Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ

This week I've been a bit busy with a side project (a new blog for my HackMaster Campaign), but I wasn't too busy to be able to try a new restaurant with the Mrs.

In the past we've had so much bad luck with new-to-us restaurants that she though we had a curse of some type and quite frankly I wasn't willing to try out new places unless I had to. My standards of service are pretty fricken low to begin with and so many places fail miserably. It is no wonder that so many places don't make it a year.

It was with a bit of trepidation that I bypassed the familiarity of one trusted pace to try out Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ. Boise, or at least the larger metropolitan area, has a few "Hawai'ian" places. One is fake as hell, the other is more of an upscale "fusion" place (I could be wrong, but it is so out of our way I won't ever find out), and the other is just ok. The last place was this new place on State Street (3912 W State Street to be exact).

We parked out back and walked in the back entrance, something that I was advised never to do. It is generally good advice to avoid the back of a restaurant if you want to keep your appetite. This was a notable exception. I don't know if the aromas were coming from their cookers or the smokehouse next door and frankly I didn't care. I just wanted to jam some smoked meat in my face hole now.

At first glance I think a lot of people would think that the Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ was a little "divey". The seating was cheaper outdoor patio furniture and people were eating out of styrofoam take-out containers using plastic utensils and paper cups. If this turns people off it must suck to be them because they either never went on vacation to Hawaii or they stayed in some super stuck-up place when they did. Between the decor and the soft Hawai'ian music playing in the background (actually in the kitchen area) it was a step back to my vacation.

The food was typical local Hawai'ian fare, or it sure as hell seemed that way to me. When we went on vacation we really tried to eat at local places and stayed away from touristy restaurants whenever possible. The food was so much better when it was made without the pretentious drapings and visitor sensibilities. I'm not going to delve too deep into the food, but I will say this: after our first bite the wife and I started planning on when we'd be able to come back for our second visit.

Kana Girl's Hawai'ian BBQ is obviously a family affair and a labor of love. The couple that own the place were in the kitchen singing along to their music, enjoying what they were doing while stealing the occasional kiss. It was a busy Saturday night maybe a half-hour before close and it seemed they

were having the time of their life.

For the brief times we've been eating there we really did enter into our own Island Time Zone.......

At the risk of you getting there before I do and eating the last of the pulled pork, I have to urge you tomake the trip and check it out for yourself.

They are open Tuesday-Saturday 11-8 and I don't recommend looking at their online menu until you are prepared to drive over. We made the mistake of trying to go over at 8:30 PM Friday night and you really don't want to experience that disappointment if you can avoid it.

GaryCon V Photos

I realized I had never posted about my trip to GaryCon last month.

In short: awesome convention.

I ran one Learn-to-Hack game at the convention and spent the rest of the time either hanging out or playing.  I got in more HackMaster in this one con than I have in the last 5 years of game conventions combined, and I've been to more than a few cons.  The last half-a-decade I'd been volunteering at the Origins Game Fair and a couple of GenCons, organizing the HackMaster events for Kenzer & Company.  All my time had been spent running events (working) and not playing in any.

To say that GaryCon was an enlightening experience is an understatement.  Not only did I get to meet and play with a bunch of old KenzerCo friends, I got to meet some legends of the industry.  Yes, these are relatively normal guys, but still....their work has given me so much enjoyment over the years.  I didn't really sign up for any games since I was there more to chill, but I was able to jump into several and there was a big pick-up game I got into.  I didn't loose any PCs, but there were a few close calls.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are some of the better ones.....(click for larger pic):

Keeping Track of Travel

I've mentioned several times on this blog that I used to travel a fair amount in my old job.  One of the other things I did on my old job was make tons of travel reservations for my boss.  He liked to have everything summarized on an excel sheet.  What a pain in the ass that could be.

Don't get me wrong, I like excel, but using it to make simply lists is a bit overkill.  This is the sheet just for April of 2010.  I've taken the liberty to blur some stuff out.  I found this when I went to close out my dropbox account.

I had to keep this thing updated for the boss's use and it seemed I was printing out a new one everyday.  Sometimes I had to fax them out, which meant I had to go through and remove all the color.  God forbid I accidentally let the thing autosave the document and have to go back in and color it up.  It was also very easy to give out the wrong one since so many little changes were being made all the time.

For my own travels I needed something simpler.  I don't require a hand holding, just some way of easily looking up my information, preferably one that doesn't require a lot of organizational effort since I didn't have someone to do all that work for me.

Enter Tripit.  Available online and as an app for both the iOS and Android market, Tripit simply rocks.  Once you make an account, all you have to do is simply forward your travel emails to plans@tripit.com.  That's it.  Tripit recognizes either the sender's email address, or some of the itinerary information (like membership numbers) and easily organizes all your assorted travel information.  It will provide an itinerary for your smartphone and if you go online you can share your trip or print the itinerary.

I highly recommend checking out Tripit if you haven't done so already.  Even for those who only travel once a year, I highly recommend the program.  Did I mention it is free?  If you travel a lot you might like the paid upgrade to track all of your frequent flyer miles and travel perks in one place.  I had to keep a spreadsheet for that too.


Special Note: I'm currently in the hospital having my bone marrow harvested.  Instead of simply skipping some posts or trying to blog the day before, during, or after having several hundred long needles jabbed in my hip, I figured I'd just have Blogger post some entries on a schedule.

Although I am undergoing surgery, I'm well aware that I'm on the easy side of this transplant.  If you could say a prayer for the recipient of my marrow, a woman with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, I'd be appreciative.  If you decided to get yourself on the National Marrow Donor Program, I'd be freaking ecstatic.

"Lost" Vacation Pictures from Chuck

In January of 2010 my wife and I made our second pilgrimage to the Buy-More store in sunny Burbank California.  I took a fair amount of pictures, but in order to be as unobtrusive as possible, a lot were snapped quickly with my iPhone and uploaded to Twitpic.  I had forgotten about this pictures until today when I clicked through a series of links until I ended up looking at some earlier "lost" pictures.

Chuck's Bedside Table

A couple of years ago, on a business trip, I learned that a business acquaintance used to work at Warner Brother's studio and still had a lot of friends there.  I mentioned that my wife and I were big fans of the show Chuck and he offered to arrange a quick tour.  Carolyn and I flew in to LA to attend a business luncheon and we stayed on for a couple nights at my acquaintance's home*.  He took us to the lot and we got a quick tour of several studios and ending up on the Buy More set.  The set was dark as they were not filming, but they turned on the lights and we got to poke around a bit, as long as we were respectful.  I was surprised that so many of the items at the Buy More were actually real.  We also saw a new set that was full of spoilers for the next season, so we refrained from taking any pictures.

Some Chuck extras at lunch

On the way out we stopped by the Big Bang Theory set, which we didn't know was filmed there at the Studio.  Our host offered to setup a future visit where we could see an episode of Chuck and Big Bang Theory getting filmed.

Two months later Carolyn and I flew into Burbank and stayed at the Burbank Marriott.  We spent the day on the set of Chuck and watched Big Bang Theory filming that night.  Although we had the chance to chat up the actors we respectfully kept our distance.  We had a great time.

We were pretty much allowed to walk around the set while the actors warmed up, chatted, and practiced a couple of lines.  It was interesting to see the stage crew go about their business setting up monitors, laying down cables, and taping marks about the set.

Carolyn and I had found a curious artifact on the set during our first visit and we were able to locate it again on this trip.  One of Chuck's crew, an Assistant Director I believe, is a fan of Kenzer & Company's Knights of the Dinner Table magazine and did a good job placing some KoDTs and HackMaster items about the set.  The placement is appropriate since Chuck is a Nerd Herder and the show's audience base is geeks, dorks, and nerds like me.

The "artifact" that I'm referring to is a simple Xbox game mock-up.  Someone had taken the HackMaster GameMaster's Guide and the Player's Handbook cover art and slipped it into the distinctive green Xbox case.  We watched Chuck trying to spot the game in the background, but we never did.  The best we could do is see some KoDTs and at one point Morgan (Joshua Gomez) has a HackMaster GameMaster Screen set up behind him for an extended shot.


Carolyn and I take our turns posing with the Xbox game and Adam Baldwin walks into her shot.  She doesn't seem too upset.

Our ability to peruse the Buy More came to a close because they were just about ready to start shooting a couple of scenes.  Someone had graciously provided us a couple of chairs in the director's area to watch the filming and see what it looks like on camera at the same time.  We watched for an hour or two while they filmed two scenes.  It was interesting how they taped the same scene multiple times with slight variations.  It was hard to tell if there was some ad-libbing going on or if the variations in the lines were actually scripted.  This was in great contrast to the taping of Big Bang Theory, which is shot with multiple cameras in pretty much one take.

*My host/acquaintance was/is affiliated strongly with my old employer and I have not spoken with him in over a year.  I would consider it impolite to identify him by name.

Hawaii Vacation '08 Day Three

Day three didn't exactly go according to plan, which is odd only in the sense that I really didn't plan much. Basically one day at a time, with a real rough outline of what I wanted to do/see during the week.

I got a decent guide book and thumbed through it during the flight over. I highlighted pretty much everything I thought sounded interesting and then turned the book over to Carolyn. Once we had a "maybe" list we categorized stuff pretty much by location.

On Friday I had roughly planned on visiting this wildlife area which was a protected bay they only allowed a small number of people to visit each day. It was a bay which offered excellent snorkeling, but you had to get there early in the AM. The day before I bought a couple sets of snorkel-fins, mask, and snorkel. They were pretty good for the $40 each I spent. We were going to try them out on Wednesday, but discovered that the water was too cold. I went in anyway and saw a couple of "boring" fish, but Carolyn wouldn't go in more than ankle-depth. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit pissed for having "wasted" the money. Not that it really matters. The equipment was a good purchase but the water would be too cold for either of us the next morning.

So instead of going to the bay we decided to check out Chinatown. Friday was supposed to be the first day of a Chinese New year celebration. What perfect timing. Unfortunately it was pretty boring. Didn't help that I forced out a crappy start on the day by eating at McDonalds. Yep, you read right....McDonalds. I wanted to try their regionalized breakfast. I had some combo meal with SPAM and Portuguese Sausage. It was ok, but we got filled up on crappy food and missed out on probably the best that Chinatown had to offer...food.

We wandered around a bit, mostly window shopping. The only thing that the New Year festival had going on was some extra chintzy crap for sale on a few tables in the courtyard of some shopping center. There were lots of cool places to eat, but of course we weren't hungry. Some of the open-air markets were pretty cool though, and I found a place to get some cheap used Hawaiian shirts. Since they were pre-washed these shirts didn't shrink!

After Chinatown we went back to the hotel and hung out until it was time for the Luau! That deserves a post of it's own.

Hawaii Vacation '08 Day Two

Well the second day of our trip started with a lot of rain. No big deal as it rains everyday. Carolyn and I hopped into the car and headed East towards Honolulu and turned a bit North. Our goal was to circumnavigate the island. It's technically not really possible as the highway doesn't go completely arounf the island, but we could get around most of it.

A few tunnels and a pass over the mountains and we were on the windward side of Oahu. Our first stop was the Byodo Temple nestled in the back of a valley which was basically one big cemetary. By the time we got there the rain had stopped. The parking lot was pretty empty, so we headed on in. The entrance to the grounds was over a nice bridge spanning a couple of mountain creeks. The main path splits in front of the pool before the Temple and the normal traffic extends left towards a large bell which is traditionally rang beofre entering the Temple. A small donation (some left fruit or small gifts) later and I got to ring the bell by swinging this huge log back and then into the bell. I think I did a better job than most and was rewarded with a deep, loud gong.

We browsed around a bit, checking out some side creeks/pools and a sitting area beside the Temple. We headed inside and made another donation (the monks will say prayers on your behalf) and lit some great-smelling incense. The Temple is a replica of another Temple in Japan (but smaller) and the Buddah takes up most of the main hall. Once back outside we noticed a bunch of koi and a gift shop beyond. We bought some trinkets and artwork, along with several bags of koi food. I love koi, so we spent a fair amount of time feeding them.

After the Temple we drove up the North Shore and stopped at a local park (with great views) and some tourist-trap Macademia Nut plantation. We sample the nuts but didn't buy anything.....way too expensive.

Continuing up the shore we got hungry. We intentionally planned at eating at a shrimp shack on the North Shore and the first one we came across was next to an old grocery and was called......."Shrimp Shack". We both had a local "delicacy" from the grocery store (spam on white rice & wrapped in dried seaweed) and Coconut Shrimp from the Shack. I thought it was too sweet and oily (always do), but the resident "expert" proclaimed it awesome! I'll take her word for it.

Continuing up the shore we did see some surfers (it was surfing competition season and one was in progress), but it was too crowded to stop and watch...besides we were on a schedule of sorts. We stopped for dessert pie (chocolate & coconut creme) at Ted's Bakery and then continued on to Waimea Bay for some quick (and generally fruitless) shopping. From there we cut into the island and drove down the big valley that makes up the center of the island.

On a whim we decided to stop at the Dole plantation to check it out. The gift shop was pretty damned cool, but everything else was expensive and lame. I sprung the $20 for both of us to take the "Pineapple Express" tour train to see the plantation. Very lame.....but at least we didn't decide to waste more money on seeing the "Worlds Largest Pineapple Garden Maze".

We stopped for some extra shopping, picking up some snorkel gear and swimwear. I had forgotten my trunks at home and needed a new pair.

When we got back to the hotel we tried out the snorkel gear and the beach. It was a bit cold and Carolyn didn't want to get in the water, but I managed to see a couple of fish and try out my gear (worked really well).

After the beach we checked in with the "welcome desk" to schedule a tour of the vacation property and pick up our gift certificate we were promised. It was $50 and we used it immediately at the beach-front restaraunt. That made an over-priced meal a bit more reasonable. It was good food, just overly expensive.

Hawaii Vacation '08 Day One

This time I figured I'd lead with the photos.....

Technically the first day of our vacation was filled with travel to Oahu. That was a long, long flight. When we landed we were too early to check in to the hotel, so we drove further up the west side of the island and got some groceries and postcard stamps (we figured we'd send out daily postcards like we did last summer).

We got out stuff, ate a quick meal at a local Korean BBQ place, and headed back to the hotel. We were wiped, but it was game night so we started our weekly online HackMaster game.

Anyway...we woke up fairly early, around 6:30 AM, and got prepared to go visit Pearl Harbor. The guidebook said we'd probably want to get there early as it's pretty much first-come first serve. After a mis-direct on the highway (^&%$@# book had directions that only worked if you were driving from Waikiki...) we got in to the park and....suprise, suprise, free parking. We got in a short line to get our free tour tickets for the Arizona Memorial and then had a couple of hours to kill until our turn came up. We visited the gift shop and the displays then headed over to check out the submarine next door. A group of conservationists (most likely old sub crewmen and families) restored the USS Blowfin. For a small fee you can tour the ship with some audio guides. That was fun. As you proceed through the ship there are little red and blue placards with numbers on them. I think the red placards were for the kids tour and the blue ones for adults. At some points I listened to both.

Our time came to tour the Ariziona Memorial. We watched a 15 minute movie (may have been longer) and then headed out to the memorial on a Navy-crewed tourboat. The memorial itself isn't that big, but it was impressive. You could still see some oil slick where the ship is leaking from it's oil reserves. At the end of the memorial is another room with the names of all the Arizona men who died during the attack. Befitting it's status as a tomb, the Arizona itself has not been explored. All of the survivors of the attack have the option of having their ashes interred aboard the Arizona upon their deaths. The names of these few are also part of the memorial.

The only problem I had with the Arizona Memorial were the other visitors. There were LOTS of rambuncious Japanese teenagers there and I for one was quite pissed that they were all giggling and screwing around on the Arizona Memorial....on a fricken tomb! Granted, they were a bit quieter than they were back in the visitor's center, but I think they should have been respectful and shut the fuck up....like I was. I may have been extra pissed because they were Japanese, but I think mostly because they were disrespectful teenagers.

After the boat ride back Carolyn and I went back and toured the submarine museum associated with the Blowfin. That was another expense, but well worth it. Pretty cool and with another audio tour.

It seemed like we had been in Hawaii for days already. It was pretty cool.

After visiting Pearl Harbor we headed down to the Aloha Stadium to tour the "Swap Meet" held there every Wednesday and weekend. Only cost us a buck each to get in, but it was totally worth it. The absolute best place for souveniers on the island. We spent a bit, but saved TONS of cash. We also had a great "take out" meal at a vendor there.

We finished up in Honolulu around 3 PM and we were bushed. We headed back to Ko Olina and discovered a DVD rental machine down the hall. $5 later and we had entertainment in the form of "Hotrod".....that movie blew chunks BTW.

Hawaii Vacation

Carolyn and I got to go to the island of Oahu for a week-long vacation. It's been a trip that I'd been working on for 6 or 7 months now and it finally happened. The fine folks at Marriott offerred me a chance to stay at their Ko Olina property for 6 days, 5 nights...with a rental car for $759.

I knew my boss has spent some time there, so I asked hi if that was a good deal. It was, so I jumped on it, paying a $200 deposit and then putting the rest on my credit card. I was a bit pissed when the card showed they charged another $750 on it.....please do the math....should have been $550 since I paid a deposit already. When I questioned them about it they said the extra $200 was for an "upgraded" suite. What the hell....it was supossed to be a vacation.

Another Quick Update

Carolyn and I are spending the night in Moline before heading out to Columbus in the morning. We've done a little bit of driving so far, visiting friends and family. We saw a lot of cool places and are kind of sad that it all has to come to an end.

Fortunately we still have almost a week of vacation left and we get to fly first class to Ohio! Also, we plan on seeing the new Transformers movie when we get there. Hot damn!

On Vaction!

Carolyn and I are on vacation until after Origins. I have some pics from my new digital camera (birthday present from the Mrs.) that I'll have to share.

It's been interesting taking my wife to some of my old stomping grounds and seeing just how much things have changed in the last 10-15 years. Ames, IA is much bigger than it was and what I remember as back roads and farmland is paved and inhabited.

It's been hot and humid so far. I was used to hot and dry in Boise (10% humidity when we left) and here it's been around 80% humidity......needless to say I prefer staying inside a bit.

We did manage to find an awesome comic book store in Ames......probably the best store I've ever been in. Nice large selection of comics and games and probably the best HackMaster selection I've ever seen. I had to buy some product I'd probably never get to use.....just had to.

We also toured one fo the Boy Scout Camps I worked at in my youth. The place has changed tons (for the better) and the Ranger I knew still works there......been there 19 years now.

Heading down to Southern Iowa to visit my family there, then off to Columbus!