So long, and thanks for all the views!

Sweeping out the attic, mopping up the basement, clearing out the garage. Everything not of value must go.


Messages from people I haven't heard from in 5 years. Confirmation of orders from Amazon.com that I have received, used and probably thrown away. Promotional offers that I have never taken advantage of. Things that should have been marked as being spam, but lazily never were. Facebook notifications. Yes - someone commented on my blog post. No - sorry, you did not get the job.


Yes, after six years and sixteen thousand messages, I finally went through my GMail account and gave it a much-needed cleaning out. It took a while, and after a bit (the first twenty pages), I got pretty lazy, and, where before I was making surgically precise deletions with the finely honed scalpel of my own human intellect, I ended up trusting the machine and clear-cutting through the forest of emails with nothing less than the Napalm that is Google's filtering mechanism.


*sigh*


Much remains; letters from friends and family, mostly. And of course, every word that Carrie has ever tossed to me from across the transom that separates one DNS server from another has been lovingly saved and preserved and cherished, or will be on my hard drive (which prompted me to clean out the account in the first place - ever try to download sixteen thousand messages including several gigabytes of attachements? Not fun!).


But that is just the beginning. My Yahoo email account, my very first one ever, which I signed up for back in 1997, is no more. Neither is the Flickr account that I dumped in favor of Picassa. No longer am I documenting ad tedium about my Java Programming or ad nauseum about my the routes that I run. Pretty soon, I'll no longer be issuing ad infinitum massive missives about all things "just Charlie (or Tony, or C.A.)". Yes, folks, sadly, this will be my final post here on the (soon to be gone) "Caffeine - Nation, baby!".


I am taking a good hard look at the relations that I have on the overcrowded (and increasingly more trite) warrens of Facebook , and go about building the relations that I want. I am slimming down and straightening up, re-asserting the priorities that I had once held dear, and re-focusing my sights on the things that are truly important to me. Which doesn't include blogging, but (in what could be a rather paradoxical twist) blogging about the things that are important to me does give me relief of a sort; call it catharsis, I guess. It also give me pleasure; call it self-indulgence. But, rather than electing to speak solely in an ego-centric forum (which is what "Caffeine - Nation" really is), I will be speaking more and more within the context of the wonderful family that I am truly fortunate to belong to: the one that has Carrie, Charlie, Gabriel, Oliver and Axia at its core. Having said such, I invite you to read about our continuing travels, travails and "just the normal pace of life stuff" at C.C. and the Beans.


Of course, instead of focusing on three diversions, I shall be keeping notes of my one allowed dalliance, writing (which is one of the things that I am planing on focusing a bit more on) at Charlie's Cafe. You can join me there as well, if you'd like.


See you - there :)


- Tony / C.A. / Charlie




-update( September 11, 2010)


It has been a while since I originally wrote this post and saved  it as a draft. Several things have changed since then, which has caused me to rewrite it slightly. I am planning on starting up a programming-centric blog, but (hopefully) it won't be as tech and code heavy as the last one. But I will always put my blogging efforts first and foremost into C.C. and the Beans.


-update ( October 8, 2010)


I really should just push  this out there, shouldn't I? I've ported most of my Blogger posts to my Wordpress account, so hopefully things won't seem too strange there.

Is it over?

The heat wave (for us, anyway) lasted into last weekend, with things finally cooling down a few days ago with high temps in the 60's. The forecast for the next few days seems to be tolorable, with temps in the mid to high seventies. 


Having grown up in Maryland, I am used to much hotter summers than these, and I don't really mind being outside during the middle of a hot and muggy summer; however, growing up in Maryland, I was also used to this little thing called "Air Conditioning", something which is sorely lacking here in Seattle.  So, I'll continue to be glad (and hopeful) for lower temperatures for the rest of the summer.

Life is too short...

...for mediocre espresso shots.


In the mornings (and sometimes in the afternoon), my drink of choice is usually a quad vanilla espresso. I used to get very dry quad vanilla cappucinos, but few and far between was the barista who could either pull the shots correctly, or (more often) get what the 'very dry' part of my drink order meant.


These days, however, I am finding that fewer and fewer baristas are even attempting to pull the 4 shots needed for my quad vanilla espresso correctly. There seems to be this popularly held misconception that pulling a shot of espresso means filling a shot glass to the line with espresso; it does not. A good shot will be about two-thirds crema and one third coffee:

Usually, though, I prefer my shots to be pulled short, that is, stopped well before the crema forms, meaning that I should only be getting about an ounce. Too many places pull the shots long, and don't pack thier coffee sufficiently - or they use the wrong beans - so that no crema forms.


There are places that I frequent that "get it", and others that don't. In the former group:

• Trabant (I go to their downtown location)
• Victrola (Beacon Hill)
• Empire Espresso
• Vivace (Both the one in Capitol Hill and the one in Cascade)
• Caffe Bella

Maybes:

• The Station (Louis makes a good quad vanilla cappucino)
• Columbia City Bakery (I can get a good quad vanilla espresso from them, but only a fair quad shot)

And, finally, the ones who don't:

• Starbucks (No surprise there)
• Cherry Street Espresso (The one barista who pulled decent shots at the Mueseum location no longer works there)
• Motore (They used to pull good shots, but the last few times that I've been there I've noticed a definite downhill slide in shot quality)

Heat Wave 2010 - day deux (The Caffine-Nation edition)

The second day found Seattle in the grips of yet another day in the 90's,. It also found Casa Gaboli in the grips of being in a relatively enclosed space without the benefits of either decent natural circulation or air conditioning. For my part, I decided to do what I could to help my body deal with the heat:

There you go - Charlie Burrell's Shaved Head. If only I could get a band to name itself after the occasion ;) At least it makes running a cooler affair!

Some of you may think that it's a bit trite of me to kvetch about us having a few days of temperatures in the 80's and 90's. But you have to remember that, if you are one of those people, chances are that you at least have a nicely Air Conditioned space to retreat to at the end of  the day. At the very least, you probably have a place that has decent ventilation. Here in Seattle, the former is a rarity for residential establishments, and the latter is a luxury that is dependent upon location, and therefore priced accordingly. Our place lies on the downslope of Beacon Hill, and abuts neighboring houses on three sides  that are less than twenty yards away. We simply don't get any sort of decent ventilation in our place. But we're working on alternatives.

Heat Wave 2010 - day one

With the advent of temperatures above 80, I think that I will declare this to be the beginning of Heat Wave 2010. The situation is a bit different this year; we are not using our ghetto AC in the kids' room, we have 2 kids in that room, and we have an extra person in the household. We had a representative from a local HVAC place come out to our house to give us an estimate, but I have yet to receive the proposals. Grrrr....


So, I trekked down to Lowes last night in search of fans.  Just as I thought, there were rather slim pickings - a rotating model set atop an ugly iron frame for $160, and a smaller portable model for $20. I grabbed two of the latter and  then made my way home.  They make a little bit of difference, but not as much of one as would, say, a centralized air conditioning system installed by the same folks who came by our house to give us an estimate. Just sayin'.

Emerald City Fish and Chips

During their stay with us, Carrie's parents developed a hankering for fish and chips. Not wanting to waste time and  effort assembling the troops to make the arduous trek downtown for the ever-touristy Ivars, and following up on a personal recommend made by a friend, we opted to go with a local place, Emerald City Fish and chips. My father- and sister-in law flew.


I wasn't impressed at all. I got Catfish and my wife got Halibut. Both portions were less than a quarter-inch thick, the breading was soggy, and the fillets themselves were dry and rubbery. The chips were limp and tasteless. The tartar sauce, which had the right amount of tanginess, was the best thing about the entire affair

They came, they saw - grandkids, they went

My parents-in-law breezed into town from Utah for the 4th of July weekend. I had plans to do some major yardwork on that Friday and Saturday, but, instead, I spent those days hanging out for the most part; Friday,preparing my kick-ass pulled pork by liberally appying a sweet and spicy rub and letting it sit overnight, and Saturday, getting the 7-1/2 pounds of Boston Butt out and cooking it.


About that...


I really need to pay attention to recipies. The pulled pork recipe, which was originally written for charcoal grills, had the following steps:

1. Rubdown pork
2. Let sit overnight
3. Take out allow to come up to room temperature
4. Preheat grill
5. Grill uncovered in a aluminum roasting pan for 3 hours at 275
6. Preheat oven
7. Bake covered with aluminum foil for 2 hours
8. Allow to rest covered in a paper bag for an hour

Guess which step I conviniently forgot? Yep. I forgot that that pig had to spend an additional 2 hours in the oven. This would not have been so bad, except for the fact that we had invited our good friends Alex, Refugiuo and Brad over for dinner. Hurredly we prepared a quick grilled pulled chicken tenderloin recipe alongside the homemade classic and North Carolina barbecue sauces and called it good. The pulled pork, which came out of the paper bag two hours after company left, was a delicious treat for all.