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So for the last month or so I’ve been running Windows Vista RC1, trying things out. My primary reason for installing Vista was the installation process. I’m so freaking sick of the crappy Windows XP installer that it’s difficult for me to blog about it without dropping my rating from a PG-13 to NC-17.

Suffice it to say that I’m offended at an installer that doesn’t support years old technology (SATA) without requiring ancient technology (a floppy drive). Vista’s installer has resolved that problem in both ways, first providing full SATA support and second by allowing drivers to be loaded from floppy drives, CD-ROM, and USB storage devices. They’ve also done a few other nice things, like ask almost all of the questions at the beginning so that you can go have a donut while the installation finishes. Review of the installer? Two thumbs way the hell up.

Things start to fall apart a little after installation though, the crux of the entire situation being memory usage. Freshly booted, nothing running, idle, Windows Vista uses about 650 megs of RAM. We’re talking a fresh installation as well, so there’s nothing else running. It’s offensive. My relatively nice computer with a gig of CAS 2 latency RAM was upgraded to a sporty new video card… and game perforance went down after upgrading to Vista! Down!

Simply put, Vista uses too much RAM. Even after disabling every single internal service I could disable without crashing the box: the Defender, the nice new UI, absolutely everything; it still used 430 megs of RAM. Is Vista worth the sticker price? Maybe… I guess… depending on how much you pay. Since I’m a student in the Computer Science department, it’s free, so yeah I guess. However, is Vista worth buying a new computer (or at least a butt-ton of RAM) for? Definitely not!

In fact, I was previously offended enough by the installer that I refused, on all counts to install a floppy drive just to install XP. However, I’ve been having a huge amount of fun raiding in WoW lately, and that is enough. I’m currently downloading SCSI drivers for my SATA controller to copy using a freshly installed floppy disk drive to disk.

Before I had experienced Vista, there was nothing that was going to make me go through the additional work to install crappy ol’ XP. After experiencing Vista… turns out it’s worth the extra work just to stick with XP and not use Vista. How’s that for an ironic turn around? I just got owned.

Recently the Panda Express in the K-State Student Union opened a sushi bar in the middle of the food court.  This has opened a unique opportunity for me–to have sushi on a regular basis–but not without it’s concerns.

I suppose the best way to start a review about Panda Express’s Sushi would be to start with a mini review of Panda Express.  In short: I love it.  I find that Panda Express is apex of homogenized Americanized chinese food.  They take the majority of cliche “chinese” food, and they produce it in mass quantities with a consistancy that is nothing short of professional.  You can get a heaping scoop of Orange Chicken any time of day and night and always expect a charming, savory entree of breaded and sauce covered delightfulness.

Panda Express is not in the same category as Happy Valley or Royal Thai, and when you are looking for authentic or extremely high quality asian cuisine one of those would be a good choice.  But if you’re looking for quick, satisfying, inexpensive, delicious Chinese food, Panda Express dominates the category.  Even the local buffets can’t come close.

So with that out of the way, what about sushi?  I was initially a bit torn.  I love sushi and sashimi in all it’s forms–typically reveling in it even more as it becomes more foreign–but I’ve always considered sushi a premium food.  I think most would agree.  After all, “sushi grade” fish is fish that has been marked of the highest quality.  On top of that, we’re in Kansas here… not the Gulf or Pacific Coast.  Seafood in general suffers greatly at the hand of frozen transport to the land locked midwest.

So the question remained, could Panda Express, the pinnacle of good-enough-to-be-delightful, pull off what I considered to be a premium food?

Today at lunch I decided to find out, and in the boldest way I could think of.  I showed up at the food court at 1:35, after the rush, after the Panda Express Sushi stand closed, and all that was left were little plastic containers of pre-made sushi that had been sitting for an indeterminate amount of time. Not a recipe for success, but that was exactly the point.  In addition, after purchasing my meal I didn’t eat it right away.  Instead I wandered over to my office in Nichols Hall to dine at my keyboard.

My little platter consisted of four norimaki, three nigiri, a little squirt of wasabi, a touch of ginger, and two decorative fake grass things that looked like a cross between wax paper and tissue paper cut with fringe.  Sadly the sushi preparer did not choose to mark my package with what sushi I was served.  While I had no problem identifying my food, I think that the “average” customer here at Kansas State would probably benefit from an explicit list of ingredients.  My particular package had the “nigiri combo”, which was a shrimp nagiri, a tuna nagiri, and a salmon nagiri, and four identical California rolls.

The verdict?  Good!  I was pleasantly surprised, indeed!  Each of the items were very tasty with most of the qualities I’ve come to expect.  They were well formed, they stayed together great, they looked good, they had an excellent texture, and they tasted both delicious and “clean”.   That’s probably one of my favorite parts about sushi, how it just tastes like such a refined, subtle, “clean” food item.

So the one thing that this sushi was missing?   Well, I guess one would say quality.  I was very happy with the dish, it was very much worth the $6.99 that it cost to purchase.  However most of my run-ins with sushi have been at excellent locations and venues to which I have grown accustom to not just “good” or “great” sushi, but “oh my goodness this is like a b-boy dance of excitement in my mouth” sushi.

Panda Express Sushi isn’t going to take the place of Kyoto’s steakhose any time soon as my favorite place to get sushi, but when I’m looking for a nice quick lunch and don’t feel like a heavy carton of orange chicken, Panda Express Sushi definitely fits the bill.