Work In Progress

Author: owenwbrown

  • Cutting Our Cord

    There was a time when we watched a lot of television in our house. With a Toddler to keep up with we are now way below the national average which evidently is five hours a day if we are to believe what was reported by the New York Daily News.

    2877784014_49e1b24606_z(Photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/spin_spin/)

    My wife watches less than an hour a day all while she gets in her daily workout. I watch about an hour a day in the evenings. We might also sorta kinda maybe watch an hour together after dinner in between bath and play time. As a result we decided to get rid of our cable and the bill that goes along with it. There is certain programming that we did not want to live without. With all of the options we were able to cobble together solutions that covered everything.

    1. Netflix
    2. Hulu
    3. Plex
    4. Tablo TV
    5. ESPN3
    6. iTunes

    All of these combined might cost us $20 a month. Most of these are, or could be with a little negotiating, more or less free. I did pay for the Table DVR and OTA HDTV antenna but after that all of what I pull out of the air and record is free.

    We have only been cable free for a few weeks. So far so good.

    Owen

  • Preordering the iPhone 6 Plus

    I should have taken his advice. He had been thru this before. ATT just does not do preorders for iPhones very well. At all. Not even close. In fact, and now I have heard this from multiple trusted sources, combined with my own experience, never ever ever preorder any Apple device anywhere but at the Apple Store Online. Ever.

    image

    Preorders were available on the Apple website on Wednesday midnight PST. Per normal servers crashed but people got in and got to order. I waited and preordered on the ATT website on Thursday mid morning. Rookie. I got a notice that my phone would be shipped around the end of November. The end of November? Really? I pondered the issue two days and on Sunday decided that I could do better. I called and canceled my preorder. The CSR said it would take two business days for my upgrade to be reinstated. Nope. In two hours I went onto the Apple Store app on my iPhone and ordered my new iPhone 6 Plus. The clincher? Shipping due around mid October. Not great but about 45 days sooner than ATT. Lesson learned.

    Owen

  • Forty

    April 29, 1974 was a good day for me. A lot has happened in the days in between then and now. I’ll spare you the details. Unless of course you were there for any of those days in between and you remember them all on your own. If so, feel free to celebrate with me by sharing your favorite. Or keep it to yourself. Your call.

    I have said it before and I will say it again here. If some Beyonder with the power came to me and said “Sign here and I can guarantee you will have exactly 40 more years to live, but only 40. What’s more, you can go back and live your 40 years from any point in your past forward.” My answers would be (1) ‘Where do I sign’ and (2) ‘I will start my next 40 years starting today, thank you very much’. Thing is, the last 40 have been just about as good as I could have hoped for. In fact, better. Still, I am way more excited about the next four decades than those past at this point in my life. No Beyonders have come calling, but just the same, here’s to the next 40!

    40

    Owen

  • Daily Ritual – Morning Coffee

    Since the end of 2013 I have had the concept of daily ritual on my mind. Call them habits, routine, or otherwise, the more fixed, the closer these get to what I would consider ritual. The internet provides a formal definition that works as well as any. A ceremony consisting of a series of actions performed according to a prescribed order. Choose the definition you prefer and follow along.

    I have always thought myself their creature. Good and bad, routine provides definition and structure. They provide outline. Over the next few months I intend to share a series of posts on the topic of ritual. Specifically my own, focusing on those that are more or less fully defined. Some I am sure will seem banal. Others may surprise. In the end I hope they will persuade you to consider your own daily rituals in new light.

    Here is the first.

    In September 2011 I wrote about giving up coffee for the umpteenth time. In that post I wrote that I have an on again, off again, relationship with coffee. After our son Henrik was born Linda and I took a three month leave from work. We both went back to work afterwards, which left us with a childcare decision to make. Linda and I both work from home, which made what we now call “child care in three shifts” possible. I start work at 6:00 AM. Linda watches Henrik in the morning. Child care comes in mid morning and stays until 3:00 PM when I get off work. I watch Henrik. Linda gets off work at 5:00 PM. Rinse and repeat.

    I wanted a way to drink one strong cup of coffee a day, but no more. I wanted that cup to be fantastic, but at the same time be too much work to even want to make a second cup. Here is what I came up with.

    (1) Water. 16 ounces. Microwave 3 Minutes.

    I heat the water in the microwave 180 degrees. I use a Pyrex 2 Cup. This dude is the a very handy utilititarian for lots of small jobs.

    pyrex

    (2) Beans. 32 grams. 5 Minutes.

    I figured out real quick that the most important aspect of great coffee is great beans. I tried a few different grocery brands that were okay. Then I found a local source of freshly roasted beans at Crate Coffee. I dropped by the shop one afternoon, had a half hour conversation with the owner Jeff about my current process, and bought a pound of beans. I try to buy my beans every other Friday. Jeff buys his beans from a local Phoenix roaster who roasts the beans on Wednesdays. That is about as good as one can hope to get.

    3152399890_8c35a17297 Photo by ed_needs_a_bicycle

    Note: How do I get 32 grams? Weigh your beans with a food scale, mister.

    Food Scale

    A word on bean grinding. This is where the five minutes fits in. Linda gave me a ceramic hand grinder for Christmas. This adds a few extra minutes to the ritual but is well worth it. The ceramic burr takes only a few minutes but gives you mostly perfect “grounds symmetry”. Not sure that is an actual term or not.

    (3) Steeping the Grounds. AeroPress. 4 Minutes.

    This gets its own section a part from step two because there are so many methods. With this I have been experimenting. Started with the French Press and have now moved to the AeroPress. I have experimented with both at the same time. It took me a few weeks but this is my current process. I pour the water slowly over the grinds in the AeroPress chamber. I then stir the mixture with a spoon. I then put the stopper in the chamber to create a vacuum and let the mix steep four minutes. I then press into a coffee cup. Here is a video of Gwilym Davies showing you how he does it.

    AeroPress

    (4) 1/2 tsp Coconut Oil, 1/2 tsp Butter. ~1 Minute.

    If you like cream, go for it. For my taste, this mixture of oils is better. I start with a refined coconut oil, not the unrefined stuff, which quite expectedly tastes a bit too much like coconut to me.

    While my water is heating, I measure the oils into a Magic Bullet cup. When the water is ready, I pour a few ounces into the cup to start to melt the oils. When the coffee is done steeping I pour the coffee it the Magic Bullet cup and buzz it up for five seconds, pour the finished product back into the coffee mug, and enjoy.

    magic bullet

    Just one cup. Now you know how. Now you know why. Give it a try and let me know how things turn out won’t you?

    Owen

  • Golf Ball Audit

    Linda and I moved into our current residence on North Balboa Drive in Maricopa, AZ in March of 2012. The house sits about 200 yards from the silver tee box on the sixth hole of The Duke Golf Course. Our neighbors to our north get most of the golf ball traffic but we get our share. Linda and I did a quick audit of our collection so far and here is what we found.

    In the 22 months since we moved in, we have collected 163 balls. That is 7.4 balls per month which works out to roughly one ball every four days. What I found the most interesting is the distribution of brand names. Here is a quick look.

    golf balls

    Here is my question. Do errant Titleist balls end up in our yard by far the most because they are the worst balls, or is it as I suspect because they are simply the most popular? Seems nothing, not even shelling out four times the cash for better balls, keeps you in the fairway. Does this albeit anecdotal piece of data give you pause, and cause, to rethink before ponying up for an expensive ball? As for me, I am going to be teeing off soon with one of my new used Titlelists.

    Owen

    P.S. In the chart above, if we collected five or less of your brand of golf ball, you got lumped as ‘other’ but more than five and you got your own category.

    P.S.S. Here is the count by brand:
    Titlelist 55
    Callaway 23
    Pinnacle 10
    Nike 14
    Top Flight 16
    Precept 2
    Dixon 2
    Srixon 3
    Dunlop 4
    Noodle 5
    Taylormade 5
    WIlson 7
    Bridgestone 8
    (Not worth mentioning as there was only one ball per brand) 9