Dan Mayer's Blog

I really enjoy trying out new restaurants and searching for something noteworthy or worth while to other people. It is great to have that perfect restaurant to bring a guest while they are in town, etc. Anyways, it is a hobby of mine to review stuff like that. I have always found Yelp and Urban Spoon, so useful while searching for restaurants in new cities, I always try to give back. When with Erin in NYC Urban Spoon was like our best travel friend, we would just go anywhere in the city and know that it could point us to exciting new places for dinner, drinks, or desserts. Just got done viewing the statue of liberty, no problem here is this great little pasta place on the waterfront for $10 a person!

So I had been lagging a bit on my review responsibilities to give back lately, and even though we had gone out a bunch in DC I hadn't written reviews. Well feel shame no more, because I reviewed about 12 restaurants in DC on Yelp this weekend. If you know my review style and enjoyed it in the past you can find more of the same. I don't really hold my opinions back when occasionally tearing a place up, or expressing my love for a certain dish or place.

So check out My reviews on Yelp, if you are going out in DC or Boulder anytime soon.

I have been wanting to write a review for Neal Stephenson's book Cryptonomicon for awhile now. I think because I have thought about it and referenced it so many times since I finished it. The oddest part is I have a real love hate relationship with the book.

Basically, I was looking for a bit more grown up Michael Crichton type book. I liked Crichton's books, but his latest ones seemed to be written with a little less meat to them (or perhaps I have just grown up). Anyways, I got a ton of recommendations for Neal Stephenson, and heard this book was considered his best by many. I grabbed a copy used on Amazon for $1.40, and was surprised by how large it was when it arrived.

I like a good book, but I don't like a book that I am seriously worried that I might die before completing. Once getting into it though the length wasn't really the issue it was the large collection of side stories. Some are very relevant as you learn later in the book, but many it seems are just asides for the sake of writing another chapter. Overall this was the biggest downside of the book. I found myself frequently reading sections of the book I found boring, while waiting to get back to the interesting parts.

The book has two many story lines going, a historical storyline and a modern story line. I found that I was more interested in the historical story line, which was pretty amazing to tell the truth. The modern story line I liked a bit, but toward the end I found that ever chapter that was set in modern times I was only reading to get back to the next historical chapter. I stopped caring about the modern characters and lost interest in their goals.

The book is hilarious at times and serious at times. I laughed so hard as the book went into detail, including charts, about how men can't concentrate if they haven't had and orgasm in the last two weeks. There was also hilarious asides about antiques, sorting inheritance items, and encrypting messages with a deck of cards. One of the reasons I can't give this book a highly positive review was that the asides bothered me, but also some of my favorite moments and the funniest moments were some of the same random stories. I think overall I enjoyed the book a lot, but thought it was a bit long winded.

So basically I highly recommend reading Cryptonomicon. I think it is the kind of book that if you find yourself not enjoying it, just quit reading it. Really this book isn't the kind of book you have to finish, in fact I would say the ending of the book is pointless. The joy of this book is the journey, not the ending. So pick it up and check it out, it may or may not be something you are really into. History buffs and techno geeks are both easily welcomed into this books world.

I am still looking for some intelligent mildly realistic science fiction, so if you have other recommendations be sure to let me know. Until then I have decided that I will at least read one more Neal Stephenson book, Snowcrash. After that, I am going to read an old Michael Crichton book to mourn his passing.

Currently reading: All Quiet on the Western Front and A Dog Year (both because of my girlfriend)

Lately I have been doing a bit more 'fine' dinning. Basically since Erin and I are doing the long distance thing when we are actually around each other we treat ourselves to a nice dinner out. Even better is that our parents have decided to give us various gifts treating us to nights out on the town. It is always a blast, we get dressed up (even when we don't need to... really where requires you to dress up in Boulder?), and we head out for a long dinner preferably followed by dancing or live music. I decided I really needed to update and share my list of the best restaurants in Boulder, so below you will find my seekler list and I have included short reviews on the site of each restaurant.

There were a couple of places on my list that I really wanted to call special attention to. I need to take a quick moment to rant and or rave about Frasca, John's, and the Red Lion Inn...

Frasca was amazing! As a treat while Erin was in town for thanksgiving my Dad and Nancy told us to go out for dinner on them. We decided that we should try somewhere new and looked up what was most recommended in Boulder... We found tons of people raving about Frasca, so we decided to just drop in after calling and hearing reservations where full but they currently had 2 walk in tables. We walked in and were told the tables had just filled and all the bar seating was full as well, but that if we wanted to wait an hour and a half they could seat us. We said OK and decided to go grab pre dinner drinks somewhere else. As we were leaving, we made it about 15 steps away, and the owner runs out and says they can seat us! Frasca had a table that was empty but reserved in about an hour, so they said we could start our meal there and then in an hour we would have to move to bar seating to finish our meal...

That sounded great to us, so we sat down for what became probably the best meal I have ever had. We had Frasca pair a glass of wine with each course, and started with champagne. The food was stunningly good, our drinks were all excellent, the staff was amazing, the dessert was a great finish as well... The only issue is that we kind of lost track of the cost, we definitely ended the meal signing a $250 CC bill, whoops... Erin and I sent my Dad and Nance a gift and a thank you, and offered to cover some of the cost, since they probably weren't expecting a bill quite like that... They told us not to worry about it and were glad we had such a wonderful evening. We were glad as well, and you know what, it is definitely worth every penny to do that once in awhile. I couldn't recommend Frasca more!

I wanted to quickly throw some support to John's restaurant as well. I have visited and enjoyed meals at least 5 times at John's and it is always a great experience. Erin and I had an amazing meal there with a fun and friendly waiter. We paired each course with a half glass of wine, and started the meal with tasty and fun 'martinis'. The sauce on the lobster ravioli was so good we had them bring us more bread so that we could dip it and soak up the rest of the sauce. Thanks to Erin's parents for the great xmas gift of dinner out, we had a great night.

Last I needed to warn people about the Read Lion Inn Restaurant. I had been there years ago and remembered liking it and had been talking about it recently. We received a gift certificate to the Red Lion Inn and decided to try it out for my birthday, with disastrously hilarious results. It was actually embarrassing to be served by their staff, it was like we were on a hidden camera show but there was no end of the joke. Luckily Erin and I have a good sense of humor and basically got a great laugh out of it (Although it was very hard not to laugh out load in the restaurant). During the course of the meal we had some of the most awkward conversations with 3 people from the staff, just basically all of them were saying embarrassing things while causing a variety of mistakes. During our meal our duck was dropped on the floor and had to be re-prepared, we couldn't place drink orders, and we overheard them serving the wrong bottle of wine to the table next to us. The service was just epic horribly epic, but I do have one nice thing to say about them... The food was still very good, we actually enjoyed all of the courses and I especially liked my quail. You will find many online reviews saying this place is a tourist trap. After seeing how badly this restaurant has fallen from past glory I would caution people against visiting for a nice meal out.

Can you tell the difference between Bud light, Miller Light, and Coors light?

We had a party and asked 8 people to try and I will briefly present the result to you. I don't think it really helps to tell you which beer is better than one another, but it is interesting none the less.

4 of the 8 people could pick out all three beers correctly.
1 person only identified Coors light correctly
1 person only identified Bud light correctly
1 person only identified Miller light correctly
1 person didn't get a single beer right

So draw the conclusions how ever you wish, but I will still hold that all beer is pretty much gross, and as my mom likes to describe it, "tastes like petrified piss!"

I finally finished reading Getting Things Done. I have been trying to implement parts of the system into my life while reading through the book. I have a filing system up and running. I have been carrying around little notebooks with me everywhere to jot down my ideas. I have been going through all my items and trying to decide next actions, and move them into projects, my inbox, tickler files, and such. I think the little parts I am following will help a lot, I doubt I will ever fully buy into the entire system, but honestly you don't have to and you will still see some great benefits in your organization and productivity.

I can't claim to have done the best job of getting done, with Getting Things Done. I started and finished 5 other books during the time I read Getting Things Done. Why you ask, because this book is about organization skills and business, it is painfully boring and repetitive. I found myself hiding the book in drawers just so I wouldn't have to read, sort, clean, or follow any more of the books tips. If you can make it through the book it really is worth it and the last 50 pages are some of the best in the book. So if you want to be more effective at everything you do, your next action should be acquiring or start reading Getting Things Done.

Now I guess to continue accomplishing and finishing tasks I set for myself I must finish one other book that I started and have slowly been reading. I have finished 8 other books since starting. Programming books are even more boring to read than business books.

I really enjoy board games sometimes. I think they are a great way to spend some time with friends. Everyone can chat, play, drink, and generally be merry. Anyways I created my own list of my favorite board games and I want to get everyone else's opinions. So that means of course I created a Best Board Games list on Seekler. Check it out and add your favorites or rank the games you love that are already on the list. Anyways almost everyone loves board games, so rank them for me...

Best Board Games

Three Cups of Tea - One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time.

This true story motivates you and makes you wish you were doing more for others in the world. It also goes into detail and the root causes of terrorism and fighting it with education and economic development, instead of only with weapons and war. I think the strongest part of this book are the examples that show how education empowered the people so much in ways that they always wanted to use that education to help their people. It shows how knowledge and understanding can spread peace at a time when there is so much deception between what is going on with governments and there people.

The quick summary of this book is that Greg Mortenson made an attempt to climb K2 on of the hardest peaks to summit. He failed and almost died on the way back down. Finding himself separated from his group and wondering in the frozen wilderness, he stumbled of the path only to find another one that led to a remote village that wasn't even on the map. The village nursed the sick Mortenson back to health and returned him safely to the base camp he was originally attempting to find. Mortenson after seeing the poverty and struggles of the mountain village promises to return and help them. Ever since he has been building schools all across the middle east, that educate and don't teach any religion.

The story takes awhile to get moving and the author twiddles on and on about every little person that is somehow helps in the process, but it is still pretty powerful and moving to see what one man has started. So if you want some alternative views of how to help improve foreign relations between the world and the US, this book is a good place to start. If you want an inspiring story about a flawed man giving his best, I would recommend this book.

I just posted quick review of Mavericks at Work over at the Pretheory blog. This means I am down to currently only 4 books, most of which have less than a hundred pages less. I am really looking forward to finishing off this group of books, so I can get my head into some new stuff. I expect to finish another one by the end of the day. If your interested in business and entrepreneur books our blog has started to put up a growing list of recommendations.

Book review of Mavericks at Work

I really enjoyed the first novel I read by Dan Brown, that was Davici Code. So I decided to give him another shot. I grabbed a copy of Deception point. It was another really fast read that you just wanted to see what would happen next. The problem with this one was it didn’t seem to really make any sense the more you learned about the plot the more holes it had in it from the beginning. They had a huge scientific discovery and act like long as everyone believed it for the first week no scientists would ever return to the site and never verify anything. That is just not true. Then the main thing motivating you to read further is just descriptions of something amazing about to show up or be told to you and then chapters later it is still vaguely described and you don’t know what this important thing is. By the time you are finally told whatever it is your waiting to find out it is almost certainly a let down. Also, another very Dan Brown thing to do is have a series of coincidences each less probable than the last work out so that the story can continue. It is also really easy to predict the fate of most of the people in the book. First most characters are either perfectly good or perfectly bad. Then if any good character comes in and has some small task they help the “good team” with the will certainly die quickly after helping out. Also, it seems that it wouldn’t be a Dan Brown book with out a strong smart woman quickly falling for a man in about 24 hours because of his caring tenderness and brilliance. I guess at this point I just don’t feel there is a need to read any more of his books as you can come up with some extremely unlikely problem and then a never ending series of improbably happenings and then the two good guys fall in love at the end of the story. I felt I had to finish the book but by about halfway through I just couldn’t wait for it to end.

To sum it up I would say Dan Brown is a master at making you wait, and wait you will if you read his book just to see what happens even when you stop caring.

What the Bleep do we know?

This was a very interesting movie that i have thought about several times since I first saw it. The basic idea is that it is about quantum physics. It tries to show how they truly break all laws of the world, but at the same time govern everything we do. So if we base so much science of what happens with out knowing the under lying principles ... truly what do we know. It then goes on to discuss bigger and more important issues about life that can be thought of and related to quantum physics. It is half documentary, mostly involving interviews with prominent researchers. It is half fictional story about working through the struggles of life, and how your thoughts effect you. Overall I liked it, it needed some editing work, some parts get a bit repetitive. It had interesting points and a good story as well. Since so much of it is interviews that are almost lecture style thought, you can't go to this movie as you go to others. You can't expect to go and be entertained, you have to go and purposely be trying to learn something and to gain from the experience. You should think of it more like going to visit a very interesting guest lecturer. They will be interesting and have a lot to say, but some of it might be over your head, and some of it may not interest you.

If your not interested in science or questioning religion, I wouldn't both going to this film because you wont like it... But you might learn something... hehe

I will give a short but sweet review of this book. I know this book was really big a little while ago and I am a late comer, but I normally don't read a whole lot. So i just finally got to this book after being interested for awhile. I liked it a lot, it had some flaws and problems but over all I thought it was a great experience and kept a wonderful pace. When ever you felt like the book was slowing down a bit to much and nothing was happening it would jump forward a bunch real quick and keep the story moving. It might have started to have a bit to much fall into place for the ending for me, but it was still great overall. It is pretty critical of the catholic church, but seeing as that is mostly about documents the church wont release and whatnot, I am fine with that. I think all information should be released and then the public can choose how and what to interpret. Anyways if you like detective type of stories where great clues are laid out and solved, this would probably interest you as well.