Thursday, September 28, 2006
Cell Phones
The most insidious device ever invented by man is the cell phone. All my suspisions and fears about carrying a cell phone have come true. Let me describe what happened yesterday on two different occasions throughout the day. I sat down at my desk to check a voicemail on my land line, as I was listening, someone was trying to ring through, also at the same time, my cell phone was ringing and it was work related. Why would you call someone's cell phone during normal business hours when they have a phone line? I'll tell you why, we have become a culture of instant gratification. Whenever some little thought or need pops into our heads, we start to freak out if we can't communicate it immeadiately. Look what I'm doing now! I could have waited til I saw all of you to spew this little rant, but now that not fazt enough, I have to get it out there! How about this little scenario, you're meeting with a client and all of a sudden another client is ringing through on your celly, ahhhhh what to do! If I ignore the call the client I'm with will think that I ignore calls from clients, if I answer it, I'm just that dick that answers his phone in the middle of conversations. You can't win and thats the way THEY want it. Insidious I tell you.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
How to Make a good Latte'
I'm posting this because for two days in a row now at 2 different coffee places I've gotten crappy Latte's. And its the reason I moved to regular drip coffee for the most part. But Dammit, sometimes a man needs a Latte.
First, get your espresso shot ready to pour but steam your milk first! get the milk nice and warm and then start making your foam by holding the steam tip just under the surface of the the milk and gently moving it up and down. Not too much foam, if your making one latte, a half inch layer of foam is plenty. Watch your thermometer! Once the milk gets to 139-140 degrees, SHUT THE STEAM OFF! Once the steam is off the temp will continue to rise to 145 degrees. Now, this is complicated, start your shot pouring and get the milk pitcher and tamp it down on the counter a few times. This will burst any big bubbles in the foam and will make it stiff and managable. Pour your shot in your cup first, (if you do it the other way around, you have a machiatto) and pour your milk into the cup, using a spoon to hold back the foam. (Remember, a shot of espresso and a bunch of foam is a cappuccino NOT a latte.) once the cup is about 3/4 full with milk and coffee stop pouring and use the spoon to push in the nice stiff foam. DO NOT just remove the spoon and continue to pour. A good latte should have a head of foam about the size of a good head on a beer. Some people like it flat (no foam) I guess thats okay. Having it with non-fat milk is not, the foam sucks, and only accomplished master baristas like myself can get a good head of foam from non-fat milk.
Things to watch out for.
Don't burn the milk. A pitcher of milk can be steamed once and only once. As soon as you try to reheat an already heated and steamed pitcher of milk, the temperature will jump up too fast and you'll have burnt milk before you know it. (this is whats happened the last two times I went to the Starbucks on Colorado and Los Robles) When you're at Starbucks and you hear the milk steaming...if it sounds really deep and hollow...the barista has burnt the milk and you're in for a crappy drink.
Feel the weight. A good latte, should have the heft of a full cup of drip coffee. If the cup feels too light, you've gotten a lazy barista and its probably a cappuccino. (This is what happened at Gelsons this morning.)
The funny thing is that I worked at Starbucks, but I didn't learn how to make proper espresso drinks there. I was taught by old school masters when I worked for a company called Old Pacific Coffee. They used to have a coffee cart at the conference center, but now they're based in Temecula. Those dudes knew how to make coffee.
First, get your espresso shot ready to pour but steam your milk first! get the milk nice and warm and then start making your foam by holding the steam tip just under the surface of the the milk and gently moving it up and down. Not too much foam, if your making one latte, a half inch layer of foam is plenty. Watch your thermometer! Once the milk gets to 139-140 degrees, SHUT THE STEAM OFF! Once the steam is off the temp will continue to rise to 145 degrees. Now, this is complicated, start your shot pouring and get the milk pitcher and tamp it down on the counter a few times. This will burst any big bubbles in the foam and will make it stiff and managable. Pour your shot in your cup first, (if you do it the other way around, you have a machiatto) and pour your milk into the cup, using a spoon to hold back the foam. (Remember, a shot of espresso and a bunch of foam is a cappuccino NOT a latte.) once the cup is about 3/4 full with milk and coffee stop pouring and use the spoon to push in the nice stiff foam. DO NOT just remove the spoon and continue to pour. A good latte should have a head of foam about the size of a good head on a beer. Some people like it flat (no foam) I guess thats okay. Having it with non-fat milk is not, the foam sucks, and only accomplished master baristas like myself can get a good head of foam from non-fat milk.
Things to watch out for.
Don't burn the milk. A pitcher of milk can be steamed once and only once. As soon as you try to reheat an already heated and steamed pitcher of milk, the temperature will jump up too fast and you'll have burnt milk before you know it. (this is whats happened the last two times I went to the Starbucks on Colorado and Los Robles) When you're at Starbucks and you hear the milk steaming...if it sounds really deep and hollow...the barista has burnt the milk and you're in for a crappy drink.
Feel the weight. A good latte, should have the heft of a full cup of drip coffee. If the cup feels too light, you've gotten a lazy barista and its probably a cappuccino. (This is what happened at Gelsons this morning.)
The funny thing is that I worked at Starbucks, but I didn't learn how to make proper espresso drinks there. I was taught by old school masters when I worked for a company called Old Pacific Coffee. They used to have a coffee cart at the conference center, but now they're based in Temecula. Those dudes knew how to make coffee.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Traveling at the Speed of Light
For those involved in last night's discussion and still give a shit, here's a quote from A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking:
"As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises ever more quickly, so it takes more and more energy to speed it up further. It can in fact never reach the speed of light, because by then its mass would have become infinite, and by the equivalence of mass and energy, it would have taken an infinite amount of energy to get it there. For this reason, any normal object is forever confined by relativity to move at speeds slower than the speed of light."
"As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass rises ever more quickly, so it takes more and more energy to speed it up further. It can in fact never reach the speed of light, because by then its mass would have become infinite, and by the equivalence of mass and energy, it would have taken an infinite amount of energy to get it there. For this reason, any normal object is forever confined by relativity to move at speeds slower than the speed of light."
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
MovieStar At D&B
Yes there is a movie star at Dave and Buster's where I work at. He actually works there at Dave and Buster's. He's an up and coming movie star and soon will be known throughout the world. If you don't know it's me!!!! ALEXANDER "HOLLYWOOD" MOOOOOEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yup my new movie Accepted came out and my word of mouth have made it spread throughout Dave and Buster's like wildfire. Every day i come in I hear from another person saying Hey I saw you in your movie. It's a great feeling. I will probably get more better ones soon. About I've counted about 15 people that have said they saw me. Two of the managers are calling me Hollywood (at my request) but they still do it. Even some of the cooks are recognizing me from the movie and saying they saw me too. I didn't even say anything or had a name in this movie. Just imagine when I will have that. Yeah!!!!! Well I already saw Accepted and hopefully will see it again. Cuz I want everyone to see me and just Cuz That's How I Roll! So if you want to see a good movie and me then watch Accepted! Well let me end this post with a quote I made myself : "Life is a MOVIE and I'm the STAR!!!"
Monday, August 28, 2006
Seeing the Sequoia's in there natural habitat on this hike was incredible. Here are three young trees. And by young I mean they probably started growing the same time as the battle of Hastings (1066 A.D. for you non English Majors or right around the time all of Owen's poeple started speaking French). The sad part about taking their picture is that you can never get the whole tree into the frame.
I'm at home right now, and all the pictures from San Clemente (and there are some good ones are on Lauri's computer so you'll have to wait til tommorow for those. But for today here are some choice p
ics from out trip to Sequoia.
This is Lauri at the top of Moro Rock. It's got views like Half Dome, except you can drive right up to it, walk ten minutes, and you're at the top.
Some bitchy lady asked us to take a picute of their family, I volunteered Lauri, then they told her that it might be on their Christmas card. No pressure there! Anyway, they took a picture of us in return. I forgot to take of my sunglasses. This was at the General Sherman tree, which although is supposedly the largest tree in the park, it is not nearly as impressive as seeing them not surrounded by tourists and asphalt and is also not nearly as impressive as me and Lauri and so is not pictured here.
Once again, blogger is not cooperating with me as I try to post these pics, so I think I'll do them one by one from now on.
ics from out trip to Sequoia.This is Lauri at the top of Moro Rock. It's got views like Half Dome, except you can drive right up to it, walk ten minutes, and you're at the top.
Some bitchy lady asked us to take a picute of their family, I volunteered Lauri, then they told her that it might be on their Christmas card. No pressure there! Anyway, they took a picture of us in return. I forgot to take of my sunglasses. This was at the General Sherman tree, which although is supposedly the largest tree in the park, it is not nearly as impressive as seeing them not surrounded by tourists and asphalt and is also not nearly as impressive as me and Lauri and so is not pictured here.
Once again, blogger is not cooperating with me as I try to post these pics, so I think I'll do them one by one from now on.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Munci Bach Droog
Hey Dudes and Dudettes, hope all is well with camping, and i hope the surf doesn't suck for those of you who can pry themselves out of their camp chairs. i'm staging a slightly more lonley (and colder) camping trip in Britain next week- got three weeks off work so i'm gonna get my tent and my board and go wondering. have a coors light for me (and a tequila, and a pipe, and a vicoden).
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Jerks!
You are all jerks, I know that right now you're having a jolly ol'time setting up your little camping site, and having happy hour. Laughing playing sorry. Simply enjoying yourselves, while I am at work. You guys suck!
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Sunday, August 13, 2006
The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
In his book Life, the Universe, and Everything Douglas Adams describes Sunday afternoons in this way, “That terrible listlessness that starts to set in at 2:55pm, when you know you’ve taken all the baths you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock, the hands will move relentlessly on to four, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”
For me, the long dark tea time of the soul has, for a long time now, been a Sunday afternoon reality. Anytime I find myself with a Sunday off and Monday back at work, I dread Sunday afternoons. I get stressed out on Sundays. I find that as Sunday afternoon hits, I get restless as I think about how badly I’ve wasted the weekend and how the week ahead is going to suck because of it. Whether it was the term paper I was supposed to write, or the errands I was supposed to run, it all starts to pile up like “loose ends tying a noose in the back of my mind” (Beck). By 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon, I’ve watched all the TV I can possibly watch in a weekend and my mind just won’t concentrate on whatever is on. I start to get the urge to go out, but know that doing so will only cause suffering the next morning. So I sit and stare at the TV, not really watching anything, and my foot starts to violently twitch as the nervous energy starts to build up. I pace around and try to figure out what’s really making me all anxious, so I can maybe do something about it, but its never something specific, is it? Its either too late and you’ll just have to now consider the consequences or its just those thousand little things that on their own wouldn’t bother you, but taken together, keep you from enjoying The Simpsons.
I’ve long since given up trying to get a good night sleep on Sunday nights. With all the shit that builds up on Sunday night coupled having invariably slept in on Sunday morning I always just stare at the ceiling hoping that I fall asleep before 3am so I can at least get two hours sleep. I just figure that Monday morning is going to suck and I’ll be back in the swing by Tuesday morning.
The fucked up thing is that I know the solution to this little problem. I just have to not leave loose ends hanging on Friday and I need to get more exercise on the weekends so I’m more worn out on Sunday afternoons. And don’t think that I don’t make a pledge to do just that every time the long dark tea time of the soul rears its ugly head. But then Friday morning rolls through and you start to think about how hard you’ve worked all week and how no one works on Friday afternoon anyway and that you’ve earned a few beers…and there it is, and it all falls apart.
So here I am, deeply entrenched in the long dark tea time of the soul, stressing over the tiny crap that builds up, knowing that none of it is going to be as bad as it seems. Nevertheless, it almost midnight now and I have to be up at 5am. The scary thing about all this is that the quote I started out with is from a passage about how Sunday afternoons and the long dark tea time of the soul drove an immortal being mad.
So here's to hoping I'm not going mad.
For me, the long dark tea time of the soul has, for a long time now, been a Sunday afternoon reality. Anytime I find myself with a Sunday off and Monday back at work, I dread Sunday afternoons. I get stressed out on Sundays. I find that as Sunday afternoon hits, I get restless as I think about how badly I’ve wasted the weekend and how the week ahead is going to suck because of it. Whether it was the term paper I was supposed to write, or the errands I was supposed to run, it all starts to pile up like “loose ends tying a noose in the back of my mind” (Beck). By 3 o’clock Sunday afternoon, I’ve watched all the TV I can possibly watch in a weekend and my mind just won’t concentrate on whatever is on. I start to get the urge to go out, but know that doing so will only cause suffering the next morning. So I sit and stare at the TV, not really watching anything, and my foot starts to violently twitch as the nervous energy starts to build up. I pace around and try to figure out what’s really making me all anxious, so I can maybe do something about it, but its never something specific, is it? Its either too late and you’ll just have to now consider the consequences or its just those thousand little things that on their own wouldn’t bother you, but taken together, keep you from enjoying The Simpsons.
I’ve long since given up trying to get a good night sleep on Sunday nights. With all the shit that builds up on Sunday night coupled having invariably slept in on Sunday morning I always just stare at the ceiling hoping that I fall asleep before 3am so I can at least get two hours sleep. I just figure that Monday morning is going to suck and I’ll be back in the swing by Tuesday morning.
The fucked up thing is that I know the solution to this little problem. I just have to not leave loose ends hanging on Friday and I need to get more exercise on the weekends so I’m more worn out on Sunday afternoons. And don’t think that I don’t make a pledge to do just that every time the long dark tea time of the soul rears its ugly head. But then Friday morning rolls through and you start to think about how hard you’ve worked all week and how no one works on Friday afternoon anyway and that you’ve earned a few beers…and there it is, and it all falls apart.
So here I am, deeply entrenched in the long dark tea time of the soul, stressing over the tiny crap that builds up, knowing that none of it is going to be as bad as it seems. Nevertheless, it almost midnight now and I have to be up at 5am. The scary thing about all this is that the quote I started out with is from a passage about how Sunday afternoons and the long dark tea time of the soul drove an immortal being mad.
So here's to hoping I'm not going mad.
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