Pinang Malaysian Thai

Location: 111-10 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, NY 11375
Cuisine: Malaysian, Thai, Asian Fusion
Hours: DAILY (11:30am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 268-9135
Prices: about $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 6
Value: 7
Environment: 7

Frequency: Unique

It was the 2nd week in a row that our family dinner was in a restaurant. We're going restaurant hopping now that my parents are into these Restaurant.com offers where you pay a low price for a more valuable gift certificate. Pinang Malaysian Thai seemed like a reasonably priced one where a $25 gift certificate (for $10) could go pretty far.

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I'm probably bias towards Malaysian and Thai food because I never really had a bad meal before in those cuisines. So it was all good. I'm mostly going to compare them to Sentosa since that's the best one in town. The food was a tie overall. Some items were better here... others in Sentosa. Please check out the Picasa album for details on each dish.

The service was just OK. The staff was polite and friendly, but inefficient. After we asked for the check, we probably waited longer than it took us to eat the meal! Naturally, they also made a mistake on the check and didn't take off the gift certificate. Be careful when using gift certificates at restaurants. They'll always try to pull a fast one on you... ALWAYS!

Prices were generally what you would expect at a Malaysian or Thai restaurant. The portions were just about right. For a family of 4, we ordered 4 dishes + 2 roti canais and had no leftovers.

Mekong

Location: 156-32 Northern Blvd., Flushing, NY 11354
Cuisine: Thai, Vietnamese
Hours: DAILY (11am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 886-2070
Prices: about $15/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 9
Service: 3
Value: 7
Environment: 6

Frequency: Unique

We did something a little different for our weekly dinner this weekend. There was no baseball and we didn't really have any food in the house, so we went out for once. Emily found Mekong while playing with the Yelp! Android app. a couple of weeks ago. We went over there since it was nearby the house and we never noticed it before. It's just a couple of blocks from Mad for Chicken in a small shopping area.

As we entered, we started out with a bad impression because 4 of the staff members passed by and neither greeted us or seated us (it was not full at all). We just seated ourselves. After they served the food, they never checked on us until we were done. They also didn't thank us on the way out.

The food was very good in contrast to the bad service though. Dad even said some of the dishes were good, which is rare for him to say that of non-Chinese food! The portions for each dish were just about right for a 4-person family meal. We ordered 3 entrees & 2 appetizers. Please click here for more details in the Picasa album.

The prices were OK for what we ordered. $15/person is normal and the food was very good. The place was a little small and wouldn't be good for groups larger than 6. Acoustics are also bad. Because there are no cloth items or carpet, it's hard to hear people talk. The patrons are mostly high school-college kids too... not really a family place as Yelp! claims. Overall, it's still a good place to go to if you're willing to get great food and expect nothing else.

Weekend Projects

Since nothing much was going on this weekend, I had a couple of computer projects to catch up on. First, I went back to last week's Dual P-III. So all the hardware was installed, but the system wouldn't startup. I tried an extra power supply and got the same results. So it's possible that the motherboard got damaged the first time I turned on the system will all the devices installed... maybe it couldn't take the stress. For now, this one is on hold until I get another idea.

The next project was optimizing my netbook, an Asus EEE PC 1000HE. I read about overclocking, but the final result didn't seem like a good enough reward to try at this point. I just upgraded the BIOS to the latest, which allowed the integrated graphics card to take more RAM. I haven't noticed a big difference with this change, but I guess being up to date is good enough for me.

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And finally, I wanted to get Android working on a desktop since Chrome OS isn't out yet. There's a very easy implementation called Live Android. You basically download 2 files, combine them to make one ISO image. Then burn that to a bootable CD. Then you boot from that to get a read-only version of Android. I decided to give it a shot with my old Pentium-II laptop and it was perfectly smooth. Check out the Picasa album above for details and screenshots.

Dual P-III (Part 1)

Uncle Bock dropped off his old computer last week since he just upgraded to a much more powerful one. I always take in computers about to be tossed. If anything, the screws are useful to me at the very least. I still had a bunch of spare parts because one of my old systems that died had good parts. Uncle Bock's computer had a good motherboard with dual Pentium-III, but all the accessories are basic. Click on the Picasa album below for more details.

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So the system is still a work in progress. It's physically complete. The next step is just to figure out why it doesn't turn on. If it's not a problem with the motherboard, then the system is still OK. After that, I'll install some basic software on it and see how it runs compared to the single processor 1 Ghz P-III it's supposed to replace.

Castle Adventure

Original Date: Mid-80's

POV: 3rd
Graphics: 1
Controls: 2
Difficulty: 5

Last night, I had a dream that I was playing an ancient PC game called Castle Adventure. The last thing in my head when I woke up was the command, LOADING CASTLE.RAN, the command that started up the program. The game came out sometime in the mid-80's because I remember it being way before the Nintendo Entertainment System and before real computer graphics. The whole game was made up of ASCII characters... the environment, characters and items. You would use the arrow keys to move around and hold down the arrow key in the direction of the enemy to attack. Battle results were determined by random numbers on the backend. It was a pretty cool game in it's time because it mixed action with problem solving.

I thought about adding this to my blog and was going to write how it was basically The Legend of Zelda in ASCII. Then I did a search for "Loading castle.ran" in Google and the first result was from someone who actually created a complete site dedicated to this game. And he already mentioned the Zelda comparison. Please click the graphic below to visit...


Everything truly is out there on Google!

Dominican Republic

Here are some photos from my parents' most recent vacation to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic:

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The resort was part of the same chain we visited when we went to Cancun earlier in the Summer for Reinhard & Marites' wedding. It's the largest and most impressive location out of all of Palace Resorts' all-inclusives. When we were in Cancun, my parents already said it was the best resort they've ever been to. Now the Punta Cana one easily trumps that one!

Sunday Dinner

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It was a good weekend for a small get together because my parents were on vacation last week, during the Autumn Moon Festival. Uncle Bock and Auntie Kim are also going to leave for vacation in Singapore next week, so we won't see them for a while.

Tito Rad's

Location: 49-12 Queens Blvd., Woodside, NY 11377
Cuisine: Filipino
Hours: MON-FRI (11am-10pm); SAT-SUN (10am-10pm)
Phone: (718) 205-7299
Website: www.titorads.com
Prices: about $25/person
Credit Cards: All major

Food: 8
Service: 9
Value: 7
Environment: 6

Frequency: Uncommon

It was just about a year ago the last time we went to Tito Rad's, and my parents haven't tried it yet, so we did our family dinner there tonight. I made sure they had the tuna jaw before we went, otherwise there would be no point... all other dishes are better @ Ihawan. So they did have plenty in stock. The person I spoke to said that there are periods in the Summer where they don't have it available, so it's worth checking before making the trip each time.

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We were planning to have an early dinner since my parents are leaving early in the morning tomorrow to the Dominican Republic, but the place was more crowded than we expected at 5pm. I never thought to make a reservation because I expected the place to be empty on a Sunday afternoon. It was completely full, but there was a large party that was about halfway done. So we waited about 30 minutes, but were able to preorder so that the food would be ready once we got seated.

Maine Coast

Photos from my parents' Maine Coast road trip earlier in the Summer:

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Flushing Apartment

Since it's a work in progress, I just shot the completed parts of the place. I'm slowing filling in the furniture based on sales and color match, so it's going to take a while. Remember, it took me 3 years to get a sofa for the Manhattan place!

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