Benjarong Thai Restaurant Rockville MD

This weekend I went to Benjarong, a Thai restaurant in Rockville, MD for a dinner, and let me say that Benjarong is probably the best Thai restaurant I have ever been to. The food was delicious and service was excellent.

Since I am a vegetarian, I always scour through the website of the restaurant before I go there so I know what to expect once I get there. I checked the Benjarong website and looked at the menu and found several items with 'V' next to it indicating that these items can be made vegetarian. Normally, I find about 2-3 vegetarian items in a typical Chinese/Japanese/Thai restaurant, but Benjarong probably had about 20 items from which I can choose. I really loved that.

When my wife and me went there on the Saturday night around 7 pm, the place was mostly full with one group of people waiting before us. We were seated in no time and the wait staff was friendly and professional. Since I knew what I was going to have, I ordered it right away and food was served in about 10 minutes.

I ordered Phad Thai and my wife ordered Kee Mao. Phad Thai is "Thai style thin rice noodles sautéed with egg, bean sprouts, scallions, ground peanuts, topped with fresh bean sprouts and cilantro" according to the Benjarong website's menu description. Kee Mao is, "Sauteed wide rice noodles with fresh chili peppers, tomatoes, basil and mushrooms", but my wife had requested mushrooms taken out of the dish. Both dishes were delicious.

I am definitely going to Benjarong again.

2002 Nissan Altima Tires

Tires are very expensive.

If you recently bought tires for your car or truck, you know what I mean. I recently had to get new tires for my 2002 Nissan Altima after my original tires call it quits after serving me 93,000 miles. Yes, that is not a type. The original Bridgestone tires lasted 93,000 miles for me. I had them rotated once when the odometer was showing around 43k miles and that was it.

The new tires I got from NTB are Yokohoma Avid TRZ tires. The 2002 Nissan Altima’s tire specs are 205/65/16. Usually, you find 205/65/15 in stores but not the 205/65/16. My local Sam’s club store did not had 205/65/16 in stock so I had to go with NTB. The final out the door price for 4 tires was $560.

R.I.P. - Stay The Course

Keith Olbermann brilliantly eulogizes and honors 'Stay The Course'.



I hear that Keith Olbermann's ratings are up at MSNBC and Bill O'Reilly's ratings at Fox News is sliding down.

Maryland's 3rd congressional district

Below is the map of the Maryland Congressional District 3. Benjamin Cardin is the congressman of this district currently and he has been getting elected in this district for last 10 elections.

Redistricting is gone wild here. Can your district beat this? Click on the map to see the large image.

This district is in the suburbs of Baltimore City.

House of Representatives (Congress) members from Maryland

Here are the current House of Representatives from the state of Maryland. There are total 8 congressional districts in Maryland; Of these 8 districts, 6 have democratic representatives and 2 are republicans.

• District 1 - Wayne T. Gilchrest (Republican)
• District 2 - Dutch Ruppersberger (Democrat)
• District 3 - Benjamin Cardin (Democrat)
• District 4 - Albert Russell Wynn (Democrat)
• District 5 - Steny Hoyer (Democrat)
• District 6 - Roscoe Bartlett (Republican)
• District 7 - Elijah Cummings (Democrat)
• District 8 - Chris Van Hollen (Democrat)

How to do System Restore in Windows XP?

If you want to restore your Windows XP system to earlier time, do following steps:

1. Click Start
2. All Programs
3. Accessories
4. System tools
5. System restore

A wizard will open and it will guide you through the system restore process. This of course will only work if you have system restore setting turned on in the System Properties.

Futures Prediction Markets

The prediction markets are highly reliable in predicting the probability of the certain event happening in the future. This is what the futures prediction markets are saying for the various events today. (October 12, 2006)

1. GOP holds House of Representatives in the 2006 elections - 40.6%
2. GOP holds Senate in the 2006 elections - 73.2%
3. GOP president elected in 2008 - 48.1%
4. McCain GOP nominee in 2008 - 38.3%
5. DEM president elected in 2008 - 48.6%
6. Hillary Clinton DEM nominee in 2008 - 47.1%
7. CT Senator IND in 2006 - 81.5%
8. Super Bowl XLI winner Chicago Bears - 19.7%
9. Detroit Tigers World Series winner - 45.5%
10. NBA championship outright winner 2006/2007 Dallas Mavericks - 16.0%

Source: TradeSports.com

Largest Cities of United States

According to the census estimates below are the 10 largest cities (population) of the United States:

1) New York city - 8,143,197
2) Los Angeles - 3,844,829
3) Chicago - 2,842,518
4) Houston - 2,016,582
5) Philadelphia - 1,463,281
6) Phoenix - 1,461,575
7) San Antonio - 1,256,509
8) San Diego - 1,255,540
9) Dallas city - 1,213,825
10) San Jose - 912,332

Source: US Census Bureau

Nurse Shortages

I know that the one month does not make a trend but as you can see from the chart below where the jobs will be in the future. The chart shows that the nursing and residential care facilities lost workers last month. Nurse shortage will be huge problem when baby-boomers start to retire.

I guess now is a good time to enroll in a nursing school.

Top Selling Cars in US - September 2006

Below is the list of top 10 selling vehicles in United States in September 2006.

1. Ford F-Series pickup - 70,822
2. Chevrolet Silverado pickup - 51,964
3. Toyota Camry - 38,269
4. Toyota Corolla - 32,279
5. Honda Accord - 27,759
6. Honda Civic - 26,331
7. Dodge Ram pickup - 25,081
8. Ford Taurus - 22,811
9. Chevrolet Impala - 21,863
10. Nissan Altima - 19,752

Interesting to note here is that 2 Toyota cars have overtaken the Honda Accord. Both Camry and Corolla are outselling the flagship Honda Sedan. Nissan Altima has gained popularity also and the sales numbers of Altima are quickly approaching that of Ford Taurus and Chevrolet Impala.

Source: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061003/auto_sales_best_sellers.html

HTTP Status Codes

100 - Continue
101 - Switching Protocols
200 - OK
201 - Created
202 - Accepted
203 - Non-Authoritative Information
204 - No Content
205 - Reset Content
206 - Partial Content
300 - Multiple Choices
301 - Moved Permanently
302 - Found
303 - See Other
304 - Not Modified
305 - Use Proxy
306 - No Longer Used
307 - Temporary Redirect
400 - Bad Request
401 - Not Authorised
402 - Payment Required
403 - Forbidden
404 - Not Found
405 - Method Not Allowed
406 - Not Acceptable
407 - Proxy Authentication Required
408 - Request Timeout
409 - Conflict
410 - Gone
411 - Length Required
412 - Precondition Failed
413 - Request Entity Too Large
414 - Request URI Too Long
415 - Unsupported Media Type
416 - Requested Range Not Satisfiable
500 - Internal Server Error
501 - Not Implemented
502 - Bad Gateway
503 - Service Unavailable
504 - Gateway Timeout
505 - HTTP Version Not Supported

Potential Toyota Highlander Customer

My household has been a Nissan holder for years. I drive Nissan Altima, and my dad drives Nissan Maxima, we also had a Sentra for few years in the family. We are completely satisfied with the performance, reliability and quality of the Nissan cars. Over the years, these cars have served us well.

Lately, I am in a market for a mini-SUV, probably Honda CR-V or Toyota RAV4 type of 4-cylinder gas thrifty vehicle. While researching Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, I came across the specs of Toyota Highlander. I thought Highlander probably cost in the upper 20’s, so I considered it out of my range and ignored it from my vehicular research sessions on the internet. But after finding out that the 4-cylinder 2WD version of the Toyota Highlander is available at around $22k, I am trying to picture a Highland SUV in my driveway. The only hesitation I have right now about the move to Highlander is the performance of the 4-cylinder engine in a 3,500 pound SUV.

So, if you are reading this and are a 4-cylinder Highlander owner, please give me your little review of the SUV by leaving a comment below. I am not a type of driver who tries to race everybody on the highways; I am only trying to make sure that horsepower is adequate enough for normal driving situations. Would you recommend your 4-cylinder Toyota Highlander to anyone?

Disabling Windows XP Startup Programs

Is your computer taking too much time to startup?
Is your computer loading unnecessary programs in the system tray in the boot process?

If you are using Windows XP than I have a simple cure for you. (Disclaimer: Please use the following instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible if this causes any problems with your system.)

• Click Start
• Run
• Type msconfig in the dialog box and click OK
• System configuration utility dialog box should show up
• Click on the Startup tab
• You should now see all the startup items checked in a list
• Uncheck all the unnecessary items you don’t want to load at the system startup
• Please do not uncheck the virus protection programs from the list
• Click OK
• Restart your machine

I disabled Yahoo Messenger and Kodak Easyshare camera software starting up at the boot up process by following the above instructions. I do not use Yahoo messenger everyday, and I only load pictures from my camera once every couple of months. I do not need these two programs starting up every time I boot up my computer.

Does this instruction work out for you? Please leave a comment below with any suggestions/tips you may have.

URL Rewriting ASP.NET 2.0

Simple URL rewriting is very easy in ASP.NET 2.0 with element in the web.config file. You can just add the following to section of the web.config file to map UglyUrl.aspx to NiceUrl.aspx.

<system.web>
   <urlmappings>
      <add url="”~/UglyUrl.aspx”" mappedurl="”~/NiceUrl.aspx”">
   </urlmappings>
</system.web>

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist - MCTS

Move over MCAD (Microsoft Certified Applications Developer), there are new certifications in town. "To showcase their technical and on-the-job skills" related to Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft suggests using MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist). There are five new certifications from which to choose from:

• Technology Specialist: .NET framework 2.0 Web Applications
• Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Windows Applications
• Technology Specialist: .NET Framework 2.0 Distributed Applications
• Technology Specialist: SQL Server 2005
• Technology Specialist: BizTalk Server 2006
  

Since I am a web developer and use ASP.NET at work, I am leaning towards the first option and want to pursue this certifications with full force. There are only two required exams for this .NET framework 2.0 Web Application option.

• Exam 70-536: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation
• Exam 70-528: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Web based Client Development
  

Washington Beltway Traffic Jam

Today, August 1, 2006, was one of the worst traffic days of the year on the outer loop of the Washington DC beltway in the Montgomery county Maryland. A truck dropped the load of the frozen vegetables on the outer loop between Connecticut Avenue and Wisconsin Avenue overnight and cleanup continued until 9 a.m. in the morning.

The traffic was backed up from the accident site to all the way back to the Baltimore-Washington parkway on the outer loop. The southbound I-95 traffic was backed up from the 216 to the beltway to all the way around to the accident site.

The daily commute was stretched to at least the double of the normal daily duration for almost everyone using this route.

Eyelid Muscle Twitching Episode

I recently went through an extended eye twitching episode that lasted over a month. One day all of a sudden without any reason whatsoever lower eyelid of my left eye started contracting involuntarily. The movement of the eyelid was kind of horizontal. When I looked closely at my lower left eyelid in the mirror, I could see the two ends of the lower eyelid pressuring towards each other. Because of this the two corners of the eyes were feeling constant pressure in the lower corner. A couple of days I even woke up with teary left eye because of the constant pressure from the eyelid muscle contractions the left eye started to shed water.

I was going crazy and started looking for reasons on the internet. All I was able to find was that it was not a big deal. Some websites said that this kind of condition could last for weeks or months before mysteriously going away. Myokymia is the proper medical name of this condition. I also found out that lack of sleep, muscle weakness, stress, or too much coffee could also be responsible for this kind of condition (Note: Do not consider this as a medical advice. I am not a medical professional. Please see your doctor if you are experiencing similar condition). Well, it is good to say that in the last couple weeks I have not had a single eye twitch. It is gone.

P.S. - I did buy a lottery ticket hoping that this is maybe an indication of coming good luck but unfortunately did not match any numbers.

ASP.NET Page Lifecycle Events

Here are the events in the asp.net page lifecycle in the sequence they are raised:

1. PreInit
2. Init
3. InitComplete
4. PreLoad
5. Load
6. LoadComplete
7. PreRender
8. PreRenderComplete
9. SaveStateComplete
10. Unload

Most of the times, the programmers will write the code in the Load and PreRender event handlers.

Washington Beltway Traffic

Does the Washington beltway (outer-loop) traffic in morning rush hour in College park, Maryland qualify as the worst traffic in the nation?

This traffic used to be from New Hampshire Avenue to Georgia Avenue. Then, it was from 95 to Georgia Avenue. Then, from IKEA to Georgia Avenue. Now, I see the traffic from Route 1 to Georgia Avenue regularly. This week the traffic stopped from Kenilworth Avenue to Georgia Avenue.

What will happen 5 years from now?

Dell Dimension 3100/E310 Memory Upgrade

My dell dimension 3100/E310 computer uses DDR2 memory. This system I bought off the dell outlet only came with only 256 MB of memory. This memory is not enough because I have windows xp media center operating system installed on it.

As I was looking to buy a new 512MB memory stick to install, I opened up the owner’s manual that came with the computer to read the instructions. This is what the manual says about memory upgrade: “DDR2 memory modules should be installed in pairs of matched size, speed, and technology.” It also says that if the DDR2 memory is not installed in pairs then the computer will operate at “slight” slower speed.

Dell manual says that if you install DDR2 400-MHz (PC2-3200) and DDR2 533-MHz (PC2-4300) memory, the memory will use the lower installed speed.

It is good that I read the manual before going out and purchasing the new memory module. There is no need to spend the extra dollars and go for higher speed when my computer will downgrade the higher speed anyways.