Punderings

First off, apologies to various people I haven’t gotten back to recently, in particular M.G., M.M., and various ASF folks. I actually took vacation around the holidays, and spent several days not reading email at all (gasp!). First time in a long time, and then of course coming back to work is always hectic. Um, and of course setting up that that 360 with MW2 after the holiday hasn’t helped my free time any either. I hope to be more present this week.

• Check out the new Community Development project at Apache – great stuff, and don’t worry, the Mentoring Programme will accept Americans as well as English speakers.
• A shout out to the staff at Peet’s in Lexington, my favorite coffee shop.
• A shout out to the cashier and bagger at Whole Foods in Medford, who were wicked nice last Friday afternoon.
• Question: did I really miss anything important on Twitter over the past 3 weeks?
• What am I forgetting to put into my Monoprice order? I’m stocking up on cheap HDMI cables and wall ports for when we upgrade to a wall-mounted medium size flatscreen tv.
• Interesting read of a website: Letters of Note (via Writing Or Typing) Copies of just plain interesting letters from a variety of historical situations.
• Big thank-you to D.R. and others for getting Facebook to sponsor Apache!
• What Facebook-reading app do you use? I have just enough friends inside Facebook that I want to follow the witty conversations, but I’m really tired of the website. There must be better clients to watch the stream of interestingness go by.

What? You thought this was a year in review for last year? Sorry – just a cheap way to get all the little bits stuck in my head of this year so far cleared out so I can start the new year fresh.

I have an awesome new business idea. I came up with it while drinking DD with friends after eating Korean food at H Mart, so it must be good. But I have no worldly idea of how to actually find the right people to see if it would fly. Sigh.

Seriously – it’s amazing. OK, we were sitting around for a while and yakking it up, and maybe I’m a little out there, but I think it actually has potential for a new niche market someplace. Involves licensing management (in areas that understand licenses but aren’t usually managed like this), and usefully targeted advertising (yuck, I know, but hey, the “useful” applies to consumers and advertisers alike). Requires web presence much like dozens of other sites use, but fits a niche that’s simultaneously narrow and yet broad (depending on how you look at it).

The idea has nothing to do with what I do for a living or volunteering at the ASF. The question is, do I actually know anyone I trust who could evaluate it and might know the right place to sell it?

• Wanted: MBP power brick/cable (with magnetic connector). With a new room upstairs, we need a power plug on each floor.
• BAM! A few days ago we went straight from awful “leave the AC on” summer right into amazingly beautiful fall weather. The change always surprises me, even if it does happen every year.
• I also forget how pleasant – or amusing, depending on the circumstance – it is watching all the new college kids and their parents tour around Boston and Cambridge each year. Important Safety Tip: do not drive your U-Haul on Storrow or Memorial Drives, no matter how much quicker it seems to be.
• Au Bon Pain coffee cup report: Cambridgeside Galleria, one large iced coffee, fairly full. 5 minute walk. No spills. Coffee: weak. Light cream: not very good.
• Fall plan: streaming Netflix et al on mid-sized screen. Specific suggestions for setting up low-key home theater? Should have convenience features and “just work”, but allow for occasional geeky upgrades. HDTV monitor should be small and low power. Have NAS and networking already. Is it worth springing a little extra for a PS3/360 to get games too, or just go for a newer BluRay with streamy stuff?
• Dear Amazon: yes, I was browsing HTDVs briefly. Please refrain from sending me DAILY emails about them now.
• Many thanks to the ASF infrastructure team for late nights and detective work on the recent hack attempt. Read more with official Apache blogs.
• Wish I had more hacking time – the visualizations of MBTA trips are cool. Kudos to the Mass EOT and MBTA for working on better feeds.
• R.I.P. Teddy, the Commonwealth misses you.
• Condolences to an ASF member who lost someone recently.

I skipped my coffee maker this morning since I came into work early, and decided to stop at the Kendall Au Bon Pain this morning for coffee. I remembered a couple of reasons I hadn’t been drinking their coffee for a while.

It’s not that the coffee’s bad: it’s certainly no paragon of coffee perfection, but it’s a fine chain bakery brew and I do sometimes like their Hazelnut mixed with the French Roast. No, it’s two issues about their materials:

• Light cream. They serve light cream instead of half and half. While I like my coffee with a moderate amount of half-and-half, I inevitably get the amount of light cream to add instead wrong. 90% of the time I think I’ve got it, and it turns out to be far too white and creamy. Today, I was sure I did it right: a tiny splash of light cream and enough 2% milk to make up for it: nope, now it’s not quite rich enough. Sigh.
• Cups. ABP cups have a far higher failure rate than other local shops – more often than not while driving or walking to work, I get a steady stream of drips down the seam side of the cup, from right under the edge of the lid. Either the seams are too uneven, or the plastic lids are too inflexible. It’s disappointing, and today I forgot to wrap a napkin around the edge of the cup, and so got dripped today.

What ever happened to the old, old Au Bon Pain, back when the baguettes were really flavorful, and the croissants were rich and buttery? Were they actually better back then, or did it just feel like that because they were one of the first chains to do those foodstuffs justice locally so long ago?

(Drat! I didn’t mention the “p” word, but even though it wasn’t on my mind I talked about croissants anyway, which I suppose counts. Another statistic plus for BHD!)

/ Blogging in haiku. /
/ Japanese doggerel, yes. /
/ But fits in a tweet. /

/ Breakfast sandwich fail. /
/ Tasty, delicious: not found. /
/ Caffeine kick in now?/

/ Am I late today? /
/ Terribly sorry doctor! Hey: /
/ Do you have a cure? /

/ Dumbledore is dead. /
/ Fun teen love angst; black flyers. /
/ Why the cornfield scene? /

/ Email, commit logs, /
/ (How do you follow the threads?) /
/ blog, tweet, chat, AIM: feeds. /

They seem to be in trouble, and I’m not sure what to do. Poor Starbuck!

On one hand, they are closing stores left and right – and even though MA was to be spared, they later announced we are not, losing 7 or more stores locally. On the other hand, I see even more “Help Wanted” signs in their front doors that ever before. Plus they’re pushing more and more benefits to cardholders: free refills, free shots, other giveaways that you never would have seen before.

They come up with a huge marketing thing for their new drink, hoping it can revivify their business. What is this vivivying magic they’ve come up with? A banana smoothie. Not what I expect from such an experienced vendor. You think a smoothie’s going to turn your business around? Think again.

Their desperation is showing in many other ways: when using my card to get my free in-store drip coffee refills, I got not one but three receipts, even though I never normally take them. One for the first cuppa, of course; then two for the refill. Not only did the staff patiently explain about their $2 for any cold grande after 2pm offer, but they also eagerly pressed their customer survey – CustomerVoice! – into my hand. This is about the third time I’ve gotten a survey in the past month, and it’s not like I’m in there daily to account for their sudden interest in my opinion.

Plus, they’re canceling their muffin contract, and ditching their breakfast sandwiches. I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about them – myself included: have you ever gotten a breakfast sandwich at the old ‘Buck that was actually assembled straight? I haven’t. But I still like them, and they’re actually reasonably priced for the ingredients, considering their corporate price levels. That’ll be a sad goodbye to the toasties in the morning some days.

What can we do to help them out? Poor little Starbuck, she’s tough but vulnerable these days.

Hmmm.

Oh, wait.

They are an evil corporate giant. Never mind. Let loose the dogs of capitalism, and if you enjoy it, update your schedule to use your card to take your break there: free wifi, free syrup, and the free refills mean it’s a great way to spend an hour in the morning, for those of you who like the coffee there. I mean, it’s good, although Starbucks is not as good as Peet’s.

Hi, I’m Shane, and this is the third coffee shop I’ve visited today.

Admittedly, today is a rather unusual day, and the post title and lead-in is a cheap bit of hyperbole. Today is a day of inconveniently scheduled meetings, long drives, and a bunch of getting out of the way of a FOAF that I’m delivering the moving truck for. So this is not a normal day at all, and I rarely ever visit two coffee shops in one day – honest!

The day started with exactly not quite enough time to get anywhere between the morning dropoff and my first meeting. Hence, I decided to skip rush hour traffic, and drive just a couple of blocks to my coffee home, Peet’s in Lexington. The staff is great (Hi Janice!), there are plenty of tables, and for all the fact that they don’t offer free wifi, I really do find it a good place to focus on work without distractions. It’s also quiet enough in the back to be able to call into my meeting with good cell coverage. Since it was still early in the day, I opted for hot coffee here.

Meeting over, I then had enough time to drive home to do a couple of hours of work, which of course took longer than expected, and left me late to pickup the rental truck. Being hungry, hot, late, and in possession of one of the free sandwich coupons, I stopped at a convenient DD for my large iced, milk, half a sugar, hazelnut, and a flatbread sandwich to finish while waiting for rental truck paperwork. I must admit that I did not actually sit down at that coffee shop.

Truck delivered to the friend who’s moving, I now have a few hours to try to finish some work while they decide what to load up and what to leave behind. Of course, I have them drop me off at the closest Starbucks for another large iced, half-sweet, since now I really do need the free wifi to read my email. This time, I am sitting down.

I promise – I won’t do this again. This week I’ll pull my thermos out of the cupboard and start making iced coffee to bring with me. But today was just a little bit too much happening for that.

I hear you ask: so, how do they compare, these three highly branded corporate behemoths of the caffeine addiction trade? I’m not sure it’s completely fair to do a head-to-head, given the differing styles, but I will share this:

• I love Peet’s. Better coffee, better bar drinks, and a good variety of pastries that I happen to like. Always my favorite, but not always immediately convenient.
• DD is such a background to the fabric of life that it will always be important. I would never call it gourmet, but sometimes you just need a predictable cuppa, and I know I can always find a DD. Sadly, today’s iced was a tad down; I think they actually gave me too little sugar, which rarely happens (I often have to explain “just a HALF sugar, please”).
• The primary value to Starbucks is that when you really need a bar drink, you can always find a passable one. And in today’s case, the free wifi (with air conditioning and comfortable chairs!) was the important part.

And now, back to tracking the latest round of software defects…

No, not blogging about backups, although I promise to do that real soon now. But blogging a backup of things I’ve meant to blog but never quite did.

• What is going on with Starbucks? Not that they’re my favorite coffee company – that’d be Peet’s – but their stock prices, their coffee quality, and now the breakfast sandwiches are going to go away this coming fall! I actually like ‘em quite a bit, although the cheese & etc. is never quite straight on the muffins. P.S. I’m surprised FF’s default spellchecker doesn’t know the word “Starbucks” too. Mebbe their developers just are too much the Jolt or DD drinkers, I guess.
• Busy, busy, busy with too many different projects at work, including some that take, ahem, an inordinate amount of overhead time. Sigh.
• Did I mention we bought a MacBook Pro? Shiny. Finally sharing iTunes/iPhoto etc. properly. Now to actually, y’know, loadup all the past pictures and then do something kewl with them. Oh, and back them up in an organized fashion.
• The new fridge is nice. A very expensive way to temporarily fool yourself your kitchen is remodeled. Note to fridge shoppers: most of them are pretty much the same, with minor differences. Actually shop in person, and pick the one with the most convenience shelves that’s in your price range.
• Gotta love those politicians, spending all that money to send everyone 2 separate letters telling them they might get that economic stimulus check. I was amazed – we actually got one! A real live check, too, since they seem to forget I did direct deposit last time. Just in time to potentially influence voters, too. Amazing!
• Joyous Summer Solstice! It was such a beautiful day – and such a beautiful evening the next – that I completely forgot to logon to commemorate in a timely manner. I only hope the sun will forgive me for that.
• Looking forward to seeing a number of friends this weekend, and had the first summer dinner last weekend with other friends, which was quite delightful. I love summer air – it feels softer, somehow.

We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?