Microsoft Burrito 2010 Professional

2 subjects. Microsoft and burritos. Who knew they could be so intertwined.

Well they aren't really, but they are the 2 main things I have to report on. I'll start with burritos. Burritos are always a good start.

So I was massively ill over the weekend. Like whoa, this is not right. First the reason for the illness (what does this have to do with burritos, I hear you murmuring). Last Friday we had our company Christmas party. Now our Christmas and Summer parties consist of a day of lectures on how awesome we all are followed by much partying and food and alcohol. It's a winning combination most of the time. Friday though, was not one of those times. I was already uncomfortable finding out that this year our conference was to be held 4 floors underground. Yay. No daylight then. But the real problem was it was so stuffy. Add to that workaholic consultants who MUST get to the conference even if it means infecting half the company with whatever disease they have, and you end up with.... half the company infected with some strange disease. So that knocked me out all weekend. Which meant I had to take Monday off. But by Monday I was able to walk again, so I walked to... The Flying Burrito :D

It was closer to my flat than I thought, and a worthy alternative to Burro Burrito which sucks. Now if only it opened more often.

What did I think? Meh, it's not going to take away Chipotle or Chilango's joint crown any time soon, but it's better than a lot of other places. Just a middle of the road kind of place. Lovely service though, and they have a loyalty card which is a bonus...

On Tuesday I went to Chipotle for my reference to be recalibrated. This is recommended after trying a new burrito, lest you forget how a burrito should taste. This time though, it was particularly tasty, not because it was any better made (actually slightly worse, had a containment failure due to defective tortilla), but because it was FREE! Yes, another FREE burrito courtesy of Chipotle. Now tell me, how can you possibly beat that? I'm going to have to sell out to the corporation and rank Chipotle above Chilango if they keep this up!

Now what does this have to do with Microsoft? Well, very little. The similarity is limited to the immense disappointment I feel when a new burrito place isn't up to scratch. I've felt this way lately about a number of Microsoft products. Here's a list of recent issues I've had.

1. Microsoft never used to support Exchange ActiveSync on hotmail. This prevented me from switching to iPhone or Android. They have since introduced this.
2. Windows Phone 7. What a pile of poo. What's worse is that Windows Phone 7 is also their official solution to the problem of Windows Mobile Device Center not working with 64-bit Outlook, knobbling my Windows Mobile 6.5 too. Apparently I should just get Windows Phone 7 which works through Zune instead. Except it's rubbish.
3. Hotmail has become all weird and difficult to use.
4. MSN changed the messenger smileyes and plastered adverts everywhere.
5. SharePoint 2010 is a pile of poo.
6. Hyper-V. Don't even get me started.

It's almost like Microsoft is trying to make their products look as shiny as Apple stuff but without making any of it work. Guys, you can't polish a turd, so either stop turning out turds in the first place or start selling them as turds so people aren't confused and disappointed.

I bet none of this post makes sense. Oh well...

Snowboarding next week. Wheeee! :D

Indiana Backpain and the Fail of Burrito...

I broke my back in 2007, in a snowboarding accident. I might have mentioned it before while ranting about Italy.

In any case, this means that despite the regular exercise, every once in a while my back decides enough is enough and refuses to cooperate.

Friday was one of those days, so not the greatest start to my weekend by any account.

It was the first time for a while, and I'd been feeling the tell tale signs that it was coming for a few weeks (those signs being a general weak feeling and knowing that if I lift something heavy it will give way immediately). I was having difficulty walking, and this time the pain was in a slightly different place to where it was before. I blame the cycling for this, but am as yet undecided on whether this is good or bad. In any case, it meant I couldn't really go to work as walking was quite painful.

Now... back in university I did a unit in business management, and we learnt about this thing called a SWOT analysis. SWOT is Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. The idea is to summarise the SWOT of a company and identify ways to turn threats into strengths and weaknesses into opportunities. I wrote one about BMW suggesting they buy Rolls Royce as a premium brand since they already had a joint venture with them making plane engines, and a few years later they did just that. But I digress.

Back to err... my back. So, I decided to turn my weakness into an opportunity, by going downstairs to try the new local burrito supplier, Burro Burrito.

Sadly, this was an epic fail.

Some of you (ok maybe one of you) will have probably seen my previous placing for Burro Burrito fairly low on the list, ranked as such by a member of the New York chapter of the International Burrito Organisation. I can confirm that Burro Burrito is indeed correctly placed near the bottom of the list.

As per my review on Qype, for some reason they squirt some kind of concentrated lime juice into the rice. I suspect that this is in fact, lime fresh Flash floor cleaner. That's problem number 1. Problem number 2 is that although the meat looks like it's going to taste great... it doesn't. In fact it doesn't really taste of anything. I used to have a Staedtler pencil eraser at school that was more flavoursome. I had to continually squirt the Cholula chili sauce into it just to eat it, and I soon gave up. So my local Burrito supplier is an epic fail. Burrito Fail VII in fact. Damn shame.

To be continued...