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The 3 best double-cheeseburgers in Milwaukee

scott8035 — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:47:14 +0000

Here’s where you can find the three best double-cheeseburgers in Milwaukee:

#3: Kopps Frozen Custard. They have three locations. Huge burgers, and they’re famous in Milwaukee, but I think you can do better.

#2: Omega Burger & Custard. They have at least two locations that I know of, one at Hwy 100 & Layton, the other near Lincoln & KK. The burgers aren’t as big as Kopps or Golden Gyros, but they’re good.

#1: Golden Gyros: At 72nd & Lincoln. Huge, delicious burgers. They also have gyros that are supposed to be good too, but every time I go there I can’t resist getting another delicious double-cheeseburger, extra cheese, ketchup, and pickles. Yum!

I’ve heard of other burger joints that are supposed to be good, and I’m going to try a new one tomorrow—the Nite Owl Ice Cream Parlour at 830 E. Layton, by the airport.

Strangely, all these places have good ice cream, too. I prefer Omega for this purpose.

My Amazing Daughter

scott8035 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:05:25 +0000

I have an amazing daughter. She’s raising her 4-year old daughter with the help of her fiance. She’s a full-time college student. On top of that she’s a teller at the bank, takes care of the magazines for local grocery stores, and works at Pier1. Plus the cooking and cleaning. I don’t know how she does it all, but she makes it work and only melts down occasionally. I’m incredibly proud of her!

The death of rock-n-roll

scott8035 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:56:47 +0000

What happened to rock music? Does anyone make it anymore? When I turn the radio on to our local alternative rock station, 75% of what I hear is weak and depressing, full of minor chords, angst, and grown men singing in a key they should have left behind with puberty. Why did the lead guitar solo disappear? It’s as if someone passed a law banning prominent guitar playing. Perhaps it’s the local Milwaukee radio market, but I don’t think so.

Here’s a list of 50 songs today’s musicians need to take inspiration from:

Aerosmith before they kicked smack: Last Child
Early ZZ Top–Tush, La Grange
Any popular Tom Petty song, for example, Mary Jane’s Last Dance
The Black Crowes, Remedy
The White Stripes, Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
CCR, Heard It Through the Grapevine
Jimi Hendrix, Manic Depression
Social Distortion, Ring of Fire
Presidents of the USA, Lump
Gov’t Mule, 30 Days in the Hole, aka Hempilation
AC/DC, Night Prowler
Bad Company, Shooting Star
Beck, Loser
Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita
Bush, Glycerine
The Clash, Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Joe Walsh, The Confessor
Anything by George Thorogood
Green Day, Brain Stew
Guns-n-Roses, Mr. Brownstone
Jet, Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Jethro Tull, Cross-eyed Mary (pardon the flute)
Kid Rock, Cowboy
Living Colour, Cult of Personality
The Outlaws, Green Grass and High Tides
Nirvana, All Apologies
Papa Roach, Last Resort
Monster Magnet, Space Lord
Rolling Stones, Brown Sugar
Rush, Working Man
Soundgarden, Burden In My Hand
Stevie Ray Vaughn, Voodoo Chile
Toadies, Possum Kingdom
The Wallflowers, Sixth Avenue Heartache
Alice Cooper, Eighteen
Bob Seger, Her Strut
Deep Purple, Smoke on the Water
Foreigner, Juke Box Hero
Head East, Never Been Any Reason
Jane’s Addiction, Mountain Song
Led Zeppelin, Black Dog
Lynyrd Skynrd, Gimme Back My Bullets
Mountain, Mississippi Queen
Rage Against the Machine, Killing In The Name Of
Robert Palmer, Addicted To Love
Scorpions, The Zoo
Ted Nugent, Stranglehold
Spin Doctors, Two Princes
Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak

I’d love to see a list of hits from anywhere in the last three or so years that rock like these songs did. I’m not talking about metal or screamo, just good ol’ fashioned hard rock. Is it really that out of style?

Coming home to Linux

scott8035 — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 22:37:27 +0000

I was a Linux user for years before I turned to the dark side. From about 1998-2001, I used RedHat (this is before there was a Fedora). We used it for various server functions at our family business, and for a while I forced Linux on all the family members. At one point, I had five Linux workstations/servers running in the house. From about 2001-2003 I was an avid Gentoo user. I loved being in total control over the various settings, always tweaking compiler flags, installing only the packages I needed, compiling my own kernels, etc.

By 2003 I had changed jobs, and the company I work for was switching over from AIX to Windows for the area I support. Although I was still a believer in Unix, it was now my job to eliminate it. I thought I had better get myself on the Windows bandwagon and learn how to be a proper Microsoft developer. So I switched my home workstations over to Windows XP. Got a copy of Visual Studio. Learned how to be a .NET developer using (gasp) Visual Basic .NET. Pirating all the software I could have never afforded if I had to buy it.

Well, it’s 2009 now, and after six years on the dark side I’ve come home to Linux. In this case, Ubuntu. I’d heard good things about it, and to tell you the truth, it’s better than I expected. It installed flawlessly on my Toshiba laptop, and I was instantly comfortable with it. In the past I’d been a real command-line geek, but now the GUI utilities are so good I don’t even need to dredge that up. Now I can try out tons of software with a guilt-free conscience.

It’s good to be back. I don’t miss Windows one bit, especially the horror that is Vista.

Update: my son finally got tired of relentless waves of viruses and strange behavior on XP. Even after starting with a fresh install, all the Windows Updates, and AVG 8.5, his computer would soon be trashed after a month’s use. So he let me install Ubuntu Jaunty on his computer. He uses his computer mostly for streaming movies and keeping his iPod music. We’ll see how it goes!