Monday, February 28, 2005

 

Cemetary stroll

Haven't posted for a while, sorry about that. Things haven't looked too promising on the SF front so that was a little depressing. Should know soon if things are looking up. I'll keep the blog updated, although Matt seems to be my only visitor...Thanks Matt.

We took a walk in Wyuka and took some pics. That Leica Lens really captures some sharp detail. Not that it really comes out at this resolution.

Click on picture for larger image Posted by Hello

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

 

Bon Appetit

All in all yesterday was horrible. Coffee Roaster broke, car had to go in the shop, and the computer had all kind of problems which the Indian techs at HP only made worse.

Well at least we had a good dinner....

Click on picture for a larger image Posted by Hello


Breakfast wasn't too bad either - Chaurice and eggs (Cynthia said I should have added some parsley for color but I put it all in the Chaurice):

Click on picture for larger image Posted by Hello

Sunday, February 20, 2005

 

You CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

Which is why I haven’t posted in a few days. Bought a digicam and found there was a whole lot to learn about using it. Then I found out that there is a whole lot to learn about post processing! So this old dog has been learning some new tricks.

Talking of new tricks - Blogging is FUN. Carson is going to start his blog, Angela has already started. So we have a whole blogging community, we are now International! Welcome Angela.

So I am making a fresh start. My goal was to update my blog every other day but since nobody seemed to be coming by my good intentions fell by the wayside. Now that things are picking up, so will my posting

Status Report:
Where is everything at:
Project - I finally got a check so the project goes ahead and on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday in the US - Presidents’' Day) I am going to install and deploy the program and then train the users.
SF - My people are working on it but I am not making a lot of noise yet. As soon as the project wraps up I shall start bothering them and maybe even taking a trip out there.
Food - So much to add on that front but I’ll do it on a more timely basis. For now, yesterday's work, 8lbs of meat into 4lbs of Hot Italian and 4lbs of really hot Chaurice:

click for larger picture Posted by Hello


Coffee - Two lbs of PNG Two lbs of Sulawesi and couldn't decide between these two beauties so I bought a lb of each

click for larger picture Posted by Hello

Saturday, February 12, 2005

 

Coffee

Karen tells me that she has found several people interested in coffee roasting and had sent them to my blog. Well none of them announced themselves (posted a comment), so I can’t tell if they did. I urge you to post a comment when you visit us so that we can know you visited.

However, for those who are interested in exploring the world of coffee – get ready to be surprised. If you haven’t had freshly roasted coffee, ground in a burr grinder and served in a French press, you haven’t really had coffee yet. Believe me, it’s a wonderful world. Coffee has more that 800 flavor compounds, more that 2 1/2 times that of wine.

So how do you get to experience all this? First, there is a lot of learning to do. Most of it you can do at these two sites:

Sweet Maria's
Sweet Maria’s is a blessing to the coffee world. They are (to my mind) the best green bean supplier in the US and are even used my many in Europe. They don’t just sell green beans though. Thom has extensive cupping notes on each coffee he stocks, and he only stocks the best. For a long time he had no Sulawesi on his list until a lot came in that met his standards. But that isn’t all. As you browse around the site you will find more information about coffee, coffee roasting and coffee accessories than you could imagine.

CoffeeGeek
Excellent articles, many product reviews but the best are the forums. This is a community of people who love all aspects of coffee. Join and participate in the forums. Unlike the pretentious and often hostile world of alt.coffee people are polite, very helpful, knowledgeable and eager to welcome a newbie to the dark side.

Want to change your enjoyment of coffee. You will hear this again and again both on alt.coffee and coffeegeek, buy a good burr grinder. They aren’t cheap but they are worth it. When we got our Solis Maestro Plus for the first time and just tried it out on some local roaster's coffee beans (probable 10 days old and therefore stale) we could hardly believe the difference, and a French Press will also make a huge difference, giving you the ability to control all aspects of the extraction

Now to roasting. Roasting coffee doesn’t smell like roasted coffee! In fact it can produce a lot of smoke. I cannot say enough about my Zach & Dani roaster. It has a catalytic converter and eliminates the smoke. Handy if you are in Nebraska in the winter. Put in the beans, press a button and 20 minutes or so later you have a beautifully roasted 1/4lb of beans. Not bad for $99. So why aren’t YOU roasting?

Friday, February 11, 2005

 

Light at the end of the tunnel

Yes it has been rather dreary, and not just the weather. That too is looking a little less bad. Maybe we can get rid of this snow and get the roads drivable again. On the food front it has not been so bad. Just after I posted that the food had not been memorable I had some memrable dishes. One a great Sicilian chicken dish with salted capers and salted anchovies (you cannot get them in Lincoln but try d'Itali.com). Very easy to make but delicious. This weekend I am looking forward to a Lamb Saag. Haven't done Indian in a while, it's about time. Since Ideal has a pork sale I shall be stocking up so it looks like a busy weekend making sausage!

Doing some great roasts and I'm just about ready to place a new order. Really curious about a couple of great loads that SM has in, a PNG and a Timor Maubese.

The project is almost ready to install but I won't be installing it until my bills are paid.

Nothing happening on the SF front but it will. Going over to see Matt and Carson's new house on Saturday.

Monday, February 07, 2005

 

Geek Warning!

I am not just a coffegeek, as you all know but a computer geek too and I want to warn everyone. Despite my geek status a few years ago my computer slowed to an unusable crawl. After having the experts treat it I found that I had been the victim of spyware. I soon went to every length I could figure to combat spyware and adware, let alone Trojans and viruses, and this was before spyware and adware had become so prevalent. Today it is estimated that over 80% of PCs are infected and their owners don’t realize it.

When I got my new computer the very first thing I did was load it to the gills with anti-spy-ware and anti-adware products and a good firewall. This has stood me in good stead. I urge all of you to be as vigilant. I hadn’t heard from my dear friend Angela in Switzerland for some time and was concerned. Yesterday I sent her an email and guess what? She was having problems with here PC and talking of Macs, as if that would be of anyhelp.

This is what I recommend to everybody to safeguard their system. This and keep in touch with your friendly local geek. There are always new wrinkles coming along.

Firewall and antivirus
Norton/McAffee, I don’t trust them and don’t recommend them. Zone Alarm has been around for years and was a leading shareware program. They are still the best as far as firewalls are concerned and Zone Alarm doesn't screw your computer up like the other two. Microsoft’s new firewall is to my mind useless, it doesn’t monitor outbound traffic, which is how spyware and adware go about their business.

Adware and Spyware: I find that there isn’t one program that does it all but I do recommend SpyBot(free) and AdAware as well as Spyware Doctor from PCtools. I am giving the beta version of Microsoft’s AntiSpyware a trial and so far it is holding up well, although some things get through it. Mainly through Outlook’s vulnerabilities. Remember to run scan’s regularly though even though it can be time-consuming.

I recently recommended that you change your browser to Firefox and wasn’t at all surprised to see that most of you have already done so. In fact I was following a post on one of the forums and a webmaster for a major site estimated that 30% of their visitors were using Firefox. So much for Microsoft’s claim that it’s share of the market had dropped from 96% to 90%.

I also highly recommend getting a Gmail account (I still have a few invitations left if you need one) to wean yourself off Outlook and it's many vulnerabilities and take advantage of web-based email.
Any of these program's can be found by Googling them or going to http://www.download.com/

Sunday, February 06, 2005

 

The doldrums

Or should that be the doldra? Nothing much to report - the food is always good but lately not memorable. The coffee is always good - working on my Harar and planning my next purchases. The work is at the grind stage and nothing much is happening on the SF front. Hopefully this is the calm before the storm.
Once this project is finished there will be more inclination for enjoyments and fun and the SF situation will work itself out. Just have to be patient - a virtue I have never exceled at.

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