less). I bought a bag of course. As many may know, I have been known to eat SweetTarts Hearts at any time of the year (mom used to get a lot of them for me on sale I suppose). The problem though is that they have changed them since I last had them. The SweetTarts are now thicker than before, and I feel that they are a bit softer in texture than usual. I don’t know if I would say I am completely displeased with the changes, but they are a bit odd to me thusfar.

1408 is definitely worth watching.

I thought I would make a brief post about going to D’s Wings (I thought it was called that, but I think it is really called D’s Restaurant now) this weekend. We went for Christine’s birthday on Saturday night. For some reason, she did not want to meet until 8PM, and by the time we sat around waiting for others to arrive, it was about 8:45 before we even ordered. Thankfully, I had pre-eaten enough that I wasn’t really hungry. Lori had eaten a little bit before coming, but not as much so she was definitely ready to eat.

Anyway, I ended up just getting a 6 piece wing with fries and then split the cost with Adena who only wanted fries (I only wanted wings, but not 10+ which is the smallest “just wings” order on the menu). I went with the medium wings because I didn’t know how spicy their selection ran, and, as many of you know, I like spice, but too much just isn’t worth it for me.

Anyway, they were quite excellent. The ranch dressing and celery were a great compliment for the warm wing’s (they were not very spicy) excellent flavor. They only had raw fries which are basically what I have always called “homefries”, thin slices of potato instead of wedge shaped. Anyway, I sampled one and I thought they were really good. They were nice and crisp which I think is normally a problem when you get them this way. The mix between the (forgive my lack of knowing terminology) two boned wing parts and one boned wing parts was a pretty even split though I think I had more of the slightly less desirable two boned parts (though I have a nice trick for getting the bones out of these that almost makes up for it). One other thing I liked is that I did not feel the wings were too wet. I know some people like their wings drenched in sauce, but I only like a light covering and often will pat my wings dry if they are too wet. I did not feel the need to do that with these. Speaking of sauce, while I ended up giving my original plate to Adena because the fries would have been harder to move than the wings, it seemed to me (I wasn’t paying close attention) that there was a lot of sauce in the bottom of the plate getting on the bottom fries and making them soggy. It may be worth asking to have the wings and fries on seperate plates if this is not desired (and it isn’t for me). Finally, I ended up finding out that they gave me 7 wings instead of 6. I don’t know if this is a standard bonus to increase the perception of value or an honest mistake, but I was happy for it, especially since I ended up trading one wing to Karen for a fried mushroom (definitely worth it because I really can’t eat enough fried mushrooms to justify getting an appetizer of them, and no one I know in Columbia eats mushrooms).

Best of all, Lori found some things on the menu that she can eat. They have a small pasta fare, but she ended up going with the grilled cheese. She said it was pretty good, but apparently they advertised Texas toast but she did not feel that it was real Texas toast or even thicker than a normal sliced bread for that matter. I think she also said there was a little bit too much cheese on it and that it was a bit greasy, but you’d have to ask her to verify those claims. Maybe the pasta will be better.

Anyway, I would definitely go back again. I need to find some other wing lovers out there who would split a larger platter to save money. If you can mix and match flavors I might be willing to branch out, but 99% of the time I prefer my wings with normal sauce rather than Teriyaki, Honey Mustard, etc.

Each year, you can get a free credit report from annualcreditreport.com because of rules and regulations regarding credit. Still, this does not include the all important credit score that many loaners use to decide your self-worth. Recently, I wanted to see my score and realized that freecreditreport.com offered a comprehensive free Experian credit report including my score. Of course, the catch is that you are automatically enrolled in a “Triple Advantage” program which offers to “ease” correcting problems on your report through an exorbinant monthly charge (I forget the exact amount, but it was probably about $20 a month) after the free 30-day trial. Of course, this could be very useful if you were in the middle of a identity theft fiasco, but not for someone like me who has a correct record everytime he has checked.

Anyway, the reason that I wanted to recommend freecreditreport.com is that cancelling my membership in the trial period was not all together horrible. I had to call instead of doing it online of course, which made me suspect I was going to get a hard-sell to keep it on the phone. The number is 1-877-481-6826, option 1 (it is even the number they give out to you when you first join and not some secret hidden number) on the menu to save you some time. Anyway, I was only on hold for about a minute before someone picked up. She confirmed my identity, asked why I was calling (I bet she knew), asked why I was cancelling, asked if the information I had seen on the site was accurate, gave a short standard spiel about why I shouldn’t cancel, and (the best part) accepted immediately when I said I was still not interested in keeping my membership.

Anyway, cancelling isn’t the nightmare I expected and that is a Good Thing in my book.

Oh, and I found out I have exceedingly average credit, the high end of exceedingly average though!

Edit: They actually only charge a slightly more reasonable $12.95 a month, but still, if you don’t need it…

Update (February 18, 2009): I tried this again and the credit report part really was a let down. I could only figure out how to get to a summary and not drill down to individual account information. Also, I don’t know if I knew this before, but it is a proprietary Experian score, not a FICO score. Lastly, the trial was reduced to 7-days and the price was raised to $14.95 per month.

Update (February 19, 2009): You can call 1-888-829-6560 to do an automatic cancellation as well.

Don’t buy furniture from Rooms To Go if you can help it, at least if you live in South Carolina. We bought our furniture there last Summer and it seemed pretty cool until it was delivery time.

1st delivery – I think this one was actually on time (not a trend), but one of our dining room chairs was broken and scheduled for redelivery. Our love seat also did not come, but that was already scheduled seperately because of a problem.
2nd delivery – We waited all day and they never showed up. We received a call at about 10PM talking about scheduling redelivery, but were were exhausted and already in bed.
3rd delivery – Furniture came about 6 hours after the “4 hour delivery time frame”, coming at an impressive 10PM. Oh yeah, and our broken chair, not there.
4th delivery – I don’t remember this very well. I think it was pretty standard, we finally got our last chair.

Ok, now, flash forward from August 2006 to March 2007. Oh snap, we notice one of our chairs is splitting. I delayed a little while because of busyness with school and all. Anyway, so we called and set up a repair appointment finally.

1st repair appointment – The repair department is pretty cool, he showed up like 1 minute after the start of the 4 hour time frame.

Sadly, he found that the split chair is unrepairable. To the warranty! They call me up, and we sadly find out that they don’t produce our dining room set anymore and we will have to reselect an entirely new set. I tried to see about getting a new chair directly from the manufacturer, but they wouldn’t even give me the information.

Anyway, so we go and reselect and after a lot of hassle with an especially helpful woman, we were set for a new set of deliveries!

5th delivery – Truck never showed up.
6th delivery – Truck showed up 5 hours after the end of our 4 hour time frame. Our dining room table top was broken. Also, while they were on the cell phone I heard them talking about broken furniture being taken to one or two other stops showing that this broken furniture thing is not just a problem with me.
7th delivery – Hasn’t happened yet, but they made me wait a full extra week in the queue before they will be back out here. You would think that I’d get priority. I did get $50 bucks knocked off the delivery charge though.

On the plus side, our new china cabinet that we got is beautiful. We didn’t have a china cabinet before, but when we had to reselect we wanted a much cheaper table so we had to do something with all the store credit

We have had a few other problems with pieces of furniture scratching up easily. My main reason for recommending against them though is that I hate their delivery people. Maybe your mileage will vary in other regions though…