I strongly believe that yelp reviews are obviously slanted in the direction of the Michelin rating. This is confirmation bias in full effect. Yes, these restaurants are likely quite deserving of good reviews, but I feel that because of the stars, you are less likely to offer a poor review.

Birthday parties for our son have been mostly adult matters, so it's important for the guests to see his expression when he opens their gifts. It's the high point of the party. When he gets older, I imagine that we'll not enjoy this part as much as he and his guests will be excited to tear through all of the things…

I don't think "huge" is exactly the right word... unless you have such a sprawling home that your washer/dryer are so far away that it is more than a minor inconvenience to wander in the general direction of them and hear them either running or not...

I don't see too much utility in this in your home laundry room, but it would be awesome in a laundromat or building laundry room. Integrate it with NFC, swipe your phone over the tag, and it'll send you a text when the current load is done.

As the holiday season progresses, you'll miss the constant cleaning up of shed needles more and more. Next year, you might even like the idea that you just have to pull the tree out of that one closet that nobody has been in for a full year that has your tree wedged in an impossible position, requiring you to remove…

This is nice, uh, I guess... if you like paying for a lot of features that you aren't going to use. I had hoped that the rPi usage scenarios would have demonstrated that hdmi ports and the such is a wasted feature.

Again, there is that slippery slope between a real investment and frivolous spending. Splurging on new countertops can add value to the house, but I wouldn't consider them to be an investment. Many home improvements can easily fall into the frivolous category, when they cost more than the value they add to the house.…

I think it's important to reserve judgement until you can properly evaluate the game. If every single unique game mechanic becomes the sole property of the "first" guy to use it, we'd run out of mechanics pretty quick.

The narrow scope of "does it appreciate in value" doesn't really cover all investments. For example, we've invested a lot of money into our house. We've installed energy efficient appliances, an on demand water heater, better insulation, etc. These things will add value to the house, but it's not really that…

The IR thermometer is a solid buy. I had one for years and it died one day when it got left in a puddle on the counter, I'm buying this one today.

My first "new" car when I got a job was a 2008 Eclipse. It was "used", but only had 4k miles and was 9 months since it rolled off the factory floor. I thought it was a sweet deal. I was making bank, so I scoffed at the 500$ a month payments for 3 years as no big deal. I was in my early 20s, single, and had a nice…

I don't think it's worth $650 to buy a camera that was released 4 years ago, and is two generations behind. You'd be much better served with a D5300 (which is a better camera in every way than the D7000) for $600 (which isn't much of a sale...)

I don't think it's worth $650 to buy a camera that was released 4 years ago, and is two generations behind. You'd be…

I haven't actually seen anything that has prompted me to get excited yet... I will keep checking. I did notice they aren't doing flash sales this round.

We like to quarter our turkey before we cook it (Quarter+convection = 20 pound bird cooked in an hour), so we have a lot of turkey carcass before we even start cooking. I like to toss it all in the pressure cooker with an onion, carrots, and celery and let it go for the duration of the turkey roasting. When the turkey…

I did this for roasting chickens. I didn't feel like breaking out the comically large roaster when I wanted to cook a whole chicken and I thought a smaller roaster was an expense I'm not too interested in.

We crank out turkeys in about an hour. (we're talking 18-20 pound birds) We quarter the bird and arrange it on the roasting pan, then have two probes, one in a breast, one in a thigh. We put the oven on convection, and pull the breasts when they reach temp, then pull the leg quarters when they reach temp. We'll wrap…

Sounds like a plan. I'll give it a try this spring. I haven't found a pair of running shoes for the snow yet.

Sounds like a plan. I'll give it a try this spring. I haven't found a pair of running shoes for the snow yet.

I would love this feature in an alarm clock, sadly, I don't wake up before the sun rises...

I would love this feature in an alarm clock, sadly, I don't wake up before the sun rises...

This advice doesn't work very well when you are looking for a new bottle of wine to drink. It works great when you know what you like and have no desire to explore.

I'm a software engineer (not a game developer), and I understand how time consuming development is. I also understand that I am going to get dragged into meetings on a regular basis and expected to account for the time I've spent on a project. I'm supposed to demonstrate that I've been working, and that the project is…