Justin Germino Ramblings

This post has been updated to include some new burgers! Every so often I crave a hamburger whether it be a fast food hamburger, or a restaurant hamburger and I have developed a list of my favorites over the years, as well as ones that are just "okay" but fill the need once and a while.  I decided to put out my opinions on some of the burger’s I have tried over the years and tell other’s my thoughts, I will be blatantly honest.  This is not a sponsored or paid review, but if you find my opinion favorable, you can sponsor me :). First I will talk about burgers priced between $1 and $3 dollars, the average fast food burger lets call it. We have the following burgers I have eaten and can recall and describe in this category.

• McDonald’s Big Mac & Double Cheese Burger
• Burger King – Whopper and Whopper JR.
• Dairy Queen – Cheese Burger
• Wendy’s – 1/2 Pounder
• Jack in The Box – Jumbo Jack
• Sonic’s – Sonic Burger

Out of the above list of burgers, my two favorites in this category are Burger King’s Whopper and Jack in the Box’s Jumbo Jack.  The flame broiled Whopper does have a signature barbequed taste that gives the meat a charcoal type of char flavor that my taste buds really find satisfying.  The Whopper JR tastes just as good and is by far the best $1 dollar burger out of any of the "Value Meal" burgers.  The Jumbo Jack is my 2nd favorite in the above category, though it doesn’t have the "Flame Broiled" flavor it does have a nice size slab of meat that is well flavored and Jack in the Box has very good buns and lettuce/tomato…etc which add to the flavor of the burger. Big Mac’s though small thin patties that barely taste like beef in my opinion are still quite good.  The dressing on a Big Mac is what makes me come back to them time and time again, the combination of triple bun, sauce and pickles really goes together as a nice package, but the meat itself in a big mac in my opinion isn’t that great. Wendy’s have always been just okay in my opinion, nothing special but nothing bad.  Double Cheese Burger’s from McDonald’s are better than Wendy’s for flavor and at $1 at most stores in Arizona are actually a deal, they have more meat than the Whopper JR, but don’t taste quite as good, but still better than some of the others. The worst meat burger I have ever tasted in the past few years goes to Dairy Queen, I have tried their 2 Cheeseburgers for $2 deal and the burgers were barely edible, the flavor was terrible, quality of meat just left an aftertaste in my mouth. I would rather peel the patty out of a big mac and eat it plain than eat a burger at Dairy Queen again.  Sonic’s Burgers are just alright, nothing special in my opinion.  I go to Sonic I don’t ever get a burger, I get a coney, or other item on their menu, I just don’t like their burger’s there. Now, lets talk about premium burger’s or "Restaurant" quality burgers.  I will compare some of the "Fast Food" premium burgers to real restaurants and see how they stack up.

• Burger King – Loaded SteakHouse Burger
• McDonald’s Angus Mushroom Swiss Burger
• Carls JR – Six Dollar Burger
• Jack in The Box – Sirloin Burger
• Chili’s – Chipotle blue Cheese Bacon Burger
• Red Robin – Avacado Bacon Burger
• Ruby Tuesday’s – Triple Prime Burger
• Culver’s Butter Burger
• In and Out Burger

Out of the above list of premium burger’s my favorite hand’s down is the "Chili’s Chipotle Blue Cheese Bacon Burger" the meat size is just right, the blue cheese crumbles, slightly tangy and spicy chipotle sauce make this a winner for me.  Red Robin has my 2nd favorite restaurant burger’s and they are all very very good, every type of burger is very good there.  The Ruby Tuesday’s Triple Prime burger was a disappointment because I didn’t think it tasted as well as the regular burger’s at Ruby Tuesday’s. Now, for Fast Food Premium burger’s Carls JR’s Six Dollar Burger is the winner by far.  This burger is actually better than every other burger on the list except for the Chipotle Blue Cheese Bacon Burger at Chili’s in my opinion.  This burger is massive, and is almost the same size for like $2 cheaper, and they get you in and out of the restaurant much faster than Chili’s.  Ironically I only tried the Six Dollar Burger for the first time back in July of 2008, and I literally loved it when I had it.  The flavor, size and taste was exquisite and I crave them now usually once every two weeks or so.  Jack in the Box’s Sirloin burger is no sloucher, but it isn’t as good as Carl’s JR.  The most disappointing of the bunch was Burger King’s Loaded SteakHouse Burger, whereas their regular Whopper is delicious their premium burger tasted worse than a whopper and was actually one of the worst burgers I have eaten by far.  The meat quality and flavor was worse in my opinion than their Whopper JR, and the fact that the Loaded Steakhouse Burger came with Mash Potatoes, Onion Strings, Bacon, and what tasted like steak sauce only worsened the experience, the cold clammy mashed potatoes made me want to gag when I ate it. The McDonald’s Angus burgers which I tried very recently are terrible, a thick globby nasty paste of Mayonnaise on a very bland beef patty that takes the spot as the worst one on the list for me.  In and Out Burgers are very good as well, but I would give a slight edge to Culver’s Butter Burgers as being right up there as one of the best from a fast food type restaurant. So in review: Best Inexpensive Burger goes to Burger King – Whopper Best Restaurant Style Burger goes to Carl’s JR – Six Dollar Burger There you have it. If anyone has tried other burger’s that they think are really good, better or equal to some of the burger’s I have mentioned please let me know.  I have never tried In and Out burger’s and there is one opening in the next two months in my area, so maybe that will be good.  Let me know what your favorite burger is, whether you agree or disagree with my reviews, let me know what you like or dislike about your burgers. But, if you haven’t tried the Six Dollar Burger from Carl’s JR.  I highly recommend it, I literally was shocked at how enjoyable the flavor was for a fast food burger. -Dragon Blogger

• Update:

The other day I had a new burger at Applebee’s called the Brewtus Steak Burger.  This was a nice size patty on grilled bun with 2 slices of Cheddar Cheese, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato.  The burger was very juicy and the meat flavorful.  Though still doesn’t topple Chili’s Chipotle Blue Cheese Bacon Burger, it is very good and easily comes in 2nd or 3rd place. In addition, there is a local Hamburger company in downtown Phoenix on 38th street and Indian School Road.  This place is called "Chicago Hamburger Company" and it has some of the best burgers with cheddar cheese on the planet.  They also have the best sliders outside of the windy city.

Which is your favorite restaurant burger?

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of T.G.I. FRiDAY’S for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Wouldn’t you know it, I live over 45+ miles from the nearest T.G.I. Friday’s restaurant.  This means I don’t get to have the dining hangouts and socializing that comes along with it, but I do get to enjoy some of the great food with T.G.I. FRiDAY’S “Entrées for One” microwave entrees. 

When I look for a microwave entree, I tend to like items on the sweet side as well as the savory side.  The Sesame Orange Chicken would be one of my favorite quick nukeable food items.

Looks like a tasty dish doesn’t it?

Sizzling Chicken Fajitas and Grilled Mac and Cheese would probably be the next two items on my “must try” list from the T.G.I. Friday’s frozen food line.  I eat frozen foods fairly often, probably at least 3-5 times per week as they are cheaper than dining out and make for a quick lunch I can just pop in the microwave and enjoy in a jiffy.  Variety is the key to not burning out and these are some new choices worth eating.

Sometimes you just want to bring the food home from one of your favorite restaurants and I am all for restaurants that make frozen food lines so you can enjoy it without having to leave the house.

For fun, you can join the Fun Freezer contest and vote for one of the crazy decorated freezers entered in the contest.  Some people went out of their way to give their freezer a makeover to join this contest.  Vote for which fun freezer should win the contest and make sure you vote before the deadline on October 20th 2011.

-Justin Germino

Make up a list of everything you didn’t try or do because of one excuse for another, this could be anything from a restaurant you skipped or a trip or travel turned down to a person you rejected outright for one reason or another.

We life in a world of excuses it seems and more people can come up with reasons for not doing something than doing it.  Life is about experiences, why have a list of all the things you haven’t tried be larger than the list of things you have tried when you reach the end of the road.

Live life fuller, try to experience something new and different as frequently as possible.  Jump outside your comfort zone a little and face the unknown or change even if you are a little scared.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B0012VL9J2″ alt=”Almond Blossom Poster Print by Vincent van Gogh, 36×24 Floral & Botanical Poster Print by Vincent van Gogh, 36×24″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51w3wX0IFXL._SL160_.jpg” align=”left” width=”160″ height=”107″]The lessons and experience nearly always pay off.  I found myself in a lazy rut of situation last week where I was alone in our CA pad waiting for my wife and kids to come down.  I had virtually nothing but boxed food in the house and was coming up with excuses why I didn’t want to walk a mile to a nearby restaurant.  Seriously, have I become that lazy that I won’t walk a mile to find something to eat in weather that is 75 degrees?  WTF is wrong with me that I even was too lazy to consider this.

So I started writing this post and made it a point to push myself past my laziness and do something different, I spent 3 nights shelled up eating inside a house alone when I lived 5 minute walk from the beach.  I spent maybe 1 hour out of the last 36 outside at all when 2 days were perfect weather.

Can’t stay trapped inside my own laziness forever, time to get out more.

-Justin Germino

It was really a blast setting up Facetime and talking with my kids and wife between our 2 iPad devices.  This really is what the future of video calls will be and I took my family on a video tour of the CA home holding the iPad like a movie camera and walking them through each room and feature.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B002C7481G” alt=”Apple iPad (first generation) MB292LL/A Tablet (16GB, Wifi)” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/618kPISJrYL.jpg” align=”center” width=”378″ height=”500″]

Ironically when I was showing my kids the bedrooms (since they haven’t been up to the new place yet), my wife noticed the bed was made and was like “You made the bed?” I was responded that I wasn’t a slob when by myself but truthfully it is much easier to make a bed when you are only using 1/2 of it and it involves just folding the sheet/blanket back over the wedge you unfolded.

I can’t talk enough about how cool Facetime is on the iPads, I have seen people using it to talk to each other over iPhone’s and it really shines when you have 2 people on an iPad.  The camera resolution of course needed to be better, if the iPad camera was 8MP like the iPhone 4S will be then it would be outstanding.  Perhaps a little LED light in there too just so you can see each other in dimly lit rooms.

But hey, these are minor quips and I am sure the iPad 3 will have a better camera and maybe some flash/light capabilities built in right?

So I am now officially a Facetime fan, and we did about 5 Facetime calls during my 3 day stay in CA before my family could come up and join me.  The kids really enjoy it and seeing them to say goodnight is infinitely better than just saying it on the phone.

-Justin Germino

[az_easel item=”B002C7481G”]

I have noticed that with caching and other tweaks my site performs fairly well, not great but fairly well.  Pingdom.com shows DragonBlogger.com loading in 5.6 seconds and Google Performance testing tool gives it an 88/100 which isn’t bad but not in the 90+ range I want to be in.

One thing I really notice and this is very apparent when I go comment on other WordPress blogs using CommentLuv is that my blog feed is terribly slow responding.  The homepage and posts aren’t, but the feed itself is so slow it often times out on the CommentLuv check (Even CommentLuv Premium).

I manually tested and show that it is very slow, it is almost like there is a delay and then once it gets passed it the feed loads fast.  I can’t tell if there is queuing or something on the database layer but it is really bugging me so I need to work on improving the performance.  I considered maybe building a redirect statement to send the feed to Feedblitz but not sure if that would work or break my feed.  I should probably test it at some point.

Meanwhile, I am continuing to test some new performance plugins and try various options to improve my blog speed.  I found some really helpful articles online and am going to test out a few things I haven’t tried before.

These are 3 of the articles I read recently, though much is information gleaned from other sites there is some new info on each site that I considered.

http://wpmu.org/speeding-up-your-wordpress-website-11-ways-to-improve-your-load-time/

http://www.smashingapps.com/2011/01/27/13-most-robust-wordpress-plugins-to-speed-up-your-blogs-loading-time.html

http://bradblogging.com/tutorials/speed-wordpress-up-3-times-as-fast-under-a-minute/

Has anybody noticed a performance issue specifically with their blog feed (served from WordPress not Feedburner or Feedblitz)?

-Justin Germino

Australian company EnviroMission wants to bring the a Solar Tower to Arizona at a cost of $750 million dollars that can stand for at least 80 years and is projected to be able to generate up to 200 megawatts of power per day (enough for 100k homes).

This solar tower stands 2600’ tall and would be the 2nd tallest structure in the world if this project is approved and starts construction.  The tower has 32 turbines in it that capture hot air as it rises from the base of the tower which spin the turbines and which generate mechanical energy which is converted to electricity by generators.

It is a completely Green project, there are 0 emissions as the only thing powering this Solar Tower is air.  The base around the tower is covered in a football field sized canopy that helps trap heat near the ground and allow it to funnel into the tower itself.  Because the ground stays hot even at night the Solar tower generates power all day long all the time, unlike Wind turbines or Solar panels which operate part time under specific conditions.

A much smaller Solar Tower was constructed in Spain and lasted 7 years during the testing while it provided 50 kilowatts of electricity per day.

This project would bring in up to 1,500 construction related jobs for up to 2 years as well as 35 full time jobs to maintain the Solar tower.  Some speculate that the company is overestimating the amount of Megawatts the tower can generate but given the extreme heat of Arizona and the desert, it may meet expectations.

The plant has an extremely low operating cost once completed due to being powered strictly from air.

What do you think, should this project be approved and put in Arizona?  I myself think it should be done and this could be far more cost effective and produce more power than Solar panel fields.

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It will be a relaxing fall break as the family spends some time in our new vacation property over in Encinitas California.  This will be the first time the kids and Grandma are seeing our 2nd home which is our getaway from the AZ heat and only a 5.5 hour drive away.

We will spend a full week there and take the kids to the San Diego Zoo and Legoland for their birthdays since we are between their birthdays and these were being done instead of a birthday party this year.

Meanwhile, I have broadband internet and am taking two days off of work but will be working from the vacation home so taking my work laptop with me.

I hope to have some pictures posted of the beach and such around the place, the house was painted by a contractor and had a dog gate installed a few days ago so I have no idea how it looks with it’s new painted color and trim and the gates.

This vacation property is something my wife and I have been dreaming about for a long time and the right property came along at the right price after many years of looking.

-Justin Germino

Now that I will be spending some of my time in San Diego county, more specifically Encinitas it was just ironic that I was thinking about some places I might be able to find a rummage sale in San Diego.

This is where a site like Yardies comes into play, which is specifically for people to post yard or garage sales and what contents will be listed.  Due to the very specific types of posting and arranged by cities it is perfect for those who don’t want to scour the papers and want to find a yard sale in a hurry that day or coming up soon.

I honestly didn’t know about Yardies back a few weeks ago when we consolidated our items with a neighbors Yard Sale and would have put up a listing there if I had known about the site.

Though we found many items for the little vacation property there is always some small things to find and yard sales are good for finding decor pieces that may be just right.  Furniture is a good option too if the wear isn’t too bad on it.

A quick search and I saw there were like 9 yard sales in 25 mile radius of San Diego area on October 1st weekend, but only 1 was currently listed for October 8th.  Still the site is awesome and makes it really easy for someone to specifically find yard sales, garage sales or estate sales in any city.  You can just simply search by city and radius in miles around the city you want to include.

-Justin Germino

Apparently the rules of the McDonald’s Monopoly game favor simply finding one of the 5 rare pieces, if you find one of the rare pieces you are pretty  much guaranteed to win a prize for the set if you just invest in a few medium drinks or hash browns to catch the common pieces missing.

So the whole pooling aspect isn’t really an issue, I thought they would release different pieces geographically and more randomly, but apparently there is some other system in play.

McDonalds prohibits pooling or trading pieces with other players to try and collaborate to win the game together anyway, so you are better off just trying your luck randomly.

Meanwhile, from reading online the last big prize winner happened to pull both pieces Park Place and Boardwalk off of the same drink cup at the same time.

I don’t really follow the game, though occasionally get the free drink, fries or big mac that come as an instant prize.  I also usually play the tokens again in the online game to win a 2nd instant win prize occasionally.

It isn’t like I go out of my way to buy 20 hash browns to get 40 play tickets, or anything like some of the devoted monopoly fans.  The odds of winning the AZ State Lottery are higher than winning the McDonald’s monopoly game it would seem.

-Justin Germino

At first people thought it was rumor, but too widespread to be anything but the unfortunate truth.  Apple posted a memorial to Steve Jobs on their website in honor of the truly innovative leader.

I was really sad to find out the news was true and really think we lost a brilliant creative mind and inspiring leader.  Though Apple will survive and develop and do well he carried an air of flare in the same way Walt Disney did for the Disney corporation.  Like Disney decades will pass and nobody will forget or ever not attribute it to Steve Jobs and the success he brought the company.

This also servers as a mortality reminder and just how fragile we are as humans, despite the wealth and access to medicine most people could only hope to afford he was unable to recover.  We are all mortal and must make sure we enjoy every moment we have in this world.  Life is too short to hate, stress and have negativity, we should all strive to enjoy every moment, love everyone and promote respect everywhere.

-Justin Germino