Category Archives: Reviews

Reviews

VOIPo

I recently signed up with a new VOIP service for my home phone.

I’m using VOIPo … so far I’m really impressed.

The call quality is great, it’s got a lot of nice features, and the rates can’t be beat.   For a 2 year contract, the price is only $7.50 / month with free hardware & setup.

I’m going to give it a few more days before I start the process of porting my 2nd phone number from Vonage to VOIPo.

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Star Trek

Ginny, Steve, and I went to see the new Star Trek movie last night.

If you are a fan of the original series, next generation, or any of the follow on shows … you are going to be in for a major disappointment.

If you’re into flashy visuals and 90210 characters, you’re going to love it.

This “Star Trek” movie is not ‘based’ on the original Star Trek … it’s more like “Inspired by” the original.   Possibly even ‘general concept inspired by’ the original Trek.

It rips so many of the established ideas to shreds it’s not even funny.

Yeah, the major characters are there … Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura … and of course the Enterprise … but the major themes that back up the concept of Star Trek are tossed out the window.

(warning, spoilers ahead)

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Ti Amo — Hoffman Estates

We had dinner at the new Ti Amo restaurant, in Hoffman Estates, tonight.

It took the place of Babaluci, which we liked a lot. We were very disappointed when we saw they had closed.

Unfortunately, I was not especially impressed with the replacement.

I ordered Gnocchi with a side dish of Pasta Fagioul soup.

The soup was kind of bland, and looked like someone had used a stick blender to mix it up. There was almost no pasta in it.

The Gnocchi was mushy, with bland-tasting sauce. When I ordered the same dish at Babaluci, the Gnocchi had nice texture and the sauce was chunky, with nice pieces of tomato.

Ginny had a duck & pasta dish with a minestrone soup. Her soup also looked like it had been mixed with a stick blender. The duck was a bit gamier than she was expecting, and the noodles were too wide to be eaten easily.

The atmosphere, while OK, wasn’t anything to write home about. We liked the homey feel that Babaluci had. Of course, we were fairly regular and were always greeted warmly.

I noticed a distinct lack of seafood dishes on the menu..which is a big disappointment for me.

Price wise they seem to be a bit higher than I would expect, but not overly so. Ginny and I spent about $40 for dinner with tea to drink.

Ti Amo is probably worth another shot, but we’ll wait a few months for them to find their legs.