I’m down for trying any new pizza place with garlic in the name.

I first learned about this pizza joint from one of their employees holding a sign out on the street. Yes, human street advertising works. In these parts we see lots of businesses running out workers dressed in crazy outfits holding oversized signs. We never ran any employees on the street outside when I was in the restaurant business pre 1994, but we did have people dress up for the kids on family nights. Relatively inexpensive advertising on busy streets, although I feel for the workers in blazing suits on sweltering days.

You can see if there is a Garlic Jims in your area by checking the GarlicJims.com Store locator. They appear to be in rapid franchise expansion mode.

What’s supposed to make Garlic Jim’s pizza different and better than the competition is that they are “gourmet.” I know, start raising your eyebrows now. Don’t you love it when places claim to be more upscale or fancy when at the end of the day the food tastes pretty much like (or worse) than every non-gourmet food tastes like? I mean really, it’s not like world famous chefs will be spinning pies at the local Garlic Jim’s. Chef Ramsey from that Hell’s Kitchen reality show running around demanding quality pies, not.

There is an upscale contemporary design inside their stores complete with two LCD TVs playing movies.

I noticed that the new Jack in the Box had an LCD TV in the store too. So while people are waiting in line they can watch TV. I’m sure some study has proven that if you show customers a TV they will be less likely to complain or react negatively to wait times, but we didn’t have any trouble getting pizza on Sunday afternoon. The whole time we were there (perhaps 30 minutes or less) we only saw two other customers.

We ordered two pizzas to take home, one of which was their best selling Ultimate. The kids and I liked the pie, but I’d put it about on par with Domino’s. Here’s how I’d rank the local pizza places on taste:

1. Round Table - they have the best sauce and understand when I say “extra, extra sauce” I mean literally oozing out of the pizza. Great buffet at a reasonable price too. My wife and I go there a few times a month.
2. Godfather’s - there isn’t a Godfather’s near by any more, in fact Garlic Jim’s opened in the same general area and what used to be Godfather’s is now a bank.
3. Pizza Hut - we love the breadsticks there!
4. Domino’s - got sick of Domino’s back when I was in high school and we ate them every day. I mean. Every. Single. Day. Sometimes multiple times in a day!
5. Little Caesar’s (if you can still find them) - the only place to find this pizza these days is at K-Mart and it’s gone way downhill. In its prime, I’d take this pizza over Garlic Jim’s.
6. Garlic Jim’s - #6 out of 8, not the ringing customer endorsement they were hoping for, but we’ll be back again trying other items on the menu.
7. Alfy’s - a little too pricey, pizza is alright.
8. Papa John’s Murphy’s (take and bake) - they have the closest location, but I’d rather eat frozen.

Here’s a scary thought: if it were fair to put frozen pizza options in the list above (it’s not, I’m just saying), I’d put Tombstone at #5 ahead of Garlic Jim’s and the others behind it. Tombstone pizza can be found at the local grocery store for a couple bucks a pizza and if you bake it and eat it right away. Good stuff.

Dwayne Northrop, president and one founder of Garlic Jim’s and opened the first store in March 2004 in Bellevue, Washington and says:

“Lots of people make a good pizza but can’t deliver it in less than an hour … A lot of people can deliver in less than an hour, but can’t make good pizza. We fill the gap.”

Apparently they have strict corporate delivery mandates that result in the pizza delivery service not extending very far in busy areas. The Garlic Jim’s manager (franchise owner?) we spoke to on Sunday mentioned that it was difficult to provide the fast delivery corporate demands in the busy area where their store was located during traffic peak times.

The GJ closest our home, about 8 miles is too far out of range for GJ delivery.

Sorry Dwayne and company but your pizza isn’t anything special nor fits what I’d call “gourmet.” The store design, decor and cleanliness? Excellent, A. Friendly help? Excellent, A, but the biggest weight in scoring goes to the pizza taste itself which I’d give a D+. It wasn’t that it wasn’t baked good, it just didn’t seem like that great a pie to me and my wife didn’t like it at all. She used less flattering terms to describe it. Our three teenagers ate it but teenage boys would clear out a fridge with food flirting with expiration if you let them. As mentioned above, we’re going to try the lunch menu later today and also pickup the new Ozzy CD. Maybe Garlic Jim’s lunch menu will prove more “gourmet” than their pizza? We’ll find out later today. Grade: C+.

How do you rank the pizza places in your area? Who has the best pie in your town?

I’ve never watched the Oprah Winfrey show. Not a single episode. Not even one segment. At best I’ve seen a few scattered minutes of it on other people’s television sets and have turned my attention elsewhere. Sill, I’m sure she’s a good talk show host or she wouldn’t have amassed a large audience and following. This is important because of an endorsement Oprah has made that I’ll get to shortly.

As readers know, our family of five hasn’t had television service for nearly a year now (I’ll write a post updating how things are going around the one year mark), but even if we had TV, I still wouldn’t watch Oprah. I’d rather sit through one of Robert Scoble’s raw footage videos than watch Oprah (although I see Podtech finally gave him an editor). So there’s my Oprah experience and disclaimer.

Oprah endorsed this mega bestselling self-help book called The Secret by Rhonda Byrne based on a DVD of the same name. I had to look the book up on Amazon (pictured right, affiliate link if you really want to buy) to see what it was about:

The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers — men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.

Whenever someone tells me about a single idea, concept and/or non-spiritual belief that changed their life I have to hold back from snickering. Are some people really that gullible? There can be no single secret to making your life better. There are several things you can do mentally, physically and spiritually to increase the odds of living a more fruitful, happy life but a single life altering secret? Rubbish. If such a mind blowing powerful secret existed it would be the worst kept ’secret’ on the planet.

Karen Cerulo, a professor at Rutgers University studied how human beings deal with the future.

Cerulo found that when most of us look out at the world and plan for our future, we fuzz out our vision of any failure, fluke, disease, or disaster on the horizon. Instead, we focus on an ideal future, we burnish our best memories…

Now there is a study I can get behind. Most people want to look ahead at a positive future, who wants to think they’re going to be living in a van down by the river? (Ok, maybe in a Chris Farley SNL skit). I strongly believe in positive grounded thinking which requires routine analyzing of your past and present life. Look around and ask yourself if you really need some secret to help you change the future. Just look at what you did yesterday and are doing today to help change tomorrow.

7 guidelines for a better present and future
If you want to make a positive future for yourself than the following are my 7 guidelines to a better present and future and you don’t need to buy some book or DVD. In fact, I’d say most good advice you receive in life will come from family, friends or research and exploration you conduct yourself, not something a stranger tells you (and if I’m a stranger to you then yes, that applies). I like the number 7, it’s a positive number. If you get three sevens in Vegas it usually means you win something.

1. Put family first, friends second, yourself third, strangers last
2. Work hard, play hard
3. Learn something new every day
4. Don’t hold onto stress, release it
5. Eat right, exercise more
6. Make choices in life that won’t ruin a good night’s sleep or make you wary of looking at the reflection in the mirror
7. Smile, laugh, love, sing (yes, even off key), pray and cry as these are all vital release points

There, my non secrets about being successful in the present and future. Oprah probably won’t recognize or endorse them, I mean who endorses a guy who writes at a blog called Things That … Make You Go Hmm, but if you do those seven things above consistently, if you live by those guidelines, no crystal ball will be necessary to live a happier present and future life.

Myself, I’m weakest at #5. I don’t eat very healthy and my exercise regimen is terrible. I’ve tried to get a good exercise plan going, but it gets back burnered too often. As I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten better about releasing stress (#4) but that’s still a problem a few times a year. It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do (#6) and I feel successful about making good decisions I can live with (#6), which many times lead to making less money than I could have made by choosing a different path. Worth remembering that money and good decisions sometimes don’t go hand in hand.

As for #7 where prayer is mentioned, I don’t want to get too religious on readers here because I’m not a deeply religious person. However, I do believe it’s important to have some kind of spiritual belief and to spend a portion of life on earth exploring and developing this belief. Something to believe in that controls life beyond our earthly existence is a very real and necessary part of our species.

I’m not yet convinced there is a single supreme entity but I don’t consider myself an atheist either. I think there is something beyond life on earth and it could have one or more supreme beings in control, but I haven’t worked out the details yet.

I would like to think that people who have lived life honorably will go somewhere once their hearts stop beating. Heaven? Not sure, but there has to be something beyond this relatively short life we live. Something where our essence marches on. I’m fascinated by this subject but continue to search for the answers. One of my prayers is that my exploration on the subject will be complete before I die. I feel like the yearning years (retirement) will yield the greatest success in my spiritual journey.

The eighth rule (bonus)
Because I like bonuses I’ve added one here for readers who made it this far in the list: serendipity. Remember me writing above that by doing several things you could increase the odds of having a happier present and future. I believe fate plays a role and that some amount of luck is involved. Even if we do everything right, we can still fail.

Even if I write the world’s best blog post ever there is a chance only a very small number of people will read it, that it won’t get slashdotted or dugg, be linked by major newspapers, get me on radio, TV and so on. Everybody, myself most certainly included, needs a certain amount of luck in each and every endeavor.

The biggest difference between those with more personal success and happiness are the ones who keep trying. You’ll fail a whole lot more than you’ll ever succeed in life but one, two or more lucky breaks will never happen if you stop trying.

Final thought: money isn’t everything
My problem with a lot of self-help books is too much focus on “being wealthy” as if being wealthy means someone has lived the happier life. There are lots of hard working, good people who will never be wealthy and yet live a wonderful life. Having more money and stuff shouldn’t be anybody’s #1 goal in life. It’s not mine. Having more happiness? Now there is one to live by! Wealth can be very transitory. Ask those who had it at one point but don’t have it any more.

What are your guidelines to living a better present and future life?

Today’s Hmmcast is ceremoniously inspired by David Hasselhoff’s drunken eating style. Also inspired by Hmmcast #93. Not meant to be construed as violating the sacred rule: don’t hassle the Hoff!

Hmmcast #111 mp4

Publishing this 2 hours ahead of schedule today since there was no Hmmcast yesterday (slacker, I know).

Update 3:24pm PST: I decided to add Hmmcast #111 as a video response to the Hoff video mentioned. The YouTube setting is that video responses have to be approved by the person who published the original video so no idea if my parody will be approved or not. We’ll both learn soon.

The flash ruined my picture above but the remote control signals the end of being an air conditioning virgin. Sure, we’ve had AC in cars for years and for a short time in high school in blazing hot and frigid cold Wisconsin I lived in a house with my dad and stepmother that had central air cooked in. Never before today — a day where I blew off the Hmmcast and heat — had we gone out and bought an air conditioner.

I took video and pictures and of my sons and I meticulously measuring the window inserts and the room square footage. I learned how many BTUs are required to properly cool a room and followed the basic guidelines in the chart below:

Room size
100-150 square feet 5,000 BTU
151-250 -> 6,000
251-300 -> 7,000
301-350 -> 8,000
351-400 -> 9,000
401-450 -> 10,000
451-500 -> 12,000
501-700 -> 14,000

Our oldest son and me did some recon at the Local Home Depot, which had a dozen different models to choose from including a couple of portable units.

I liked the idea of a portable unit because I’m not good with putting things together. Strike that, I suck at putting things together or doing any sort of maintenance man type stuff unless it involves a computer. Home improvement guy I’m not. I like to cook and can mow the lawn and weed eat the yard. I don’t mind doing the dishes. I draw the line somewhere between there and putting stuff together.

With the portable air conditioners it seemed they came with all the parts and very little assembly was required. With the ones that go in your window you need to wedge something in the window and/or add insulation of some kind around them. I wasn’t up to that tonight.

The lowest BTU portable unit they had was 8,000 which was good for a room “approximately” 250 square feet according to the manufacturer’s box but 301-350 according to the web knowledge I gleaned before shopping.

Our family room is 250 square feet, but this opens into the kitchen which is 182 square feet which brings the total room size to 425 square feet. That means if we planned to use the portable AC in the family room / kitchen it wouldn’t have enough BTUs.

My office in an extended room off the house — and where I record most of the hmmcasts (and where I’m typing this right now at almost 10pm — is 265 square feet. A nice fit in this room. The bedrooms are all too small for the 8,000 BTU unit.

Home Depot had a 10,000 unit for another $100 and we might go back and buy that one, but we decided to go with the 8,000 portable unit first at $299 USD + tax. It has a built in timer and the remote control you already saw. Setting it up was a snap even for a non-Macguyver.

There are multiple settings on the AC: cool (for hardcore AC action), dehumidifier (get that water out of the air) and fan (with low, medium and high settings). With the fan or dehumidifier modes working, it shows the room temperature and when the cool setting is on the green digital reads the temperature the AC is working toward. It also has a timer function to auto turn on and off based on time. We may have to play with this setting a bit to figure out what’s good.

I’m thinking in the morning when it is cooler it will be easier to keep the temperature down with the AC running and heavy shades on the window.

The AC also came with some sticky insulation tape. Need to buy some more and also some duct tape because I saw numerous nooks and crannies that are definitely leaking degrees. All in all the adventure was well worth playing hookey from today’s Hmmcast to chill out, pun intended.

I’m curious what is your home AC situation like? Do you have central air (I’m jealous, that’s the really good stuff), one or more wall or portable air conditioners? Or have you been sweating it out in the hot spring and summer months like we have for many years? I can proudly say I’m not a 40 year old home AC virgin. You?

Hmmcast #110 mp4

Maybe John Edwards is a better tipper than me, but I don’t understand how any haircut can cost $400. Was it cut by some celebrity hair stylist? If you want to be elected President of the United States go get your haircut where most Americans get theirs cut. And definitely don’t make the “mistake” of charging these $400 haircuts to your campaign.

Edwards haircut math
Let’s assume Edwards gets his haircut every six weeks and calculate the annual cost:

52 weeks / 6 weeks per haircut = 9 times a year (rounded) x $400 per haircut = $3,600 annually

Wow, $300/month for a freaking haircut? That’s mot quite as much as our Saturn Relay car payment, but more than our property taxes for the year. Any karma Edwards might have built-up with hard working geeks by speaking for 45 minutes at Gnomedex last year is likely gone.

Note for Edwards damage control: put using the local barber as one of your campaign promises.

Hmmcast and regular blogging will continue tomorrow.

This cake could fool me from a distance, how about you?

Tezco spotlights a bunch of other cakes, noting:

Yes, these are all real cakes, made from flour and eggs and frosting. No plastic models here.

I also like the money counting cake, solitaire, roulette wheel and tennis shoe. Mad skills indeed.

Perhaps our town being without usable city water for 24 hours now is the main reason this who is sick mashup stuck out in the RSS reader. To use, just enter in your zip code, click on your symptom(s) and fill up the colorized pie: runny nose (red), cough (green), fever (yellow), headache (black), muscle ache (orange), stomach ache including diarrhea, nausea and vomit (black).

You can also receive an email when there is an “outbreak” in your area. Just enter your email address. Not sure how reliable this service actually would be since our area must have at least one problem and I was the first person to report anything.

Contaminated water update
Local restaurants have been closed today and school has been called off both today and tomorrow. An automated message on the office phone this morning said that water will not be available for use again for at least 24-48 hours. As you drive into town the following sign has a message I’ve never seen anywhere before:

We went out last night and bought six 5-gallon containers from a water dealer at 40 cents a gallon. We took some water to a couple neighbors. The city is giving away one gallon of water free to each person in the family at the school. Nobody in our family is sick, but I’ve had an upset stomach for a couple days and my wife said she was feeling a bit light-headed today. I don’t think either of our symptoms is due to the water situation but will admit the surrounding conditions are making our family go hmm.

The kids are fine, happy in fact, to miss more school. With all the missed days, they are going to be going to school through July.

The city just called our office with a spooky message: don’t drink the water, it’s contaminated. No, this is not a joke and I’m not kidding.

Apparently the water is contaminated in our area. I don’t have any more details yet including how far reaching the contamination is (I didn’t speak to the city official, my wife did) — and don’t see anything about this at any of the local news services yet — but am going out now to buy more bottled water just in case the water is contaminated for awhile and if there is a rush from others doing the same in our area. We already use bottled water and make our own ice (not from the tap). I’ll be back to update this post later when I learn more.

Eerie.

Update 7:42 PM PST: KOMO and KIRO vans are out at the local Safeway along with a command center of Fire Engines. It’s front page news on KOMOTV.com website as of this writing saying that the water is “possibly” contaminated. Area restaurants have all been ordered to shut down.

Hmmcast #91 mp4