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The box got here yesterday afternoon via regular mail.  I will clean up the coffee maker and send it out on Monday.

I tried plugging in the Tassimo just to see what would happen - sometimes things simply fix themselves.  The lights on the front panel no longer did their sickly intermittent blinking and acted normally (I guess the electronics had dried out sufficiently).  I put a coffee disk in and about 10 seconds later all four lights on the front of the unit began to blink, which is usual for a generic brewing error.

My guess is the heater control is shot.

Any guesses on how long it will be until they send me a new coffee maker?  I am guessing 4 weeks.  I will keep you posted.

OK, I was wrong.

In the post where I talked about the Scooba dying at the virtually the same time as my monitor I was sure that the next appliance to go belly-up would be either the “bearings-bearings-who’s-got-the-bearings” washing machine or the “for-the-love-of-God-what-is-that-noise” microwave oven.  In fact, it was the coffee maker.

I wrote an article when we first got the Tassimo (by Braun) describing our new toy.  Happy visions of gourmet coffees, teas and even hot cocoa danced through our heads.

What was significantly less happy-making was the repeated and spectacular disc failures that would happen with about 80% of any coffees that were not Maxwell House (12 oz version) or Seattle’s Best.  They would explode and make a huge mess in the coffee maker and in my cup near the completion of the brewing cycle.  Watching it near the end of a brewing cycle became exactly as gut-wrenching as watching that little mountain climber guy from the Price is Right approach “25″…

Making coffee should not be ulcer-inducing.  Drinking it, maybe.  Not making it.

For those of you that are interested and have a cabinet filled with exploding coffee disks, I found a “hack” that bumped up the success rate of the faulty discs.  Since the Seattle’s Best never failed, I cut out the bar code from a used one and covered up the bar code from one of the fragile discs.  Works pretty much all the time except you need to remember the orientation of the bar code.  Maybe its not being perfectly brewed, and its kind of a hassle but at least I don’t spend my mornings going all Angry German Kid in my kitchen while cleaning up coffee grounds.

It might be worth your time to complain to Tassimo about faulty discs.  They will send you free new ones, when they get around to it.  Unfortunately, these also have the same failure mode and rate.  Luckily, I really enjoy the Seattle’s Best coffees, so that’s pretty much all I get anyway.  That and the Chai Tea, which has also never failed.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  After brewing a cup of coffee last Saturday, I disposed of my disc and sat down at the computer to check the news.  About 5 minutes later a sound like the one the bird makes when Mr. Slate calls “quitting time” at the quarry came blasting out of the kitchen.  I ran in and steam was burping out of every crevice on the machine.

I yanked the plug and let the thing cool down for a while.  I plugged it back in and the little lights on the front started to blink in a very sickly, unsteady way as if to say “the error codes in my EEPROM simply don’t cover this, man.  You are on your own.”.  I am sure all of the electronics are ruined.

I checked out their forums and found no failures like mine.  Lots of complaints about customer service and exploding discs, though.  I called customer service (open 24/7, according to their website) and told them what happened.

The lady on the other end of the phone (who apparently just finished a “I bet I can drink more Red Bulls than you” contest with her co-workers)  laughed and said “Well, that shouldn’t happen!”. I agreed with her and said I was thankful that I was not standing next to it at the time or had left the house already.  She stopped laughing after that.

She said that they are sending out a box with which to ship the coffee maker back, but “it is coming from Canada so it might take a while to get there”.  I reminded her that it is 2008, and it shouldn’t matter if it was coming from the moon she should be able to tell me better than “it’s going to be a while”.  And I don’t know many Canadians, but from what I hear they pretty much have their act together… So I don’t know what she was talking about.

It has been 5 days and still no box.  I did get an e-mail tonight, though, that said “my order has been shipped”.  I assume they mean the box.   I will post when it gets here.

In the meantime I will continue to enjoy the crystalline goodness that is Folger’s Instant Coffee.  Heated up in my awesome microwave…

(For those of you that want to “get their geek on”, read the title of this post in as crone-ish of a tone as you can.  There you go.  )

Review by jimmydunes

I don’t usually find myself looking too closely at a flashlight, but as a camper and hiker the idea of a light source that does not require batteries is very appealing, and I was pretty excited when offered the chance to review one.

Now, my criteria for a backup emergency light is very simple… make it cheap and make it lightweight. This device fits the bill nicely. The packaging is simple and the box makes no promises other than the device is inside. There aren’t any instructions or specs inside the box.

The first thing you notice after taking it out of the box is the Art Deco design.  The body is mostly molded plastic but the side grips, crank grip, and button cover are made of a comfortable-to-hold rubber.

To be perfectly honest, there’s not much to say about this thing’s construction, but I’ll assume right off the bat that it is not water/weather proof. 

It comes with a 3V battery inside and will run for quite a while right out of the box.  I let the battery (silver circular object in photo) die completely in order to test the generator.  The cranking action is smooth and 30 seconds of turning can power the bluish-white LEDs brightly for longer than I cared to watch it.

It’s pretty much perfect for the price. I plan to keep one of these in my backpack as well as in my nightstand and truck. 

You can get these at Target stores for $5.  Can’t seem to find them at their website, though, so you’re gonna have to go there to get one.

My wife got me a toy helicopter for Christmas.  She was forced to because there is only so much pouting a human being can take before they cave.  That’s a good strategy to know, fellas.  So now I am the proud owner of a severely damaged 2-Channel Transformers Blackout RC Helicopter.  You can get them at Radio Shack.

It is mostly constructed of Styrofoam and light-weight plastic.  There are no batteries – it is powered by charging an internal capacitor via 6 AA-powered remote control/charging station.  There are no exposed electronics except for an amazingly bright green LED.  The RC controller is IR based, so that means this is a line-of-sight device - it is vitally important to remember this easily forgettable fact when it starts to dip below the top of the coffee table or behind a chair.

The instructions clearly state:  “For indoor use only.  DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FLY OUTSIDE EVEN ON A CALM DAY”.  Very good advice, since this thing is very, very sensitive to even the slightest air currents.  As a matter of fact, it will get sucked violently into the wake of someone casually strolling by three feet away.  Even the stratified air of a room that is quite still will give it some trouble if the temperature difference between the floor and the ceiling is high enough.

It comes with heavy stickers that you attach to the nose to get it to tilt forward a little.  This gives it a reason to move forward; otherwise it would just hover until it crashes horribly into the kitchen cupboards 12 seconds after takeoff.  Again.

In flight, it sounds like a very large dragonfly and has the flight pattern of a dozen or so angry dragonflies haphazardly taped together. 

Every time I lift off, there is a movie scene that plays in my head.  No, it’s not the “Ride of the Valkyries” scene in Apocalypse Now.  Not even the “Easy!  You just don’t lead ‘em so much!” scene from Full Metal Jacket.  It’s the scene in Hot Shots where Admiral Benson says “You know, I’ve personally flown over 194 missions and I was shot down on every one. Come to think of it, I’ve never landed a plane in my life”.

The Radio Shack site reads: “Inspired by the Transformers, you can fly as Blackout and pursue your enemies with ruthless efficiency.”  I assume that by “pursue” they mean “noisily blunder sidelong into” and by “enemies” they mean “lamps, televisions, and potpourri dishes”.  I have crashed this thing so many times that I am delighted to “land” it and have it merely spin around upside-down on the kitchen floor rather than have to untangle the gradually disintegrating rotors from the Christmas tree to the delight and amusement of all.

The box claims that this toy is for “ages 8 and up”.  That must have been a fun focus group.  I hope those researchers got hazard pay.  At least the rotors, which are apparently made from Faberge eggs, are replaceable items.   I will play with this toy until the aforementioned rotors break or the wife buys me something less hazardous.  Like a new table saw.

My wife and I were looking through the Restoration Hardware catalog and I happened upon this “Survival Kit in a Sardine Can“.

It retails for $14.  Well, if anyone would know the ins and outs of how to survive in the woods, desert, or other desperate situation, it would have to be the proprietors of a mid-scale furniture and knick-knack store. 

So I asked for - and got - this little item for Christmas.  Sweet!

The front of the can (left) lists 23 items that are inside, including things like a fire starter cube (neat!), a compass (cool!), a pencil (ok…), and something called an “energy nugget” (bleh).  The front of the can also mentions that the pencil, compass, whistle, and safety pin all come from China, I guess in case you would rather let you and your family perish than use Communist-made items in a crisis (As in: “I’ll be damned if some Godless commie is gonna tell me where magnetic North is”).

The can opens to reveal these items.  As you can see, there are 23 of them. 

The instructions that come inside the can claim that “This Survival Kit contains more than 25 items, all of which have primary and secondary uses.”  The “energy nugget”, it turns out, is the Tootsie Roll, thank God, although for the life of me I can’t even picture MacGyver coming up with a ”secondary use” for that item.  And I am also hard-pressed to come up with “more than 25″ when I count these things, unless the wrappers are counted as individual items.  Or the matches and then empty matchbook cover.  Or the individual grains of salt or sugar…

The little compass is cool.  The thread (fishing line and spool, according to the instructions - hey, the spool might be a separate item!) is surprisingly strong for its thickness.  The fire starting cube is water-resistant but, unfortunately, the matches are not.  The kit claims that the golf pencil can be used to write rescue notes.  The “signal mirror” is actually the can itself, and doubles as a cup.  My guess is that its razor sharp edges also lets it triple as a mouth lacerator.  Which I guess is what the Band-Aid is for.

By putting a little thought into it, one could come up with countless ways to use the kit in desperate situations.  For example:

• Tea Time: Tea + sugar + matches + fire cube+ can + pond water  =  semi-delicious dysentery-based beverage
• Goodbye, Cruel World: razor blade + pencil + note paper = portable suicide kit
• DHS-Sponsored Caribbean Vacation for Life: taking this kit through airport security
• Wilderness Cubicle: Paperclip + pencil + paper + wrappers from things + can (to use as “In Box”) = reminder that your current situation is still probably better than your job.
•  That’s Not Mine, Officer - Razor blade + powdered aspirin + plastic bag + signal mirror

Although what the can actually contains is “false hope”, I think this kit is well worth the $14.  The only suggestion I have is to change the name from “survival kit” to “extremely minor inconvenience kit” (”Oh, no, I’m out of gum, and my breath is not as fresh as it could be.  No, wait!  The day is saved!”). 

If you have other ideas on how to use this stuff in a crisis,  just post a comment.

Ok… I transferred all the video from our trip to New York to the hard drive and I am now in the process of editing it.

While we were in Western New York we went to a Flea Market (which will remain nameless for a number of reasons) I remember being “fun to go to” when I was a kid.  It has since turned into Mos Eisley Spaceport- “Never will you find a more retched hive of scum and villainy.”  Or maybe the years have just thrown my memory out of whack…

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Ok.  I have already mentioned I am not an Early Adopter.  New techs come out and it is pretty rare that I need to be among the first to have them.  Oh, don’t get me wrong… I love toys.  But I refuse to spend a lot of my money on stuff that will drop to half price if I just wait a year.  But to me, it’s sort of like begging a large company “Please please please grant me permission to own something you make… I’ll skip out on work for days and pay anything”.

It also allows time for me to be at the right part of the bathtub curve when I do buy stuff so I rarely have to deal with surprise battery replacement issues, red-rings-of-death, plasma screen burn-in, the VHS-Betamax-like war of HD formats, and other buyer’s-remorse-related issues.  Call me un-American.

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 (This post is from the old site)

As I reported within my “On Christmas Gifts” Unexpected Segue post, I recently received an amazing clock as an early Christmas present from some friends.  How to describe this work of art?  OK: Picture Dr. Seuss and Salvador Dali had a child. Then that child gets assimilated by the Borg. Then he leaves the Collective to become an artist.  This is the type of clock he might make.

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 (Originally written for the old site)

If you told me 25 years ago that I would have robots cleaning my house in the year 2007, I would have totally believed you.  No problem. I mean, 2007, for crying out loud!  The Weekly Reader repeatedly informed me I would live and work in a giant rotating space station when I grew up, so, it logically follows that robots would be doing my chores and whatnot.

I’m not bitter.  I’m not bitter.  A cubicle is just fine.  Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean.

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 (From the old site)

My old cheap-o coffee maker was on its last legs – the heating pad surface was flaking away and the water heating elements were probably mostly boiler scale. Anyway,  I never liked the klaxon-like screeches it would make when 1) the coffee was ready (ok, I can see the point in that… a little unnerving first thing in the AM, but whatever) or 2) when the heating pad turned off automatically (as if to say: WARNING! WARNING! YOU HAVE FAILED TO DRINK THIS POT OF COFFEE IN THE ALLOTED 30 MINUTES! WASTE OF COFFEE IN PROCESS! WARNING!) . So we figured “Hey, let’s get ourselves one of those automatic ones… you know, the ones with the little cups or bags? Who cares that it’s probably an inelegant solution to a non-existent problem?”

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