Live data from Hacker News

Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

mit.edu

51–60 of 99 posts

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#51
post #42

La Costeña is still in business. They were on Rengstorff and they're on Middlefield now. Either they're not very good or my expectations have increased considerably. xcostena was an early X app done at SGI back in the day; fill out a form and it would fax the order to La Costeña. Arguably the beginnings of ecommerce. Back then, they were the closest available calories. This was before SuperMac Technologies started th…

I agree. Current day La Costeña on Middlefield is nothing to write home about.

I’d do much for one more burrito from the old school La Costeña. They were so good.

La Bamba had the best meat; just a plain pollo burrito was a thing of glory, and their carnitas was transcendent. But La Costeña was where it was at if you wanted a burrito with stuff in.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#52
post #45

compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day. im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable traves…

I avoid all the middlemen gig economy food delivery apps entirely. One I do like is the Little Caesars smartphone app in combination with their pizza portal, it really is seamless and a social anxiety sufferer's dream. Little Caesars is an entirely private single corporate owner company; I feel like there is a Linux to BSD analogy somewhere in here.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#54

This brings back the memories. Another true story to add to this one. I (like many Sun cohorts) loved the burritos at La Costeña market, and we had adopted the FAX trick from Adobe. Then along came the "Distributed Objects Everywhere" project (which invented CORBA) and they wanted an example application so they created "BurritoTool" which used CORBA to find the server that was connected to the fax line, and a nice WY…

During my tenure at Sun the burrito tool faxed your order to Burrito Real (good, but not the institutions that La Costena and La Bamba were). Maybe this was in the wake of La Costena turning off their fax machine. It was a dark day for Bay Area Burritos when they tore down the building that housed La Costena and La Bamba. There was some Burrito magic on that corner of Old Middlefield and Rengstorff.

La Costeña is now further down Middlefield in the shopping center at Whisman. They’re no longer a grocery store, more like a regular taqueria. They still make decent burritos and similar food.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#55

Oh man, this is great. He even had a .costenarc file with the options, haha. If I was him, I wouldn't have added the "lengua" option. I have not yet met a person that likes to eat lengua.

It's pretty popular in South Texas. Beef is King in Texas and the parts of northern Mexico that it borders that may have something to do with it. There is also "barbacoa" which traditionally is a whole cow head slow cooked in the ground - tongue, cheek, brains and all.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#56
post #45

compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day. im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable traves…

I recently opened UberEats because I was given an Uber gift card. There was a promo that said "no delivery fee" and I thought, "that seems too good to be true, but let's see." I then saw a promo for a local donut shop that was buy-one-get-one for certain items. It appeared that I could have two donuts delivered to my door for just a few dollars. This seemed too good to be true, although the donut shop is pretty nearb…

It might be a difference in jurisdiction, but I've never noticeably been caught out by this in the UK.

Honestly, I think I'm seeing a lot of rose-tinted spectacles here because I can order a burger to my door and track it all the way in about 15s flat if I want to with the Uber eats app. I really don't see what the problem is.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#57

Oh yes! I was at Adobe working with Curtis Jackson and Ross Thompson when I first saw this thing. And La Costena was the best! The building that Adobe was in then is now occupied by Google. It's the one with the "Tin Man" in front of it. All the "PostScript" developers then got SparcStations.

The “Tin Man”? Is that the same as the Barfing Boy?

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#58
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During my tenure at Sun the burrito tool faxed your order to Burrito Real (good, but not the institutions that La Costena and La Bamba were). Maybe this was in the wake of La Costena turning off their fax machine. It was a dark day for Bay Area Burritos when they tore down the building that housed La Costena and La Bamba. There was some Burrito magic on that corner of Old Middlefield and Rengstorff.

La Bamba, which had moved to Middlefield and Rengstorff, recently gave it up and went truck only. The truck parks in the O'Malley's Sports Pub lot on Old Middlefield.

they actually took over the O'Malley's kitchen. They are doing truck there as temporarily measure. The truck will continue with different menu once the kitchen is open.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#59
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently opened UberEats because I was given an Uber gift card. There was a promo that said "no delivery fee" and I thought, "that seems too good to be true, but let's see." I then saw a promo for a local donut shop that was buy-one-get-one for certain items. It appeared that I could have two donuts delivered to my door for just a few dollars. This seemed too good to be true, although the donut shop is pretty nearb…

It might be a difference in jurisdiction, but I've never noticeably been caught out by this in the UK. Honestly, I think I'm seeing a lot of rose-tinted spectacles here because I can order a burger to my door and track it all the way in about 15s flat if I want to with the Uber eats app. I really don't see what the problem is.

American prices rarely if ever include taxes in the listed price. This is something that americans are used to, and will usually budget extra money for when they go to pay, but it catches a lot of people from other countries off guard.

Re: Ordering burritos from my SPARC (1992)

#60
post #45

compare this nearly 30 year old script with the absolute red hot hell of trying to order anything at all through toast,caviar,grub hub,uber eats or postmates and you'll want to check out the latest RCS and build it on X86 before the end of the day. im serious. compared to the relatively clean, coherent and transparent burrito script, the dumpster fire that constitutes modern online ordering is an unforgiveable traves…

I dunno - I always thought we had it pretty good now. Previously delivery options were limited to the handful of takeout menus you had stuck in a binder - not knowing if they were up to date, if they were running specials, etc.

Now I can get a burrito made to order to my door in 20 minutes and I don't even have to hand over my credit card details to a minimum wage server. I'll take this Byzantine system any day.

Post reply on HN