I am one of “those people” (cue the eyes rolling and snide smirks). I like the over roasted flavor of Starbucks coffee - and when it is combined with an unhealthy dose of steamed whole milk and some chocolate syrup. At the same time my budget is thankfully that not one of the 1000’s of caffeine dens is within 50 miles of me.

My solution is to keep a hand-me-down espresso machine functioning well enough to exhume my morning elixir from second rate Arabica dust.

I finally decided to meet taste and budget on the long yellow line (that’s the center of the road for those getting lost in my analogies). I now mix a brick of Pilon “south of the border” espresso with a bag of fresh ground (Turkish setting) Starbucks beans - what ever is available because a junkie can’t be choosy where the next fix comes from.

If you are a coffee drinker and not an espresso fiend, then you can use pre-ground high end coffee mixes with any one of a variety of ground coffee bricks. If you are an espresso drinker, the choices are much more limited. In my area, the Pilon brick is the only espresso ground choice.

The result is quite good and since the brick of Pilon is typically $2.99, the mix brings Starbucks down to the affordable plateau .

Now before you jump to the comments thinking this is an easy one, look close at the title. I am not asking a question as much as exclaiming surprise and even outrage. What I am saying is; ” This is just wrong!”

The Eastern Shore has the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Chesapeake Bay on the west and the two make for a raw, windy, and occasionally damp winter but they do not make a climate indicative of snow! All of last winter brought two miniscule atempts at flurries. So what is going on her !? It’s not yet Thanksgiving and I am making snow balls !? (Granted, this snow does make for nearly perfect snow balls but that’s beside the point.)

I realize the nation voted for change but this was not on the ballot!

I am representative of the old adage, “what you see is what you get” - or in the case of my blog “what you read is what you get”.

Update: read to the end for something interesting ….

RTTC and then MIB blogged about the use of Typeanalyzer.com to calculate a Myers Briggs style personality indicator type based on blog entries.

Typeanalyzer uses a classification engine from uClassify.com. It is the same engine that GenderAnalyzer.com uses. I don’t know all of the in’s and out’s of these systems but it does seem that the rules and heuristics that Typeanalyzer has created are pretty good given the limited view is has for calculating results. Here is what Typeanalyzer came up with …

ESTP - The Doers: The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

Sound like anyone you know ?

BTW: GenderAnalyzer.com said my blog was written by a male (pretty smart) whereas vowe.net was reported to be written by a female - sorry Volker <giggle> And, if you blog, what results do you get for Typeanalyzer.com or GenderAnalyzer.com ?

Interesting Update: The above was based on the analysis *before* my five posts for today. I re-ran the analysis and got a different answer. My guess is the analyzer is only using the front page and thus is a very limited view of the blog author(s). Here is what it came up with after including today’s blog entries …

ISTP - The Mechanics - The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.  The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

The change in results might indicate weaknesses in the analyser or perhaps I’m a Gemini.

This is an update on my prior post about using the Prism plug-in for the Firefox browser. I now have nearly a dozen “web applications” that I’ve made from websites. The fist one I created was for Google Reader. Now I have added one for my local weather, National Radar map, Grand Central, Premiere Conferencing, my work email’s Web interface, our corporate directory, and the web interface to my Network Storage. During a recent Woot-off, I even created one of these web applications for Woot so it was easy to keep up-to-date on the deals.

I find it very handy to have “windows” rather than browser links to these applications. The windows remember their size and placement. Prism runs these applications as separate from the browser and even remembers login information separate from the browser. While I do not get “off-line” access, that’s not a concern since most of these web applications are for specific servers or very time sensitive (weather now not a few hours ago) so if I don’t have a network connection, the service would not be much use anyway.

all in all, it is one of the better productivity enhancements I’ve adopted over the past several months. It goes especially well with StandaloneStacks which I use to extend my taskbar!

I find that “nature” on the Eastern Shore does a pretty good job of putting on it’s best for the holidays. My farm and the rental property both have an abundance of Holly trees and starting in mid-November, the Holly take on a festive collage of red and green. For the more beauty minded, the Camellia start to bloom at nearly the same time. The result is a very beautiful but very juxtaposed landscape …