Monthly Archives: November 2004

Home Roasting

November 28, 2004
For the past six months or so I’ve been roasting my own coffee in earnest, using green coffee beans that I buy from sweetmarias.com and a popcorn popper that I bought from eBay for $15. There are small, personal machines on the market for genuiune home coffee roasting, but they’re mostly in the triple-digit range, and I wasn’t sure if I would take a shine to this thing when I started it, so I went the cheap route to minimize my potential losses. My friend Steve, who lives around the corner, got me started with this business. He started with a popcorn popper, too, but since has rigged up a little rotisserie thing on his gas grill so he can roast five pounds at a time. The guy is an animal! …
Posted in self-indulgence | 6 Comments

Thanksgiving Snow

November 26, 2004
The first snow of the season fell just in time for Thanksgiving this year. Holland, Michigan, as you can see in the picture below, got about 10 inches, while Grand Rapids seemed to get a little less.
Posted in miscellany | 4 Comments

Computer Time Limit

November 21, 2004
A friend of mine recently challenged me to limit my time on the computer, outside of work, to one hour or less each day. He didn’t think I could do it for a month. So I’ve accepted the challenge, which means that I’ll probably be posting fewer entries on this site and I’ll definitely be reading fewer online magazines and newspapers. Maybe that’s okay, though…
Posted in self-indulgence, technology | 2 Comments

Trying to Be Fair

November 15, 2004
In a Washington Post article, executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. describes the policies in place at his newspaper to separate the editorial staff from the news staff and to maintain as much objectivity as possible. It’s an excellent reminder of the standards that most mainstream news organizations apply to their reporting, even when it comes to political campaigns … Granted, bias inevitably can creep in from time to time, no matter how hard the news outlet tries to keep it at bay. And we shouldn’t just blindly trust what we read in the paper. But I think there’s a real danger in throwing up our hands …
Posted in society | 2 Comments

One Moment More by Mindy Smith

November 14, 2004
My new favorite album is One Moment More, the debut effort of Mindy Smith, a countryish, folkish singer/songwriter currently living in Nashville, where it seems just about every country artist and folk singer and even the stray electronica/dance/pop band winds up if they want to “make it” in the music biz…
Posted in music | 1 Comment

Election Outcome Explanations Abound

November 12, 2004
Sure, this information is a little dated already, and we’re all trying to move on and put the election behind us, but for what it’s worth, here are a few links to articles that try to make sense of the Republican victory…
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When I Grow Up

November 10, 2004
Sara was in the kitchen, making herself a latte. Ben sat at the kitchen table and drew a picture of only he knows what.

“Momma,” Ben said, still rubbing the crayon hard against the pink construction paper. “Yes, what is it, Ben?” “When I grow up, I’m going to be…
Posted in family | 5 Comments

Back on the Blog

November 9, 2004
After eight days of vexing back and forth with tech support from two companies, I finally have my little blog software running again. Just like a long-lost friend. Thanks, everyone, for your patience and understanding as I worked through the byzantine world of cgi, mysql, php, and other odd strings of letters. Now brace yourselves for some pent-up blogging energy ready to explode.
Posted in technology | 1 Comment