Unbelievably McCain is ahead of Obama in some polls. I have given up arguing this; if I find idiots who support McCain I simply start chanting "8 more years, 8 more years!"

From Boing Boing.

http://www.boingboing.net/PosterArt72dpi.jpg

Update: I’m still unhappy with Yahoo, but at least their customer service department responded fairly quickly and refunded my money. Kudos to them for fixing this problem eventually.

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No other way to put it. $20 for a single game. Fine, I am desperate. We got take-away food, ready to watch the game.

Result: we’re sorry, the event hasn’t started yet. Over and over and over. No Seahawks game. No any game. Unbelievable these guys can charge money for this. If only I knew a lawyer, someone who would think wow, I bet there are thousands of other people out there who just got screwed. Sounds like a class action suit to me.

I’ll post updates as I can. Their site says "no refunds" so I guess I can start the long Visa-rejection-because-these-guys-are-frauds process. I love doing that. Bottom line: they say you can watch the NFL, they charge you for it, and then you cannot watch. Nice business model fellas.

A colleague of mine was kind enough to provide a list of restaurants to try in Paris. I plan to try out these and others in our time in Paris. Hopefully I will even write up a quick review on each. I know the world doesn’t need another Paris restaurant review site, but my angle is a little different: restaurants for people from Seattle who enjoy great food but are more used to the general swill served on the Eastside but have lived in Zurich for the last year and while they enjoy wurst in all its glories were really in need of some good food. Might not be a big demographic though.

Something nice you can do on Saturdays is “Marché des enfants rouges” (rue de Bretagne , 3ème) to have lunch and a walk in the neighborhood (a really parisian thing).

American food :

Joe Allen,

30 rue Pierre Lescot, Paris 1er

There is one Joe Allen in New York (good sign J )

Coffee Parisien,

7, Rue Gustave-courbet , Paris 16^ème

4, Rue Princesse, Paris 6ème

Mexican food :

La Perla, 26, Rue François Miron, Paris 4^ème

French food :

L’Emile, 8 rue Jean Jacques Rousseau, Paris 1er

Le Petit Marché, 9, rue de Béarn, Paris 3ème

Café Rouge, 32, Rue de Picardie , 75003 Paris

L’auberge Bressane, 16, avenue de la Motte-Piquet , Paris 7^ème

Chez Paul, 13, Rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris

Mollard, 115 rue Saint-Lazare 75008 Paris

Italian Food

Vitelloni, 4, Rue Dupetit Thouars , 75003

L’Altro, 16, rue du Dragon, Paris 6ème

Da mimmo, boulevard magenta , Paris 10ème

Asian food

Le sourire de Saigon, 54, rue du Mont-Cenis, Paris 18^ème   (really good restaurant)

Bistrot de Mme Shawnn ,18, Rue Caffarelli, 75003

And to finish : some places more expensive but view or mood are really amazing (you can just have a drink too) :

-Café Marly (Musée du Louvre)

- Georges , Paris 1er (on top of the Pompidou museum)

-Kong, Paris 1er

-Les ombres, Paris 7ème close to the Alma bridge (on top of the quai Branly Museum)

Enjoy!

We ate at this nice little restaurant for our first lunch in Paris. This is located on rue Benjamin Franklin.

What we ate:

• Mediterranean salad: fresh, nice. Downside was the shrimp appeared to have come from a can
• Steak hache with fries. Very nicely done, medium rare and it looked so good I forwent the fork and knife and just picked it up.
• Kids both had croque monsieurs. Not overly cheesy like you get downtown, these were nicely toasted. The fries of course were a hit with the kids but they also both ate their salads which again were fresh lettuce.

S and I shared a lovely white Burgundy which is so far my favorite wine in the day we’ve lived in Paris:-)

Just minutes ago I posted that according to Grooveshark I have no friends. In addition to using Grooveshark I have also been using Zune’s social features over the past few days. And who knew, there are apparently other people like me out there! Or at least that’s how I am interpreting "listeners like you". I guess it could be interpreted that other listeners like me, sort of in a personal but at a distance way. But I think not, I think this means there are some other musically-challenged people out there.

The Results

Oddly enough I cannot copy and paste the tracks Zune is recommending for me. So… the first track "One more sad song \ The American Rejects" was good, solid. The next track is by Christina Aguilera. I admit a reluctance to try this, but I am listening to it and it’s pretty much what I expected, pop for someone for sure, but not me.

I am trying out a new online music streaming service, Grooveshark. It has some good press around it’s recommendation engine. Fair enough, I will check it out. Pleasant UI if a little web 2.0-heavy. Needs a Java app on the PC to check out your current music and share it with others (can you hear the clock ticking on the lawsuit countdown?).

Then I switched to the social page and see this.

Maybe I am a little touchy after spending 5 days in a hotel room in Zurich waiting for a French visa. Maybe I need to get out a little. But still, that seems sort of harsh. How about "Bricin hasn’t found the right buddies yet, but we have full faith that he will".

Of course given my taste in music perhaps it’s not so inevitable. How many people out there have Springsteen & Abba in the top of the artist list, with Journey’s "Don’t Stop Believing" as the most played iPod track.

So much to write about… we are moving to Paris soon. I just finished a huge ride in the Alps. We are on holiday enjoying the sunshine in Zurich now, but I will start writing again soon, really.

This is the slogan of SAAB. I was listening to "This American Life" and it is sponsored by SAAB and their tag-line is "born from jets." And it hit me. This is perhaps the dumbest slogan I have ever heard. And that is saying something.

First of all with fuel costing what it does, who wants a jet?

Second does anyone really believe that since the founders of the company came from the jet/defense business that somehow that makes it’s way into the cars?

And finally, it’s insulting. This is the slogan only in America it seems. The first image is from the US web site. The second image is the international site. Notice that it’s "move your mind." Fine, move your mind. Inane since presumably when you drive a SAAB in addition to your mind your body comes too. But at least it’s not "born from jets".

What is this phrase? It’s the Swiss phrase one says before everyone eats, equivalent to bon appetite in French or buon appetito in Italian. I’m not sure precisely how this translates, I always think something like "enjoy" but that is just me, no actual Swiss people were consulted in the writing of this post.

One of the things I notice in Switzerland is people wait until everyone is served, people say en güeta* and then everyone eats. It’s nice if a little slow sometimes; being American there is just a built-in "hey, let’s dig in, consume the calories, and move on". It’s very social. It’s also the case that things like "cheers", "prossit", "sante" and other equivalents are more sincere on the Continent than in the States.

Which led me to a question: what is the English equivalent of en güeta or bon appetite? I have pondered a bit. I know I have heard "bon appetite" but it usually has a slightly ironic flavor, for example being used only when the group is about to eat something sort of nasty, like a McDonald’s slurp-fest. If you read this and know the answer, please use the comments to help me out. It’s starting to feel like a real cultural difference, you know, the kind I was looking for when we moved to Europe. Basically in America we don’t really have anything to start the meal off (assuming you skip saying grace).

* en güeta is sort of pronounced "en gwetta" or perhaps "en goo ett a" depending on who is saying it. I busted out a line the other day about Swiss German: the regions for each dialect are so small that sometimes family members cannot understand one another. I thought it was a pretty good line and one of those witty things I would use for years to come. Then my colleague (hi Roger) informed me that it’s actually true. Well hell, it’s not as funny if it’s actually true. Another line busted.

No, not *that* kind of toast. This guy is hit-or-miss for me, but the more I think about this, the more I can imagine the wedding, the guests at first thinking "oh wow, deep, romantic" and then the zinger hits.