Stewart’s Fountain Classics Key Lime Soda

October 14th, 2009

It has been a while since I have reviewed a soda. I am not sure why I never posted anything about Mountain Dew Game Fuel Alliance Blue (basically delicious MD Revolution recreated) or Horde Orange(?) (original Halo 3 Game Fuel). I might mention more later about those, but not now. I have not tried much else outside of the norm and have been mostly lamenting the apparent death of Pepsi Throwback. It is worth mentioning that I found MD Livewire at the Exxon near our house. It is still overpriced since I only find it in 20 ounces, but it is a good treat from time to time.

Speaking of overpriced soda, I bought some only very slightly overpriced soda at Mast General Store in Greenville this past weekend. I found RC Cola and “Stewart’s Fountain Classics Key Lime” soda in glass bottles for $1 each. I had the RC for lunch today with a sandwich and tostitos. It was appropriately good. I decided to follow up with the Key Lime soda with dinner. Lori, who usually hates soda, had the first swig (she will usually try a new one with me, probably mostly to humor me, but I think this time it was because she loves Key Lime pie) and told me it was good. I followed up quickly and was a bit taken aback. I expected a lime flavor more similar to a Sprite or something, maybe a bit more of a bit to it in sourness. Instead, it had more of a cream soda taste with a lime flavor, kind of like key lime pie.

I like key lime pie, but this was definitely weird to have with dinner. I put the cap back on and had water with dinner. Afterwards, I decided to finish it off before it went flat though. It was solidly “okay” for me. It had some interesting flavor, but it was way too much of a cream soda type taste for me and overall was “kind of weird”. It also has left a nasty lingering aftertaste on my tongue to a point that I will need to brush my teeth when done with this posting. I would try it again if given it for free, but I probably would not bother to try it again. That said, if given the opportunity I might try another Stewart flavor. Their root beer is supposed to be one of the best. Too bad I don’t like root beer! :)

One thing that is a bit annoying is that this drink pretends to be way more independent than it is. The bottling info says it is on the authority of Stewart’s Beverages, LLC. I thought this might be a totally indy drink, and while it supposedly has roots from old recipes produced by the real Stewarts Drive-In; this is definitely corporate soda. It is manufactured by the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group (formerly Cadbury Schweppes). In their defense, it was pretty indy before 2000 when Cadbury Schweppes bought out a ton of companies (Snapple, Royal Crown, Stewart’s)

I will give it a solid 3 out of 5. If you want to know more about Stewart’s you can go to their website.

Posted in Reviews, Soda | 2 Comments »

Dreams 9/1/09

September 2nd, 2009

Last night I had a dream that Andy died. Kristin was not even that upset about it. I wonder if he has been a crappy husband =P

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Funny Business with Chase Credit Cards

August 26th, 2009

I was aware of others talking about credit cards changing rules, raising interest rates, lowering credit lines, and the such in the face of the ‘credit crunch’ (another reason would be to sneak in things before they were limited by the CARD Act this month), but I had been pretty fortunate. For example, a lot of people have had trouble with Citi raising interest rates, but mine has stayed the same. Eventually, a few months ago, my Discover card sent me a notice that they were going from a low fixed rate on the card to a higher variable rate. I quickly wrote and ‘denied’ the change which closed the card. I then quickly paid it off so that I would not have to even worry about it anymore.

Chase though has quickly taken things to a new level, and honestly a new low. I have had a few problems with Chase in the past. I made a mistake and accidentally paid late (just a day or two) a couple times when I was not so ‘on top’ of making my payments on a specific schedule. As a result, they shot me up to the default APR on the account in question. Even though it has been approximately two and a half years since the problem first happened, they still have not come off of this rate. Of course, that was not a big problem, because at the time they distributed low APR balance transfers “for the life of the balance” both on the website and as physical checks (now if they make a similar offer, they limit the term to approximately 3 years or less).

I have another Chase branded card that I received from the Buy.com website. I signed up for it to get $30 off an order. This card did not get the default rate when I messed up on the other chase card and has a decent APR, so I used to use it as my primary credit card. In August 2007, I started consolidating some debt and getting my finances in order. I had a 5.99% balance transfer offer available on the Buy.com card and 6.99% (online) and 7.99% (paper) offers available on the other Chase card (I had to take advantage of both since I needed the 7.99% paper check to pay off my existing balance on the Buy.com card since you cannot typically do BTs within the same credit issuer). I then called and shifted $1200 of my available credit from the normal Chase card to the Buy.com card. At this point, I essentially filled both cards with balance transfers to consolidate and reduce the interest payments on all of my outstanding debts. Since then, I have just paid them down each month without adding to my burden (except that I BTed some more onto the Buy.com card from another card that was about to have the interest reset to a higher level at another point when 5.99% was offered again in December 2008).

So, now you have an idea of where I am at in June 2009, with two Chase cards at limits of $700 (regular), and $4100 (Buy.com) with balances of $520 and $3800. I then receive a one two punch that is what is causing me to write this post. First, they reduce my credit line on the Buy.com card to $3900, not a big deal but slightly annoying since it can affect my credit score adversely. That does not really matter though since we already had our mortgage approved.

The second is that they knocked the minimum payment up from 2% of the outstanding balance to 5%, at least on my Buy.com card. I think I received a notification that this was going to happen, but, in my head, the math did not click correctly and I did not think to act on it in any way. I could be wrong though as I received a separate notice that the balance transfer fee was going from 3% to 5%. Anyway, this annoyed me, but I knew it was in their rights (assuming they did send me notice which I cannot prove or disprove for certain) and probably to be expected since they need liquidity, especially with the WAMU takeover, etc. The annoying part though is what I read on Chase’s Consumer Affairs thread. While I fortunately can pay the increased 3% payment without much difficulty (I pay extra on a higher interest card, I can just shift over the difference), there are a lot who cannot because they had payments jump from from $390 a month to $950 a month. Normally, I would just feel a little bad for these people, but Chase says they will budge on requiring you to pay 5% of the balance… if you accept an interest rate hike! So basically, they are keeping their word to charge the rate for the ‘life of the balance’, but by manipulating other variables in their control to change what the ‘life of the balance’ is, they are effectively extorting people to give up their right to that low APR or have it forcibly taken away from them when they cannot pay (because of course, if you are even late on a payment, the ’special offer’ immediately ends). As far as I can tell, the CARD Act would not protect against the minimum payment changes, but just require them to give you 45 days notice as with other changes.

Posted in Personal Finance | 1 Comment »

mkcd

July 22nd, 2009

I started an xkcd parody comic. If you want to see it, go here. It is probably only funny in the context of being familiar with xkcd, but even if not you could try it.

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Dreams 7/1/09

July 2nd, 2009

Last night I had a dream that I was at a gas station. Apparently I was in the past (time travel?) because we were discussing gas prices in the future and I tried to bet the store worker $1000 that gas prices would rise to $4 a gallon in two years. I even told him I would let him have the $1000 for those two years, I was so certain I would be right. He declined though, but I was going to write his name down in my cell phone so I could come back and say “I told you so” nonetheless. I had went out back to do this and then was going to walk around the building to the front. Near the gate (there was a fence around the back enclosing the area behind the store apparently) some guy started hassling me for being on ‘his property’ and I kept walking away. He then accused me of spying on him and taking pictures of his business activities. I said I didn’t and then offered to show him that I had no pics.

For some reason, he did not think my phone sufficient to look for the pics since I could ‘just delete them off the phone’ so he wanted to look on some computer discs of mine. He ends up back at our place and I can’t find the discs in question. I eventually sneak off alone and dial 911 really quick and just let it ring without saying anything. I go out to tell him I can’t find the discs, but by then the police are there and he has his hands over his head. I am worried now that he will try to kill us when he gets out of custody even if he was not going to do it before because he will be extra mad. Also, he now knows where we live. In the end, he ends up getting into a shoot out with the officers and I try to get out of the way of the bullets. His gang shows up near this point and they shoot out with the officers as well. I do not remember how it resolves, but Lori and I end up back inside and I then find the stack of discs immediately. I lament for a moment that he might not have had to die, but then think he was being unreasonable and it really was his own thought. About this point, I woke up.

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Dreams

July 1st, 2009

I have mentioned to people that I should blog about my dreams. I have made no progress on it though. The thing that makes is particularly hard is that my dreams tend to be muddled, make little sense in retrospect, and even when they kind of do, it is hard to describe. Take my dream last night for example. I was out of town with the whole Shackley clan. I think we were at Andy’s wedding or there for it in general, but I don’t think Andy or Kristin were ever in it and it was definitely in no place from STL that I visited in real life. Regardless, I specifically remember there being someone that kept wanting to talk to me, but I kept delaying calling them back for whatever reason. Also, during the course of the dream, there was a least one small car accident in a parking lot that I caused (I tend to have dreams where I cause a small car accident in a parking lot because the brakes fail).

The only two events that particularly stick out are that I ended up, for a short period caring for a kid, but rather than Emily or Katie, it was Benjamin Gerrald. I guess Susannah or Matt were somehow there too? I have no idea how this came to be. The end of it kind of sticks out too. I ended up leaving the wedding area and going toward this mall-like area. They were blowing up all these hot air balloons for some sort of flyover. At first it reminded me of when I used to see the balloons fly over in North Augusta, but I was not in the Augusta area. It turns out I was in France apparently though no one ever spoke French. I kind of wanted to take a balloon with Lori but I worried it would be too expensive. That said, I ended up going inside and they had this weird thing that was like a small platform suspended between two balloons that flew around the top of the mall. You were supposed to stand on the platform and hold both balloon strings and it would fly you around. It looked cool, but it cost $310 US! (or $370 if you were gay. I am seriously not making this part up. I just remember thinking “how would they know?” in the dream, and also thinking that the only reason I could come up with for the extra price is that some homophobic people would refuse to ride if they knew a gay person had ridden on it.) I ended up doing it though, and it sucked. I did not get on the platform right and spent the entire ride (which only lasted like 30 seconds apparently) trying to get into a good position. It was 0 fun. I went out and the others were there and was left pondering whether the real hot air balloon ride would have cost much more in actuality.

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Moutain Dew and Pepsi Throwback

May 21st, 2009

I got the chance to taste both Mountain Dew and Pepsi Throwbacks recently. I feel pretty similarly about both of them as compared to their original counterparts, so I will fold it into one review. In both cases, cleaner flavor if you know what I mean (I have seen others describe the flavor as ‘clean’ as well, so I do not feel completely alone here). Also, the body of the soda was completely different, more of a wateriness to the texture. I am pretty sure this is a result of sugar making the drink less syrupy than the HFCS. Additionally, there seemed to be a little bit less of an aftertaste left on your tongue, but there was sweeter taste left on your lips when you lick them.

Speaking of sweeter, I think both drinks were sweeter than their HFCS counterparts, but the Pepsi was far sweeter than normal Pepsi. It reminded me a lot of the real sugar Coke or real sugar Pepsi Gold that I had in Jamaica (Pepsi Gold was a gold colored Pepsi variant that was a promo for the World Cup in 2006. It also apparently contained a hint of ginger not in normal Pepsi).

As I am not a big fan of Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Throwback did not do enough for me to switch to it. I would drink it again though if given the chance to do so for free, and I would be interested in drinking it side-by-side with some Mountain Dew to do further flavor comparisons.

Pepsi, being my soda of choice, is what I am most picky about. I am not sure what to say really. Part of me is really used to the HFCS version and almosts misses the texture of it when drinking Throwback. That being said, I do like the extra sweetness and the other perks with the aftertaste. I think that if it stayed on the market and I got used to it, I would probably prefer it to normal Pepsi. I do not like it so much as to pay a premium to purchase it on more than a yearly basis though.

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Pepsi Throwback

April 24th, 2009

It has been a while since I have written about soda. Nothing much has come my way in the soda front lately except for the fact that I found some Livewire in Columbia a couple months ago. Disappointingly though, it was only cold 20 oz. plastic bottles (one of the most overpriced forms of soda available), and I have not seen it again since. This makes me really glad I got some that day.

But anyway, I have some news today. Apparently Pepsi has started producing Pepsi Throwback. It comes with a classic logo (the new logo sucks btw) and real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. I am really interested to try it, but I am not sure that I will LOVE IT like some people do. Since I am relatively young, I have only rarely experienced soda with real cane sugar (in Jamaica). It almost was a bit weird in taste since I am acclimated to the texture of HFCS, but that could have also had something to do with different water supplies and/or bottling practices in Jamaica. Therefore, if you see Pepsi Throwback, get one for me! I definitely want to try it and review it here.

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Experiments in Over the air (OTA) HDTV Part 1

April 14th, 2009

A while back, I spoke with Lori about the idea of getting rid of our cable. As our discounts have ended, our bill has slowly creeped up to $123 a month for cable and internet. The way they structure things now, it is harder to get onto a discount without signing a contract service agreement. Anyway, we both had some reservations. Even though 95% of our TV watching is on networks, there were a few shows that we watched on the cable. Additionally, Lori and I very occasionally enjoy channel surfing and watching something random (usually on Food Network in Lori’s case). Despite this, we decided the saved money might be worth it, at least to try for a while.

This left two problems: Getting reception over the air and replacing our beloved DVR “box”.

I will cover replacing the DVR box more extensively in another post, but the long and short of it is that it basically will cost about $500 to come up with an acceptable solution that is not laggy and does not require tying up one of our computers or our network all the time. This is a bit of a hard expense to bite, but even if we went back to cable, we would save $9.95 a month in DVR fees and eventually break even. Also, it will allow us to bring Blu-Ray into our house without paying a premium price for a standalone player.

First though, I wanted to share my experiences thusfar in getting over-the-air HDTV. Our HDTV has an ATSC tuner (the type needed to pull in HD channels), but I never understood how it worked. Whenever I opened it up, it had like two blacked out channels that were not even network names for our area (KABC and something else). After some research, I realized that with HD, you have to scan for channels first. I realized that I did not have an antenna though. In the past, for analog TV reception, I have jury-rigged one from a coat hanger, or even more primatively, from a paperclip. I knew those gave weak signals though and did not even know if they would work with digital broadcasts. Then I remembered that I have a UHF/VHF signal booster from college (the signal to our apartment was really bad because they split it so many times). I combined these two into a small paperclip boosted antenna (I have heard that a booster is no substitute for a decent antenna, but I figured what the heck did I have to lose?).

After a scan, I had 6 channels show up: CBS and two weather related subchannels and PBS and two subchannels (South Carolina TV and something else). The CBS channels were choppy (but hey, I was watching free HDTV for the first time!!!) and the PBS channels were ‘no signal’. I upgraded from a paperclip to a paperclip wrapped around a metal clothes hanger and retried it. After this, CBS and its subchannels were completely watchable and with a little adjustment PBS and the subchannels were coming in pretty good as well. I could not get it to find anything else though.

The next day, I decided to play with it a bit more, after some more antenna adjustments, I eventually got it to rescan and get 11 channels. CBS and 2 subchannels, PBS and 2 subchannels, NBC and 1 (weather related) subchannel, CW, Fox, and My Network TV. The CW and Fox channels came up as no signal when I actually tried to view them, but I was able to get variable reception on the remaining 9 channels. This leads me to believe that a proper antenna will be able to pull these channels well. I have ordered one to test that out.

The catch of course is that we are moving in June. I am going to have to go out there with a small TV, digital converter box, and antenna to try it out, but I believe I will be able to get tolerable reception with an indoor antenna. Failing that, I do not know what I will do exactly. We could go outdoor, but the up-front costs of that might make this adventure more expensive than it is worth.

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

Twilight

March 27th, 2009

So I am watching Twilight with Lori. I realized that there are a lot of people in the movie that I have seen in other movies or TV shows. I think it is pretty hilarious to try to think of each person playing as that character in that instead of as their current character. Here is a partial list.

Bella Swan – Girl from Speak
Edward Cullen – Cedric Diggory, but I never remember this normally.
Rosalie Hale – Party girl in Thirteen and/or girl who kills her mom in Mimi’s First Time
Jasper Hale – Nicholas Fiske from Beautiful People (THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE DUN DUN DUN)
Esme Cullen – Jane Doe from Grey’s Anatomy whose face is screwed up
Mike Newton – Joan of Arcadia’s little brother Luke Girardi
Victoria – Apparently she was in MTV’s Undressed. A show with hilariously bad acting.

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