The best coffee maker I have ever owned
Posted on May 4, 2008
Filed Under Misc. | 1 Comment
It’s so rare that I like a coffee maker that I own for more than a few weeks it’s worth blogging about one that I still like 6+ months later. This will probably read like a paid review. It’s not. I’m just talking about a kitchen appliance that has given me a lot of satisfaction.
I’m the only one in my house who drinks coffee and I’m not a huge fan of the instant stuff made in a microwave. I never liked most carafe-based coffee makers because 1. the coffee was never hot enough, 2. I’d end up pouring out more coffee than I drank, and 3. clean up was a pain.
I love the coffee that comes out of pods, but the cost per cup is ridiculously expensive.
Late last summer, I found this in a local store and bought it on a whim:
Hamilton Beach 3-in-1 Hot-Beverage Center
Love it!
The top part lifts up and you can either put in a pod or a single serving of drip coffee in one of those permanent filters. Then you slide out the drawer underneath and fill with a cup’s worth of water. Place the mug underneath the spout and a few minutes later you have a piping hot cup o’ Joe.
The only thing that needs immediate cleaning is the filter which is easy to dump & rinse off (in addition to the less regular cleaning that you should do with any coffee maker).
FriendFeed
Posted on April 27, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Misc. | 2 Comments
I don’t know about you, but I think I’m over Facebook. It’s too noisy. The time I used to give to Facebook, I now find myself giving to FriendFeed.
What I like is finding people who say/do interesting things online around topics, ideas and interests we have in common and easily following all the ways they express those topics, ideas and interests.
It’s called “FriendFeed” but friendship has little to do with it. Maybe the folks I follow will be “friends” one day based on those common topics, ideas and interests. I hope so. Some already are. But that’s not where it starts. FriendFeed should follow Twitter’s lead and change “friends” to “following” which is a more accurate term. Considering the name of the service, probably won’t happen.
FriendFeed is similar to Plaxo Pulse and at least 10 other services where you input all the places you are and follow others where they’re at (a kind of lifestreaming). As I posted earlier this morning, one can no longer assume that the blog is the center of someone’s online universe. It certainly isn’t mine. It’s just another avenue I use to express myself publicly (read: carefully).
I also post on Web Worker Daily. I share links through Google Reader and Del.icio.us. I post some photos on Flickr and SmugMug. And of course, I tweet. Interested in the same things I’m interested in? Subscribe to me on FriendFeed and you get it all.
FriendFeed is pretty simple. I like that the interface is low-key. It doesn’t trip over itself like Pulse does. It only sends me information I’ve asked for (which is once per day).
It’s not a popularity contest. I love that I can only see how many folks are subscribed to me, and I can’t see how many folks are subscribed to others. Yet I can see who they’re subscribed to. A nice way to discover new voices.
Bottom line is that I’m not that interested in Facebook groups, pokes, games, etc. which makes most of Facebook annoying these days.
I love the “hide” feature (underneath each entry). I prefer to read tweets in Twhirl. I’m starting to appreciate FriendFeed for the other streams. So I set FriendFeed to only show me tweets that have comments/activity in FriendFeed. Cuts down on a lot of the duplicate noise.
Currently, you can only auto-discover fellow FriendFeed users through your address book. I wish there was a way I could pour in the list of folks I already follow in Twitter.
The blog’s stream runs deeper than Twitter
Posted on April 27, 2008
Filed Under Blogging, Life, Misc. | 1 Comment
Like many, I’ve been more active on Twitter lately than my blog. It’s hard to explain why, for many of the same reasons Twitter is hard to explain in the first place. You either get it, or you don’t.
I was just reading a post from someone who begs folks to “Twitter Less, Blog More.” One of the reasons he gives:
Even if you don’t like to think in abstract terms, there are material reasons to opt to blog something instead of Twittering it. In the long run every backlink and every visitor count. Guess what, every time you Twitter instead of blogging something interesting you are risking to lose visitors and backlinks.
Guess what? That’s exactly the reason I’ll put something on Twitter instead of blogging it. And it’s part of the reason why I don’t publish my Twitter stream here. There are times, more often than not lately, where I just want to be part of the conversation without all the baggage.
I’m still a little blog-shy. Last year, some of this blog’s archives from 2006 were taken out of context, twisted and used against me in a legal case. That’s about as much as I’m going to say about that right now. Rest assured. I do plan to blog the details at some point when I feel it’s safe to do so. If for no other reason than to serve as a warning to other parents fighting for appropriate services for their children.
We often forget that the average person doesn’t see the difference between sites that report news in blog format and personal blogs that react to news in the moment. What I’m writing this minute is how I feel and how I see the world at 7:14 am on Sunday, April 27, 2008. That may change at 7:14 pm tonight, or it may change in a week or month from now. But because I’m blogging this, it will have more permanence than if I put these thoughts on Twitter in between my thoughts on 100 other topics that I may tweet about.
Here, I refuse to go back and edit/delete posts. If it’s clear I’m editing after-the-fact what I posted in the past, how can you trust that I believe what I’m saying right now? I haven’t even removed or edited the posts that were used against me. I’ll say I’ve changed my mind. I won’t change the past to catch up to the present. It’s a losing game.
Yes, I know that with my tweets on the public timeline everything I say there is for the world’s eyes and it can still come back and haunt me later. I’m careful in my tweets, especially as the legal matter referenced above is not resolved. But somehow, 140 characters caught in between completely irrelevant content clearly says “this was in the moment” in a way that a blog post never can.
Repeat after me…rectal. R-E-C-T-A-L.
Posted on March 5, 2008
Filed Under Life, Misc. | Leave a Comment
Ever since I started working for the Colorectal Cancer Coalition, it has been interesting to watch people react to the word, “rectal.” Yes, the stuff that comes out of that part of the body isn’t pleasant dinner conversation. But the word “rectal” itself is not evil. It’s not dirty. It’s just anatomy.
I give my employer name for whatever reason, they say, “can you spell that?” and I laugh internally as they go out of their way not to say the word “rectal” under any circumstances. “Colo-what?” “Colorectal” “C-o-l-o-r-e-c-t-a-l…colo-rectal…it’s okay, you probably have one too.”
I’m used to it from the general public. There was a time that “breast” was a dirty word too. Then women started getting cancer in that body part and feeding their babies in public with that body part and gradually over time, the word lost its whispers.
At C3, we are absolutely careful to include rectal cancer in our mission and attention. Rectal cancer is very real, and from what I understand, can even be more deadly than colon cancer as the surgery is more difficult. We always refer to it as “colorectal cancer” or “cancer of the colon and rectum.”
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Colorectal Cancer. It’s how George W proclaimed it in 2003:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2003 as National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. I call upon all Americans to reaffirm our Nation’s continuing commitment to controlling and curing colorectal cancer.
So if W isn’t afraid of speaking the word “rectal” out loud, what’s the problem with the American Cancer Society?
When talking about the disease to the lay public, they only use the term “colon cancer.” Look at their site. The final straw for me was an email I received from being on an ACS mailing list that ended with:
P.S. March is National Colon Cancer Awareness Month. Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women. But there’s good news: Colon cancer is preventable, treatable, and beatable. Click here to learn more about colon cancer, including how to reduce your risk for the disease.
No! March is National Colorectal Awareness Month. I don’t care if you’re the American Cancer Society, you don’t get to dismiss the 40,740 people (citing ACS’s own statistics) who will be diagnosed with rectal cancer this year. Ironically, in that very statistic document, beginning on page 12, they talk specifically about Colon and Rectum cancer and use the word “colorectal” throughout the section. They just won’t call it “colorectal” on any document the general non-patient public will likely read (as opposed to documents aimed at patients which use colorectal and rectum where appropriate). In other words, it’s a marketing decision. Somehow, I guess ACS thinks people will be more likely to get screened if they don’t think the word is “icky”? I don’t know. Sorry, rectums are icky. Get over it. Cancer is ickier.
Don’t get me wrong, there are amazing people who work for ACS. We have some great relationships with ACS employees all over the country and it’s a fantastic organization. But I have heard from ACS employees a few times that it’s an intentional decision not to say “colorectal” because focus groups say people have a negative reaction to the word. Say what?!?! That is precisely the reason to use the word. People have to be able to talk about what they see going on in the toilet bowl, or they will ignore the symptoms and they will die.
Verizon DSL is not fun
Posted on January 6, 2008
Filed Under Internet & Technology, Misc. | Leave a Comment
I forgot that I had to disable OpenDNS because it wasn’t playing nice with auto-discovering T-Mobile’s hotspot login page at Starbucks.
As soon as I turn OpenDNS back on, Google pages resolve just fine but speeds are way down to the point of being barely usable. I should note that this issue affects every Mac in the house, not just mine, and restarts don’t make a difference (modem or computers).
How bad? Let’s see, with only the browser running:
I switched over to my Sprint EVDO modem, changing nothing else (no restart, no configuration change):
The EVDO speed is nothing to write home about, but come on…it’s beating DSL?!?
I sit in Borders or Starbucks all day with this computer and never have these problems. So I have to believe it’s either the DSL modem (Westell 327W), the wireless configuration (I tried switching channels to see if that’s the issue) or something in how the connection is hitting my house. Verizon phone support is useless. They just ping and see that they can see my modem and call it a day. Looks like I need to spend some time in this forum or this one.
Oh, how I love Verizon DSL. Not.
Comcast didn’t work here due to poor neighborhood wiring in my condo development. Verizon DSL is well, Verizon DSL and it’s going to be a while yet until FIOS is here.
I’m running out of decent broadband options, short of sitting on my EVDO modem all the time.
Update: I think I fixed it.
This thread and this one pointed me to Verizon’s announcement that they had deployed a firmware upgrade for my modem. Would have been nice if I didn’t have to go digging for this information.
Okay, I’m going to say something nice about Verizon… I fully expected the firmware upgrade to be one of those have-to-run-from-a-Windows-PC things. But no! I was able to download the upgrade file, log in to the router configuration window in Firefox (connected to the modem via Ethernet, not wireless, of course) and upgrade the firmware without ever having to leave the Mac side of things and it worked exactly as expected. Pleasant surprise.
Now all the computers in the house are online and not dropping the wireless and speeds are in the acceptable range again. Here’s hoping that’s all it was.
