@gburke: A variant of this is to take the monitor and actually turn it upside down at the same time, leaning the pedestal against the cube wall. Then, when your buddy gets back, his screen is upside down but still legible. A real mind-bender.
I wouldn't say I'm a fanboy of it, but I dual-boot it on my MacBook, and I have to say that I actually like it quite a bit. It gets used whenever Windows is the right OS for the task at hand. I was never a fan of XP, and Vista was a train-wreck. MS finally got it right, IMO.
I prefer the zero-knowledge and client-side encryption aspects of Spideroak. They compete with several of the top contenders here when it comes to price, but their features win out overall. #onlinebackup
Vote: Spideroak #onlinebackup
Sorry, Privax is not what I was thinking of, it was [e-pr0xy.com] that kept the up-to-date list of open proxies. As a security guy, I catalog a lot of these tools and managed to get confused. My apologies.
I've also had good luck with the proxy list at [www.privax.us]
Not to toot my own horn too much, but I wrote a five-part series on web filter evasion and it's quite relevant to the content, so hopefully readers will find it very helpful - [www.h-i-r.net]
The sweet spot will be finding the right amount of time to infuse the coffee at your refrigerator's temperature. Too short, you get a bland watery drink. Too long, you over-extract the coffee and end up with an acrid disaster (neophytes think this bitter beverage is 'strong' coffee, it's not)
If you have a conical burr grinder (as opposed to the blade/blender grinder), you can adjust the coffee's coarseness to fine-tune the brew. If it's not rich enough for you, use a finer grind. If it's bitter and over-extracted, use a coarser grind. Conical burr grinders can be had at Target or Wal-Mart for cheaper than you think. I got my Black & Decker one for less than $40.
It often goes without saying that you get what you pay for with most things. Coffee is no exception. Start with whole bean coffee roasted recently by a competent local shop. It costs more than Folger's or Seattle's Best, but it's worth it.
Lighter roasts have more delicate flavors and usually pack more caffeine. Darker roasts have richer, deeper notes and due to being cooked longer lose some caffeine content naturally.
Brewing great coffee is an art, but there's plenty of science behind it as well. A properly extracted brew will be rich and bold, without a bitter edge to it. If you don't infuse it long enough but over-compensate with too much coffee for the water you're using, you don't get all the different flavors. If you infuse it for too long or use less coffee than you should, you extract the acidic flavors from the bean. The proper way to "tone down" coffee that's too strong is to add a bit of water to it after it's brewed or to try using a lighter roast.
Really good burr grinders are expensive, but both Black & Decker and Krups make some entry level burr grinders below $40 that do a much better job at consistent ground size than the "will it blend?" style blade choppers. If you're going to run your coffee through a French Press, you want a coarse grind, and that's really hard to do with a blade grinder. You'll get everything from dust to whole beans that went unscathed. since burr grinders eject the grounds once they get to the proper size, you don't end up with whole beans in your French Press, and you get a lot less fine-ground dust (which slips through the press and gives you a cup of "cowboy coffee")
Our clothes dryer (technically owned by our landlord) kept going on the fritz. The landlord kept replacing the bunk dryers with used ones. This is a pretty large apartment complex. The dryer they gave us most recently was taking forever to dry clothes and it was noisy from a failing drum bearing. I finally took matters into my own hands, reducing the dryer to a pile of sheet-metal panels, a drum, a motor/fan assembly and heater element. The entire dryer was clogged with lint and one of the two elements was broken. I fixed everything up in about three hours and it's like having a brand new dryer again, for the cost of (cheap) parts vs. waiting a few days to get a dryer in worse condition or giving up and buying our own.
It's been great, Gina. Here's to recognizing your calling, once again taking the reigns and turning play into work once more. Now go git'm!
I firmly embraced my bicycle as my primary mode of transportation. I drove to work only once this year, and that was because I'd needed to pick my wife up from the hospital after work. I'm also about 30 miles shy of riding my bike 5,000 miles for the year. I'll get that wrapped up tomorrow.
@Liffey: I have a few friends on Dailymile from elsewhere in the world. They indeed log their workouts in kilometers. dailykilometer just doesn't have that ring to it, though.
@Mike Panic: You've been packing on the miles making me look bad. Just wait till summer. :P --Noah aka ax0n
No, I can't leave the smack talk on Dailymile. It REALLY is that competitive, but all in great fun.
CHDK, automatically-booted with the "Write-Protect" trick as annotated on the CHDK wiki, is literally a DAILY BOON to me. I am constantly getting compliments on the photos I take, and questions about what camera I'm shooting with. FYI: It's a PowerShot A530, nothing to write home about. While a lot of it comes from the fact that I just take a TON of photos and only keep the interesting ones, CHDK gives me that extra edge of increased information and flexibility from my consumer-grade point-and-shoot.
What is this? Some Jedi Mind Trick for my Mac?
*waving hand* This is not the song I'm looking for...
*waving hand* This is not the song I'm looking for...
As one who used to work from the Coffee Office, I felt no guilt as long as I got at least one espresso beverage and one snack item (usually a pastry), although I'd often refill with black coffee throughout the rest of the day. I'd also get one of those black coffee refills "on the house". To me, that means the owner felt he was getting his money's worth from me.
@lestat730: I don't ride down the highway. There are roads that are adjacent to the highway where people not only respect cyclists, but they're used to seeing them. I'm shooting for 5,000 miles on the bike this year, and only have a little more than 600 to go. I chronicle my cycling adventures at kc-bike.net (more a journal than a blog)
I agree with cmowire. I bike to work, which in the good weather is 29 miles round trip. I'm not too fast on the bike, so it's about 2 hours on the bike every day. Given that the highway is a parking lot on my homebound commute, this only adds about 45 minutes to my commute versus driving my car. I get 2 hours of cardio, 2 hours of time to think, 2 hours of focusing on what's a quarter-mile down the road (as opposed to what's 54" from my face) and a lot less stress than driving, all crammed into 45 minutes added to my commute. What's crazy is I'm not eating much more than I was 2 years ago before I started riding. My metabolism's up, my weight is down, and I feel healthier now at 29 than I did at 19.
When it gets snowy, I have a mountain bike that I use to get to the bus stop a few miles from home. I can take the bike downtown on the bus, and still have the option to ride all the way home or travel around town for errands or lunch if I want. I've driven to work once in the last year and a half, and that was to pick my wife up from the hospital after work.
VOTE: is.gd - I haven't found anything that makes shorter URLs
Logitech MX Revolution (desktop) and VX Revolution (mobile) have been the mainstays of my computing world lately.
First and foremost, battery life is exceptional. Then, there's Logitech's proprietary wireless, which results in a stable connection and crisp response. Both feel natural to me for all-day computing use.
I picked up my VX before the nano reciever was out, but aside from the size of the first-gen USB reciever, I have no complaints at all about either of them.
