Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

School's done and the itinerary is set! I can't wait for the up-and-coming Chitown adventures with the ad and PR majors on Monday, May 3rd to Sunday May 9th.

I'm particularly excited about Tuesday's itinerary, May 4th. According to Kenton Larsen's Infotainment blog, we are having a "Chicago welcome" pizza party in the hotel from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. - Free!

My only concern is if the pizza party is in fact a deep dish pizza party. I am on a quest to find Chicago's best deep dish pizza party. Nothing will stop me on my quest to find the most delicious, most tasty, and most deep Chi-keh-go pizza. OK, maybe I will stay in the constraints of the hotel vicinity as this little expedition could get out of hand!

So I've been researching online, trying to find the best deep dish hot spot and this is what I found.

Internet recommendations: (based on Google searching "best place to go for deep dish pizza chicago")

1) Lou Malnati's Pizzeria - 439 N Wells St. = estimated travel time 3 mins., 0.84 miles
2) Giordano's Pizza - 730 N Rush St. = est. travel time 1 min., 0.35 miles
3) The Original Gino's East of Chicago - 162 E Superior St. = est. travel time 1 min., 0.34 miles
4) Pizzeria Due - 619 N Wabash Ave. = est. travel time 57 secs, 0.26 miles
5) Pizzeria Uno - 29 E Ohio St. = est. travel time 1 min., 0.43 miles

Fairfield Inn, 216 E Ohio St. recommendations: (based on the person who answered the phone)

1) Giordano's Pizza
2) The Original Gino's East of Chicago
3) Pizzeria Uno

"You hit one of these places, you're a happy man," says Sul from the front desk of the Fairfield Inn. I think I'll take his advice.

And finally, a recommendation from a Chicago native:

"Oh man, you need to go to Gino's East. They have the best deep dish pepperoni pizza - it doesn't get more Chicago than that," says Jackie Te, 26-yr. old. registered nurse.


The Pizza Plan:

Logistics - after getting a hold of a Chicago map, I will be mapping out the five different locations for ease of locating them later when we're on foot. I will also bring a GPS device and go on a little pizza geocaching adventure. My team and I (and yes, I will need a pizza team for this one) will consume pizzas from all five locations. A deep dish pizza can serve up to four people or one hungry Neil Babaluk. Our team will be traveling on foot.

$$$ - will they take my 'par' Canadian dollars? I don't think so. So I will be allocating up to US$100 for my expedition, whatever it takes to eat pizzas from five different locations. As for everything else, there's always Mastercard.

Health considerations - none.

Fun factor - high.

And until I actually have pictures holding one of these babies, I'll leave you with an image that would make you wish you were going on this trip with us...

Ivana trust Macs...

Some say Mac computers are great because there is little or no virus that can affect its operating system. Recently, I found something on my USB stick that would test that statement...

At first I thought the unidentified folder on my USB stick was mine, but then again I don't remember copying any folders called "Ivana" nor would I re-title a folder with that name. Once I collapsed the folder, I instantly knew what it was - a virus!

So instantly, when I saw a virus, I immediately thought it was caused by my PCs at home running on the Windows platform. I'm sure everyone has been affected or have known someone who's computer has crashed recently because of an unknown computer virus. And also, many would agree that it was very easy to catch a virus on a computer running in a Windows environment.

Nevertheless, I continue with my CreComm life by backing up the contents of my USB stick. As long as you don't run the program contained in the "Ivana" folder then you're actually fine. The virus in this case was an executable file ending with the file extension '.exe' so for it to work, you would have to double-click on the file. Collapsing the folder container would allow you to see the contents of the folder without touching the programs or files in it.

Knowing that my CreComm movements were logged and monitored at school, I was careful not to bring the virus to the school's Mac computers, which were what we primarily use because of Adobe InDesign and Final Cut Pro. So after formatting my USB stick, I transferred all my files back. I ended up doing this procedure about three times...finding an unknown folder, formatting my USB stick then transferring my files again.

Eventually, I got frustrated. I even ran my virus check on both my desktop PC and laptop, twice and yet no viruses were found. This puzzled me. Until yesterday...

I printed out a promotion campaign for The Fyxx for my advertising class. I brought my 'clean' USB stick to the print centre in the William building. As "Lorne The Print Guy" looked for my pdf file, he paused and picked up the phone. As he talked to the person on the phone, Lorne looked at the screen in front of him. I couldn't help but ask "Is there something wrong Lorne?" He hung up the phone and replied "There's a virus here..." still looking at the screen.

I immediately thought I didn't properly format my USB stick and that the folder was not actually deleted...my "Ivana" secret was out! And worse, it might have infected Lorne's computer! I must say I was a bit terrified and thought I was going to get expelled from RRC for crashing the network with virus on my USB stick.

Little did I know that the virus Lorne was looking at on his screen was a different virus altogether. Which meant that the virus came from his computer! Which meant that the entire time I was getting infected was because the virus was on select Mac computers at school! This also meant that my computers at home were NOT the ones that were infecting my USB stick.

Lorne handed me back my ISB stick and didn't say much. All he said was "The virus is contained, we quarantined it." As soon as I plugged it into a Mac at school, I saw a new folder added to my flash drive. This one was labelled "Sevebomba" but the contents had been emptied by Lorne.

For those Mac users who think Macs are impermeable to viruses, think again. This was proof that viruses exist on Macs and can attach themselves on to your flash drive or USB stick so always run a virus check on your platform at home and scan your USB stick too!

A view from Neil's beard. - Neil's review of a wing place!

"A let down," says Neil Babaluk, a full-time student at Red River College's Creative Communications program.

Babaluk visited Big Guy's Ranch and Saloon in the St. Vital area with three of his buds to hang out and have some wings and a couple of bevies.

"It was good, but not Tony Roma's good," says Babaluk. He and some classmates from CreComm went to Tony Roma's on Pembina Hwy. the night before to take a break from studying.

"The wings were more meaty and the sauces were better in general at Tony's," says Babaluk.

"The wings were big and there were a lot of them," says Babaluk about his experience at Tony Roma's.

Neil Babaluk's rating: 2 1/2 stars out of 5 for Big Guy's Ranch and Saloon.
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Big Guy's in St. Vital has their wing deal on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Wings are 49 cents per chicken wing with a minimum 5-win order. They have most of the regular flavours like honey garlic, hot, buffalo, sweet chili, lemon pepper, salt & pepper, and their popular flavour choices being cajun and teriyaki. I am intrigued by their pineapple curry and I'm interested how it would hold up to Movado's same offering.

Just for the record, Neil very much enjoyed his night at Tony Roma's when he was with me and a couple of other friends. He says that the best part of every wing night was the company.