Milwaukee Specialty Food and Coffee

Piggyback

I've often thought that for the coffeehouse concept to survive, it should be piggybacked onto some other type of retail. My personal wish would be for it to be piggybacked onto an Apple Store or Windows Store-type concept. Just imagine the emotional home run this could be. A constant source of frustration for me is my inability to engage with technology in a time-effective manner in my free time. Imagine the sales proposition of being able to offer the technical facilities to enable the customer to get a *shitload* done in 15 or 30 minutes while drinking that latte. My current stereotype of coffeehouse patrons is the unmoving twentysomething couple on laptops, camped out for hours on end and filling the cafe area, while the only drinks or money that change hands do so out the drive-thru. I realize that overemployment isn't exactly an epidemic right here, right now--but those in that position would likely be exceedingly grateful for a superfast Internet connection and a consistently "very good" or better drink.

Web/Tech: Brutal Machines, Machines, Machines

In keeping with the frugalist theme, my 1999 Toyota Corolla has no CD or MP3 player, but only a cassette player. When I went to Shawano on Labor Day weekend, I went to Goodwill to pick up some new tapes.  Since almost no one has a cassette player anymore, the only non-country title was Celine Dion's Falling Into You. Kind of the soundtrack of the white middle-class experience. I've actually kind of taken a perverse liking to it. In one song, "I Don't Know," Dion sings "Brutal machines machines machines" and it never fails to crack a smile. It's my favorite kind of fun: low-tech and campy.

In the fifteen years since the album's release, the white middle-class experience--along with that of the rest of the industrialized world--has been increasingly mediated by electronic communications. To my mind, what distinguishes the white middle-class adoption of these communications is the vociferousness with which we make them all-important. Heck, I'm sure one reason--whether conscious or subconscious--for my starting this blog was to address feelings of awkwardness I had over many years of coffeehouse transactions. I remember that in 1995--as I recall, the year I also sent my first e-mail--a serious girlfriend showed me a printed e-mail from an e-argument she was having with a friend, who also happened to be a work colleague and ex-roommate. 

As a 38-year-old, I find the pace of online change occasionally maddening. My e-mail interface refuses to be the same two days in a row, it seems. Opportunities for intentional or accidental disclosure abound. How do they make me feel? I think I'm making a choice about how I will feel about it: I'm not going to worry about it. The amount of of self-disclosure on my blogs and other public online activities might be excessive, but I also think it makes a powerful statement: I am a normal and acceptable person and I have nothing to hide. Even if, you know, my every naughty online venture causes lolcats to pop up on my parents' computer screen saying "Meow meow ur son downloadz teh pr0n meow meow," that doesn't need to fill me with a feeling of dread. That doesn't need to be on my mind at all.

Web/Tech: Heinousness Alerts: Bloody 'Ell (Part 2)

At the Glendale, WI Panera this afternoon, this website was blocked: http://tinyurl.com/beatlelunch

It was a link from http://twitter.com/BeatlesTweets

I'll be needing a satisfactory explanation as to why this site was blocked before I ever spend another penny at a Panera (or Paradise).

(Resisting urge to go off.)

Blog News: Social Media Madness

Today, I resolved to take greater control of my life by scrambling the Department of Overwhelm Management to unleash a can of whoop-ass on my Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.  Wish me luck.  These "communication" tools seem to demonstrate the 80/20 principle: 80% of the material comes from the people I am only 20% interested in hearing from.  Secretly, I'm waiting for the first animated GIF of people humping on hump day (get it?  It's hump day, so they're humping) to give me an excuse to plonk Facebook altogether. 

Web/Tech: Stone Creek Launches New Website

This week, Stone Creek Coffee launched its new website, which, in my opinion, is just about the best I could imagine.  It's decidedly generous in terms of well-written descriptions and decidedly lacking in das Blinkenlights and useless gewgaws.

Blog News: Facebook Group

Earlier this year, I had grand designs for increased Facebook integration of this blog.  I started a group (link; I'm not sure whether this link will work or not) that soon kind of fell by the wayside, mostly because the Facebook redesign made groups difficult to find.  Tonight, on a lark, I checked the group, fully expecting all other members to have left.  In reality, I'd actually picked up a few!  I was tickled to see that local radio personality Patti Genko is a member (hope she won't mind my posting this).  I see that she runs a voiceover agency now.  I always wanted to dabble in voiceover work.  Listening to the audio samples on her site, however, I don't think my voice is deep enough.  Darn.

Editorial: Web/Tech: Twightsizing

Earlier today, I coined a sniglet: Twightsizing = to "unfollow" people on Twitter in an effort to make one's use of the service manageable, while agonizing over the possible offense caused thereby.  A week ago, I'd decided to kill my Twitter account, but now want to keep it for possible future use.  Which puts me in an awkward position.  Some follows gotta go.  (If you're reading this, you're not likely to be affected--not that I presume you care!)

Further adding to my frustration with the service is that I just discovered that I'd been failing to check my @mkecoffee replies.  The home page doesn't indicate when new messages arrive, nor does it forward them to my e-mail as it does with direct messages.  Shee-yit!  Now I have to face the prospect of writing a bunch of messages saying, "Sorry I didn't reply to your message...because I didn't see it...because I'm a moron.  Yeah."

I already have to check my spam boxes for my various e-mail accounts for the inevitable misdirected e-mails.  One of my reasons for liking Facebook it that is doesn't have any nooks or crannies where messages can be lost.  And isn't it ironic to be setting up all of these avenues for people to communicate with me, only to thereby create more such traps in which communication can fall into oblivion?

Web/Tech: Blog News: Social Media Madness

Stone Creek Coffee now has a Twitter presence, which is a great idea.  Kudos to them, also, for being featured in a recent Journal-Sentinel article. There's only one thing missing: any mention of longtime blogger Mary Dally-Muenzmaier. If memory serves, blog posts and newsletters were regular during Mary's tenure there. They've been a tad sporadic since then. Perhaps not coincidentally, a recent Mary post to her own blog mentioned Kim Kisiolek and Stephen Bybee, but not Stone Creek (where all three work or worked at one time). Tee-hee! Anyway, Stone Creek's blog--like this here one--was better when Mary was working on it. Love 'em and leave 'em, Mary, love 'em and leave 'em... ;-)

 *um, just so we're clear, Mary is happily married to a great guy!

Heinousness Alerts: Web/Tech: Bloody 'ell

Caribou Coffee's overactive Sharia porn filter caught the following URL (link):

http://www.popcrunch.com/will-grace-spinoff-karen-jack/

It was a link in a TV forum regarding a possible spinoff of "Will & Grace" called "Karen & Jack".

I like censorious, false-god-worshipping, oil-drilling societies and their laws almost as little as I like the B-list chain coffeehouses their petrodollars keep afloat.

Sorry, I know I resolved to be mellower this year, but this really irritates the hell out of me.

(UPDATE: I just viewed the page from Stone Creek--which will be seeing more of me--and have no idea what the objection could conceivably have been that led to the site being blocked.  Also, unlike most of the incidents I write critically about, my outrage about this has only grown over the day.   I can confidently say never again Caribou.)

Web/Tech: LiveJournal In Trouble

So has LiveJournal been pretty much superseded by Facebook now?  So it may seem.  I know it's been a while since I've been LJ way.