We chose the Katy Freeway location since it’s relatively close to our neighborhood. We came in around 6:30PM on Friday and were seated immediately. The restaurant had a good amount of people in it, but was not crowded by any means. It took almost 15 minutes before anyone even acknowledged us at our table, and it took even longer to get the usual chips and salsa. The salsa was also very cold… as if they’d just pulled it out of the refrigerator. Good salsa should never be served cold!

When we finally got the menus, we were very surprised to see that the food was cheap compared to other Mexican restaurants in the area. With food prices the way they are today, it’s very rare to see a fajita dinner sold for less than $12, so it was surprising to see that La Fiesta had fajitas for $9.50 or so. We placed our order — fajitas for me, a quesadilla for mom, and some queso to enjoy with our chips and salsa.

The food came out a short while later. My fajitas were pretty decent. The meat was cooked nicely and had a good flavor to it. One thing I did notice is that the portions were very small compared to other restaurants. I wouldn’t consider this a “filling” meal were it not for the chips and salsa that were included. Most restaurants include a round container full of tortillas with an order of fajitas. La Fiesta did this as well, but included only 3 tortillas inside the container. This made the meal pointless, and I had to ask for more tortillas at least three times during our meal.

Mom’s quesadilla didn’t look very good either. I originally thought that they brought out the wrong meal since her quesadilla looked more like two tacos on a plate than a quesdailla. Quesadillas should always be served as part of a very large tortilla, which is cut up into small triangular slices; like so. La Fiesta’s idea of a quesadilla seems to be putting taco fillings into a tortilla, wrapping it up, and calling it a quesadilla. Not good.

All in all, our meal came out to about $26 before tip, which I think is pretty cheap for a dinner for two at a “sit-down” restaurant. Even with the food being as cheap as it is, I don’t think we’ll be coming back to La Fiesta. There’s nothing fun about mediocre Mexican food, so I’d much rather spend a few dollars more at a place that offers good food and good service.

We came in on Friday night at around 9PM. The restaurant was empty for the most part so we were able to get a table immediately. My mother and I immediately noticed the beautiful furniture, clean and well decorated building, and view of Lake Travis, which was amazing despite the fact that it was already dark outside. If someone were to ask me about my experience at that point, I would have said that we were off to a good start.

Unfortunately, the good start came to an end when it was time to order our meals. My mom ordered a Margarita with her meal, which she found bland and improperly mixed. I had my usual Dr Pepper which came out just fine — then again, I don’t think it’s possible to mess up serving a soft drink.

I went for the Beef Fajitas while my mom gave the Beef Fajita Nachos a try. My fajitas did not come out well. The meat tasted like it was reheated in a pan instead of taken fresh off the grill. The condiments (rice, beans, guacamole, sour cream, etc.) were nothing to write home about, either. My meal tasted like something you’d expect to get at a greasy fast food place or out of a van at a construction site… it certainly wasn’t worth the $16.99 price tag.

Mom’s nachos were yet another disappointment. The first thing we noticed was that her “Beef Fajita Nachos” didn’t seem to have a lot of fajitas on them. We searched her plate for fajita meat but were only able to find 2 or 3 strips of it. We complained and our waitress was somewhat helpful, bringing us a plate with more fajitas, which were also poorly cut (huge chunks!) and undercooked as well. I would’ve expected them to take the entire meal back and bring back a properly done plate, but this just didn’t happen.

In the end, the cost of our dinner came out to a total of $42 for the two of us. We were not charged for the extra meat, but I still feel that we would’ve gotten a better meal at Taco Cabana or some other fast food Mexican joint. Service was good, the view was amazing, and the building was clean and spectacularly decorated. Unfortunately, bad food killed the entire experience for both of us.

I don’t think we’ll be back in the future.

AT&T DSL

Price: $34.99/month plus $14/month for phone line (required)
Speed: 6016/768

Pros:

Cons:

Overall:
Great service, but it feels “so 2003″. The packages haven’t changed at all, the speed is crappy at best, and the service itself just seems like it’s stuck in the bowels of time!

AT&T U-Verse (VDSL)

Pros:

Cons:

Overall:
U-Verse used to be great, but now it feels like it’s starting to go to hell. The Internet speeds were never that great to begin with, but the TV service (I really loved having west coast feeds!) really made up for it. Now that those are gone, I’m having a really tough time finding something I like about this service.

Comcast Cable

Pros:

Cons:

Final Words

Essentially, I want an ISP that wasn’t designed for absolute idiots. I want common sense from my ISP. I want good, honest, reasonable service. I just want… things to work.

How hard could it be?

However, there is one thing that bothers me about the RX65. It seems that, if the unit gets hot, it will start to make a constant (and very annoying) noise followed by a message on the LCD that reads “Service Required”. With the Texas heat in full swing, I find myself getting out of the car for a quick trip through a store, only to find my radar detector screaming bloody murder once I get back to the car.

Granted, there is a really easy solution to this problem: just turn the damn thing off on your way out of the car. I tend to forget about this quite a bit, so I frequently return to an angry radar detector. I’ve also learned that “Service Required” does not necessarily mean that service is required. When this happens, I simply turn off the radar detector, remove it from the mount, and hold it against an A/C vent for about 2 minutes. That always fixes it.

Even with this annoying issue, I still recommend the RX65 to anyone who’s looking for a top of the line radar detector. Great unit, relatively cheap, has very nice features — can’t go wrong with the RX65, as long as you remember to turn it off on your way out of the car!

The service itself is excellent, except for a problem I have with the way the Linksys PAP2 adapter is set up. The Linksys adapter they sent me hooked up to my network without any problems — however, for some reason it set itself up with DMZ access, which forwarded all incoming traffic to the Linksys unit. This means that anyone accessing http://myipaddress was able to view the configuration of my PAP2, including my full name and phone number. This is, in my opinion, a big security issue since so many sites log your IP address.

Fixing this was not a big deal, though. I simply disabled DMZ for the PAP2, assigned it an IP address, and forwarded a few ports to the unit. Call quality was not affected by this — as a matter of fact, call quality is spectacular even when I’m maxing out my connection by downloading off of usenet, or uploading to one of my servers via FTP.

Another small headache is that I’m still working on making Houston’s 311 service work with ViaTalk, but this should be a pretty simple fix. I just need to get some pointers on the configuration of the PAP2. A few changes to the dial plan should make 311 work just fine.

The last concern I had about VoIP was 911 service and overall reliability. ViaTalk offers E-911 service, so that all 911 calls are routed through to the proper call center. After setting up my 911 address in the control panel on ViaTalk’s site, I did a test call to 911 and verified that it does reach the Houston Emergency Center, which handles dispatching of Houston Police, Fire, and EMS. Reliability should be just fine, too. If the power goes out the VoIP adapter and my cordless phone are both hooked up to a battery backup system, which should be able to keep them going until utility power is restored.

I highly recommend ViaTalk for phone service. The savings are spectacular when compared to traditional telco service – 2 years of ViaTalk service cost $240 whereas 2 years of AT&T POTS service would have run us about $950. Woot for ViaTalk.

How can you go wrong with that? Belkin kicks ass!

Speedtest:

About two weeks ago, I decided to go for a random drive. Instead of turning right at I-10 to head east like I usually do, I turned left and headed west. I quickly left Houston and passed through Katy, where traffic enforcement was nonexistent. I got my money’s worth out of the RX65 as soon as I got out of the city; I-10 between Houston and San Antonio is littered with Texas DPS cars and local law enforcement. For a while, I was averaging 1 alarm every 20 minutes. The Bel performed very well, warning me well before I could see the police cars. Even with the police hiding behind bridges, on offramps, and in opposite lanes, the RX65 was not fooled.

But there was one problem. The RX65 is useless if you’re playing music somewhat loudly. I don’t mean at full volume, or even 3/4 volume – but when you’re driving 85 mph while listening to the radio, it’s very hard to hear the RX65. This isn’t as much a complaint about the RX65 as it is about radar detectors in general, but I could barely hear the damn thing even though its volume is set at full blast.

Either way, the Beltronics RX65 kicks ass. Why? I ended up driving just over 400 miles that day. 0 tickets, 0 close calls, 0 problems, $230 well spent.