Back in the 90′s, Hurry Curry was a great place to come for lunch or dinner. Then it was sold, and the quality went down. I stopped going there many years ago.

Recently, I decided to give the place another try. In keeping with my usual favorite here, I ordered the Tokyo Curry on pasta. I should have know things were not going to go well for me when the waiter asked me if I wanted to substitute brown rice for an extra cost. I reminded him that I was having pasta. Hmmm.

My order came quickly. The included salad was good, especially the dressing. But that’s where the food stopped being good. The pasta came with the curry in a separate container as usual but I could tell right away that it was very watery. In fact, it was so watery, it looked like soup.

This was so ridiculous, I called the waiter over and gently asked him what happened to the curry. His response was strange at the minimum. He told me that the curry was the same as it has always been and that he has been working there for 10 years. I wanted to say, “If you’ve been working here for 10 years, you should know the curry shouldn’t be soup!” but I just tried to eat the watery curry.

Basically, I just ate the pasta and left the soup in the container. When I asked the waiter for the check, he asked me if everything was alright. I told the waiter again that the curry was not supposed to be soup. This time he declared that it was just a “bad batch.” That’s probably true. But no restaurant should ever be serving their customers a “bad batch.” They won’t be seeing me again there for at least another 10 years.

Hurry Curry of Tokyo
2131 Sawtelle Blvd.
West Los Angeles, CA 90025
310-473-1640
hurrycurryoftokyo.com

Are you worried that somebody might shoot you from road rage? Or do you drive through some shady hoods where drive-by shootings are common? If you’ve ever worried that you may not be safe in your SUV, the Knight XV from a Canadian company called Conquest Vehicles may have the SUV for you.

This 6 ton monster SUV sports a V-10 that can run on bio-fuel (or regular gas) and is not only bullet proof (body, windows and even tires), but is under vehicle grenade proof and even has a detector for magnetically attached bombs under the SUV. Yes, the SUV will alert you if somebody attaches a bomb under the vehicle. WTF? There are 2 night vision capable cameras in front, and 2 in the back. Some options include a hidden security safe, real black box (like in airplanes), and yes, an entertainment system.

If you have to ask how much something like this costs, you probably can’t afford it. With a $25k down pain-ment, you can get your custom Knight XV started before you have to pay the base sticker price of $490k. Each one is custom built and can take from 3 to 8 months to complete. You can visit your vehicle being built in Canada, or they can email you pictures. For that price, they should have a live person come to your house with a video.

The Knight XV: Perfect for the upcoming drug lord, Hip-Hop mega baller rain-man, or Middle Eastern royal families. Or just a super rich paranoid guy.

Toyota has now released official pictures of the Prius C, and it looks exactly the same as the leaked Japanese brochure. The press release is touting 50 MPG city, and is almost 20 inches shorter than the original Prius. It’s slightly larger than the Toyota Yaris.

The informational panel is located in the center above the dashboard, the same as in the Prius V that I just took a look at. There are some similarities but the interior is not the same as the V.

There was a girl with a strange looking purse so I tried to get a picture of it really fast. As you can see, I wasn’t able to get a full picture because I was doing it quickly.

Looking at the picture, you can see that it’s a purse with keyboard keys glued to it. Windows keyboard, no less. Yes, notice the “Print Screen” key.

Most people probably would think it looks like crap, but to geeks like me, this is a girl after my heart.

As you may know, I’ve been looking at the Prius C as my possible next car but only have been looking at concept models. However, back in October, CarScoop showed the entire Japanese leaked brochure on their blog. According to CarScoop, the Japanese Prius C is slightly larger than the Yaris, and will get slightly better mileage than the regular Prius. The article also says the American version will be shown in January 2012 in Detroit, and will be available to the public in Spring 2012.

From the picture, it looks a lot like a smaller version of the Matrix. Since I like the look of the Matrix, I don’t mind the look of this version of the Prius. But of course, a lot can change from the Japanese version.

A couple of weeks ago, the Prius V was released to dealers in California. This is the “station wagon” version of the Prius and is bigger. I’m more interested in the Prius C which is supposed to come out in 2012 but I decided to take a look at the “V” to see what I might expect next year.

Prius V

The “V” comes in 3 models: Two ($26k), Three ($27k) and Five ($30k). At the upper end, you can get Panoramic View Moonroof with power sliding sunshades, full-on navigation with “Entune”, Safety Connect, Dynamic Radar Cruise Control, Pre-Collision system, and Advanced Parking Guidance System.

The Moonroof is basically a sunroof that doesn’t open. Entune is a system where you can download apps to your iPhone, then upload them from your phone to your Nav system. The apps aren’t ready yet apparently so they didn’t have it running in the demo car.  Safety Connect is a rip-off of On-Star, which you get for free for 1 year, then you have to pay per year. Dynamic Radar Cruise Control will automatically slow you down if there’s a car ahead. Pre-Collision tries to reduce the damage to your front end when you crash by stopping earlier.

The Advanced Parking Guidance System is their auto parallel parking computer. There’s a rear camera that shows on the Nav screen including color coded areas for parking. You touch where you want to park and the car does the rest. I assume the car knows if the space is too small to fit in. I noticed that it does know areas where you cannot park and a mesh graphic covers that area so you cannot touch that area for parking. If I had more time, I would have tested it with a small dog blocking the parking space to see if it knows the difference. I think we’re about 10 years away from the car driving itself. That would make my commute time productive and texting would be allowed again.

One other thing I noticed was what looked like a cigarette lighter plug in the back hatch area (behind the rear seats). I’m not sure that’s what it was but that could come in handy for plugging in electrical powered stuff in the back area. You can never have too many power outlets in my book. And yes, there is a USB outlet under the Nav system.

For people who didn’t want to get the hybrid SUV because it was too big, but still wanted more space than the original Prius, this is the perfect solution. For me, it’s too big and defeats the purpose of getting good mileage from a hybrid.

It’s amazing how ThinkGeek has used rapid prototyping to bring a prototype to life so quickly.

I want a version of Siri running on my computer interfaced to my home control system and this Hal 9000 box. Or not.

Brookstone has a new cool gadget that a friend of mine bought. It’s a remote control wireless tank with a built in camera. They are calling it the “Rover Spy Tank.” Nothing new about a remote control tank but this one is controlled by your iPod, iPhone or iPad and you can see what the tank is seeing on the screen. Very cool.

Rover in action

When they call it “spy,” they aren’t kidding. Not only does it have video, it has audio, can take still pictures and has IR for night vision. Why didn’t they have this thing when I was a kid, or even in college? I would have had so much fun with it. It’s like something out of one of those “Nerd” movies. Of course, I’d probably would have been expelled from school.

Unfortunately, the app on the iPhone seemed to get locked up sometimes and I would have to close the app and re-start it to get it work again. I’m sure they’ll have an update soon for that. You wouldn’t want your Spy Tank to get stuck in the girls’ locker room.

A few months ago, El Pollo Loco stopped making the Classic Chicken Burrito. That was my favorite dish at this fast food joint. I broke down and tried their new burritos. The new ones are bigger, and more expensive but filled with junk I don’t like. I hated the new burritos because it’s too watery and I like simple tasting meals without all the junk they put in these burritos.

So I stopped going to El Pollo Loco.  Then one day, I was complaining to my friend about this and she said, “Why don’t you just ask if they can make the Classic Chicken Burrito for you? They have to have the ingredients there.”

I was shocked. I’ve become so brain washed into being a victim of advertising of these giant companies that I never even thought of asking them to make me what I wanted. I was embarrassed that I never even thought of this option.

Soon after this conversation, I returned for the first time in months to El Pollo Loco and asked if I could get a Classic Chicken Burrito. The man behind the counter politely tells me that they don’t make those any more. Upon which I asked him if he could simply remove the unneeded ingredients from one of their new fancy burritos and I’d gladly still pay the higher price.

At this point, the man behind the counter told me in a sad voice that the ingredients are pre-made at some other far away place and packaged that way and cannot be changed.

So ended my attempt at thinking outside the box. I ended up ordering drumsticks instead.

“Feel the Mexcellence!” indeed. I felt it right up my behind.

There is a Japanese tradition called Tanabata that was celebrated back in August this year in Little Tokyo. People write their wishes on paper (called Tanzaku) and hang it on the branches of a tree, so that they might come true.

Take a look at the green one on the right below. Apparently, being very specific about your wishes makes it more likely to come true. I’m surprised he didn’t put his website address and Facebook on there too.

Tanzaku paper wishes - Click on image to see larger version