Yes, Its true

The movie "The Hangover" is a funny as everyone says.

Espresso Beans

I buy my Espresso here:

Inteligentsiacoffee.com — Black Cat Espresso, Old Faithful
Stumptowncoffee.com — Hairbender Espresso, My current favorite

Other famous roasters

Vivace — I use both their espressos, this is super traditional Ialian, not my fave.
Blue Bottle — Excellent new roaster, I’ll try them when I get tired of Stumptown.

Local Denver Roasters

Kaladi Brothers, University Blvd. -- Best Local beans
Crowfoot Valley, Castle Rock — Even localer for me.

Super-Z

One of our cats, Zoe a.k.a. Super-Z, is sick. She has a pretty good sized lump on her side. She is going in for surgery this morning to have the lump removed and biopsied.

Good Luck, Z.

Ugghh, Starbucks

This morning, out of desperation, I again gave Starbucks a chance and once again I was disappointed by piss-poor espresso. What I got was a watery, crema-free, and burnt tasting and pretty typical of Starbucks.

I literally can't remember the the last time I had even a tolerable espresso for those jokers. In fact I wonder if I have ever had a tolerable espresso from any Starbucks.

So my quest for good espresso in Philadelphia continues....

Strike Three

I have tried to find good Espresso in Philly since I started coming here two years ago. I thought I finally found pay dirt in Caffe del Academia. They certainly talk a good story and the shop looks promising, but sadly the Baristas are simply too inconsistent. I've had good espresso there a few times but the number of times I've had bad (and often really bad) espresso in likely higher.

This morning was a prime example. The barista pulled for over 40 seconds because she was getting a pastry for another customer durring the pull. I though maybe she knew what she was doing but suspected otherwise. Of course, the espresso was watery and sour. Classic overextraction.

Why is it that there are at least a dozen great espresso shops and there seem to be none here?

Button and a haircut

I pulled a button off my favorite black sport coat getting on or off some airplane in some city recently and took time at lunch today to get it sewn back on. It also gave me a chance to spend time in my new favorite place in Philly-- the underground mall beneath One Comcast Center and Two Penn Center -- I think it's call the South Suburban Station. It's is a major rail station and support a whole crazy ecosystem of small businesses struggling to lure in the harried traveler in the two seconds they look up from their Blackberries and iPhones.

The place is a maze of open halls, light wells, corridors, escalators and hallway leading off to distant buildings. The ceilings are low and the lighting a yellowy fluorescent cloud. However it is reasonably clean, well patrolled, and a great place to people watch. There are coffee shops, bars, restaurants, sushi, doughnuts, florists, even an Asian vegetable market.

At the end of the longest corridor, in the far back corner is a small Beauty Salon and a Dry Cleaners/Alterations While You Wait/Shoe Repair/Key-Making place operated by a rather stern looking Asian woman. I pass it each day walking from City Hall to One Comcast and have shirts laundered there a couple of times.

While the Stern Woman sewed my button back on ($2 thank very much) I went next door for a hair cut. The woman who cut my hair -- Christine I think -- said she had been cutting hair in that dark basement for 35 years. The shop had been in another location, across the corridor before moving to its current location. She gave me a great haircut and told me in no uncertain terms that her cable bill was too high and that I should shave the goatee off immediately. Properly shorn and well buttoned, I headed back to One Comcast but detoured into a small Italian men's shop.

As a frequent traveler, I must say that my black sport coat is an absolute workhorse, it works with anything, goes perfectly with everything. I wear it once a week at home and more when I travel. It gets stuffed into roll-aboard, packed in overhead bins and occasionally kicked under airline seats. It is an absolutely indispensable item and mine is starting to show a bit of wear.

The shop was crowded with shirts, shoes, jackets and ties, all unmistakably authentic Italian. I glanced at the overstuffed racks of sport coats, most in pretty garish colors and asked the proprietor if he had anything in simple black -- maybe like the coat I was wearing.

He smiled and pulled from the rack the single most spectacular garment I have ever seen. It was contemporary Italian-cut sport coat in soft, muted black with a very subtle fine herringbone pattern. It was woven of fine grade cashmere and felt spectacular to the hand. The lining was black silk with small pearl sized polka dots. It was neat and sophisticated and reeked of quality. It was a 44L and the fit was like a glove -- I could have worn it home.

Except for one thing -- the yellow tag on the sleeve said "4495" -- it took a moment to realize that it does not mean $44.95. I had to read it twice.

I learned that my Comcast would get me half price -- only $2,495. I have to admit I never considered that there were sport coats that cost that much. I mean I have a couple of pretty expensive ones -- nearly $1000. But $5000 is insane. Hell, $2500 is insane. Yet there I stood transfixed by this beautiful thing -- wondering which card I could use.

This is an emotion is usually reserved for cars and watches. However that jacket was a truly spectacular thing. I managed to resist, escape the store, wallet intact, but even now I hear the siren song calling.

New vacation ideas

This morning I watched a brief story about a British cruise ship attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia. These attacks have been going on for over a year, and based on previous successes their number is increasing. Watching this I had an idea for a new vacation concept.

Gun boat cruises. Take a large cruise ship, put a few dozen .50 cal machine guns along the deck and give passengers a change to get their own confirmed kill. Talk about family fun -- and making the world safe for democracy.

I think I could also work in a whole guns/bikinis angle -- which seems to be popular with many preospective customers. Maybe hire a couple of bikini models and have them strut around between attacks.

So, if anyone knows where to pick up low-cost criuse ships, used .50 cal machine guns or discounts on .50 cal ammunition let me know.

New York City Espresso

What a spectacular place. I made the mile-plus cross town walk from the hotel to Everyman Espresso. The windchill made it feel like all of 15 and I considered buying earmuffs at each sidewalk vendor until I realized I'd have to stop walking and risk instant hypothermia to do so.

The espresso made every frigid step worth it. Oh glory, what a shot. I had two and wanted 10. This is a shot that grabs you by the balls and twists -- hard. A good amount of Ethiopian lends the signature dirty flavor that is perfectly balanced with nice residual sweetness. When it was over I positively floated back to the hotel -- I don't even remember it being cold.

I'm beginning to suspect there is a unidirectional correlation between Tattoos and Good Espresso. That is: Every good barrista seems to have visible tattoos, but not every barrista with tattoos is good. The guy at Everyman is good (and tattooed).

Everyman Espresso
136 East 13th Street (Union Square)

iTunes Managment

Here are a couple of very hard earned tips when managing large iTunes libraries:

• NEVER, EVER, Under any circumstances, start iTunes without the music library mounted. This can cause many hours of work to re-connect iTunes to the missing files.
  
  
• The only way to merge libraries is at the file system level, dragging whole libraries into iTunes causes more trouble than it's worth.
  
  
• External NAS-based iTunes servers suck. I have a 2TB ReadyNAS NV+ from NetGear and it's a piece of shit. Performance is poor, the UI sucks, and it takes 20 minutes to start-up.
  
  
• Anything over 25k songs really hurts iTunes performance.
  
  
• Lots of people talk about managing large libraries. Lots of people think that 10 Gigs is a large library. Things that work with 10 Gigs, struggle at 100 and fail at 250GB. Make sure you research any new technique.
  
  
• Over USB2, 250GB (50k+ files) take 6-8 hours to copy. Try not to do it twice.
  
  
• I could not have gotten everything under control without a number of scripts from Doug
  

Celebration Ale

Today, while shopping for same basic beer for Kathy's anual cookie party this evening, I found a real gem hidden among the more pedestrian beverages -- thre six-packs of Sierra Nevada Brewing's Celebration Ale.

A relatively light carmel-colored beer, with a hop aroma that is like rubbing your face in a pine tree. A mix of Challenger and Centennial hops contribute as much flavor as aroma so the taste is a green as the smell.

I once drove 150 miles to the Sierra Nevada brewery to buy this beer, so finding it was a real surprise. Chico is a long way from Denver.