Category Odds and Ends

Tenderloin time at the Grill-A

Ted Shideler 7 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

The breaded pork tenderloin might be Indiana’s greatest contribution to civilization aside from corn, open-wheel racing, and Axl Rose. You can find one practically anywhere here, usually consisting of an expansive fried pork cutlet far larger than the bun tasked with containing it. The best I’ve ever had actually came from Chubby’s in Sevierville, Tennessee, of all places, but Indiana is its home. In tiny Markleville, the Grill-A fries up a pretty good one.

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Random tech review: the JOYROOM Portable 2000mAh Wireless Charger for Apple Watch

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 5 min.

I’ve had an Apple Watch for years, but owning one and actually wearing one have turned out to be two different things. My first was a Series 3, which I bought around 2021. A year and a half ago I replaced it with an SE 3 with GPS for $249. I like my Apple Watch a lot! Unfortunately, I’ve always been terrible at keeping the thing charged. Enter this dumb little JOYROOM device.

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What, exactly, was this unsolicited AI email I just received?

Ted Shideler 14 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

Now that we’re a couple of years in, I’m used to blogging in the AI era. Friends and family might send me a screenshot of their favorite chatbot citing one of my blog posts, or I’ll see a couple hundred random referrals from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Copilot. Sunday, though, I got an unexpected email from what purported to be an AI agent. What?

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New Castle’s silent Thunderbolt

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 5 min.

Just south of Muncie, downtown New Castle is home to some compelling architecture. There’s the 1869 Henry County Courthouse for starters, but the city’s old YMCA -a four-story building erected in 19251 and designed in a restrained Renaissance Revival style- features an enormous bracketed cornice. The cornice does much of the architectural heavy lifting for the structure, but what sits above it is what intrigues me: a Federal Signal Thunderbolt 1000T tornado siren.

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There’s another new Asia single and I’m here to review it

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 5 min.

Sorry to break away from my typical topics, but the newest incarnation of the ’80s progressive-rock supergroup Asia released “The Traveller (Into the Light),” the first single from the band’s long-awaited Indigo album, back on July 6, . On August 12, Frontiers Records released a video for the album’s second single, “Echo of You.” As I was with the first release, I’m here with some thoughts.

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Muncie’s sirens still sounded after the flood

Ted Shideler Leave a comment
Read time: 7 min.

Longtime readers here know that I’m fascinated by tornado sirens. I’ve tracked down all of Muncie’s aging Thunderbolts, the Banshee on top of the old courthouse, and even some of the modern 2001-SRNs scattered around these parts. It’s rare that they actually become newsworthy, but the other day, they did! A little.

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Santa heads, giant pumpkins, and one weird goose

Ted Shideler 8 Comments
Read time: 11 min.

I’ve been selling a ton of stuff on Facebook Marketplace (where I’m highly rated, I must add) over the past few months. One of the first things to go was a vintage General Foam Santa Choo-Choo and Tender Car from the seventies, but I got ripped off after failing to do enough research about it. I made a solemn oath that I wouldn’t get caught flat-footed if the opportunity ever appeared again! When I inherited thirteen more vintage blow molds, I came prepared.

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The best surprise of 2026 is a new Asia single and album

Ted Shideler 3 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

The ’80s progressive rock supergroup Asia is back with its first new single in twelve years as the band’s fourteenth studio album comes due this November. As the world’s foremost simultaneous amateur Indiana historian and Asia musicologist, I couldn’t let that news pass without mentioning it here!

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Candy Clash: Krackel vs. Crunch

Ted Shideler 6 Comments
Read time: 6 min.

Krackel vs. Crunch. On paper, this brawl couldn’t be much fairer. Both are simple candy bars built around the same basic idea: milk chocolate packed with crisped rice. No layers of caramel, peanuts, nougat, or wafers muddy the waters! Still, despite sharing nearly identical ingredients and debuting the very same year, these two bars have followed remarkably different paths. One became a candy aisle icon. The other was relegated to the bottom of a a multi-pack. That raises an obvious question: which one got the formula right? 

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Juan’s Mill Street Place is better than the original

Ted Shideler 2 Comments
Read time: 7 min.

I’ve written before about Juan’s Mexican Grill & Bar in Chesterfield, the restaurant inside a former Ben Franklin store that’s become my favorite spot. When Juan’s announced that it had purchased another local institution -Gaston’s venerable Mill Street Inn- I was intrigued! The new place was closer to my house, but the real question was whether it could capture the magic of the original. It took me a couple of visits to find out, but I think it did. In fact, it even improved on it.

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