That message was caused by me passing in a hash instead of an array of hashes. Luckily, I realized my mistake after reading some documentation, but really, what am I supposed to make of that error message. Is “type ‘i’” an integer? An imaginary number? I didn’t pass in any type named ‘i’ in my original code.

King’s Highway, the restaurant in the same building as the Ace Hotel lobby/check-in area, is what I pictured a diner in the 70s to look like, maybe a bit hipper. Likewise, the food is a hipper version of 70s diner food.

Upon sitting down, an interestingly dressed older woman with fantastic glasses plopped down a small jar of pickles.  She quickly gave me a look and muttered, “Here are the pickles, that’s all you’re getting, it comes with your dinner” or something to that effect.  I noticed she said the same thing to other people who sat down after us.

The pickles were intensely sour with an over-whelming taste of vinegar and a nice piquant bite to it. What I thought were slices of ginger turned out to be thin slices of potato.  I’ve never had pickled potatoes before, but these made me a fan.

The menu doesn’t have many vegan options — I think the BF ordered about everything there was that he could eat.  We started with the couscous salad with meyer lemon dressing.  The dressing didn’t really taste like meyer lemon but actually reminded me of some sort of bottled Italian dressing.  The pistachios in the salad were probably the best thing about this salad.

Next came the white bean dip with pita chips. The dip was decent, had a hint of spice, and the chips were crispy.  It wasn’t exciting or fantastic, but solid.

I had the stinky grilled cheese sandwich with bacon (extra) which was pretty much what I expected. The stinky cheese wasn’t terribly stinky, unfortunately. It was better than plain ol’ American cheddar cheese, but certainly not anything to write home about.  I did appreciate the basil in the sandwich, which gave it another dimension.  The bread part was greasier than I’d like, but that could have been solved if it had cooked longer on the pan and got more crispy. As it was, one side was already soft and soggy by the time I took a bite.

There was some confusion with the waitress about the vegan-ness of the vegetable pot pie.  She claimed it was vegan and I thought it was too good to be true that a place like King’s Highway would have vegan pot pie.  Even after we asked her twice before ordering, it turned out that there’s butter in the crust and it’s not vegan after-all.  In the end, the BF got the vegetarian chili sans corn bread.  It was unexciting and had mushy, overdone vegetables, but at least the waitress was nice enough to comp it because of the mix-up.

We weren’t expecting anything too fantastic from a hotel restaurant and our expectations were met.  As a whole, we didn’t have our hopes too high for good food in Palm Springs, which was good.  The food at King’s Highway was decent — for a hotel kitchen. I stayed away from ordering anything from the “dinner only” section of the menu because the dishes were so expensive there and I wasn’t sure if the place was up to snuff.  A wise choice.

King’s Highway @ ACE Hotel
701 East Palm Canyon Drive
Palm Springs, CA 92264
(760) 325-9900

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was suggested to me by someone as a helpful book for someone new to the language but not new to programming in general. I found this more helpful than the Pickaxe book because it’s concise with examples while being detailed in the why’s, when’s and how’s of things, which is something I’m more interested in when learning a new language.

It’s an excellent companion to the Pickaxe book since it gives a different voice and perspective on the subject. I mainly read The Well-Grounded Rubyist and then used the Pickaxe book as reference when I needed to look up something more technical.

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I mostly worked on google maps integration on our Events page (see here).  Now you can see a map of each individual event when you click through and get driving directions. Woohoo.

During my week at the SF office, we did some pair programming — it was my first time.  It’s stressful and frustrating but I think my pair partner and I finally got sorta in sync by the end. At least, more in sync than we started off.  One computer + two keyboards + two mouses will always be a little stressful, I think.  Despite that, I think pair programming is a good way to learn the ropes because there are tons of tips to pick up from seasoned co-workers.

I scored a new job and I had breakfast with J. Gold today. I have to say, I’m floating on clouds now.  J. Gold was how I imagined he’d be, which was nice. I was afraid that I was going to be all internet-awkward, but I think we had a pleasant meal together. It also helps that we had decent food.

Now that we have our study some-what set up, I actually have a desk to work from. I opted to work from home on Friday because I needed to just concentrate and hide-out without any distractions, which was getting hard to do at work. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have a change of scenery to spur work past a road-block.

My favorite thing about working from home is being able to take breaks and make refreshing drinks.

The ambiance at Four Sea is nicer and there are a lot more tables — I might take a bigger group (or a hot date!) there, but if it were just me and the BF, I would rather save the gas and stick with Yi Mei in Monterey Park. It’s closer and a bit cheaper.

I’ve started turning off my email at work these couple of days and I think I’ve been more productive without it. I don’t really need to be checking it every ten minutes. This way I can just focus on the things I need to finish that day instead of stressing over other things I need to add to my queue.