Room Available – Looking for Roommate

Jason is moving out at the end of this month, so I’ll have a spare room in my apartment. The new lease would be for eight or up to ten months.

I live at 75 and Northwest Hwy in The Village (The Hill, specifically). It’s a 1244 sq ft two-level townhome with two bedrooms, each having its own bathroom and a walk-in closet (there’s also an additional bathroom downstairs).

There’s a washer/dryer right in the apartment, and the kitchen includes a microwave, garbage disposal, and a dishwasher. The floorplan is available online.

Cable-modem is already setup, and there’s a port in each bedroom (via a Linksys gateway). I’ve also setup wireless networking (Wi-Fi/802.11b) in case you have a PDA or laptop that can make use of that.

Rent is $1007 in total, or about $504 each. The utilities, listed separately below, add on about $100/month (of course, you could opt out of paying cable-tv or cable-modem if you didn’t use those).

  • Water & Electricity - about $50/month each
  • Phone - about $10/month each
  • Cable-tv - about $23/month each
  • Cable-modem - about $23/month each

I’m available on ICQ (3812078) and AIM (standardsfanatic). Or, if you would prefer to talk over the phone, my cell number is (469) 569-7421.

Online Traffic Reports

Earlier today, Leia mentioned to me about Traffic.com where you can get real-time traffic reports for many metropolitan cities. Of course, Dallas is there, but several other cities such as Pittsburgh are also listed.

My only gripe is that this would have been an ideal opportunity to make use of the “title” attribute on the accident-links — instead of including the incident report (or an excerpt of it) in the title tags, their text just says “Click here for more info” :-/.

Chicago-style Pizza in Dallas?

From time to time, I have a hankering for a good pizza, and I especially enjoy Chicago-style pizzas (mmm, so much sauce and cheese — delicious!). But, are there any such restaurants in Dallas? (I don’t know of any yet)

After some brief searching, I found BJ’s Chicago Pizza & Brewhouse. They have a few restaurants in Texas, but I’m not sure if any are near here (Clear Lake? Lewisville?). Their Addison location is listed as opening “early 2003”, so maybe that’ll be available soon.

If all else fails, Pizza Hut also now offers Chicago-style pizza:

According to Evans, Chicago-style pizza is different from other pizzas: Chicago-style pizza has a flaky crust with tall sides. The dough is made with a hint of corn meal for taste and texture. The build of the pizza begins with a thick layer of sliced mozzarella cheese. It’s filled with an abundance of toppings, shredded cheese and then chunky marinara sauce is poured on the top of the pizza. […]

They talk-the-talk, but I’m not convinced yet. It’s not that I dislike Pizza Hut's pizza, but I’m concerned whether the cooking-speedups necessary for the delivery environment may have an impact on the quality or flavor :-/.

Cute Gym Girl

Is there a protocol for asking people out at the gym? Or, is there no means of achieving that while maintaining etiquette? There’s this cute girl that often uses the treadmills around the time I do, and she’s about my age (25-26, or so). Hmm.

Dallas Bans Smoking in Restaurants

Dallas city council members have voted 10-3 to ban smoking in restaurants, effective March 1:

City leaders snuffed out smoking in restaurants today, passing an ordinance that exempts stand-alone bars, pool halls and tobacco shops that have separate areas for smoking.

The ban approved 10-3 by city council members also bans smoking in various public places, including hotel bars and lobbies, country clubs, bingo halls, hospitals, libraries, schools and transit system vehicles. Many of those places already ban smoking or had areas restricted by the city. […]

I’m not sure how I feel about this one. I think it’s pleasant that I might be able to better enjoy restaurants without smoke, but I don’t think it was the right decision for the government to dictate that.