Tuesday, January 8, 2008
At the very bottom of their home page, far below lead-ins to stories about Britney Spears and dog obesity, sfgate.com reported today that the Muni N-Judah train I saw yesterday struck a 90-year-old woman at 5:41 PM. The woman was severely injured and taken to SFGH. Why is this news not worthy of being the top story or at even above the fold? Usual oatmeal breakfast. Edited funding page for Susie. Health insurance page update for Cindy. Rsync is very slow today, I asked Julie to investigate. Student computing committee meeting. Staff meeting. Scott and Carol tied in winning the annual guessing game of how many applications we receive (which make it to initial review). Their winning guess was 1,015. Lunch by myself at Minh Tri: bbq pork with imperial rolls and vermicelli noodles, hot tea. Taught Lucia how to scan over the network directly into Acrobat and OCR at the same time. Pharm sci resources edits for Carol. Ordered replacement UPS batteries for Alyssa and Cindy. Tiny home page edit recommendations for Eric. Chris and Nate picked me up at work, then we drove over to Danny's spa where he closed up the shop and we met Phil and Drew for dinner. Phil wanted to try out House of Prime Rib (415-885-4605, 1906 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco), which looked like it was going to be expensive, so I was hesitant, but then he offered to buy dinner so I couldn't argue with that. We had a round of drinks while we waited for a table. The interior has a good ol' boys feel to it, but modernized and tasteful. The entire bar and restaurant was crowded—completely filled, which seems surprising for a niche menu and a Tuesday night. The menu is essentially set. You can order 4 types of prime rib or one kind of fish special. There is one item for kids—a special prime rib plate. You choose your main category of prime rib (extra thick, extra thin, small portion, or classic), specify your desired meat temperature, choose a vegetable (creamed corn or creamed spinach), and choose a potato (mashed or baked). Essentially everyone gets salad with the house dressing. I think most everyone gets Yorkshire pudding, too. (Except Chris.) 6-inch (wheat?) sourdough rounds are served with butter on small cutting boards with a heavy-duty knife which wasn't a bread knife. The salad is next—the server literally spins the serving bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice while adding seasonings and dressing before the toss. Huge portions served on (I think) 10-inch plates. I ate half of mine and it still looked like I hadn't started. I ended up eating about 80% of it—didn't want to get too full to eat meat later. When the meat is served, a giant stainless steel cart-dirigible is wheeled tableside and a carver cuts your servings while you watch. I ordered mine medium well, and it was not as good as I imagine the rarer cuts were. It seemed at our table that the rarer the meat the happier the eater was. But I still enjoyed the food and the old school experience. Service was mostly very good. Most of the servers had an air of being rushed, and on one occasion I saw two servers bump into each other, one of them nearly losing two cups on saucers in his hands. We skipped dessert.