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I’ve become a big fan of Pho over the past few years, from my first Pho in Vegas to finding out about Pho Minh in Pittsburgh. I was browsing the Pittsburgh Tweetup website and I noticed they had a Pho event coming up. My first thoughts were that it would be held at Pho Minh, but it was scheduled to be at a place called Vietnam’s Pho. Being a big fan of Pho I was surprised I had never heard of Vietnam’s Pho before. I looked it up and they even had a website! I definitely wanted to check it out so my friend Colin and I headed down for the Tweetup.

Vietnam’s Pho is located on Penn Ave. in the Strip district and by 8PM we were able to find a parking spot right in front of the place. Inside we were greeted by a very helpful staff and to my surprise it was very nice inside. The staff was nice enough to pull tables together to fit our entire group. I ordered the #11 which is the Pho Tai-Sach, which has beef and tripe in it. I’ve really come to enjoy tripe in my Pho. In no time at all our food was done and we were served. Just like most Vietnamese places the portions were quite large and the food was great. It definitely contends with Pho Minh, but I haven’t been there in quite some time so I really cannot compare the 2 yet. I would recommend that anyone looking for good Pho in Pittsburgh try Vietnam’s out. I need to go back and try some of their other dishes! Here after some photos of the food and our group.

Lately I haven’t had time to watch any TV or even listen to Podcast’s that I would listen to on a weekly basis. One thing I always try to do is listen or watch things that inspire me or make me want to do more. Surprisingly the Random Show is one of those things. The Random Show was put together by Kevin Rose and Tim Ferris where they talk about traveling, investing, technology, health etc. Kevin Rose is the founder of Digg.com, but you also may know him from The Screen Savers back in the old TechTV days. Tim Ferris is best know for his book The 4-Hour Workweek, he also has done some pretty amazing things in his life.

The show is those 2 sitting down and talking about pretty much anything, hence the name The Random Show. There really is no schedule of when new episodes will come out but there are 8 right now. I have embedded the first 3 episodes below, but you can check out most of them here and here is the link to episode 8. Enjoy!

2010 is sure going by very quickly! It is already March and it seems like it was just the new year not that long ago! This month hasn’t been the best here is Pittsburgh as we’ve had some of the worst snow storms in recent memory as you could tell from my Snowed In post. I was extremely busy working on a new project and ThinkComputers last month so I was only able to write 6 posts, my favorite out of them would have to be the Things I love about Pittsburgh post.

Popular Posts
So what was everyone checking out this month? Let’s take a look…

1. SUSHISAMBA at the Palazzo
2. Snowed In!
3. Super Bowl Ads 2010
4. Things I Love About Pittsburgh
5. January 2010 Thoughts

Great to see the new articles getting most of the traffic!

Traffic Sources

1. John Chow
2. Facebook
3. Twitter
4. A Dawn Journal
5. Justin.tv

Nice to see some new traffic sources up there!

Top Commentators
Well I said I was busy this month so I forgot to take a screenshot of the top commentators on the last day of February!

Stats

RSS Readers 223 (-736)
Twitter Followers 6152 (+110)
Facebook Friends 1497 (+26)

As you can see the RSS numbers are way down, maybe this is because I switched this blog over to a new server, I’m not sure yet!

On to March
I think that March will be a good blogging month for me. Blogging gives me a good break from the normal everyday work I do so expect a lot more posts this month!

Back in January I wrote an article on ThinkComputers about this year’s experience at CES, where companies were getting thrown out of hotels because they did not register with the CEA. I also reposted the article on this blog as I wanted to share my experience with all of the readers here. About a week after the article was posted I was contacted by the New York Times, they interviewed me for about 30 minutes about the article and my CES experience this year compared to last year. I was pretty cool being interviewed, I have only been interviewed 2 other times and it was by websites, not a big publication like the New York Times. Here is a quote from the article…

Bob Buskirk, who attended the electronics show and owns a Web site, ThinkComputers, that reviews hardware and software products, said he had “never been kicked out of a hotel room or even heard of companies being kicked out.” But this January, he said, two of his meetings were disrupted when the vendors were ejected by hotel security. “From what I’ve heard anecdotally, the amount of unlicensed vendors was certainlly the most it’s been in recent memory,” said Mr. Reese of the Sands.

Mr. Buskirk, who has been attending the show for five years, said that the show’s exhibits seemed to take up much less space this year. A spokeswoman for the association confirmed that the show’s size dropped to 1.4 million square feet of exhibit space.

The article is online here and appeared in print in the February 16th New York Edition of the Times. What is interesting is that most of the things I write are for a reason, a company sends me a product I have to write the review etc. I just felt that this was something that needed to be talked about and interestingly enough it got a lot of attention.

Well if you didn’t know I’ve been living in Pittsburgh all my life. I’ve live in the suburbs most of my life but I moved closer into the city about a year ago. You really learn a lot about a city when you live in it. I’ve learned even more since living closer to the city and going out more. I originally got the idea for this post from Michael Kwan who did 2 posts about the things he likes and dislikes about Vancouver. So I figured I know a lot about Pittsburgh I should let you know the things I like and dislike about Pittsburgh. This post is the things I love about Pittsburgh, but believe me there are things I dislike so stay tuned for that post as well!

Sports
Pittsburgh is definitely a sports city! The Penguins and Steelers are both great teams and have won championships in the past few years. The Steelers rarely have a bad team and the Penguins have built their team up over the past few years to really be one of the best teams in the league, they have been to the Stanley Cup finals 2 years in a row now!

Small City
While Pittsburgh is a major city, it is a very small city as far as actual size goes. The downtown area is very small and you can drive through it in just minutes. Most people do no live in the city, they just work there. They drive in from the suburbs, which gets to the reason why I enjoy the small city. It is very easy to get around anywhere in the city! I rarely drive more than 20 minutes to get anywhere in the city!

The Rivers
Many people call Pittsburgh the city of bridges, that’s because we have 3 rivers that go right through the city and form the ever famous Point, where Point State Park is located. The rivers are not only interesting, but also provide for some great activities in the summer. There is the Regatta, which I went to for the first time this past summer. Also there are tons of watersports that can be done on the rivers as well. If you have a boat the rivers are a great place to relax and party, especially in the summer!

Inexpensive to live here
One thing that I’m sure many people enjoy about the Pittsburgh area is how inexpensive it is to live here! The cost of living is extremely low, especially if you live in the suburbs around the city. This is another reason why many people come to Pittsburgh to work and live.

Blue Collar Town
Pittsburgh really is a working-class city. Many people here work for large corporations like UPMC and Highmark. These people work 40 hours a week if not more and are ok with that. Remember Pittsburgh was a Steel town and I think that’s where most people get their work attitude from. People who live in Pittsburgh have a great attitude towards work and I think that’s one thing that makes Pittsburgh special.

It’s a developing city
If you’ve lived in Pittsburgh over the past 10 or so years you have really seen the city change a lot. Years ago not a single person lived in the city, but now they are turning old office buildings into lofts and developing many new residential areas in the city itself. Also we have seen many changes recently with the new casino being put in and all of the new development on the North Shore. I really like what Pittsburgh has done over the past 10 years and it will be interesting to see where it all goes from here!