There has been a lot going on in Dallas lately. And much more is in store for the future.

DallasFood.org released their final choices for the Chicken Fried Steak Countdown today. The Beaujolais Nouveau Festival is tonight.* Whole Foods is having a tasting tomorrow, too. More wine-related events can be found at DallasWine.com.

Next week marks the opening of Dallas Roof Gardens:

The top level of the downtown resto hosts a rooftop stream and dizzying (stay strong) views of the city. One floor below, thereâs the ultra-swank Petrus Lounge. And a quick walk down the staircase brings you into the main dining room, where chef David Gilbert (formerly of The Beverly Hilton) whips up palate-pleasing fare.

Coming up at the end of the year, New Year’s Eve at the Nasher. Tickets aren’t cheap, but Wolfgang Puck is making dinner.

And to make the Arts District construction a bit more bearable, I found some nice imagery of the Dee and Charles Wyly Theater and the Winspear Opera House. The Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Foundation has exciting plans in store for our city.

It seems Rumsfeld and Hussein were buddies back in the day. I’m sure Rumsfeld is saddened by the latest news about Saddam. [via]

It’s an old meme, and it’s been done by many. But as I was debugging my extensions after my recent upgrade to Firefox 2, I decided that I should at least document the list for myself. So here it is:

And here are the links, in alphabetical order, just like in the image above:

• del.icio.us
• DOM Inspector
• Download Statusbar
• ErrorZilla
• Flashblock
• Google Browser Sync
• Greasemonkey
• Platypus
• SearchStatus
• SwitchProxy Tool
• Talkback
• Tiny Menu

There has been a lot of chatter lately about what Michael Schumacher will do now that he has retired from Formula 1 racing. Here’s one idea:

Spiral Jetty (@ dawn) Desktop

Originally uploaded by whileseated.

Flickr’s geotagging combined with unique geographic features makes for some interesting exploration. The Spiral Jetty has its own website.

MI fall

Originally uploaded by pockett.

The Flickr blog gave a nice showing of fall colors today. I’m not seeing that type of thing around here yet, so I suppose the Flickr collection will have to suffice.

After reading the glowing review of Back Yard Burgers over at Metroblogging Dallas, I finally got around to trying out Back Yard Burgers last night. I’m sorry that I have to be the one to say this, but they really don’t live up to the name. Burgers cooked in my back yard are juicy and never overcooked. The bacon cheddar burger I tried was well done and dry. The bacon was overcooked, too. I didn’t really taste much of the cheddar, but the onions and pickles masked the tomato quite well. What was missing? Oh yeah, lettuceâit was so small I didn’t even taste it. I think YUM could make a better burger.

I’m participating in a little weight loss competition along with the guys from the office. The goal is to lose the largest percentage of weight in 45 days. You can read more about the competition, along with daily updates, at our blog.

The domain insane.com was all mine from 1995 through February, 2006. It was comforting to know that friends and past coworkers could always reach me at scottj@insane.com, even if my phone number or home address changed. That one piece of contact info was constant. Now, however, the domain has been sold, and the old address is gone.

One day a solution came to me: My old, expired contact info should be indexed by search engines so that I can be found. So if you have found this page via a search, please use my contact form.

Expired:

• scottj@vignette.com
• scottj@insane.com
• scottj@onramp.net
• scottj@ffanet.com