Street Meet

Street Meet is a restaurant on Hilton Head Island that promotes itself as an American Tavern, which is true but is the only place I've ever visited that was a dedicated Ohio place.  We went there because (1) we were hungry and they had great food and (2) we wanted to watch the Ohio State football game and we knew it would be on one or more of their many televisions.  As you can see from the picture below, they have flags from many of the Ohio colleges including Miami, Toledo, Ohio State, Kent State, and Youngstown, and our professional NFL and NHL teams.  It's worth a visit if you find yourself on the island.

https://streetmeethhi.com

Rí Rá Las Vegas

Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale is one of my favorite beers and I can only find it in some very select Irish Pubs like the Rí Rá Las Vegas shown below.  I stumbled onto this place around ten years ago when attending a conference at Mandalay Bay and during our recent trip to Sin City, I made sure to pay it another visit.  Being Vegas, they charged $9.25 for a glass.  Their location in Charlotte charges $7.25 and a mere $6.00 in Portland, Maine.  It certainly did not stop me from having another.

https://rira.com/las-vegas

Do Not Disturb

The mechanism you see in the picture below was in our hotel room at the W Las Vegas.  Located next to the door, its two functions are self-explanatory.  Pressing Do Not Disturb turns a light on the outside of the door red and pressing Housekeeping lets the staff know you want your room serviced by turning the light green.  Housekeeping would turn that off and the light would turn white, letting you know from the outside that your room is ready.  

From the information at the link below, this device is networked to a system that keeps management and staff informed on the workings of the hotel.  It sure beats hanging those plastic door placards and hoping they don't fall off.

https://cloud.axxind.com

Anveo

The little box pictured below is an OBI200, a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) solution for those of us (not me) who want to hold on to their landline phone number but not pay the high prices the big phone companies charge.  You connect the box to the Internet with either an ethernet cable or a USB WiFi adapter and connect your telephone to the Phone port.  

This solution used to be supported by Google Voice and provided a free (I love free) service.  But last November Google announced it was no longer supporting this solution. While it would continue to work for some unknown length of time, another VoIP provider would eventually be needed.  Enter Anveo (see the link below) which supports the OBI200 (and many others) and for about $99.99/year gets you 1,000 minutes per month, voice mail, and text messages (try that on an old-fashioned telephone line).

Big shout out to my older brother for smoothly making this transition.  If he can do it, so can you.

https://www.anveo.com/consumer/default.asp

Snow Mode

A few weeks ago I took our Infiniti QX60 to do an errand and its pick-up was so bad I thought I would be taking it in for a service call.  It was fortunate to notice that the Drive Mode Selector was turned to SNOW, presumably by the guy that just detailed the car, and that reduces engine output to avoid wheel spin.  A quick counterclockwise twist to return it to normal driving mode (the dot position shown below) restored power.  The knobs on either side select heated seats, nice in the winter, or cooled seats, surprisingly nice in the summer.

https://gearshifters.org/infiniti/what-does-snow-mode-do-on-infiniti

Potato Skins

Gourmet Chef Elaine commented that it's been ages since she had potato skins and that we never see them in restaurants anymore.  I made the skins you see below with the recipe at the link and then used all the scooped-out potatoes to make a batch of gnocchi.   Crumbled bacon, Cheddar cheese, sour cream, and green onions are added to the baked skins and then put under the broiler for a couple of minutes until it bubbles.  Combined with her perfectly cooked filet and asparagus, this made an awesome Sunday dinner.

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/282216/homemade-potato-skins

Vizio Volume Leveling

For months I've been complaining that the crowd noise during football games was so loud I could barely hear the announcers.  I figured some doofus at the television network thought that was a good idea, but it turns out it was a setting on my Vizio TV that was at fault.  In the audio menu, there is a "Volume Leveling" setting (see the image below) that was turned on, and turning it off solved the problem.  The other TVs have a similar setting, but those were already off and they worked fine.  The link below describes the best settings for our Vizio, but you can Google search for the best audio settings for your specific TV.

https://settingsbase.com/best-audio-settings-for-vizio-tv

Precision Pen

WD-40 is one of my best friends, but the normal spray can is impossible to use without needing a couple of rags to clean up the excess that's bound to happen.  So whoever the design Brainiac that developed the Precision Pen shown below is now my best friend.  Pop the cap and press down to release a little lubricant at a time.  

Thanks to my daughter and son-in-law for this awesome Christmas present!

https://www.amazon.com/WD-40-Precision-Lubrication-Pin-Point-Controlled/dp/B0C8PW3L5N

Christmas Tree Napkins

We spotted these napkins, folded to resemble Christmas Trees, at Walnut Grove Country Club.  You might think this would be hard to do, but as the video at the link below demonstrates, it's pretty straightforward.  Two folds to make the napkin a square, four folds to make the triangles, two folds to make it a tree, and four tucks to make it pretty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkWFQ89XyE

Key Rings

My Infiniti G37x and house key are all that's left on my keychain shown below.  And with the G37x and Infiniti QX60 having nearly identical fobs, there are different colored house keys on each like this yellow tweety bird.  I prefer these larger format keys as they are easier for me to turn and this one key works on all our external doors.  Having a fob with a single key has been a goal for quite a while and the last barcode key tag, from Dot's Market, was eliminated when they upgraded their cashier system.  Happy days!