I've been thinking a lot about all the open source projects I use. A lot of them are run by a small team or even a single developer. I know from experience that being an open source developer is a rather thankless job. I decided that the first Monday of June will become "Open Source Developer Day". This year that will be June 2nd, 2008.

What does this all mean? Well, I'm going to send emails to all the open source projects that I use and thank the developers for their time. I could not be as efficient during the day without these open source projects. So mark your calendars on June 2nd and join me in thanking the developers of the open source projects you use. Make an open source developer's day!

As promised, here is a PDF of the presentation I gave on Saturday at cf.Objective() 2008.

What's New in Mach-II 1.6? (~3mb download)

CFUG Managers: Please contact me at the email address list in the presentation PDF above if you want me to present this presentation to your CFUG via Adobe Connect.

As promised, here is a PDF of the presentation I gave today at cf.Objective() 2008.

Using ANT: Make Your Development Life More Productive (~4mb download)

CFUG Managers: Please contact me at the email address list in the presentation PDF above if you want me to present this presentation to your CFUG via Adobe Connect.

Pizza Luce (Selby Location)
Pizza Luce
1183 Selby Ave
St. Paul MN 55104
651-288-0186

Pizza Luce is locally owned pizza chain with four Twin Cities locations and one in Duluth, MN (about 160 miles north). They are open late and offer free delivery until 2:30am every night. They are more of a "gourmet" pizza place than say your typical "hut". They offer everything from 'za, pasta, salad and hoagies. Prices are mid-range with apps running $5-$8, pizzas from $13-21 (from small to large), all pastas are $8.39 and all hoagies are $7.39.

Pizza Luce is a busy place - always call ahead during peak meal hours to get on the waiting list or suffer a long wait (which varies depending on the meal time).

As always I'll discuss the veg head options first. For 'za, I love The Rustler which is mock duck, pineapple, banana peppers, red onion, cheese with a bbq red sauce. I'm lactose intolerant so my wife and I always sub in soy cheese or rinotta (nut based topping).

If it's a hoagie kind of evening, the Mock Muffeleta is great! It is a bit spicy and salty because it has a blend of olvies, peppers and garlic with mock duck topped with bbq sauce. The typical toppings of a muffeleta follow with onion, tomato, pepper rings, lettuce and rinotta. You can sub in provolone cheese for the non-lactose intolerant people. They off a non-veg version of called the Muffeleta (of course).

I haven't had the chance to try the spaghetti substituted with bean balls instead of meatballs. If anybody tries it, please let me know as a comment.

Omnivores next! I'll although we heard that Luce was a good place, our first experience at it was after we turned veg. Considering that veg pizza toppings aren't that different, I assume that the non-veg pizza are equally as good since the crust and red sauce is great. Luce lists their entire menu online, so check that out for all the various options!

The decor of Luce is funky and is different at all of their locations. The Duluth, MN location restroom has a shared common hand washing room (including an ATM) with opposite sides for men and women toilets. The bar has a normal amount of beer on tap and several kinds in bottles.

The Selby location of Luce is 3.5 miles from the Crowne Plaza which is a short taxi ride. This location is in the middle of a neighborhood (with single family dwelling on each side). If you come by taxi, be sure to have a number of a taxi service or you'll have to walk to Grand Ave to hail a cab.


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Tanpopo Noodle Shop
tanpoporestaurant.com
308 Prince Street #140
Saint Paul, MN 55101
651-209-6527

A great little locally owned, chef driven, gem in the Twin Cities. It's the cheapest Japanese place I know of in the area and the quality is better than places that cost twice the amount for an entree.

Located in downtown Saint Paul, Tanpopo offers home-style Japanese noodle soups (soba or udon) and Teishoku (a "set" meal - rice, miso soup, pickles and entree). Soup prices range from $6.50 to $9.75 (veg heads add $1.25 to substitute mushroom broth). Teishoku meals run from $9 to $12.

For starters, veg heads will love the spinach with sesame seeds (served cold) and omnivores would like the chicken wings in a soy-ginger sauce (I miss these sometimes).

Veg heads try Kitsune Soba or Udon with seasoned deep fried tofu (be sure to sub mushroom broth). Or if you want a teishoku meal, I do believe you can get the Agedashi Tofu (be sure to ask them to omit the bonito flakes) and ask them to sub edamame instead of the miso soup. The service usually knows what is veg-friendly or they will ask the chef.

Omnivores will like the Tori Soba or Udon with chicken. If a teishoku meal is up your alley, a pre-veg favorite of mine was the Tonkatsu (panko-breaded pork cutlets with tonkatsu sauce).

For the perfect Japanese meal, I recommend the hot tea from $1.75-$2 a person. They offer sencha, genmai (green teas with brown rice), jasmine and oolong and comes in your own earthen-ware tea pot and cup. For the non-tea drinkers, they have Sumatran organic fair-trade coffee.

The service is prompt, but causal even when busy and never rushes you from your table (I've had to ask for the check a few times because they don't mind you relaxing). Gratuity of 18% is added to all checks. Open for lunch Tuesday - Friday 11am to 2pm and Saturday 12pm to 2:30pm. Open for dinner Tuesday - Thursday 5:30pm to 9pm and Friday - Saturday 5:30pm to 10pm. Closed for lunch Monday and closed all day on Sunday. Reservations are only accepted for parties six or more.

Walking distance from Crowne Plaza St. Paul Hotel (about six blocks):
Google Map to Tanpopo from Crowne Plaza

Taking a clue from Fred Anderson's series, I thought I would post a few places to eat in the Twin Cities (a few are close to the hotel, others not).

I'll stay away from the chain restaurants since I prefer locally owned joints aways. I'll admit that the places I'm posting are aimed towards the vegetarian crowd as I went veg early this year.

Current reviews:
Tanpopo Noodle Shop
Pizza Luce

I've recently added and updated my Google Notebook on my Ways to Go Green.

I've done all of these things on the list (and more). I beg you to join me by doing all or even one of these things to reduce your impact on the environment. I'm thinking my children (of which I have none yet) and their future. Most of these things are so easy to do and it's easy to over look our impact on the environment if you can't physically see how your habits impact our natural resources -- you never know how much you waste!

New entries include things from paperless billing to where/what food you eat. You can help save the environment too!

I was a customer of Vonage for over 3.5 years, but decided to consolidate some of our service. We ended having access to 4 lines -- 2 land and 2 mobile. We don't make many calls in the first place so saving $30+ a month looked great. For example, our Vonage account show 64 minutes of in/outbound calls in a recent billing cycle and we always have hundreds of minutes to spare on our mobile plan.

I ported our Vonage number to my wife's mobile phone since she recently got that number and most people still called our Vonage number at home. This was a simple process at T-Mobile and it took about 5 minutes to confirm my identity, the number to port, the Vonage account information and our "security question" at Vonage so the port would occur. I did that at 12:30am on April 1st, 2008. On April 7th, all of the call to our Vonage number started going to my wife's mobile handset. I called T-Mobile and confirmed with the representative that the port was successful. Wow, 7 days which 2 days were weekend days. That was fast!

Now, to close my account at Vonage. I called yesterday evening only to find out that you have to call during business hours (ugh!). I called this morning and got the automated, "please repeat that request", system (I admit some places have systems that work -- Vonage not so much). Got a representative right away. Confirmed details about the account and "security question" was less than 2 minutes. Then I requested to "close my account" and the rep gives an "offer". Then a bunch of questions about why you want to leave Vonage and a long story that (I kid you not) "because of the sound of your voice, I know you are family oriented person. We know that family oriented guys know how to save money. Let me offer you..."

This is unbelievable! Ended up requesting to "close, terminate, cancel, end my service/account" over 12 times to this representative. Now my call is over 30 minutes of listening to cross offers, explaining why you want to cancel and the representative taking your reasons but getting all the details wrong. Then they take your reasons and try to work them into their offers.

After the 24 minute mark I repeatedly asked for a supervisor and/or manager. At the 30 minute mark, I was transferred pretty much mid-sentence to a supervisor. The sup then tried 2 times to offer me a "new deal" which I recalled as offer number four or five from the first person. I kept asking to "close, terminate, cancel, end my service/account" to no avail! Until, the magic words - "Please disconnect my service and close my account." You must say "disconnect my service" in order for the rep to do as you ask and I suspect that you have to get to the supervisor level as well. Also, I recommend that you do not answer their questions about stuff as they use it to retain you as a customer and give additional offers. Midway through the call I just started to say that "I am not comfortable sharing that information with you."

The service quality from Vonage was good - B+. The customer service from Vonage was very bad and this experience does leave a bad taste in your mouth especially since I was trying to leave in the first place. I give the customer service - F! I can understand two or three offers, but 10+ special offers, two representatives and 35 minutes of my life gone. Glad to be done with Vonage.

P.s. We use Packet8 for our VoIP business PBX and it's great. Plus you get to talk to somebody in the US at Packet8 instead some unknown foreign country(as with Vonage). Worth checking them out at Packet8.net. And no, I don't get a thing for putting a link to them.

My wife and I are becoming more interested in where the products we buy are sourced from and how the people that invest their lives into a job for meager wages are treated. This stems from the fact that we are trying to be more green and have less impact on the environment (including how we travel).

We've recently began buying Oke bananas from our local co-op instead of the standard ones from the big two producers that we all know at the mega-grocery stories. Oke is the only fair-trade organic banana distributor I know of in the US and they pay banana farmers more than three times the amount then the bigger companies do. For more information, check out the The Wedge Co-Op's article on Oke Fair Trade Bananas.

The El Guabo Co-Op is a 500 family run banana co-op in Ecuador. In the past couple of months, they have been hit with devastating flooding which has even killed a son of one of the farmers and has caused damage to the farms. They do not have any machinery to help excavate the dirt from the flooding -- so they have to dig out with shovels!

Oke Bananas is trying to fund $20,000 bobcat excavator to give to the El Guabo farmers. Check out BuyTheBobcat.org if you are interested in helping the little guys. I gave a donation and I hope you consider you do too!