MOD Pizza

I was over on Vancouver Island this past weekend visiting my wife's sister and her husband. It was my sister-in-laws birthday, so a big Birthday shout out to her. Also a big thanks to them for allowing the mainlanders to stay over for a few days.

It was late afternoon and the ladies had gone out to do some shopping, the men were left home to watch the Euro Cup final. As both of us weren't football fans, the game for us was a bit of a snooze fest, so we decided to grab lunch. My brother-in-law, Ryan, suggested we try out MOD Pizza.

I'd never heard of MOD pizza, but Ryan went on to described it as Sub-way style pizza.

Ok it's bad enough that both of us being first generation Italians, aren't into football(soccer).

Second, it's the Euro Cup final, and we're ditching the game to grab pizza?

Then you suggest a Sub-way style pizza?

WhatTheHeck! 

I'm surprised we didn't get shot down by lightning or something.

I know a little something about eating pizza, as I've been to Italy and had authentic Neapolitan style pizza. I've been to many a restaurant and tried all kinds of pizza, and Vancouver has some pretty good places, but come on now, Sub-way style pizza, this can't taste good. Can it?

So we drive (10 minutes) out to Langford, BC which is the first and only Canadian location.

Photo by: THE CABBIE IN THE #YYJ

Photo by: Bill Smithwick

So here I am, and low and behold, I'm at a pizza place that's set up like a subway. 

• You pick your dough (6",11" or 11"thick crust)
• You select your sauce, as many or as few as you want (BBQ Sauce, Garlic Rub, Olive Oil, Pesto, Red Sauce, Spicy Calabrian Chili Red Sauce, White Sauce, No Sauce) 
• You select your cheese, as many or as few as you want (Asiago, Dairy-Free Cheese, Feta, Gorgonzola, Mozzarella, Parmesan, Ricotta, Sharp Cheddar (Limited Edition), No Cheese) (
• You select your meats, as many or as few as you want (Anchovies, Back Bacon, Bacon, Grilled Chicken, Ground Beef, Mild Sausage, Pepperoni, Salami, Spicy Sausage, Taco-Spiced Sausage (Limited Edition))
• You select your Veggies, Herbs & Good Stuff, as many or as few as you want (Artichokes, Arugula, Basil - Fresh Chopped, Black Olives, Broccoli - Roasted, Cilantro, Corn - Roasted, Garlic - Chopped, Garlic - Roasted, Green Bell Peppers, Jalapenos, Mama Lil's Sweet Hot Peppas, Mushrooms, Oregano, Pineapple, Red Onion, Red Onions - Pickled (Limited Edition), Red Peppers - Roasted, Rosemary - Fresh Chopped, Salt & Pepper, Spinach, Tomatoes - Diced, Tomatoes - Sliced)
• Once your pizza is cooked you can add the following finishing sauces (Balsamic Glaze, BBQ Swirl, Hot Buffalo Sauce, Mike's Hot Honey, Pesto Drizzle, Ranch, Ranchero Sauce (Limited Edition), Red Sauce Dollops, Sri-rancha)

So you can pick as many or as few items as you want, the price of the pizza stays the same with the mini 6" being $10.87, the MOD 11" being $13.87, and the Mega Dough 11" thick crust being $15.87.

My pizza went as follows... Mega Dough with red sauce, oregano, mozzarella, dusting of asiago, salami, peperoni, back bacon, artichoke, tomatoes sliced, green bell pepper, drizzled with hot buffalo sauce.

As you can tell, I jumped around from one area to the other, and the server was totally cool, he laughed at my scattered combination, but gave my creation a final nod of approval, as he placed it in the oven. It took about 10 minutes and the pizza was cooked.

My verdict...

Firstly, you need to do some research online to know your selections. In-store they didn't have labels on any of the offerings, so you would have to point or ask, which could be frustrating if it was busy. 

How do you even judge this? 

Well, is it the best I've had? No

Is it the worst? Far from

I would honestly say it's mountains above a Little Cesare or Domino pizza and that's all I can compare the concept too, in terms of speed.

It's not as good as a specialty Neapolitan style pizza place, and just slightly below a Famouso pizza chain.

However the concept, speed, and price give it a leg up in some areas, if that makes any sense.

Would I go again? Definitely 

The quality was really good, and the infinite amount of toppings, makes it great, specially when your with groups of people with dietary restrictions.

My only let down was they didn't offer Parma cured ham, which is my favorite topping on pizza!

 

Also posting this was a total after thought, and I didn't take any pictures. I would have loved to photograph my pizza because it looked and tasted really good. 

The location was a typical strip mall, with the vibe being sort of skate boarder inspired.

All in all, a cool place to chill with friends and have a good quick bite..

OMG, Completely overwhelmed (Part 2)

 

So it seems I may have corrected my non-compliance issue with the EU, yay I can start making money again!

(EU issue was that my site was listed as www.mass-imo.com/ instead of www.mass-imo.com, I don't even know where the / came from, as this is a Blogger template)

Now Google AdSense doesn't seem to work.

I'll gone through the code a dozen or so times this week so I'll dumb it down, as I really don't understand it all to well myself. 

• Google places advertisements on my site, based on who is visiting (they listen to you phone calls)
• Google can only place advertisements , if my site allows it (which is what I want)
• hidden on my site is a file (ads.txt) that gives Google permission to place advertisements 
• Google AdSense claims the ads.txt file is missing, so they can't place advertisements 
• in my attempts to fix this, I completely re-designed my website (as you may have noticed)
• to test functionality, I'm instructed to type in www.mass-imo.com/ads.txt
• if my publisher id comes up (which it does), then everything is working

YET GOOGLE STILL SAYS THERE ARE ERRORS

WHAT THE HECK!!!

• How am I using Blogger (a Google product)
• To advertise AdSense (a Google product)

And I'm still not able to get it working, this should be a simple turnkey process. 

The best part, is that this was working perfectly from 2010 to 2015. Then the EU compliance issue came into effect and I've stopped making any money since then. Listen it's not a lot of money to begin with (about $100 a year), but the viewership of this site has gone up considerably in the past 6 years. As a side hobby, making some $$ would be nice.

I end up spending so much time just maintaining the website, instead of actually blogging.

Anyone else run into these issues?

Is it time to pull the plug on Blogger? 

• What are some alternatives to Blogger?
• Is it easier to move to another platform, or should I solve these Blogger issues?
• Is there anything else out there for advertisement revenue besides AdSense?

Happy Canada Day

 

This post is a little late, as the weekend got away from me.

The artwork pictured above hangs in the front hallway of my house, a memory of my late father. My father was an avid outdoorsman, who spend many a weekend up in the Lytton and Lillooet area fishing it's many lakes for Rainbow and Dolly Varden trout.

So the story as I know it goes like this...

The artwork above is an oar/paddle carving of a salmon/eagle. It's carver is unknown to me, (there is a signature on the back, but I had never thought of having it researched) who lived in the Lytton-Lillooet area. 

It was on one hot summer day, during a weekend, some 35ish years ago. My father was driving the lonely dirt roads of the Lytton-Lillooet region to his favourite fishing spots. During his drive, my father came across a stranded car facing the opposite direction. I suspect most people, minding their own business would just drive by. That wasn't my father, a mechanic, he would often find himself pulling over to assist stranded motorists. The story, as I remember it, was that the stranded vehicle had overheated, caused by a blown radiator hose. A common enough problem, remedied quite simply at a shop was made ever so much more complex at the side of the road. While not a complete fix, my father managed to sufficiently repair the vehicle enough so as it's driver was no longer stranded and could safely make his way to the town garage. 

The vehicles driver was an indigenous artist from the region, who, in a token of appreciation offered my father the oar/paddle as thanks. Regretfully mentioning that the artwork had little to no value as it was an unfinished piece, something he was currently working on. 

I know my father wouldn't have wanted any momentary reward, and was probably hesitant to accept the artwork and did so more out of respect, to the artist.

I am so proud of the man I had as a father, even though we seldom saw eye to eye, he bestowed a great deal of wisdom in me. As an Italian immigrant, my father fell in love with Canada and it's inspiring beauty. It's forests which provide us with clean air, the melting mountain snow which provide us fresh water that fill our lakes and rivers, perfect for trout fishing. My father went on to become a Canadian citizen, put down roots, and has been placed to rest, in his new home...Canada. My father taught me that being Canadian meant respecting wildlife, nature, and your fellow man, values many of us born here take for granted. He taught me to treat people, as I want to be treated, and to always look out for those less fortunate. He taught me to always do my best, and have patience for those who weren't as capable.

I choose to celebrate Canada Day this year, not because I am insensitive to the hurt felt by our fellow indigenous brothers and sisters, but because of the bonds formed. In light of mistakes we may have found in our past, we as a nation are far from perfect, but we can always strive to be better.

Because we are Canadian.

Netflix and chill, no seriously just chill it's hot out there

Netflix and chill, no seriously just chill, cause this weather be crazy hot here in East Vancouver. I think I might have to put off blogging for a bit.

Anyways Black Summer Season 2 just dropped on the 17th of June, so last week, and I finally got to watch it. It's such a crazy show. 

For those of you into the zombie genre, which might be getting a bit played out, Black Summer is another strange take on post pandemic life. It's like the walking dead on adrenalin!

If you're at home trying to stay chill then why not throw this show on to kill some time.

OMG, Completely overwhelmed

 

It's been a while since I was blogging on the regular.

It's been even longer since I started this blog.

Well, it seems I've neglected a bunch of stuff over the years, and it's time to fix everything.

Fun Facts 

#1. European laws dictate you need to have security imbedded into you domains through a DNS service?

- I honestly thought I had done this when I click ok.

Well here is the problem, I started this blog (and other blogs) as a free service from Blogger (google). I later went on to purchase this (and other) domains from Blogger (google). Blogger (google) purchased the domains (on my behalf) from GoDaddy. 

So now when I need to do an update, I use the Blogger interface which send me to the Google interface, which redirects me to the GoDaddy interface, which lets me make changes. Well, somewhere along this chain, I lost access. Normally I just use the auto-password and auto-login from site to site, but I lost a password, or changed it, or changed my user name or something happened. I now use safeincloud which helps tremendously (I am not sponsored by them, purchased it and use it). 

I'm stuck, I can't seem to make changes, Oh well F*it, I'll suffer the wrath of the EU.

This non-compliance has been going on for some time now, and some people have even reported to me that mass-imo.com, no longer works in search engines, and that they can only get to my site using www.mass-imo.com, of which I am truly remorseful.

I want to give blogging another chance to monetize (to earn some money, since I retired from my day job), and tie in Facebook/Instagram monetization and maybe start vlogging (we will see). Monetizing is no longer as simple as it used to be, in that there is so much tax info needed, oh and you also have to be EU compliant!

WhatTheHeck! 

This EU compliance is going to be the end of me.

I'm currently wading through all the interfaces and re-submitting for access, trying to determine which username is associated with with which domain, which password is associated with that username, and getting them all to communicate in harmony.

My plan is to...

1. Resolve this EU issue
2. Possibly host this blog on my own server (not sure how to do it, so it's learning curve).
3. Get this blog re-monetized through Blogger (google)
4. Get this blog monetized through Facebook/Instagram
5. Bring vlogging to this site.

If anyone has any suggestions or help, drop me a line.