I’m not sure how long it’s been open, a few weeks maybe? But I went there a couple weeks back and let me tell you the food was fantastic! The location is rather hidden, but other than that it was great. Fresh food, cooked expertly and served hot at more than reasonable prices. What more could you ask!?

The place is called, “Gyro City Grill”. It’s located off Fayetteville road behind Walgreens. Look back there, you’ll see it. The salads are wonderful and the Gyros are fantastic. The food was fresh and the cook area was clean. Heck the whole place was nice and neat and the workers friendly.

Give it a shot, it’s worth it!

I’ve not updated lately, I know. I’ve been lazy. I’m also tired of the same ole news. So this post is about cooking! Specifically some Gnocchi. I’ve been wanting to try to make this for awhile and finally I did it and it turned out awesome, or at least I think it was pretty awesome! I snapped pics along the way too! I had to document it since I wasn’t sure I’d ever attempt this again.  I probably will again at some point, since I think it gets easier the more you do it. This took the better part of an afternoon.

To begin with I wrapped 8 potatoes in foil and baked them til done with crispy outsides. I then cut them in two while still very warm and scooped the insides out. I saved the potato shells to make potatoes skins with. Heres a nice shot of that the skins looked like right after being scraped.

There’s a shot of the warm flaky potatoes right before I stirred in two eggs, some salt and a bit of flour to bind it all together.
The next is a shot of the still lukewarm dough. Handling the dough as little as possible ensures a fluffy bit of Gnocchi! Make ’snakes’ like you used to with playdough then gently cut them into tiny pillows. The next photo shows the snake! The next pic shows the little pillows being rolled into a fork to create small lines. These hold the sauces better. And the next photo shows a bunch of lil gnocchi sitting on a pan waiting to be frozen. Oh yeah so does the very next pic! The next one shows the gnocchi right after being rescued from a quick boil! They were done and awaiting the next stage. Which was a quick pan fry in olive oil and seasonings to give a slight brown crunchy outside. Delicious!!! But I didn’t snap photos of this last stage, I was too busy trying to get them all done!

The last pic shows the leftover potato skins right after a quick dip in a fryer and before a bake with cheese! Nothing at all wasted. How cool is that! Oh yeah for the record eating fried stuff is a rare treat for us, we usually don’t have anything fried.

So that’s it. It was an easy recipe, but to make it right took time and patience. Wish I could have taken pics of the very end results because the gnocchi looked wonderful and tasted great. Maybe next time.

I like my cactus theme. It’s back. It’s sparse and bright. I like it and only what I like matters, if we’re being totally honest. I did lighten the cactus so that the sidebar is more readable.

About a month ago I was told my cactus made the sidebar barely readable, that I needed a more prominent link to the message board and that I needed to open the message board to guest posts. More accessible and that some folks from around here may just not know how to sign-up to use it. And that some wouldn’t want to sign up. I got offered a lot of unsolicited advice!

But in the interest of new readers and providing a place for residents to chat and exchange thoughts and ideas, I did what was suggested. I changed the look of the blog. I added newer larger links to the message board and opened the message board to guests for reading and posting.

Guess what happened?

To the average user, nothing. A couple new posts from a new person or two. TONS of new spam that I had to filter through everyday. The new poster or two did not bring more new posters and actually stopped posting after one or two messages. Some kept reading the boards however, just not posting anything at all.

You can’t make folks post/write/engage each other in conversation here or anywhere else. The bottom line is that I’ve given it some time and more than once I’ve changed things to make them easier for my readers to no avail. Spam idiots cost me valuable time and money and I don’t want to bother with the message board  anymore.

Have a nice day!

Recently I posted about some searches that have brought traffic to my website concerning high gas prices and how it’s affecting everyone all over the US. A reader made a comment that prompted me to sit down and write this article. I guess I just assumed that everyone knew these things. I was wrong. After investigating a bit I see that many folks are not aware of the tracks they leave behind when they surf.

So here we go. Let me explain just a little bit about this.

When you sign up for internet access at your home, you’re assigned an account number. No matter the service you use, dialup, cable whatever. You have an account number. That’s your first identifier. Everytime you logon, or even if you’re online all the time, your account number is being stored and logged. You’re assigned a random IP when you connect to the internet (we won’t get into the purchase of static IP’s for businesses etc.). If you’re always connected to the internet you can keep an IP for weeks, then it resets itself assigning you a new IP. The IP’s you are given are assigned to the company you purchase internet access from. If you buy access from Sparky’s Internet, then Sparky has been assigned a block of IP addresses which they in turn re-assign to the users when the users are connected. This block of IP’s that Sparky has access to are the identifiers for Sparky’s Internet. These IP’s and the user account they’re assigned to are logged as well. A new log file is created everytime a user gets a new random IP  assigned.

Whew. Get that? You get an identifier from your internet company, that is logged everytime you connect to the internet. Just so you know these logs are not usually reviewed BUT in some cases they are. The police can get a warrant and force your internet provider to turn over those logs, if they have reason to believe a crime was commited using your computer and internet account. These identifiers can be traced back to your account and from there to your machine. Not to a particular person though, because even if you have a password on your machine, it’s always a possibility, whether probable or not, that it was someone else using your machine and your password. Sometimes that little bit of doubt doesn’t matter much.

It’s happened in some very high profile cases; recall the recent case up north of the young english guy just recently convicted of killing his wife and child. His computer was searched and several searches were found that had to do with committing murder (see this link for more info: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/state/x1165648058/Searches-about-murder-escort-services-found-on-Entwistles-computer ) That search was simply on his machine, the police could and may have gone much further by getting a warrant for his internet provider.

Read this article for further clarification on what is collected, stored and for how long. It can be shocking to some people who really do not know this is happening. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/technology/04privacy.html?scp=3&sq=hansell%20subpeana&st=cse )
Heres a telling quote from the article: “When it comes to e-mail and Internet service records, “the average citizen would be shocked to find out how adept your average law enforcement officer is at finding information,” said Paul Ohm, who recently left the Justice Department’s computer crime and intellectual property section.” This is a very good article and I really suggest reading it to get a handle on all this.

Alrighty! So we now know that when we’re at home using the internet that we have ‘identifiers’ and those can be traced back to your account and from there to your actual physical machine. Damn.

The same thing can be done at work, with a twist in some cases. Most companies have ‘IT’ people who run the networks. Those networks usually have identifiers that have nothing to do with the internet. Some machines are named and/or numbered so that the IT staff can identify them at a glance. This is so that the network can be monitored and kept up to date, repairs can be made at a faster rate because the machine in question can be pegged by name or number. It is that IT persons job to make sure their network is secure and functioning properly and protecting the company’s interests. So now you have an extra set of identifiers on top of the Internet service providers identifiers. And these identifiers can usually be connected directly to a particular person, unlike the service providers identifiers going back to the machine only. At a job a worker is usually ‘logged onto’ the network and is doing work while logged on, the fact the person was doing their job makes it a positive ID. So if the employee happens to surf the web for porn while working with a company database, it’s reasonable to assume the identity of the porn surfer is the same worker who is logged in to the porn surfing machine. People get fired for this kind of behaviour. Another thing to consider about the work place and the internet is the ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ that most employers have in place. Does your workplace have one? Have you signed one? Did you really really read it? I hope you did.

Now that was brief wasn’t it? Yeah. Ok now on to the websites and the information they gather when you view them.

The main reason a webmaster/owner wants to view this information is so he knows who his target audience is. Who is looking and for what, allows you to cater to your authentic readers. If someone is searching for jokes on your website, you may want to accomodate them to keep them coming back. If they’re searching for local news, you may want to write more articles about local happenings. See what I mean? If the IP address says they’re coming from India and searching for porn on your website, you know it’s most likely a nasty spammer and you can block that IP from posting or hold for approval any posts they make; avoiding possible spam posts that can wind up costing you readers and cold hard cash due to bandwidth usage. If the IP that hits your website is from a local internet provider and they’re searching for news on the local school system you can assume it is a local person. From there you know that at least one local person would like to see some local news on your site.

You can also see what kind of operating system they are using and what browser. This allows you to check your website on those operating systems and browsers to see how well they degrade on other systems (ones you did not use to build your site on). You can tweak your site a bit to accomodate these other OS’s and browsers by having this information. There is more information avaliable and it is all designed to help the webmaster better serve his target audience. In RobesonBlogs case our target audience is mainly the citizens of this county. It’s really not nefarious and every single web host grabs logs with this information and saves them. From cookies to session ID’s to telling what URL you came from and showing searches from search engines.

Most folks just don’t think about all that backend stuff. But it’s there. I should also note there are ways to ’surf anonymously’. Do a quick google search on that and you can read all about it.

So I have this script that shows me who hits my web page and where they came from. It can be very revealing if you know what to look for. This blog gets a good many hits but there have been some recently that tell me that I’m not the only one who is pissed off and worried about these stupidly high gas prices. Check out this search that ultimately led to this blog and the articles I wrote about high prices and the common folk.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fuel%20prices%20and%20the%20price%20of%20groceries&start=60&sa=N

See? People are worried, real people.

So whose job is it to attract new business to Robeson County? The truth is that it’s everyone’s job to sell ourselves. If the people of our county want new businesses then we need to say we want them, speak out at the commissioners and council meetings. Support small local businesses as much as humanly possible so that our community thrives and our citizens thrive.

That being said, there is a whole county department dedicated to bringing new business to the county. This is the Office of Economic Development. This is pulled directly from their website to explain what they are and do exactly: (http://www.robesoncountyoed.org/edc.htm)

“The Robeson County Economic Development Commission is a non-profit organization utilizing public funds to promote Robeson County’s economic growth. The Economic Development Commission works with new and existing industries for the creation of new jobs, an expanded tax base in the county and a stronger local economy through the business retention and expansion program.”

Alrighty then! This office has been in the public eye recently with the unveiling of a new brochure and website. I explored this website and found it to be rather pretty on the front page (if you don’t mind a photo that has a scroll bar in it that does not scroll), but somewhat lacking in continuity on the other pages. That is neither here nor there however. I looked to see who designed this site but couldn’t find any indication. So I just continued to explore a bit.

There is a good deal of info on the site and if you’re looking at relocating a business here it seems this would be very helpful. They have an extensive ‘Links’ page as well. I read the article posted on the links page and was impressed that their brochure won an award! And the website is mirrored after the brochure… but something seemed a bit odd.

Wait!

This is the Office of Economic Development (Hereby known as OED because I am too lazy to keep typing the full name), right? For Robeson County, right? Why did they hire a firm from Raleigh to design the brochure when we have talented local designers for hire right here in this county, AS well as a community college (RCC has a computer science course that touches on web pages and design software) and a University (UNCP has a computer graphics course)? You mean to say that students couldn’t have been used to do this as a project? Come on now! I can’t imagine an instructor refusing the opportunity to let their graphics students design such a visible project for a county department. The students would get the experience and the OED would have a FREE design! How cool would that be? They could have run a contest among the students, giving the winner an article in the paper and a pat on the back and a decent start on a portfolio. But they didn’t do that at all. They paid god only knows what to have a marketing and advertising firm do it for them. This from a piss poor county that is supposedly in dire straights in every department! Of course how many advertising and design firms does our county have? I can only say that I’ve looked and I can see a couple of places that show up under graphics and advertising on the Lumberton Chambers website. So it is possible they may have had to go out of town to hire a marketing firm, but for the whole thing? I think not.

But wait! It gets even better!

So I look a bit further on this links page (by god that site is full of information if you know where to look!) and start clicking on some of the listed links. Lo and behold I see that ‘CoreVantage’ is still listed on there. Does anyone remember the promises made when that company was rolling into town? They promised a couple hundred jobs then applied for and got a huge grant… that they ultimately had to pay back. Seems to me it was a train wreck from the get-go. Yet it’s still there. But I digress. This is not about CoreVantage, rather about the link at the bottom of their home page. It says web development by. So I click the link there and am taken to a web design company that is located in Wisconsin. Wisconsin people. That’s alright though, because CoreVantage can hire whoever they want, from where ever to design and maintain their website! It is a free country after all!

But wait! There’s more to it!

I click on the ‘Clients sites’ link on the Wisconsin web design site. And guess what I see? Did you guess right? The OED website is listed as a client. The OED paid a web designer that is not only out of town and out of county BUT is out of state, to do the new site. I won’t repeat myself about the many local designers who do this for a living that would have given them a wonderful site at good prices, OR the two institutions of higher learning that could have done it all for free. I’ll just say this: WTF?

The organization that is supposedly working to bring more business to the county and to help retain business and industry goes out of county and out of state to contract things which could have either been done totally free OR could have put much needed monies back into our local economy. I would say I’m speechless but you’d never buy that. I’m outraged. I can’t stress how easy it would have been to get quality work from within our own county, possibly at no cost to tax payers at all. But then again the article does say: (and I quote from their website links page)

“Our goal was to present our assets, which include our great location along the Interstate 95 and Interstate 74 corridors, in a professional brochure, which will help brand our county and make a memorable impression on our prospects.”

I suppose this means that they had to go out of our own county to get a professionally done brochure. I take that as there is no one qualified to provide that in Robeson County. The very county this organization is trying to promote. I’m insulted.

You be the judge of what this means. I know what I think.

P.S. If you’re a local to Robeson County web designer, graphics designer or the like send me a link to your website and I’ll link you here and on our message board. Heck if you own a small business period send me a link or if you don’t have a website send me the complete info for your business and I’ll post it here and on the message board. A bit of advertisement never hurts! Send links to any blogs that are local and I’ll link them as well..might as well go for the whole shebang, eh? This county needs more networking!

info@robesonblog.com

P.P.S- I just had to add this in response to the last quote from the OED website concering ‘branding’ our county. PLEASE! This county has been ‘branded’ over and over again. You don’t think the corrupt sheriffs department branded us? Hell everytime it’s reported on we get seared a bit darker. But lets also not forget how our own children have branded this county: How about RobCo? Think that nickname is a good one? Think again the next time you hear a younger person snickering about how backwoods RobCo is and how they’re never coming back to this hole. A perfect example of the branding of our county is the nickname the kids have for Lumberton; Lumberdump. Don’t believe me? Do a google search for “lumberdump”…we’re already branded.