May 08, 2009
KFC Grilled Chicken review
I am always a sucker for advertising. If the ad or gimmick is halfway decent I will HAVE to try it. In this case, KFC took their brand and married it with the art of grilling.
I was thinking this week would be the week to try KFC's new grilled chicken, and thanks to Queen Oprah, I was able to enjoy KFC for free with my a few of my coworkers.
However, while it was nice to have eaten lunch for free, I wish that it hadn't been because unfortunately for the chicken, this played a large role.
I approached the lunch event with high expectations. The Colonel's original and extra tasty crispy recipes have had me dealing with mild addiction for the better part of my life.
However, you get thrown off slightly when a company takes an abrupt departure from the model that made it successful.
Remember Coke II? or the Arch Deluxe?
The woman behind the counter spotted the coupon in my greedy little hand long before it was my turn to order, and apparently she had decided that she was not going to accept it. I had to appeal to the higher authorities and get the manager on duty to validate my coupon and process my order. It was under these circumstances that I acquired my meal, so I am wondering if this is why I felt my chicken was under-sized.
KFC is marketing this chicken as a healthy alternative to their now un-healthy fried chicken, and I'm wondering if they pulled one of those tricks where they reduce portion size to make the calorie and fat counts drop. Next time you're in the grocery store, note how many companies run by elves living in a tree do this same kind of thing with their nutrition facts.
The grilled chicken is kept in the same heat lamp staging area as the other chicken varieties so you won't have to wait for the "grilled" variant to take any longer.
The chicken on my plate looked a little underwhelming. I couldn't tell if it was the diminuitive drumstick and thigh or if it was the "grill" marks. I use quote's around grilled because it looks more like the chicken has been through a panini press than over an actual grill. Another odd thing was that the chicken didn't seem as warm as the fried variety. I'm not sure if all the fat and fried goodness somehow insulates and locks in the delicious heat.
I started with the drumstick mostly because i wasnt sure yet how I would tackle the thigh. You can taste the 6 secret spices and salt that coat the outside of the chicken, but the extent of the flavor stops there. The inside is more or less the same as regular KFC. This was a bit puzzling because it seemed like what would happen if a boston market chicken and a kfc chicken had a baby, an ugly baby.
The chicken overall wasn't bad, I think I just would prefer to either get my original fried chicken, spicy popeyes fried chicken, or a nice flavorful rotiserrie chicken from boston market.
Overall my experience was positive. In the shadow of bank audits and the recession a free lunch carries extra weight.
However of the four patrons who were with me, 3 of them said that they would prefer the fried variety over the grilled variety in the future when Harpo Productions isn't footing the bill. If I want chicken that isn't fried, I'll probably be going to either Boston Market or one of the several peruvian / south / latin american chicken joints that spot the chicken landscape.
Pros:
- Half the Fat and Calories
- Same Price or cheaper
- More choice at a fast food joint is always better
Cons:
- Chicken with an Identity Crisis
- Smaller pieces? unconfirmed.
- Not as Hot? unconfirmed.
- Not fried.
Amusing | Posted by Bryant at 12:43 AM | Comments (0)
September 09, 2008
Does Obama really think he has the experience?
Obama has recently been attacking Palin for not having enough experience.
Let's go back a little bit.
Politics | Posted by Bryant at 08:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2008
What did Steve Jobs really introduce today?
So I like the masses misinterpreted the news today. For the greater part of the day I was thinking, Steve Jobs has done it a gain. His holiness hath delivered the 3G iphone. And I thought wow look at all the new features. This is going to be great.
Then I had a sobering moment and analyzed what we're really getting:
A phone with:
An sdk and 3rd party application support
3g internet
GPS assisted google maps
Exchange support
all priced around 200 dollars
Having just bought a new windows mobile phone, when I thought about the last two features I realized we'd all been had. You've been able to buy a phone like this for a really long time now. Really, this should have been called the iPhone Apology instead of the iPhone 3G.
These are all features that have been implemented by the competition forever and are really features that should have been there in the first place. And still there are a boat load of other problems still remaining:
1. No user replaceable battery
2. No user upgradeable memory
3. No bluetooth audio
4. No MMS
5. No video
6. No copy and paste
7. No multi-tasking
8. No laptop tethering
9. Verizon has better coverage than at&t
Still I have no doubt that the phone will sell extremely well, but hopefully if you're reading this you'll stop to consider other options out there before drinking the kool-aid
Here are few reasons why I'll be keeping my HTC Touch:
1. Much better form factor. Try putting the htc touch right next to an iphone and see what you think.
2. It has the iphones missing features:
multi-tasking, copy and paste, video, mms, full blueooth stack, sdhc upgradeable to 16gb, stylus, user replaceable batteries which allow me to carry a spare, I did a speed test today. I got 1.5Mbps down and 250kbps up.
3. has all the iphones new features:
gps with google maps and windows live search, full exchange server support, tons of 3rd party development, "3.5G" speed internet with REV. A EVDO
4. Plus there are some additional cool features that the htc touch gives me:
- bluetooth keyboard support - I have the stowaway. You will never know that windows mobile 6 has alt-tab support until you get a bluetooth keyboard.
- winzip file support
unbelievably useful when your company's outlook is set up to automatically zip attachments
- Better versions of the iphone software suite
s2p
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=377627
s2u2
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=381588
s2v
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=358187
pcm keyboard
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=349647
- A better browser
Opera mobile mini loaded that demo page that took steve jobs 22 seconds in about 9.
Nerd Alert | Posted by Bryant at 12:41 AM | Comments (0)
May 28, 2008
Dusting off the old blog because Digg has a bug
I decided to check today to see what results came up when I googled myself, and I was surprised to see that a blog post I added to Digg over two years ago was number 3. I clicked on the link to digg to check it out again and an odd thing occurred. The article was correctly tagged as occuring 2 and a half years ago, but the comments were tagged as being posted on 10/12/2007. If I recall correctly, the comments should have been all posted around December 2005.
While trying to post about this, I found another annoying "feature" with digg, You can't post a link to another digg page. I guess they don't ever expect the digg pages themselves to be news.
Site Info | Posted by Bryant at 09:56 AM | Comments (0)
December 18, 2007
Hi I'm a PC
What do you think of when you see this guy now? Windows Vista? PC's? Microsoft?
Is it just me or has this guy been more successful at representing PC's and Windows more than an intentional marketing scheme like the Dell guy?
Sure, I find a lot of the commercials a little annoying, and I don't know if Justin Long leaves as big an impact on consumers, but Hodgman seems to fit the part perfectly.
It would be one thing if Vista was doing well, but seeing Vista sort of flounder makes it all seem so fitting.
Nerd Alert | Posted by Bryant at 12:17 AM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2007
Snubster on All Things Considered
Well All Things Considered can finally rest. They have reached the end of all things to consider seemingly. They have interviewed me about Snubster. It seems as though the interweb is going crazy again with the whole social networking thing and so Snubster has been popping up in the media again a bit.
For those of you who don't listen to NPR here's a link to the radio broadcast.
Seriously... | Posted by Bryant at 01:43 AM | Comments (1)
Thanks a lot genius!
Was reading an article today about how unfortunately Mac's that have the beta version of Boot Camp installed can get bricked if users upgrade Tiger to 10.4.11. Apple support technicians at apple stores are called "Geniuses" and they sit at the "Genius Bar." Unfortunately, the solution is to back up the disk and format and start all over again. While this is sort of a solution, it made me realize that in the unfortunate case where Apple doesn't have a solution to one of their problems, naming their support technicians "Geniuses" might in fact backfire.
While most of the time, when things to right, people will happily say "Oh thanks! you're a genius!" When things go wrong, it quickly becomes "You screwed up my computer with an update? Thanks a lot Genius!!"
Amusing | Posted by Bryant at 01:36 AM | Comments (0)
November 15, 2007
Time to quit facebook again
I'm sick of facebook again. I think I might quit this time for good. The last time I was this disgusted was when the mini-feeds popped up. This I think facebook just dug its own grave with facebook apps.
First off let me say the biggest reason i'm annoyed with facebook everything about it is a farce.
1. claim: Facebook is a online community for friends
reality: Facebook is an anti-social unsafe online stalking tool.
We have children posting up all of their pictures, who their friends are, where they go to school, what their favorite things are, where they want to go on vacation, where they have been. All of these personal details are now posted online. Just ask Chris Hansen if he think kids should be using "social networks"
2. claim: Facebook is social networking
reality: users select and post pictures, post personal details, post notes for others to gawk at. Then people go online snooping on everyone they can get access to.
3. claim: Facebook apps are the new .com
reality: Yes they are the new .com, but in a bad way. Someone please tell me how these apps are making money? the only thing i see is that they are starting to add a lot of garbage to facebook and they are starting to make the site look like the wasteland that is myspace. Really? someone threw a fish at another person online?
4. claim: Facebook is hip and cool
reality: everyone from high school students, to their teachers, to their parents, to the evening news is talking about and using facebook. how hip is that?
So what's my biggest peeve? All these people wasting effort on facebook is just sad. We should really be developing better tools. We should be developing tools that are truly innovative and open.
If people want to share photos, use photo sharing tools, flikr? picasa?. If people want to post their comments, post on their blog, blogspot, movabletype?. If people want to play online games play online games, wii, warfish?
Although I don't know of a good way to link these together yet, maybe that's the direction we need to head. Or maybe it's better that they aren't.
Seriously... | Posted by Bryant at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2007
Another Facebook App
I'm getting into this facebook app development. While I might not be the biggest fan of "social networking", I'm still a nerd and I like playing with new toys.
So I'm introducing the latest Facebook Application creation, WhereImDrinking.
The basic idea is, everybody marks down where they're planning on drinking. Then that info is populated into your profile.
The hope is that once enough people start using it, you'll start to be able to see where everyone's gonna be on a certain night. You'll be able to look up which neighborhood more people are going to and which bars more people are going to that night.
I've loaded in New York, Boston, DC, and Beloit as lists of bars. More are coming.
Let me know if you haev any questions or comments.
--Bryant
Cures for Boredom | Posted by Bryant at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2007
Snubster on Facebook
I know I know. It doesn't make sense.
I just wanted to check out the Facebook API today, so I decided to do an ironic mashup.
For those of you who are Facebook members, you can add the Snubster application at:
http://apps.facebook.com/snubsterfb/
By the way, if anyone knows who registered the other facebook app called snubster, let me know. I have a few words for him/her.
Amusing | Posted by Bryant at 12:54 AM | Comments (0)