Coffee review: Daily Grind

a simple boring brew that will be drinkable by the most people.

specific review info:
Not much going on, but it isn't bitter at all. Also, pretty watery- not really in a bad way though. I wouldn't want to drink it regularly, but it's kind of nostalgiac, even though I don't have a lot of coffee history to reach back on.

specific brew info:
had it with breakfast at the sandstone cafe, added some sugar and little creamer stuff.

coffee review: Peet's Major Dickason's roast

Summary Comment: smooth, rich tast, almost chocolaty. This is my most favorite roast yet!

Specific review info:
The good flavors happen all the way through the mouthful- from beginning to end. No aftertaste that need rationalizing. Some subtle flavors in there that I'm not sure what to call yet.

Specific brew info:
This is my daily brew, 3.5 scoops (7 tablespoons), to 13 oz water, with a couple of teaspoons of sugar and enough milk to bring it to 16 oz.

coffee review: Pike's Place Roast

Summary Comment: a little more burnt taste than I like, but drinkable.

Specific review info:
While the flavor is pretty clear, it lacks a body. Most of the flavor is punctuated at the end, by the (not necessarily bad) burnt taste.

Specific brew info:
This was a commercially brewed cup from Starbuck's at the corner of 395 and Clearwater in Kennewick. I added two sugars (maybe one too many) and a bit of whole milk.

Palouse Falls

20080511_palouse_falls

We had a very nice trip to Palouse Falls last weekend. The above picture links to my picasa album of photos from there. It was very beautiful, kind of windy, and a little cold that day. But, we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.

Coffee Review: Tully's House Blend

Summary Comment: a little weak, but not too bad.

Specific review info:

At one point I thought I tasted brandy, and no, I hadn't added any myself.  So, there are some interesting flavors in there, but the general body is pretty mild.

Specific brew info:

This was a commercially brewed cup bought at the Kennewick Fred Meyer Tully stand.  I added one packet of Sugar in the Raw, and a few tablespoons of whole milk.

Opening Day, Farmers Market

We bought 5 pounds of Asparagus for $10.  Not much else there for produce, but one booth had silantro for sale.

new cook book!

I check out this book from the library about two weeks ago:

and all the recipes we've tried have been excellent.  So excellent in fact, we bought it!  I highly recommend the onion soup, the cheese spread ideas, the rice pudding.  We've had a few others, and they've been good too.  To boot, the recipes have all been quite quick and easy, simple, with a few ingredients.

I'll be expecting a check for my advertising work, Mr. Bittman.

ISI cam

I've got a web cam grabbing images once a minute and making them available for public consumption:

You can find the current image here, and a bunch of old image here.  Eventually I'll make a movie out of them.

Briefly, what that big metal shiny thing at the right is:

1. active (like with actuators and stuff) seismic isolation platform
2. made out of aluminum
3. weighs about 5000 pounds
4. contains more than 1000 helicoils, all put in by hand (a couple of hundred by yours truly).
   what that means is that all the little holes you see are tapped into the aluminum, but then a small hard steel insert is wound in.  This is what the screw or bolt will bite into, instead of damaging the soft aluminum body.
5. will support some optics inside the vacuum system soon.

MdDS is gone

It went on Saturday, but I wasn't totally sure until today.  Yay!

smirking, a lot

I've found myself laughing to myself several times over the last three days about this.  Warning: juvenile humor and some foul language.  Also, it helps if you know what Twitter is.

MDDS: Mal de Debarquement Syndrome

Apparently I have Mal de Debarquement Syndrom (MDDS).  This is self-limiting, which means the dizziness should go away on it's own after some time (days to months).  I'm hoping for the former, and to encourage that, I have some exercises to do: mostly looking around quickly, or tracking things.  I'll keep you posted.

am I on a boat?

I feel like I'm on a boat.

Since getting back yesterday, I have a slight, subtle, wobbly feeling.  Every few steps, the floor won't be quite in the right place.  Or, after a while sitting in front of the computer, I feel like my head is turn a little all by itself.  If I were a cartoon, I would probably have little circles around my head.

If it keeps up tomorrow, I'm calling my doctor.

Onion Soup

I made onion soup from Mark Bittman's How to Cook everything Vegetarian last night.  It was good last night, I had never made or had onion soup before.  The soup was even better after sitting in the fridge overnight and re-warmed for lunch today!  It's like a revelation- really good!  The hardest part was slicing the onions.  If you need to make a soup that is easy and full of flavor, make this one!  Unfortunately I don't have a link to the actual recipe.  I checked this book out from my local library though.

coffee review compendium

Note: this entry will be updated. This list is ordered from best to worst.

The Best

1. Pete's: Major Dickason's Blend: very good
2. Starbucks: Ubora Blend: very good
3. Raven's Brew: Three Peckered Billy Goat: good.

Middle Grounds

1. Starbucks: Espresso blend: okay.
2. Starbucks: Pike's Place Roast: a little bitter.
3. Daily Grind: plain, but nostalgiac.
   
4. Tully's: House Blend: weak.
5. McDonalds Premium Roast: watery.

The Rest

coffee review: McDonald's Premium Roast

Summary Comment: watered down.

Specific review info:
really weak in the flavor department. Not too hot, so I could drink it right away. It was not overly bitter which was nice, just not much flavor.

Specific brew info:
This was a commercially brewed cup bought in Hood River, Oregon. Additions included one packet of plain white sugar and one tub of "coffee cream".

last day and trip home (bonus day!)

Sunday was our last day in Syracuse. Our flight left at 3:30 in the afternoon, so we pretty much had a full day to mess around. Lunch and coffee with Eiichi, we really had to drive around to find a place open on Sunday morning! That was kind of a surprise.

Now, some highlights from the return voyage:

• due to a canceled flight prior flight, we were selected to change travel arrangements. In the end it didn't mean much- we flew to JFK instead of Atlanta, and then nonstop to Portland.
• The Delta Connections pilot from SYR to JFK was kind of a "race car driver"- taking the corners (on the ground) kind of fast compared to other pilots, and accelerating out of the turn at take off. Not scary, just unusual.
• Departing from JFK we experienced some "congestion", there were quite a number of planes queued up to leave the terminal. So many in fact that we couldn't back up. While taxiing around the airport I could see about 6 planes in front of us at one point. Later the pilot announced that we were number eight in line for departure! In the end we were only 20 minutes late (the really flew to get us home) from our original landing time. This would have been over an hour from our earlier itinerary, except that plane was delayed too and arrived at the same time as we did!
• Our checked bag took the Atlanta route.
• When we landed in Portland it felt like 2 AM!
• We got in the car at about 6:30 AM pacific time, which felt like 9:30 AM, but we still only got about 5 hours of sleep.
• On I-84, we saw two interesting things: an entire box car (for rail) laying on its side on a flat bed truck; a pickup truck with the bed full of wagon wheels, some of them looking really old!
• It took us almost two days to get all the way home. Still, I find it utterly amazing: we flew across the entire country!

Forgot to mention above: we were upgraded to Business class (first class? we were in row 1) for the 6 hour flight from JFK to PDX. This got us dinner (good for a plane, I would say) and complimentary movies/games on the in flight monitors. I watched two movies which I'll sum up:

1. There will be blood: gruesome. It was very well composed, but due to the subject matter, I'm not sure I enjoyed it.
2. National Treasure 2: dumbest plot ever. I expected this. The first one was better, but it was okay- if your stuck on a plane for six hours.
   

heading home

we're in Syracuse airport waiting to board delta flight 4371 at 3:30 eastern bound for Atlanta. Our flight to PDX is delta 669, but we aren't seated on it yet- I'll update you on that after we check in. Presumably we'll be on it.

Syracuse, Day 4

Most of today was spent looking at a couple of apartments. See the map. We did manage to get a little lost this time. We missed the turn to the airport off I-90. We were trying to check in for our flight, but you can only do the 24-hours-a-head-of-time-thing on line.

The three apartments we saw:

1. labeled B, Grant Village Apartments. It's in a run down neighborhood. Heat is included though.
2. labeled D, Covered Bridge Apartments, because it has a covered bridge. The 1 room apartments are down stairs with the windows buried under snow in winter. Also, it has a sliding door in the shower.
3. labeled E, Grenadier Village, located on the Seneca River. Very nice and also the most expensive of the three we saw.
   

We ate at The Retreat in Liverpool, labeled C. It was nice, and we beat the rush, just barely! The food was good, and the service pretty prompt.

mobile blogging

I'm such a nerd... I can blog from my mobile phone.

Syracuse, Day 3

I'll try to keep it a little shorter than yesterday's summary. A few bullets:

• attended the Syracuse GWG meeting this morning, which lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
  a couple of things I found out aboout:
  - the Einstein@Home home team, SUGWG has moved up 2,000 spots in the rankings since adding the SUGAR cluster.
  - how to estimate the coincident rate for glitches from a couple of channels (bad sentence summary).
  - global warming is going to be very bad, a summary statement from the APS meeting this week in St. Louis.
  - of course, more stuff.
• had lunch with that group. Stephanie really got along well with Peter! That made me happpy.
• A road tour around Onandoga Lake to see what the neighborhoods were like (thanks Josh!).
  - I found out what New Yorks obsession is with the word "Empire": when people first moved here, they stated that the area that would become the state of New York had everything necessary for an empire.

After that, Stephanie and I headed off to find some quiet time at the hotel.

Also, I determined that the right bank is probably HSBC, it has branches both here and in back home. If anyone knows anything about this bank, please let me know!