December 2008


Zanzibar Café

Pacific Beach of San Diego
976 Garnet Ave.
San Diego, Calif.  92109
Phone: 858-272-4726
Web site: www.zanzibarcafe.com

Reviewed 8-6-08 for breakfast.

Food: A
Menu: B+
Service: self serve
Ambiance: C+
Restrooms: C

This restaurant is for breakfast and lunch only.

The menu costs range for breakfast of between $2.25 for a toasted bagel with plain cream cheese and $9.95 for egg specialties.
The menu ranges in cost between  $3.50 and $9.95 for lunch.

My wife thought the inside of the restaurant looked to be old town.  The ceilings were high with exposed beams, old looking inside and out.  There is very interesting artwork on the walls.   You walk inside the restaurant to the counter cash registers (left one for take out orders only), and place your order.  You are given a number to place on the table you sit at so the servers can deliver your food correctly.

Reviewing any restaurant for breakfast is difficult because the preparation of the meals is no challenge, in my opinion.  The items we ordered were too simple to list here.  What did impress me was the claim that this restaurant tried to promote is they “serve only the highest quality food and beverages available” and it seemed this was the case.  There were two problems I spotted.  As I ordered our meals at the cash register I noticed flies in the kitchen and one fly landing on what appeared to be toast lying on a kitchen table.  When we sat to eat I noticed flies in the dining room.  The doors were left open with no overhead air blast fans to keep flies out.  The second problem was a plumbing problem in the men’s room.  The urinal did not flush, could not flush.

The only parking we spotted was along the streets.  During the week, we found plenty of parking spots near this restaurant.

E-Trade.   We do not recommend this company.  If your a day trader, you might look at this company.  For the small investor and anyone who wishes to buy and hold stocks for the long run, do NOT consider this company.  They charge extremely high inactivity  fees that will diminish your investments over time.  Our experience was the fees to be $40 each quarter for a yearly total of $160 if one fails to make a trade within an allocated time period.  It would seem that the free market system, that is so highly regarded by many, has, in some cases, a dark side component called greed. Most of the financial news of 2008 were incidents of greed.  Makes one think that this is now an American economic system component.

Our experience with another stock trading company, CUNA Brokerage Services, also charges inactivity fees but they are only $35 a year!

Update & Reflection:  Reported in the Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2008 (page D2) was a story about the state attorney general of Connecticut bringing a suit against the owner of the Crystal Mall of Waterford for allegedly illegally subjecting the consumers to inactivity fees and having to pay $309,000 in a settlement.   Our take:  Wonder why no one has not gone after E-Trade for their use of alleged excessive inactivity fees.

One needs to spend a significant amont of time studying the very companies that we use as a mechanism to gain profit, make our stock transactions, to see if we are not being fleeced by those same companies.

Triangle Fire 2008

Triangle Fire in Yorba Linda, California

Triangle Fire in Yorba Linda, California

Helecopter used to deliver water to fire approaches Birch Hills Golf Course lake.

Helicopter used to deliver water to fire approaches Birch Hills Golf Course lake.

Water dropping helicopter dips low over golf course.

Water dropping helicopter dips low over golf course.

Water droping fire fighting helicopter hovers over artificial lake to draw up water.

Water dropping fire fighting helicopter hovers over artificial lake to draw up water.

Close up of fire fighing helicopter hovering over artificial lake.

Close up of fire fighting helicopter hovering over artificial lake.

Fire fighting helicopter lifts up from Birch Hills Golf Course lake.

Fire fighting helicopter lifts up from Birch Hills Golf Course lake.

Zhenren: Can you explain the compass of life with more detail

Selene: Each person possess a compass.  The compass is not a compass you hold in your hand but a process of bringing together a lot of intellectual components to make a good mind decision.  Some personal compasses are better in one person than another.  A good compass necessitates intellect so you can think about all the possibilities and reason out options.  A good compass comes from life experience to help you measure options you think are open to you.  A good compass necessitates diminishing personal arrogance so you are always open to new information and knowledge.  A good compass comes from being sensitive to life experiences in such a way that you can intellectually step into other person’s shoes to make guesses about why other people do what they do or possibly will do.  Finally a good compass is equal to one’s ability to make good decisions for self and others.  A good compass results in making good decisions.

A lot of data continuously moves around the world through some major infrastructure wiring. As with any complicated utility, the performance of the total system can change. Good performance is when packets are sent swiftly and reliably. Simplistically, a total performance number can be totaled up for the whole system but its value is questionable unless the whole planet is affected. External factors such as radiation from the sun can, at times, disrupt accurate packet travel. If a major fiber optic cable is cut, this can impact signal flow values in large areas of the planet. Cyber attacks that spew out unnecessary packets can also lower performance. In the graphic below, internettrafficreport.com, has quantized the Internet performance. A low number starting at 0 is bad while a top number of 100 is perfect. The graphic below shows the current performance.


The Internet Traffic Report monitors the flow of data around the world. It then displays a value between zero and 100. Higher values indicate faster and more reliable connections.

A better way to show this level of performance is to break down the world into big chunk sizes typically tied to the large land masses of Earth. To see core down values, just click on the image above.