The Verdict Is In: Tucker Duke Burger: Thumbs UP! ((8/29/16)
If you haven't followed the saga of Tucker Duke, I got sidelined searching for the famous Niceville burger place, which has outgrown and moved from at least 2 other locations in recent memory. I nearly found it Saturday in a strip mall but I looked in the wrong direction from another place, Joey's, based on an inference from Google Maps. I then went to the corporate website, which seemed to have the inconsistent, invalid street address and map location. I messaged the corporate website to no avail. It was a tip yesterday from a hotel clerk that he had seen a "Tucker Duke's now open" sign at the entrance to the strip mall late last week that led me (after lunch) to go back to the strip mall and check the other side of Joey's. But Tucker Duke's closes early on Sunday, so I had to wait until today.
It didn't help this morning to hear another trainee brag how he found Tucker Duke's over the weekend and feasted there, calling it the best burger he had ever eaten. He also raved about a deep fried PB&J appetizer. An unplanned long lunch break gave me an opportunity to move up dinner plans at Tucker Duke's. Another colleague expressed interest in doing the same and left earlier than me.
This time I knew exactly where to go. I was mildly surprised not to see my colleague already in the restaurant. He knew about the strip mall like me, via Google. But he showed up about 10 minutes after me, noting confusion in finding the place. The waitress tried to recommend the daily special, but we knew we wanted the legendary $10 burger. We each tried an appetizer (for me, the peanut butter one; he did the hush puppies). The burger lived up to its hype. It's stacked several inches high, including multiple layers of onion rings; I peeled off a few onion rings before tackling the generously sized burger, while my colleague compressed the burger and cut it into halves. The burger is awesome, but it'll be a while before I order another burger.
Where does the name of the burger/restaurant come from? Evidently, according to the menu, it's the name of the chef's dog.
Safety Razors Forever! (8/29/16)
I was sorely tempted to address this yesterday when the NYT published a Twitter-trending letter of recommendation. I've never really worn facial hair (like my middle brother), while my Dad and youngest brother have done so for decades. (I have gone unshaven for periods between jobs, but I don't have a heavy beard so I need to shave only 2 or 3 times a week.)
I think I had a safety razor during my salad days, and I'm not sure why I transitioned to gimmick disposable or cartridge razors (maybe convenience, comfort/fewer cuts), but maybe a year back, I got fed up with running through hair-clogged blades or cartridges if I went 2-3 weeks between shaves.
I read various sources on straight-edge and safety razors, including one of my favorite websites, The Art of Manliness. I'm not quite sold on straight-edge, but a safety razor can cut through a few days of beard growth with ease with a single inexpensive blade. The biggest problem is finding a safety razor and blades. Even at WalMart you might find only one or two brands and maybe a handful of razors in stock, maybe about $18. (I recently bought a second for my travel kit.) I laughed at the NYT author who mentioned buying what I call a lifetime supply of safety blades from an Amazon vendor for about $13, because I did the same.
I am also experimenting with shaving oil, including this one I found at WalMart. The libertarian Jeffrey Tucker writes against the shaving cream racket; I haven't tried baby or mineral oil as Tucker has suggested, but Shave Secret works fairly well. I still have some of the "new tech" razors, but they mostly serve as backup or specialized use (e.g., my upper lip).
Misleading Indexes (8/29/16)
I have a long-standing research interest in documentation and human factors, why technological solutions fail to be adopted, etc. I was particularly interested in the applied psychological research of Patricia Wright; I don't want to oversimplify her key insights and contributions, but among other things, she showed there's a human performance hit in combining information from different sources. I often address these and other insights in my Softdoc blog.
But today provided a key example that illustrates the point. I'm an a training site which functionally identifies classrooms. This is a contrived example just to illustrate the point: maybe you have some surgeon training rooms with simulation scalpels, etc., e.g., SURGEON ROOM 1,...,4, EMERGENCY ROOM 1,...,4, NURSING ROOM 1,...,4, EMT ROOM 1-3, etc. The rooms also have an overall sequence, e.g, 1101-8, 1201-8, 1301-8, where the enumerated classrooms may be mixed functionally.
Your assigned classroom may change daily. Here's the issue: the classroom assignments are given numerically, but the halls are indexed at the ends functionally, e.g., the back hall might have SURG 1-2, NURS 3, EMT 2 instead of 1301-4. So if I am assigned 1306, I don't know which hallway has my class. On more than 1 occasion, I traversed a hall, only to find out it doesn't have 1306, and I have to go down another hall. This is confusing enough for me to find the trainer doing the same thing. Why they simply didn't annotate the hallways using number ranges, I have no idea.
