Daily Archives: March 20, 2014

PDX Food Recommendations

Posted on by

I’ve been visiting Portland OR and Vancouver WA for the past 3 years – at least 1 trip per quarter.  As a result, I’ve had a chance to visit some very nice restaurants here.  Here are my recommendations

Tommy O’s – Hawaiian-esque cuisine, great sushi and Ahi Tuna.  Desserts are tasty!  I’ve been downtown and at a location in Vancouver (Washington, not British Columbia).

Elephant’s Deli – And don’t forget their PDX airport location, Flying Elephants.  Great lunch – I highly recommend the Kale salad, any of the sandwiches, Mac & Cheese (best I’ve ever had), the chocolate mousse and anything from the bakery.  The staff are friendly, and you’ll see a lot of great Pacific NW beards here.

Red Onion – Great place for quick Thai at lunch.

Toast & Pho – A quick hole in the wall Vietnamese restaurant, family owned.

Mother’s Bistro – We stumbled on this when we went for walk around the city.  You can get half sized portions of their main entrees so you can try multiple dishes.  Admittedly, despite being half the size of their portions, it’s still quite a bit of food.  Still, if you’re diet conscious, go for a half portion and you’re set.  Try the spiced plum tea – it’s awesome.

Beaches Restraurant – The only restaurant I’m mentioning that’s located in Vancouver WA.  You can get a beautiful river view table.  The fish and desserts are awesome, and the staff are friendly.

 

So I bought an XBone

Posted on by

Goodness – it’s been a few months since I wrote anything in this blog.  I’ve been travelling between Portland, Dallas and Ann Arbor for the past 6 out of 7 weeks with 3 more weeks of travel coming up.  A 2 week break and then 1 more week of travel.

True to form, some may say, “Some may doth protest to much”, and that’s pretty true of the XBox One.

I bought one.

I like it.

Possibly more than my PS4.

So what was it that turned me around?

  • Firstly, I’m a race car fan and given Sony Computer Entertainment has delayed Drive Club from being a launch game to being indefinitely delayed.  Forza is pretty drool worthy, and one has to admit the Drivertar functionality is pretty cool.
  • The lack of games on the PS4 during the launch window and even until today has been pretty lacking.  I can only think of a handful of games, that I’m not really interested in, that have been released.
  • The first game I’m really interested in beyond the launch window launches this weekend – Infamous Second Son.
  • The games available for the XBone are trumping those I was interested in for the PS4.  Forza, Peggle 2, Max: Curse of the Brotherhood, Killer Instinct, and Crimson Dragon.  I’ve been playing all of them.
  • A lot of the independent games Sony has been hawking on PSN+ have not been great.
  • Rehashing games from the Vita or the PS3 is not a good strategy for those of us looking for new content to play.  I wanna see the limits of the PS4 pushed.
  • It feels like that with the launch titles, the PS4 was going after the XBox360 demographic with a lot of first person shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield.  There’s more to a game console than FPS.

I’m feeling a bit burned by my PS4 purchase, honestly.

Now that said, I know it will get better.  The PS3 started out slow and became such an amazing game machine.  Or at least, I hope the PS4 will get better.

So what about the stink I made when the XBone was announced?

  • Most of the arrogant folks who were responsible for the botched announcements have left.  This clears the perceived integrity issues to a degree.
  • Checking out an XBone, they seem to have gotten rid of a lot of the advertising that seemed to plague the Xbox 360.  It’s still there but it seems to have toned down considerably.  Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft is listening to the complaints about all the advertising.

What else turned me around?

  • Playing around with an XBone at EB Games somewhat turned me around.
  • I liked the operating system.  It’s similar enough to Windows 8/8.1 but unique enough that it is it’s own thing.
  • Kinect actually works in my man cave, surprisingly.  The original Kinect for the 360 really sucked.
  • Voice commands, despite the fact I really hate voice commands outside my car, actually seem to work and have some value.

I still think the XBox 360 is one of the lamest, modern, game consoles available.  I think Microsoft has somewhat redeemed itself.

I still think the amount of advertising they spent on the XBone shows how desperate the company has been to address the asinine way Mattrick and others first announced the XBone.

The XBone may be worth looking at relative to the PS4.