Jim Goodrich

This is a cross post of my review found on TheLocalTourist.com.

I’ve always preferred the view from the 94th floor Observatory of the John Hancock building, but being a Chicagoan, I hadn’t been there in years. That changed yesterday mostly because a lot has changed at the Observatory.

The Observatory announced that Chicago’s Highest Café, Espression by Lavazza just launched a full bar, including 8 new coffee drinks, beer, wine and assorted fine spirits. I was able to try a couple of signature drinks.

The Skyy© High cocktail (Raspberry Vodka, Blue Curaçao and Lemonade with fresh lime over ice) was my instant favorite for a couple of reasons. It was the perfect light, crisp summer drink for the beautiful summer day it was and two words. Blue Raspberry. My favorite childhood flavor. It’s priced at $11.

Then there was the drink with the placeholder name of “Lord Stanley’s Cup”, made with Maker’s Mark, Fresh Ginger, blackberries and Lemon sour. We toasted the announcement with this drink. It’s a more substantial drink, balanced without overwhelming, perfect for when you’re just not in a rush and want to soak in everything around you. It’s not on the menu yet (more on that in a bit).

The three appetizers were Assorted Savory Italian Biscuits, Baked Goat Cheese with Tomato-Basil Sauce and Charcuterie and Cheese Assortment, ranging in price from $6 for the Biscuits to $15 for two or $29 for four servings of the Assortment. The pricing was about what I expected and it was a good variety. The Baked Goat Cheese hit the spot for me, halfway inbetween the snack feel of munching on the Biscuits and the ‘pardon me while I pay attention to the Assortment so I don’t drop more than normal on myself’. But I enjoyed them all.

Then I saw this:

No, it isn’t the helm of a futuristic spaceship (though that won’t keep you from pretending it is). It’s the Hancock Observatory’s new Behold telescope, the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere (Dubai has the other installation) and the Hancock observatory has a two year exclusive agreement in Chicago. Beside the fun of the point and shoot aspect of the telescope, it has zoom and markers you can click on the screen for more information about certain areas in Chicago. The display is currently in English only, but will be expanded to include 7 languages in the near future. But that’s not the best part. Visibility isn’t the best? You want to see the night sky in the middle of the day? You’ve got it. The telescope has three views from which to choose – Day, Live and Night, so I tested it out and here are three side by side shots taken within 26 seconds of each other:

The Behold telescope costs $3 for two minutes and takes only credit cards or Hancock Observatory Gift Cards, unless the visibility is 0 – 1 miles. In that case, they cut the normal $15 admittance fee to $8 which includes the first two minutes of telescope use for free. So your second cousin from Nevada who’s only here for the most overcast weekend of the year can still enjoy the view.

And if you’re the favorite vacation destination of friends and family, the Observatory also has the Sky High Annual Pass – 365 days of unlimited entry for you…and a friend for $79 for Adults and $59 for Youth 3 – 11. so you don’t have to break your bank to show people the view.

See what I mean when I say a lot has changed? I wasn’t sure I could fit it all in this review. Oh, I almost forgot. Remember this Lord Stanley’s Cup signature cocktail I mentioned earlier?

Observatory General Manager Daniel Thomas announced a contest to give that cocktail a permanent name. You can win Blackhawks tickets among other prizes. For details on the contest follow their Twitter account at aThousandFeetUp or their Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/HancockObservatory.

The John Hancock Observatory is open 365 days a year from 9:00am to 11:00pm and is located at 875 N. Michigan Ave. Tel. 312.654.5019.

I posted this on a few of the Social Media sites, but thought it was too good to pass up not writing at least a little about.

If you’re not familiar with the US Postal Services “Forever” stamp, the premise is this. You buy the Forever stamp and those particular stamps will work whether or not there’s been a rate increase, it’s good…forever.

I got a letter from my sister in California today, really more of a short note, nothing a single first class stamp wouldn’t cover. I found this addendum on the back:

Really, is there anything more to be said?

[This is a cross post from WithAVoiceLikeThis.com]

This is one of those ‘I wish someone was with me’ stories, but since no one was there with me, I’m going to share it with you.

My Birthday is this month and the other day, I received an e-mail coupon from ”Name withheld” ‘s Pizza, a local pizza place for a free Birthday Entree (see below). I mean, they’re known as a pizza place and pizza is a part of their name (see the mostly grayed out logo in the upper right of the coupon, I put a red circle around the word pizza in the logo). I’m looking forward to some free pizza for my birthday. That is, until I read the disclaimer and get to the last line “Not valid on pizza.” (Once again, I circled it in red near the center of the coupon).

So already I think this is a bad deal…But does this stop me from getting a free meal? Uh-uh, No, no, no, no, no. So I go in last night, a little later than the dinner rush because I’m by myself and don’t want to deal with the wait.

I get there and the host greets me and asks how many, I say one, he says go ahead and sit anywhere you want. I choose an area with not too many people and they all look like they’re near the end of their time in the restaurant. The host brings my menu and says my server will be right with me. Standard later in the evening restaurant stuff.

My server comes to the table and gets my drink order (a Mountain Dew, I know you were dying to know that), then gives me a minute to look over the menu. My server comes back and I order my entree.

“Would you like Soup or Salad?”

“Ah”, I think to myself, “This is better than I first thought it would be.”

“What’s the soup?”

“There’s Minestrone, French Onion or Chicken Tortilla.”

Not being one to rush into a decision, I pause for a few seconds.

“I think I’ll have the chicken tortilla.”

And off my server goes to put in my order and get my soup. My server returns pretty quickly with my cup of soup and a packet of crackers on the saucer, which strikes me as odd, but I don’t give it much thought.

Then I taste the soup and it’s pretty good and that’s when I notice there are no tortilla strips in the soup. Maybe they were put in the bottom of the cup before the soup, so I dig in the cup to the point that I’m practically shaving off ceramic I’m scraping the cup so hard and still, no tortillas. They must have run out of tortilla strips, that’s why they gave me the crackers. So I wait for my server to come back.

“How was the soup?”

“It was good…” And my server was gone with the cup before I could start the next sentence only to return almost immediately with a new table setting for my entrée. “But I have a question about the soup. Shouldn’t it have had some tortilla with it?”

“Oh, that’s just the name. I told them we should probably change it to chicken enchilada soup or something like that.”

“O, o-okay”

Now I start to see a pattern. Just because it’s in the name, that doesn’t mean I’m going to get it. And that’s when it hits me. This could be the perfect night. The night when everything was so wrong it was right. By this time everyone on my side of the dining room was gone, so the only way I could see, or hear anyone was if they were walking toward me and I see their reflection in the windows across from me or I get up and walk to the other part of the restaurant. I’m all by myself, literally and figuratively. But I’m also excited. I mean the anticipation is building. You see, I’m hoping that there’s something essential missing from my entrée. In fact, I know there’s something missing and with no one around me, the anticipation is just magnified. It’s to the point that I’m so excited that time seems to stop because there’s no way it took as long as it seemed for that entrée to get to me. And just when it was to the point that I was exactly like every Wolf you’ve ever seen in a cartoon with a knife in one hand, a fork in the other, the napkin tucked into his collar, mouth wide open with his tongue lolling out one side and drooling up a storm that out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The reflection of the dish in the hand of my server. There was no one else that it could be for. I saw my server turn the corner and I knew that dish was for me and I knew that it was missing something, I KNEW it!

My server put that dish down in front of me and you know what? You know WHAT?!

There was both chicken AND parmesan in my Chicken Parmesan.

My heart sank. This had the promise to be one of my top five story of stories. I had the terrible trifecta in my grasp and it slipped through my fingers. I was beyond disappointed.

And the food? Well, the food was okay, it was good. Not as good as their…pizza.

Which is what they’re known for. And I couldn’t have.

For my Free Birthday entrée…

…Because I’m a valued customer.

Alex, I’d like clues for 1000.

One last thing. My server got a little more than 25% tip on what the bill would have been if the entrée hadn’t been free. Hey, good personal service is still good service. And another part of the reason was for being able to say “Oh, that’s just the name.” with a straight face.

I’ve been looking into the best way to make some of my sites iPad friendly (yes, I said it) for audio, since my standard way of delivering streaming audio on my sites is a flash player. Now don’t get me wrong, I still love my flash player, it will be there until either no one supports it anymore or someone comes out with either something to replace it (which will be difficult) or a new, simple delivery standard comes out.

So I’m toying with HTML5 here. Different browsers react differently to it and it isn’t easy to make a standard setup at this point, but it’s worth playing with it. there are actually three files for each song on this page, a wav file, and two mp3 files, one being called from HTML5 and on in the standard flash player I use. What do you see below?

Never Been to Spain:

Your Mama Don’t Dance

Stuck in the Middle With You

Only one player should show for each 30 second clip, don’t even get me started on how it appears in different browsers. It’s got some promise, but nothing I definitely want to implement yet. What do you think?

[clips provided courtesy of Jim & Tim. Check out our website]