reesesWeb

I don't know about the statistical accuracy of this article, but it must have been tough for the author to get an article on the inefficacy of gun control laws on crime published in Boston.

More Ruby. I've rewritten a lame little Python script in Ruby last night. It was a lot easier to write this in Ruby than it was to write the first one in Python, and that's a purely environmental observation, as the problem itself was quite trivial.

I went out with a buddy today, meeting in the Mission area of San Francisco. Of course, I hadn't checked to see if there was a HUGE CARNIVALE in the area first, but there you go. Lines for all of the restaurants were long, except for a tiny, centrally-located, El Salvadorean restaurant.

The lack of a line should have been the first warning.

We went in, and stood around for a minute or two until a table was vacated. We sat down, next to the pile of dirty plates, for about ten minutes before the one guy working came by to clear them. He didn't wipe the table off, but he did return about another ten minutes later with menus. Another fifteen minutes, and he came by to take our order.

We waited, and every time someone came to the door, we thought,"Run, run! Don't do it! Don't come in!" Several groups came in, waited a long time, and left, before we received our food.

Fifty minutes later, he brought my "El Salvadorean Enchiladas", while my friend sat and waited for his Carne Asada. Another fifteen minutes, and he went up to ask in the kitchen if his food was coming. For those bad at math, fifty + fifteen = one hour, five minutes. It turns out the business was a real mom & pop endeavor, and mom was in the back, making one plate at a time.

I tucked into my food, and discovered that it was truly foul. Steve's "Carne Asada" was a strip of cheapest cut beef, grilled without seasoning, with a little red sauce poured on top. My enchiladas were crisp fried cornmeal disks, with shredded beef seasoned liberally with MSG, and cheap shredded-cabbage-from-a-bag on top.

Did I mention that I had to eat what I could with a flimsy plastic fork?

The place, Panchita's on 16th, looked as if it had been open a while, which baffles me completely. How do places like that stay open? They must have served maybe six plates while we were there, at an average cost of about $10/person (with beer). We were there at the busy time, so unless their rent was a few bucks or they had been so long it was under rent control at 1950s rates, it would have been really tough to cover.

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