Home of the World Famous Home Office Setup
I’ve decided to consolidate some of the old content into my new site. Over the years a lot of content has been in various places and it’s rather hard to keep track of it all. Links to the old material should still work as well, though you will get redirected to the new personal site.
Good news. VMware has released the beta of VMware Workstation 6.0 which supports displaying virtual machines on multiple monitors and running virtual machines in a headless mode (in the background without the full blown display yet still accessible by remote desktop). An even more interesting new features is the integrated Virtual Debugger which allows you to deploy and test your code from Visual Studio straight to a target virtual machine. Another wonderful addition is the ability to set a VM to be a VNC server so you can remote control them without having to install your preferred flavor of VNC.
I am frequently asked how I manage to get my workstations to make use of so many monitors to simultaneously show the output of a single system. While there are various ways to accomplish this, often involving multiple graphics cards in a single system, I have been using configurations whereby each system has a single graphics card that uses two outputs in order to create a dual-screen setup, while enhancing the functionality of the screens on other systems using a wonderful software-only solution called MaxiVista.
Cafe Maddalena, located in Dunsmuir’s historic district, was a very pleasant surprise while we were staying in Dunsmuir. We arrived early in the evening and went hunting for a place to eat and just by sheer chance ended up in front of where one of the locals passed by us and said the place was “always very good”. Personally I consider that an understatement because it was more than good. It was GREAT! The food was excellent and the staff was extremely kind and helpful. I’m not surprised that some food critics have said that Cafe Maddalena was one of the best restaurants in Northern California. I would definitely agree with that and that’s why they get the #2 spot on my personal favorites list. The presentation of the food had a lot going for it but the deserts were real works of art that tasted even better than they looked and I can tell you, they look amazing! I’m not a big fan of fish but the way that Cafe Maddalena did their grilled swordfish almost turned me into a fish lover, instantly.
This place was a surprising discovery that turned into a very pleasant one. While driving in the city we decided to just look for a place for dinner by doing a spot-check of “hey that looks good, let’s try it”. After driving around and feeling hungry while looking for a place to park we ended up at David’s Kitchen, a hole-in-the-wall place that didn’t have any clear ambiance or characteristics… other than the menu that looked to be interesting. Well, those are famous last words because the food was simply great and the ambiance is created mostly in part by it being a small place with a small kitchen with one cook (David) who works his butt off to create very tasty fresh food. According to David a lot of the locals know of the place and those make up the bulk of his customers and that he has some help from his sister and his mother when things get busy (you will have to be patient but it will be well worth it). I started off with the Half Moon Wraps which were Enoki mushrooms wrapped in thinly sliced beef in a black pepper sauce. Very very tasty!
By now you may figure out that I like Italian food a lot. And lots of it! Tonno Rosso was this incidental find we ended up for dinner at while being at the Embarcadero because we had planned to go to the Slanted Door (which unfortunately had a 5-week waiting list for reservations!!!). The food was very good and the service was prompt and quick. The place uses waiters and runners so when you ask for a another glass of wine the runner will tell the waiter who then comes over to the table again. This process may work out well, logistically, for the restaurant but does seem a little odd when the restaurant isn’t completely full. The food was good and the service was decent and effective. Not a place I will go out of my way for but definitely a place that should be on my recommended list… and so it is. Unfortunately, it’s now closed.
Roy’s is a Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine. A very innovative, surprising, and excellent place to go for food that is quite different. All food comes as a presentation of a work of art where a lot of effort is put into the balance between looks and taste. Lots of good medium priced wines and really interesting and tasty food if you want to try something you may not have had before. The ambiance lacks the romantic feel but the overall feel fits in perfectly with the food.
The Brookdale Lodge, good food but with an even better ambiance. The restaurant (Brookroom) has a real live brook running through it which is lit with colored lights at night and provides an atmosphere that is very good for both casual and romantic dining. The food, as I already said, is good. It’s not spectacular but the fruit salad I had was almost unique and really worked well for me. It may be a bit out of the way but if you ever pass through Brookdale, or come near it, going to the Brookroom would not be a mistake you’d regret.
Well, what can I say about this place that hasn’t already been said. Not much I suspect. “If you haven’t eaten at Fior d’Italia you haven’t been to San Francisco!” is what they say and I can agree with that. The place is up there with the best of all time and while it’s not inexpensive it’s definitely worth it for their authentic cuisine and their excellent wine selection. This place always pops up in the top-100’s that are published and for one I can’t disagree with that. It’s one of those places where it’s good to dress up and make sure you make it worth your time by going the whole route from appetizers to desert (so you can experience the full range).
Stefan Didak’s Home Office Comments
Over several months many comments have been made about my home office setup. A lot of these comments reside on the various blogs and forums where people have been posting links to my home office pictures. This blog entry, now that I have a personal site to play with, is a way to allow comments to be left directly on the site itself. If your comments are really funny, silly, or outrageous I’ll consider adding them to the collected comments archive.