Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

Let me preface this by saying that I am NOT paid to endorse this product and I am NOT part of an affiliate program — this is just my personal opinion.

Ok, so the gasoline prices are skyrocketing which is affecting not only our personal budgets but also escalating prices for groceries, merchandise, etc. because it takes fuel to get these items to us!

So where can you save some money?

Your phone. Most people are embracing the “packages” the phone & cable companies are offering, but by the time you really look at what you are paying for home and business service you think, “Bloody hell, there’s got to be a cheaper solution!”

So a friend of mine is forever on the phone both domestic and international. He absolutely raved about this gadget called MagicJack. Seems it’s a flat $20 per year for ALL phone calls incoming and outgoing. You do need a DSL connection but you can get one of those for $20 a month - personally, I have the AT&T monthly dsl rate at $29 because it gives me access to their 17,000 hotspots as well.

So I checked out the site, ordered 2 on their 30-day free trial period and, no, I did not pay to expedite shipping and they still arrived in 3 days. Insanely easy to set up. Since I use most of the USB ports on my computer, I opted to use the included USB cable so the MagicJack wasn’t taking up space right next to the computer.

I plug the cable into the USB port on the computer, plug the cable into the MagicJack then plugged a normal phone into the other side of the MagicJack. The computer instantly recognized it and began setting itself up. I could have chosen any city from the available list but opted to stick with 214 Dallas. The whole thing took maybe 5 minutes to set up.

The MagicJack system also emails you your voice mails so you can hear them through the attached file that is sent to your email account — really handy when you are on the road!

My friend has a guy in London he does a lot of business with so he ordered a MagicJack, set up a Texas number and then mailed the MagicJack to the guy. Now, Texas and London can call one another like they were just down the street instead of across the pond from one another!

The only glitch with this process was that I didn’t have a home phone so The Illustrious One brought me a cordless. It kind of worked but people kept telling me that every 8th word seemed to drop. SO, moi decided that a standard, old fashioned slimline phone was needed. Something compact that could even be put into the laptop bag.

Now, in this day and age of cordless and wireless phones everywhere, just try finding a slimline phone. A simple, plug the thing into a phone jack and pick up the receiver - no power supplies, nada. Not so easy any more.

Thank heavens for Target. Sure enough, available in both black and white were simple slimlines that also sported a caller ID screen for $14. (I didn’t see the phones on the Target website but they were in the store on a lower shelf) So, we acquired 2 and when I tried mine out, it works like a charm and everyone seems to be able to hear me clearly!

So in a nutshell: $39.95 for the MagicJack itself AND that includes the first year’s service ($20); pay for your DSL connection monthly ($30) and bought the slimline phone at $14.

I can’t wait to see what the mobile phones do — I think there will be others like me that will simply buy a slimline to have in the laptop bag because we can literally make calls from anywhere and start cutting down on cell phone usage! Though the cell is still more practical when riding the motorcycle!

Step into new era of divine cuisine, eclectic décor, and unbelievable scenery at Ziziki’s. Veteran Chef/Owner Costa Arabatzis opened Zizki’s in 1994 featuring flavorful Mediterranean Cuisine, with an emphasis on Greek and Italian.

Ziziki’s is showcasing a new menu featuring the flavorful Saganaki which is imported kefalograviera cheese wrapped with fillo dough and brushed with a sweet rosemary butter; served with lemon and flamed with Ouzo.

All entrees are prepared daily with freshest ingredients featuring : Fresh Island Catch flown in daily, Filet Mignon, Dine with the Gods including three courses: Ziziki’s Bread, your choice of salad, a family style platter of Rack of Lamb, Spanakopita, Greek Island Chicken & Grilled Sweet Shrimp, served with asparagus. Lamb Osso Bucco, a house favorite, featuring Australian free-range lamb shanks simmered in tomatoes, roasted red-bell peppers, basil, bay leaf and garlic, served with Mediterranean orzo and asparagus.

If you would like something on the lighter side you should try the Caprese Salad; fresh boccaccini mozzarella, sweet roma tomatoes skewered and topped with basil & olive oil; served on spring mix greens tossed tossed with basil mint vinaigrette; or the Grilled Seafood Salad topped with Ahi tuna, salmon and skewered sweet shrimp; served with mixed greens, sweet onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and Feta cheese. For the sweet temptation, experience your choice of a decadent Baklava Ice-Cream Cake, a lovely Tiramisu and more.

Ziziki’s has recently earned the Wine Spectator’s prestigious “Award of Excellence” again in 2008; they won this award every year since opening in 1994. The menu also features two amazing specialty drinks including Ziziki’s Sunkiss and Ziziki’s Coffee, a perfect way to wrap up dinner.

Ziziki’s décor consists of a metropolis of unique fixtures from all over the world. The neighborhood bistro is finished in faux Italian yellow wine shelving and a cherry wood bar with a mahogany finish. Mary Arabatizis hand selected everything from the table tops, lighting and music, to the design of the eclectic open air patio dining. Ziziki’s at Travis Walk offers two private dining rooms; one accommodating 40 guest and a second seating 20 guests; perfect for every type of event.

Ziziki’s is located at 4514 Travis Street #122, Dallas.

Let me preface this by stating that I think I’m a fair person when it comes to reviewing an event. I’ve been involved in major events on the management / behind-the-scenes side from everything from the Lone Star Biker Bash (approximately 30k attendees), North Texas Irish Festival (approx 50k attendees) and the Lone Star Rally (approx 490k attendees). So what I will notice might be different than the typical person.

First and foremost, major kudos to Victory Park for setting up events like New Years Eve and last night’s MystiQal Mardis Gras Parade. It’s a great way of getting the downtown residents more involved and drawing people from the suburban wastelands to seeing what all the hype is about.

On a side note, to hold a major event it is of the utmost importance to have the right management crew behind it and it doesn’t appear that Victory has got people that are up to the management task.

I left Deep Ellum for the typical 5 minute ride over to Victory around 5p. In typical fashion I went Elm to Pearl to the access road to Woodall and turn right at Hooters. At Woodall the traffic was starting to back up. I did manage to get past Hooters and upon seeing the gridlock I headed towards I-35 and jumped on only to see that the exit for Victory was backed up so I cruised on to the Oak Lawn exit. I took Oak Lawn to Maple and then turned right on Cedar Springs and right on Olive. As luck would have it, just a couple blocks from American Airlines Center, there was space for me to park my bike along the curb for FREE. Right behind me was a lot where they were charging $10 per car….way too much in my opinion.

An unnamed source who is well entrenched at Victory had informed us that the event would be “no big deal”. By 5:30p it was packed. I stopped by to visit some people I know at the retail stores and they expressed surprise at the crowd size. I walked around and saw the various boys from the Clear Channel stations manning their booths and they said everyone seemed to be in good spirits.

Whomever organized the fun run appeared to do a good job as there were mounds of ice with bottled water available for the attendees.

In regards to the non-runners, wow, did that leave a lot to be desired! In the parking lot where the food/drink vendors were set up it was lines everywhere. In some instances the drink lines had to be 75 people deep and the line for the crawfish just went on and on and on. Aside from crawfish, Popeye’s had a booth there selling chicken fingers or red beans & rice. Samantha Rush of Rush Patisserie was also there selling $5 king cakes which were wonderful!

At around 6:30-7p, you could honestly stand in the middle of the parking lot where the food/drinks stands were and have your choice of which line to get into because it was like spokes on a wheel.

Then to antagonize matters, some people would buy beer only to walk to an exit from the parking lot and be informed they couldn’t take their beer with them….yet 20 yards away outside the lot is another beer stand. Those poor guards were dealing with explaining why people couldn’t enter/exit with their drinks all night.

So you have organizers expecting 5,000 people and getting close to 35,000 with 1 stand selling beads, 3 food stands and maybe 5 drink stands?

Did these people learn nothing from New Years Eve when the exact same thing happened?

The parade itself was….interesting. For a first year event it was ok but not like the floats that people expect from the Greenville Avenue St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Each of Clear Channel’s stations had a vehicle in the parade, as did Hoffbrau’s cow bus, Dick’s Last Resort’s bus, Popeyes, and DART as to be expected.

In a surprising appearance, a tricked out rig from the Dallas Cowboys was part of the parade and you could hear the crowd “Boo”ing before you ever saw the rig….I definitely felt for the guy having to drive that rig!

Also, in far too many instances the crowd was trying to see down the street and kept asking “is it over” because there was such a big lag time between the floats.

With the exception of Electrique Boutique who had the always great Queen For A Day band performing live on their float, most of the people on the floats were looking at the crowd dazed and confused. People were standing on the floats clutching their strings of beads and tossing out a string here and there and as we were standing near the end of the parade route, there was really no reason to be bogarting the beads!

The truly amazing part of the parade had to be the Grambling State Tiger Marching Band. Truly amazing as always!

So in closing, Victory Park is definitely on the right path to enhancing the area; however, the powers that be need to set aside any sweetheart and/or political deals and hire the right type of talent to manage an event like this so that they can continue to grow, plan accordingly and receive rave reviews about the events.

There is an amusing and informative film out called Charlie Wilson’s War.

It’s got some major talent in it including Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman. For those of us that are Texans, it’s refreshing to see the essence of the bigger than life Texans without making us look like total hicks.

Charlie Wilson was a congressman from Lufkin, Texas who flew below the radar. If I may paraphrase The Rolling Stones’ Saint of Me, Charlie liked “women, wine, and song and all the special pleasures of doing something wrong”…and then he found out about Afghanistan.

Charlie is a real person who is now retired from Congress. And while most people viewing the film may think the producers and writers played up Charlie as bigger than life, they in fact, watered down his character quite a bit.

Take the time to view this film and see the insanity that we can pull together tens of millions of dollars to fight a war yet won’t pull together 1% of that for the aftermath.

Wow! I am impressed with Happy Two Helpers Moving.

After getting royally shafted by AB Moving during a June move when 3 movers showed up and only one spoke broken English, they took payment in cash, $75 of which was to cover insurance to move a few boxes (they marked it on my receipt “$75 ins”), the owner Kenny Baker claimed I hadn’t paid the insurance and must have altered my receipt and has been challenging to work with because he won’t provide the general liability insurance due to his guys damaging a valuable sculpture of mine.

Kenny contacted me a few days ago asking if I would delete the negative feedback I’d left on various sites about AB Moving and if I promised to never post again, he would provide the insurance info. I declined to play his game and am continuing with other options.

So, today I had scheduled Happy Two Helpers to move a few items. Jason and his partner were as nice as could be, really efficient and not once did I worry about them damaging my things. Oh yes, they speak English!

Very affordable…they do have a 2-hour minimum and though I knew my things would take less than an hour, it was still affordable and they were easy to work with.

Definitely check them out!

Their contact info is:
happy_two_helpers@yahoo.com
817.294.8447

For a number of years, I have been intrigued about the art of Feng Shui and have enjoyed reading books on the subject by Terah Kathryn Collins - some of my favorite titles include:

The Western Guide to Feng Shui for Prosperity

The Western Guide to Feng Shui: Room by Room

The Western Guide to Feng Shui: Creating Balance, Harmony, and Prosperity in Your Environment

In mid-May, as I was preparing to leave for the West Coast to tape some episodes for a motorcycle travel series, I found a funky upstairs studio in Deep Ellum. Housed inside a 112 year old building with hardwood floors, exposed brick and a dynamic finish out, I was steeling myself for a ridiculously high rent. I was surprised to find it was actually going to be affordable.

In spite of all of this, I was hesitant about signing a commercial lease and when I saw the almost ream of paperwork that comprised the lease, I briefly hyperventilated. I signed the next 3 years of my life away and then promptly left for California.

After returning to Dallas, all the initial fears from a couple weeks earlier came rushing back and I called feng shui consultant Karen Ann Tompkins. I’d hired two other consultants for two other locations in the past and, to be candid, I wasn’t all that impressed. Yet in spite of this, I had always felt that there was something to this whole feng shui business and I just needed to find the right consultant.

To say I was delighted with Karen Ann would be an understatement. She doesn’t practice strictly Western School or Black Hat but she does take into consideration compass readings, birthdates, the roles of the persons involved with a home and/or company and much more. I had told her that my main goals were to enhance an environment that fostered peaceful working relationships, a fun and creative environment and prosperity on all levels.

She suggested the types of colors we needed to enhance in certain areas, which direction some of us should be facing, decorative elements that should be placed in certain locations and much more.

The initial consultation was affordable and she does offer her services for an on-going basis at a reasonable monthly retainer fee. She works with a number of companies and now I can easily see why she is in demand by the corporate sector!

The results have been nothing short of amazing.

If you’ve ever had the desire to experience feng shui for yourself in your home or business, I highly recommend Karen Ann Tompkins!

Typically when I am in my studio in Deep Ellum overlooking Elm Street, the most action I see is the preliminary construction of the DART station across the street. Today, however, Prison Break was on location taping.

If you want to be part of the PB action, be sure to visit Reno’s Chop Shop as the owner, Alan, is in the know on getting people spots as extras.

Below is a scene from my window showing the massive crew working on PB.

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In other Deep Ellum news, today we stopped by for lunch at the Fantasy Cafe on Main Street (just east of Good-Latimer). We were intrigued by this combination convenience store/cafe and decided to give it a try.

Chef Joey prepares Southern Style Soul Food with a twist.

Today, almost all of us chose the Black Angus Burger that was grilled to order and heaped with lettuce, tomato, sauteed onions, pickles and mayo. A heaping serving of curly fries was included with each sandwich.

We were all pleased with the sandwich and gave it high marks — we will be back.

Fantasy Cafe is an interesting concept and is open for deliveries of beer, cigarettes, ice cream, chips, etc. from 9am - 1am. The Kitchen is open from 7am - 3am Mon-Sat.

Visit their website and take advantage of specials including the current Buy 1 entree and receive the second for half-price.

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