Hello Again, Pi-Hole.

Some weeks back, I decided to set Pi-Hole (the DNS-based black hole for ads and other creepy requests) again on my home network. I already had an Ubuntu VM available. It only took minutes to get it going on that. I previously ran it on a Raspberry Pi Zero.

My Eero mesh network uses the Pi-Hole for DNS and Pi-Hole used OpenDNS for its DNS. About a week ago, my Ubuntu VM changed its static IP address unexpectedly and, in a hurry, I just restored Google DNS settings to it because I knew them (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4). But I’ll probably go back to OpenDNS, because no one on Earth should trust Google.

Pi-Hole is a wonderful product.

Hello, Sound Devices MixPre-3.

I picked up a Sound Device MixPre-3 (not the second generation) a few days ago. I’m excited. Plan to use this as an audio recorder for personal projects and as an audio interface at work to replace my very nice pair of Roland Quad-Capture interfaces. No complaints about the Rolands. I bought this to replace my Tascam DR-100 Mk II for personal projects. I don’t need the microphones on that and I don’t need it pocket-sized, so this MixPre seems like a great fit.

Nacholist

Today, I had some decent nachos at Bar Fly in Safety Harbor with a friend. I wanted, not for the first time, to have a list of places I’d eaten nachos, with notes about my opinion of their nachos.

I don’t eat out a lot, but when I do, I very often order nachos. I’m very disappointed when a place has nachos are obviously so bad that I don’t order them, or are disappointing when I do.

I registered some domain names (.com, .net and .org) to make such a list and share it.

I’m thinking some of the characteristics to track would be:

  • Flavor
  • Chip quality
  • Greasiness (bad)
  • Fake cheese (a huge negative)
  • Chicken quality (I seldom get nachos with any other meat on them.)
  • Price
  • Amount of food
  • Overall perception one value
  • Whether the ingredients are mixed in with the chips
  • Whether the chips can hold their form (not turn to mush) before I get to the bottom of the dish.

18 March 2018 Update: I’m going to keep track of nacho experiences here until I get the dedicated site up.

18 March 2018: Ford’s Garage (a restaurant) has terrific chicken nachos. The jalapeños weren’t even hot, but tasted good. Eating the left-over last half cold this Saturday morning, they’re incredible.

New aspect to track routinely: The morning after. How are the nachos the next day, fridge-cold?