A few words about writing articles, eating well, and getting (web) served.

So I had another article published on Guildwars.com this week, but I have yet to see much feedback on it. I can’t complain though, after seeing and hearing quite a bit of negative feedback on a fellow GuildWars.com writer’s article from last week. I have some theories as to how last week’s article got published in that state, but I don’t think the writer deserves quite as much flak as he’s gotten. I also will not discuss these theories externally, so please do not ask. However, I do know that the writer has played for top guilds in the past, and he has written better articles in the past, so hopefully his next article will garner wider acceptance.

As for my latest article, I hope it, at the very least, encourages more experimentation with some of the new skills offered in Eye of the North. I won’t, however hold my breath for a wholesale change in the metagame just yet. I also wonder how many Guild Wars players might become a bit preoccupied come September 25 at 12:01 AM. I probably won’t, unless someone can compel me to purchase an Xbox 360 by then.

Hot stuff
If you like Indian food, you will love Bombay Garden in Santa Clara, at the corner of El Camino and Lawrence Expressway, near Biglots and Starbucks. They offer a buffet for lunch every day and a dinner buffer on Friday through Sunday, as well as regular and banquet dining and catering. Boasting over 35 different items, Bombay Garden’s buffet meets or exceeds regular dining offerings at other restaurants in terms of taste and quality, and their regular dinner offerings thoroughly impressed me the one time I accidentally went in during non-buffet hours. Their Chicken Maharaja compares quite favorably to other Indian restaurants’ butter chicken (and the waiter told me that they can prepare a butter chicken as well). While their Poori bread at the buffet seems a little flat (literally, as opposed to puffy as you might expect), they serve their Naan bread fresh to your table so that it doesn’t sit out at the buffet. During their non-buffet hours, their Garlic Naan provides an excellent change of pace.

Bombay Garden’s buffet also includes some tasty desserts, including soft-serve Mango ice cream. Before dining there, I never thought much of Gulab Jamun, but they serve theirs warm and with just the right texture and sweetness to make it taste fresh and delicious even after sitting in a buffet tray. Mundane desserts like rice pudding that other restaurants make unappealing actually taste like they belong in the dessert area. With Indian music videos playing on several flat panel TVs around the restaurant, the lively, but not loud, atmosphere contributes to a pleasurable dining experience. According to their website, http://www.dinebombaygarden.com, they have 3 other locations, but I don’t know how the quality at the other locations compares to this new Santa Clara location. I do know, however, that it would take quite the effort to find an Indian dining experience to top this Bombay Garden location.

And now a few words about my host…
So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that my websites had experienced some downtime. My new provider, Westhost, resolved the issue quickly, and I don’t seem to have encountered any problems since. If you need a new webhost, you might want to consider them. Unlike other low-priced hosting companies, Westhost provides customers with a virtual server. This means you have shell access, can install almost anything you would need (though more processor-intense applications might require account upgrades/additional fees), and have access to server configuration files–basically like having your very own web server. So far, their hosting service has seemed pretty good, but they truly impressed me with their customer service. In my experiences in dealing with them via their live chat contact option (they also offer e-mail and phone support), their customer support agents have responded quickly and courteously. I recommend them to anyone looking for low-cost space to dev in a LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) environment. They also support Ruby On Rails, which I’ll hopefully find time to play around with in the near future.

Share This