Tag: Recommendations

Northern California’s Peet’s Coffee has introduced a new way to buy someone a cup of coffee, called eCups. Much like an e-card, you can log in and send someone a voucher for a coffee at Peet’s through e-mail. Congrats, Peets, you have just one-upped the ‘bucks.

And, it certainly makes living life out of your cubicle that much easier.

Unfortunately, I’m talking about the vacuum cleaner I just used at the gas station.

I’m slightly OCD about the cleanliness of the inside of my vehicle. Since I go off-road for work and recreation on a regular basis, it’s not economical to get the Jeep professionally cleaned any time it gets grubby, so I resort to using the vacuums at gas stations and do-it-yourself car washes.

Here’s a quick list of some good & bad car washes and vacuums:
Continue reading “That definitely did not suck”

Sacramento’s other major daily online newsource (aside from the Sac Rag, of course) published a useful tip for Mother’s Day. The Sac Bee warns us today about subjecting our moms to spam:

According to McAfee SiteAdvisor, a unit of antivirus company McAfee Inc., at least 10 sites that offer greeting cards, silly poems or other light-hearted material can flood the sender’s inbox with spam. For instance, signing up at one joke Web site resulted in more than 1,000 spammy e-mails a week for McAfee’s testers.

Of the 10 sites that McAfee warns against, five are high-volume spammers and five others install unwanted software like spyware or viruses, Keats said.

A list of those sites can be found at http://blog.siteadvisor.com.

If you want to show Mom how much you care, McAfee recommends Hallmark.com, 123greetings.com, WorldWildlife.org and AmericanGreetings.com as sites that offer quality cards without a side order of spam.

A nice recommendation for those of us who care to send the very least for Mother’s Day.

So, I got pissed off at my dry cleaner that I’d been going to for the last 5 years and decided it was time for a change. I tried out 5 different cleaners around my house and would love to share the results with you. If you live in the greater one square block area around Loehman’s Plaza, this may prove useful to you, otherwise, feel free to ignore.
Continue reading “Airing My Dirty Laundry”

I do not get out much. I really don’t get out much after dark. So when I found myself out and about yesterday in the wee small hours of the night AND hungry, I was at a loss for an all night eatery (other than Del Taco that is.) Luckily my handsome companion suggested that we visit the Plum Blossom for some pork buns. Man o’ man was that a great call. And at .75 per bun, you really can’t go wrong. They are open till 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and have also applied for a liquor license. Mmmm, beer and buns…

The family and I enjoyed the newly reopened Colonial Heights Library last night. It had closed during the rainy season due to a major roof leak, and its planned March 4 reopening was scrapped due to another leak in the brand new roof. So they’ve got brand new carpet now, along with a huge bank of computers, a great kids section, a dynamite staff, and my favorite, an awesome reading area with views of a backyard garden. It’s convenient if you live in Tahoe-Tallac but otherwise you’d probably never find yourself there. CoolDMZ says check it out.

Frequent Raley’s shoppers may have noticed a new coffee brand on the shelf. And let me tell you, it’s pretty dang good …and local.

“…Now Sacramento-based Beantrees is taking its line of organic beans from the coffee stand to the checkout stand in an exclusive deal with West Sacramento-based Raley’s. The arrangement marks Beantrees’ first entry into the retail grocery aisle, right next to coffee giants Starbucks Corp. and Peet’s Coffee & Tea Inc…”

At $7.99 for the 12oz bag, it’s a great price for some great coffee. Their online prices aren’t too shabby either.

If you’re the type who watches Metrocable for fun (it’s OK to admit it), you may wish to give input on developing the Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) for the next 20+ years. The MTP contains big ticket items such as a beltway from the 99 corridor in the Elk Grove area to 50 in the Rancho area and light rail to the airport.

A series of workshops is beginning soon, put on by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, known as SACOG, (which happens to be my former employer of about 5 1/2 years from ’95-’00.) Click here for dates, locations, and times.

Also take some time to poke around for data, maps, and all other things regional.