Saturday, November 21, 2009
Redownloaded and reinstalled CrashPlan to resolve "unable to connect to the local crashplan engine" error which began shortly after upgrading to Snow Leopard. Fixed. Stretches. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Errands and shopping with Patrick. We had lunch at Chipotle in Westlake Shopping Center Daly City. Patrick had been here a few times before, but I can't recall having eaten here before. I wanted to go after hearing about Chipotle in conjunction with Food, Inc. I had a really great experience. The rice they use is not Spanish rice. It seems to be a really high quality jasmine long grain that has some kind of herb in it (no tomatoes). The tortilla chips also seem made fresh rather than from a bag. They have a hint of lime and an unusual kind of salt—perhaps sea salt? We were amazed at the prices—all the burritos were around $7. We still ate vegetarian, but even the meat burritos were inexpensively priced. Anyone who has a choice between traditional fast food and Chipotle should be picking Chipotle. We went to ZarcNet to recycle computer junk. We had missed a local pickup that they offered in our neighborhood a week or so ago. It took a long time—perhaps 30 minutes. Most of my time was spent waiting in line. And, they didn't even help people in the order in which they arrived, so there was some unfairness in the waiting process. It was not clear how the process worked, and there wasn't enough communication. I didn't know if they would charge me to recycle computer junk but at the end they paid me—about $2.50. I think it's nice that they paid me, but I can see why people just throw stuff in the garbage. Who wants to drive for 20 minutes and then wait in line for 30 minutes to earn $2.50 and the feeling that you're doing the planet some good? The little good done was undone by the driving, wasn't it? Also, all that waiting is done in an area that isn't very pleasant. I can't say that I would enjoy returning to ZarcNet. Then we shopped at Chef's Warehouse for the first time. They were having a really amazing pallet sale—it seems they call it a pallet sale because they're too lazy to take the items off the pallet. Thank goodness for their laziness! The prices are pretty incredible deals; we bought a few things. The salespeople seem really nice, even though there weren't that many of them and most of them seemed to be busy doing things. We drove to Westfield Shopping Center and did some clothes shopping. Dinner in the food court: roadhouse salad, french fries, unsweetend iced tea for Patrick, hot water for me. We also stopped at the Apple Store where I finally got to try the new Magic Mouse. It feels almost right—perhaps just a little too small or too low—I don't know which. I think that it's not really very ergonomic in the sense that it doesn't feel very comfortable to my hand. I don't believe it's worth the premium price of $70, but the all-tracking surface is innovative and the momentum feature of the flick-scrolling is great.