Tag: Recommendations

Here’s a free wi-fi finder site for Sacramento that utilizes the Google Maps API well. A few may surprise you.

• Brookfield’s Restaurant
• Hoppy Brewing Company
• Sacramento Brewing Company

Know of any other free hot spots not listed here? Feel free to let us know!

We’re only #46 on the top 100 free wireless cities list.

There’s a lot going these days with the iPod. From lawsuits both good and bad to increases in crime, the portable digital media player has brought Apple the highest revenue and earnings in the company’s history. As a frustrated iPod owner myself (the battery life on the Mini? Come on, last likes 2 hours at best) I thought I’d drop a few “did you know” links for users in the Sacramento area.

There’s an Apple Store at Arden Fair Mall which offers free workshops on using Apple products. And if you sign up here you can reserve a time to meet with someone for a little one on one support (if you’ve ever been to this location you’ll know what a fuster cluck it is, so I’d go this route if I were you).

Apple Sacramento (Elk Grove, really) houses their Operations, Telesales, AppleCare, Service Dist Center groups. Is their outdoor basketball court REALLY that popular? You EG locals might help to shed some light on this.

The real point of this post, however, is to share this site with you…
Continue reading “iPod, Sacramento, etc.”

Friends, I have been summoned by the County for possible Grand Jury work. (I sure hope I don’t have to weigh in on a case involving anything snarky!) I have questions, however. If you have ever served on the grand jury, and The Sac Rag is a site you might have heard about, maybe you can help me by telling me how this works. Do they give you a pager? Is there a Bat signal? Do you check in every Monday? How much actual time should I assume I’ll have to commit? Are there doughnuts?

Need a good haircut? Have a giant unweildy pompadour that is beyond the powers of the folks at Supercuts? Enjoy swingin to that crazy beat, Daddy-o?* Then you belong at Eddy’s Deluxe, a 4 year old East Sac barbershop in the stretch of retail anchored by Sidewalk pizza. The rockabilly music is loud, the art on the walls is grotesque and varied, the small talk is enjoyable and never forced, and most importantly the haircut is top notch.

*This is really bad. Sorry.

The E. K. McClatchy branch of the Sacramento Public Library might be one of my favorite places in town. Located in a former (I want to say Georgian?) mansion in the Poverty Ridge neighborhood, it is a drafty old house full of books. It’s small, so you can’t do research there like you can at the Central branch or anything, and chances are they Won’t Have It, but if you’re down for browsing or you need a dozen books for your 3 year old every week it’s top notch.

Well, it got better yesterday when we got a call from the branch librarian, Joanne, to inform us that said 3 year old had left behind an important piece of plastic jewelry. We’ve become noted regulars!

As many of the proud 96% know, businesses only operate during business hours. That leaves us working stiffs little time to do many of our errands.

So, I had to do the smog check thing yesterday. I decided to try out Smog ‘N Go down in what used to be Laguna. They have several locations, and they’re open well past 5 PM – the one I went to was open until 6:30. Their total fee for smog testing was about $50, which includes the $8 smog check certificate, and a $10 discount coupon (check your pennysaver mailings too – sometimes there’s a good discount on smog checks in there as well).

No appointment was necessary, and I was in and out in half an hour.

I could go on and tell you about the great service I received within those 30 minutes, but they already do on their website:

Quick – Clean – Courteous – Convenient – Competitive. In and Out in a hurry!

I would say they lived up to all of it. And yes, my car passed.

The online map game is getting competitive. As is the case with most online firsts, Google presents a beta product only to have Yahoo! follow suit shortly thereafter. When Google Maps debuted last year it was very exciting. Coupled with Google Earth, I quickly became a daily visitor. However, Yahoo! recently introduced their beta version of a map product and I must admit I’m impressed. If not only for the easy to use interface, I find myself visiting this site more and more.

Basically, Yahoo! took a few of the features that Google Earth offered and implemented them into their web service. That is, you don’t have to download and install the Earth product to sort by categories, for example. And the category listings are very helpful. After entering “Sacramento, CA” into the “Get Map & Directions” field I am able to search by categories such as Restaurants > Italian or Entertainment > Movie Theaters (it’s a beta remember so maybe they’ll remove the listing for the Pussycat Theater?). The real bonus for me being that each listing offers up the address and phone number along with directions to and from without doing more searching. And in a crazed phone number search that is very handy.

And with their API product your very own Sac Rag might be coming at you with some cool new features in ’06!

There are many online digital photo printing shops available these days. First there was ofoto.com (later became kodakgallery or something) then snapfish.com and shutterfly.com I could go on and on. For me, however, I’ve been using walgreens.com a lot mainly because I’m cheap and they offer in store pick up (no shipping costs!) and the one hour pick up aspect is very reliable and still 19 cents a pop.

What has kept me coming back though is the great customer service I’ve received so far. When you place your order and select in store pick up you usually have the option to choose the Walgreens store closest to you, but sometimes you have to select another location based on high volume, etc. Totally understandable. As such, I’ve been to locations on Howe and Arden (I refuse to say that other phrase for this area), Fair Oaks and Marconi, and Arden & Eastern.
Continue reading “Walgreens makes it easy”