Ramblings of a 20-Something
Archive for April, 2010
My Mom Can Be Really Awesome
Apr 29th
I like bacon. I like cheese. These are two facts that most people know about me, including my mother. So, the last time I stopped by my parents’ house she had something for me.
That’s bacon cheddar cheese. Let me describe that for you. These are slices of cheddar cheese with bacon in them. So awesome.
I tried these out tonight in a grilled cheese sandwich. They’re definitely tasty, but I felt like they were missing something. I like bacon and cheese separately and together on sandwiches and burgers, but when you infuse them both into a single piece of cheese you lose the texture of the bacon. It still tasted great and it smelled fantastic.
Also, my grilled cheese sandwich felt smaller. I plan on trying these out on a burger in the near future but I don’t know what else to put on the burger. Usually I’d do cheese, bacon or pepperoni, other cheese, and ketchup. With the removal of bacon, I’m not sure how I’ll feel about it.
Maybe There’s Something to This Social Media Thing After All
Apr 19th
A few months back I became a fan of Universal Studios Home Entertainment on Facebook. I did this solely because they were giving away Blu Rays every day throughout the month of January. That was it. I had no other attachment to Universal Studios. Sure, I probably own a ton of their movies on DVD, but I own a ton of movies on DVD from just about every studio there is. Anyway, I ended up winning one of the Blu Ray prize packs they were giving away. After some time, I finally received them. Four Blu Rays free of charge. Not a bad deal.
Some time passed and I didn’t “Un-Fan” Universal despite their occasional posts that I didn’t really have any need for. Then recently, Universal added a new feature. You could vote on what you thought their next Blu Ray release should be and in exchange for your vote, you’d receive a coupon for $5 off your next Universal Blu Ray. I cast my vote right away (The Big Lebowski
Then a couple days pass and I see another post from Universal in my news feed about the coupon. Some guy is running his mouth about how he can’t believe that a company would ask their fans to install spyware on their computers in order to print out coupons. I took it upon myself to reeducate this guy explaining that the program is definitely not spyware. It is instead a program that’s used by a variety of big name companies including Disney and General Mills and it’s designed to regulate the amount of coupons that are given out. Plus it’s a way to prevent people from printing out multiple copies of the coupon. I mentioned in my post that I couldn’t print out the coupon because I voted at work. That was the end of it.
Then out of the blue I receive a message from someone presumably from Universal. They saw my comment on their post and wanted to make sure I got my coupon. I emailed them back and received a direct link to download the coupon. And with that, I had my coupon.
The whole thought of this impressed me. At this time, Universal has over 130,000 fans and each of their posts receives dozens and dozens of comments. While certainly not gigantic numbers, I was surprised that my little comment received the attention it did. That meant that someone went through and read all of the comments, found mine and responded to it.
Now, I work in advertising, specifically in the online space. Not a day goes by where I’m not asked about social media including Facebook. Since this area of the online world is an ever-growing and changing section, it’s tough to just say that this is what they should do and this is how much it should cost. The main thing I’ve learned though is that you need to be consistent and diligent. You can’t just put up a Facebook page and leave it alone. Honestly, there almost needs to be someone who’s sole responsibility is keeping Facebook and Twitter up to date. I’m glad to see that Universal is so on top of that and I wish that there were more companies that were doing so.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Blu Ray shopping to do.
Death by Chicken: The KFC Double Down
Apr 12th
Today was a day that will go down in history. Today was the debut of the Double Down at KFC. Just take a second and look at this bad boy.
The description that KFC gives it is as follows:
This one-of-a-kind sandwich features two thick and juicy boneless white meat chicken filets (Original Recipe® or Grilled), two pieces of bacon, two melted slices of Monterey Jack and pepper jack cheese and Colonel’s Sauce. This product is so meaty, there’s no room for a bun!
The moment I heard about this I had to try it. What’s not to love here? Chicken. Bacon. Cheese. Some sort of mystery sauce. This has everything I’d want in a sandwich without that pesky bread to get in my way. I shared this with my boss, Rob who is an avid KFC supporter. We made plans to check it out today. I also found some coupons from Pepsi for a free soda. Good deal.
The first thing I noticed about the Double Down is the package. First off, it doesn’t come in that little wrapper thing that the ad shows. That would have been beneficial. Instead it came in a box like you’d get a sandwich. It had this little cardboard home. This seemed OK but it proved to be a bother because of the trouble I had to go through to eat the thing. I quickly realized that sandwiches have bread for a reason. First of all, chicken that comes right off of the grill or right out of the fryer is f-ing hot. This makes it rather difficult to lift to your face to chow down. Another reason is that it’s just less messy to have bread. Don’t get this if you mind having greasy fingers. I ended up dumping out my fries and using the cardboard container they came in to construct a crude holder for my Double Down. This worked to an extent.
As you can see from the picture above, the sandwich doesn’t look exactly like the advertisement. I had expected this because all chicken isn’t the same. Although in an era when they can make chicken nuggets into the shapes of dinosaurs, I would think that KFC would be able to make some uniformly shaped chicken for this sandwich.
Aside from the packaging and the look, the Double Down is actually quite tasty. I have no idea what is in the Colonel’s Sauce but it’s good and I’m always a fan of Monterey Jack cheese. My only qualm with the taste was the bacon. Hold on a sec. Yes, I did say that. Let me rephrase though. There wasn’t enough bacon. There’s only two pieces of bacon and they’re easily swallowed up and missed when you’ve got these two big pieces of chicken on there. I could have gone for more bacon.
Overall, this was an OK sandwich but there’s definite room for improvement. I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone though. This is only for serious fast food eaters. The Double Down practically knocked me out for the rest of the day. I’m typing this 8 hours after the fact and I’m still full, plus my stomach is still a bit uneasy. I was ready to take a nap about 20 minutes after eating the sandwich. I seem to be willing to go great lengths to try out new fast food, but I sort of regret trying out the Double Down. I’m going to take it easy over the next week or so and stick to the basics like peanut butter & jelly. You know, stuff I know won’t kill me.
I’ve Been Waffled
Apr 7th
My junk food quest continued this past weekend. I had the opportunity to try out the Waffle Sandwich from Dunkin’ Donuts. I was looking forward to this. It’s a sandwich with waffles for bread! This cannot go wrong. I had my doubts though. The McGriddle holds a special place in my heart, right next to the clogged arteries from eating said McGriddles. It is a damn near perfect breakfast sandwich so how can this newcomer fare against it?
The short answer is it didn’t. While the pictures in the commercials look great, the fact of the matter is that the Waffle Sandwich misses the boat. It’s got the basics of a breakfast sandwich in the eggs, cheese, and sausage (although I would have preferred bacon) and those are OK. I think that all fast food breakfast eggs and sausage are essentially the same. The “bread” part of the sandwich was what I was looking forward to. I love me some waffles. Unfortunately, the sandwich just felt like mush. Picture tossing an Eggo waffle into a toaster and taking it out before it’s finished. The result is a mushy waffle. That’s what happened here. I got some mushy waffles for bread. I was a little disappointed.
If they had toasted the waffles a bit longer, I would have enjoyed the sandwich a lot more. As it stands though, I don’t think I’ll get this sandwich again. The McGriddle remains king of the fast food breakfast sandwiches in my opinion, although I will accept any challenges.
The next item on my fast food agenda is the Double Down from KFC. I’ll be picking that up on Monday.
The Great Trophy War of 2010
Apr 1st
Since I bought my PS3
I got into a friendly competition of sorts with my friend, Doug. He’s my go-to guy when it comes to video games and when he got a Platinum trophy, I was in awe of him. At that point in time, Platinum trophies were mythical to me. To get one of those must be really special. Then I got one. I was so proud! But I wanted more. Doug got another one and then I got one. This happened a few times until Doug had a surge in trophies. He was way ahead of me now. What was I to do?
Things became desperate. I had decided early on in my trophy hunt that I wouldn’t buy a game for the sole purpose of getting the trophies. I wanted to stick to playing games that I liked and get the trophies there. This mandate went right out the window. I found a sale online at a used game site where I could buy 2 games and get 1 for a dollar. I ordered 5 PS3 games and a DS game with the intention of playing the games, getting the trophies and selling them to another used game site where I’d actually turn a small profit ($8) and I’d basically get the DS game for free. I did this and of the 5 games, I somewhat enjoyed about 2 and a half of them. The rest were quite annoying but I wouldn’t have played any of them if not for the trophies. I sent the games away and by this time I was just one Platinum trophy behind Doug.
But now what? With those games done, I moved on to Uncharted
In related news, I was also reminded of my other hobby: DVDs (and now Blu Rays). After watching Toy Story I’m afraid that I’ll start wanting to re-buy all of my DVDs in HD. I feel like I’ll want to go through my collection anyway and take out anything I don’t think I’ll watch again and get rid of them and consider upgrading certain DVDs. I upgraded those Pixar movies because I was able to get rid of my DVD copies via SwapaDVD. We’ll see how this works out though.
