Alex Scoble's IT Notes - An Information Technology Blog

GMail allowing more spam through

In the past few days Google Mail (GMail) has let through a lot more spam than it ever has before. Usually GMail is very good at filtering spam into the spam bucket, but not in the past few days.

I think I've had to mark at least 10 emails as spam just today. I don't think I had to mark 10 emails as spam in the previous 6 months.

And the emails that are getting through aren't anything special. They are pretty much the same stuff that I see in the spam bucket all the time.

Wonder what's going on there.

Verizon adds new HD channels to FiOS lineup

Looks like Verizon has been busy while I was on vacation for 10 days. I came back and noticed that they had radically altered their channel lineup to add more HD channels. We now have HD Sci Fi, A&E, History and others that weren't there before.

Good news for FiOS customers with HD TVs.

Now if they would only offer a way for customers to add more storage to their DVRs. 180GB just isn't near enough when you are recording HD content.

The Motorola QIP-6416-2 box that I have has USB 2, Firewire and ESATA connectors on the back of the box. Hey Verizon how about unlocking those ports so we can actually use them? You don't even need to make it a supported feature.

Or come out with a DVR with at least 500GB of storage. I don't even care if you charge me $5 more a month for it.

Rib City: Great BBQ in Beaverton

Last night Cassie and I tried out Rib City based on a friend's recommendation.

They are located on Hall Blvd. in Beaverton, across from Standard TV and Appliances just down the street from the Cedar Hills Mall. Rib City is on the right hand side if you go down Hall Blvd. from Cedar Hills Blvd.

Rib City is a great rib place. They smoke all their stuff and their sauces are delicious. I'd say that it's better than Reo's Ribs (the place famous because of Snoop Dogg) by a good margin.

There are plenty of seats, and the restaurant is clean and well laid out, but I'd expect it to be fairly noisy when at full capacity.

The staff is very friendly and courteous and was on the ball (although as often happens at places, the waitress didn't here me say no ice with my diet coke). Service was prompt as were refills of drinks.

I ordered the rib and ribs combo which is like a half rack of baby back ribs and 4 or 5 "St. Louis" style ribs, which are the meatier ribs with a bit of cartilage at the end of the bone. Cassie ordered the rib tips plate.

Out of the two style ribs that I got, the St. Louis were better by far. They just had a slightly better flavor, more meat and there's just something satisfying about crunching on the bit of cartilage. Cassie liked her rib tips but I found them to be too bland for my tastes.

They also offer three different bbq sauces for you to drizzle on your food. Their normal bbq sauce which they use to cook the meats with, a sweeter one and then one with hot pepper in it. I mostly used the hot pepper one as it wasn't overly spicy, just enough to give a kick, and tasted real nice and smoky.

I ordered fries and cole slaw with my meal and it also came with a piece of garlic toast that was gone in 2 seconds, it was that tasty. The cole slaw was also probably the best I've had outside of the fake stuff you get at KFC.

Lastly we finished the meal with a piece of pecan pie. I ordered it warm, but I'd recommend getting it cold as it was a bit too hot for my liking and this took away from the taste.

All in all, a very satisfying meal.

Oh and for the security conscious people out there, they use wireless hand held point of sale (POS) units from Symbol that include credit card readers on the unit, so your credit card never leaves your sight. I also got a kick out of the fact that the wait staff all had printers on their butts.

I'd definitely recommend eating at Rib City BBQ. My vote for best BBQ place in the Portland metro area.