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It seems to me that one of the favorite activities of the Americans during the beginning of the “fall” (or autumn, like my friend Paul prefers) is the apple picking.

For the second year I didn’t miss this occasion!

Honestly I don’t go to do it because I love it… I mean… I like it but because it reminds me the when I was a kid and I was climbing on the pear trees close to my grandpa’s vineyard .

Now I can’t climb trees any more: today I tried with success but I’m not good as I used to be!

Anyway… The apples were delicious and now I have almost 30 pounds of apples at home!

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Several years ago, when I was working in my own company, I went to a server farm to install a couple of servers.

If you don’t know what a server farm is, let’s say that it is a place where to put your servers and where everything is optimized to avoid problems, including the temperature!

The heat is probably the biggest problem for a server, so in these places they keep the temperature so low that you need a coat if you don’t want to freeze!

Now do you know what is the only other place that gives me the same sensation of cold? A real American restaurant!

Last week I went with my wife to a nice restaurant (one of the best in Cambridge, according to TripAdvisor) and as soon as we entered in that place a polar wind attacked us and since we didn’t have clothes warm enough, we had to leave!

Now the funny thing was that it was not that hot outside.

Anyway… I realized that to go in a restaurant sometimes I need the same coat I used to wear in the server farm!

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Yesterday night I was in a very good restaurant (Oleana in Cambridge) and while I was enjoying the wonderful dinner a question came in my mind: what makes a good restaurant “great”?

Today I think I have my answer: it’s not only a matter of food! I’ve been in many good restaurant serving wonderful food, but only few of them were great!

The “great” is something related with the experience you have in a restaurant! The details, more than everything, are really important!

Oleana, for example, has tables in a small patio. They could take advantage of all the space they had, but they decided to sacrifice some of it to make a wonderful garden with amazing flowers.

The garden itself is then well maintained, so there is not backwater and there are no mosquitos!

So the result is wonderful food, amazing location and a really pleasant time.

In other words: GREAT