Scary. I once took a nap on that very road during a long road trip where I passed through Yellowstone. It was a very scenic little road that provided easy access to some geothermal features...

You're clearly confused. El Pollo Loco has never served fried anything, especially chicken. Marinated flame-grilled chicken only. That is their claim to fame.

I'm sorry to hear that. I couldn't fathom what you had that wasn't great. Their chicken is excellent and almost everything incorporates it, so it imparts that delicious marinated chicken flavor to everything.

Seriously. Even outer coastal regions have some scary stuff (Taco Time? Taco John's? Yeeesh). I fear for my life when I get sent to the middle of the country. Even the fruits and vegetables in the grocery stores seem to have a mysterious exceptional mediocrity about them.

While Hodad's is decent, I always felt like they were beating me over the head with their burgers. They're just dementedly large.

Dick's is, sadly, nothing to write home about. I think it's an acquired taste. Even the local I went with from the west side of the sound (and therefore never lived in close proximity to one) thought it was quite mediocre.

Actually, also, why isn't El Pollo Loco at the top of the fast-food burrito list (or for that matter, fast-food Mexican in general)? Just because they're not national?

Seriously. They used to be the pinnacle of national fast-food burger chains. Now, after their senseless focus group changes they have some of the worst burgers on the market.

My order there is: #2, animal style, easy spread, fries well, animal style, no spread. This gives you an animal-style burger (mustard-fried burger, grilled onions), regular spread (animal is really too much spread), and crispy fries topped with melted cheese/grilled onions. I do eat the lettuce and tomato first (kind…

Smashburger is another fast-casual burger chain in the same vein as The Habit. I always felt they were exceptionally-salty and didn't care for that, but they did make pretty good burgers. That's the only thing I'd knock them down a notch for.

I consider them the happiest fast food on Earth. Someone is pumping prozac into the water supply for their employees.

Uh, you must've chose really bad. Noodles is an excellent fast-casual place. I've rarely encountered anything that wasn't pretty good. I usually eat the Japanese Pan Noodles with extra mushrooms.

I grew up within walking distance of In-N-Out's headquarters, so I admit that I'm pretty biased (they make the best cheap, readily-available fast food burgers and fries, in my opinion, and are about 10x better than Five Guys), but The Habit is really good for a more expensive fast-casual place (I've never seen one…

Each drive has a maximum throughput. It doesn't matter if you can saturate the link if a single drive cannot saturate it.

I've never lost an SSD. Unlike HDDs that crash and burn with regularity, SSDs stay cool and seem to run forever. I've been running them in RAID 0 for over 4 years now.

I've been running all my PCs with a main drive that consists of a pair of SSDs in RAID 0 since 2009 (home and work). I did it because storage is the biggest bottleneck in a modern PC.

Where I spent my teen and young adult years in a neighboring state we had the same name for them. They were notorious for riding their brakes, driving way too slow, and not using engine braking (often rolling in neutral, paradoxically), as if they were taught to smoke brakes intentionally. Freaking road hazards.

Just today the car next to me in the parking lot at lunch looked like hell. It was a decent looking Infiniti with dark silver paint, but clearly the birds either didn't like it or loved using it as a target because it was completely covered in poop like nothing I've ever seen.

I suspect this is why most people change the oil immediately before selling a used car.

You know who else does this kind of thing? Headhunters.