Pho Garden

There's three pho restaurants in downtown Mountain View, and two of them are generally among the cheapest restaurants you can go to, with correspondingly low grade food. I mean it's really low grade. You have a selection of meats, ranging from flank steak to intestines to tripe. I've never tried anything other than the highest grade of meat (i.e. flank), but basically even if you try a dish with the highest grade of meat, it's still a very low-grade meal. It costs like $5.

Today I went to the other pho restaurant, and having gone to the other two recently, I was expecting the worst. Surprisingly, it's a cut above the other two. I still didn't like my meal enough to finish it, but at least it wasn't disgusting. I write more about it here in the Sunfire lunch blog.

The DMV

I don't know anyone who doesn't cringe when making a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, envisioning a purgatory of endless lines and surly employees. This afternoon I arrived at my local DMV at 4:50pm (they close at 5:00) without an appointment and saw a line out the door. I figured I'd be lucky to get in at all. Not only did I make it in to the queue, I got my driver's license renewal taken care of by 5:30pm. The chairs are still uncomfortable, another customer tried to beg money off me, and service isn't exactly provided with a smile-- but still, +1 to the San Diego Hillcrest DMV office for not putting me through the bureaucratic wringer.

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

The first Transformers movie was unexpectedly pleasant. We had all expected Michael Bay to shit all over our childhood dreams, but surprisingly the movie delivered a heartfelt story about A Boy And His Car, and the action wasn't too excessively over the top (it was, but the story made up for it).

I had heard since then that Transformers 2 was terrible so I'd never bothered to watch it, but recently I did and it's much better than expected. The action is still quite Michael Bay, though it is remarkably well-paced. Unlike many Michael Bay productions, none of the action sequences go on for three times as long as they should (as they typically do in his films), but instead they end after having resolved the conflict that precipitated them, then there is some more plot advancement, and then more action. It is interspersed very well throughout the movie and never becomes tedious.

Two other highlights of the movie:
- JetFire is in the movie, and he's pretty awesome.
- Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute) is in the movie, and he is awesome.

All in all, it definitely sucked a lot less than expected.