Author: Daniel

Daniel https://turnings.phrasewise.com/ In the 4th grade Daniel was asked to step in into the hall because he was coaching fellow students on a similarity assignment he provided the class. Since then, Daniel’s passion for helping people has propelled him to be a creative developer of software and systems, and a team coach who excels at successfully delivering business value. Daniel founded QuietlyHelping in 2009 in order to have a direct hand in helping families with the struggles of debilitating disease. QuietlyHelping is an organization of compassion and empathy that brings ease, comfort, smiles, laughter, healing, and love to people battling cancer and other diseases. Spare time activities include cycling, occasional work as a musician, woodworking, photography, and reading books he never got around to in school. Unsurprisingly, Daniel is able to cook minute rice in just under thirty seconds.
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Maui Yellow Caturra Coffee from Roast Coffee & Tea Trading Company

My friend Evan and his family started a coffee shop, the wonderfully engaging Roast Coffee & Tea Trading Company, a couple of years ago. They aimed high and decided early on that they to roast their own coffee. They transparently source single origin green coffee beans from around the world, roast them, brew them and serve them as “single origin brews” so that you can taste the different regions and how they compare to one another. And it is from him that Lisa procures her daily dose.

A recent trip by the folks at Roast brought Maui Yellow Caturra to our home. Grown in a hot, dry climate on the island of Maui, these coffee beans produce high yields of coffee cherries all with a bright shade of yellow when ripe. Enriched by the nutrient-rich, volcanic soil from a farm located in the West Maui Mountains and grown under the guidance of owner Kimo Falconer, this coffee is grown overlooking the famous western coast of Maui. Mild and clean with a spicy character.

I’m a tea guy, not a coffee guy, and not a particularly crazed one at that, but there’s some kinda magic in good coffee, and Evan & Co. goes to great lengths to produce the magic. At this point Roast is quiet resource from Long Island and I know first hand the lengths that were traveled to procure an appropriate roaster, get it tuned and producing excellent coffee. I’ve also had the chance to taste the roasted beans of many batches and have learned quite a bit about the varying tastes and flavors. Right now, the Maui Yellow Caturra is the one Lisa tosses in the grinder and the smell is so wondrous it makes me wonder why I don’t drink the brew. Go get yourself some before it’s gone.

yellow_caturra

Law of the jungle

Law of the jungle:

Think about motorcycles. Most cagers who don’t ride think motorcyclists are batshit crazy sucides. But it doesn’t make them want to kill the guy on the Ducati in flip-flops and a t-shirt and an eggshell brain bucket who’s splitting lanes on the 405 at 70 when the traffic’s at a standstill.

At worst it makes you think “That dude’s gonna die soon and I’m not gonna feel sorry for him one bit.” It never makes you intentionally hit him. By the same token, seeing some old fart on a Goldwing with his wife, dog, and three kids on the back doesn’t make you love motorcyclists or change your opinion that this is their death wish.

[snip -ed.]

You have a right to be in the road on your bicycle. The only way you can keep that right is to exercise it. You won’t change the hearts and minds of the hater cagers by being a Boy Scout, although you may thereby avoid becoming a statistic. The only thing that will really change the way people think is making bicycles a permanent part of the traffic landscape.

Until then, the best thing you can do to change attitudes is to … ride your bike. Simply existing will piss off certain cagers, no matter how you ride.

[The term “cager” struck as particularly apt this morning.]

Source: Cycling in the South Bay

So Heralded

So Heralded:

My friends—my riding friends—they all always have some mission, some dream, some ride that for them is crazy and maybe impossible and which the world will never care about. Some aim to do a single loop of 2-5-10 without walking. Some want to ride across the country, win national titles, world championships, just keep up for once dammit, or figure out a good route to work. And we all understand it all. We know as fully and purely as we did back in those summer days that something vital to life and truth is at stake every day. We have each other’s respect—though not, anymore, because we saved the world but, I think, because we’re still at play.

[Noah teaches me this every day. So do my riding friends who always have some mission or other. Bill’s on fire lately.]

Source: The Selection

This weeked (we celebrated Oma’s 100’th birthday)

summer

Bill writes:

On my bike, when I am aware, which is almost always, I am aware of being me, or, more rare, of simply being, or, more often, aware of the riding, and sometimes of how my bicycle and I relate or of something I hope to put into words. If those words ever feel at all to anyone anything like a ride, or if in them riders recognize themselves, I have done my part, whatever my part is.

[Well that ain’t gonna happen with this description… but the rides are beginning to feel good. Joyous and overflowing with beauty. It was cool outside this morning so I pulled on arm warmers until I hit the climbs. The gnats that have been bit of a plague on the climbs were MIA. Two woman flying down a decent left an odiforous wake of sunscreen mixed with detergent(?) that nearly gagged a pair of hikers kitting up on the side of the road. The riders were also talking so loudly a deafness warning zone should have been established around them, so now I have some potential new additions for the Velominati rules. As it was a fleeting encounter, we collectively shook our heads, smiled and moved on. The little cottage (rectory?) of the Church in the Woods is being rebuilt and is coming along quite nicely. And as you can again see from the above, the anglers stayed home.

By the time I rolled home Noah had saved the world at least twice (evil ninja’s, storm troopers, who knows from what else) and was headed out the door to get some summer reading books and to meet his friend at the book store.

Below, you can see my Oma making her entrance to the celebration of her 100th birthday. 61 (not counting babies) of her immediate family, their spouses, nieces, nephews, and including grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great grandchildren were able to attend. Those who were not able to make it were missed. Beneath that is some of the food that was served and why the scale yelled at me this morning. But what is one supposed to do? We waited 100 years to have this celebration. I doubt I’ll be at the next one… Allez!]

Source: True BS

IMG 2588

le bad food

It’s 2013. Why are we still in login hell?

It’s 2013. Why are we still in login hell?:

The sites are the servers, and our browsers are the clients, suckling the servers’ teats for the milk of “content” and cookies to keep track of us.

This blows.

It has blown for eighteen years.

[snip -ed.]

But why should we need logins and passwords at all? If you and a site or service truly know each other, why put both of you through the rigamarole of logging in all the time? There are a zillion good security answers to that question, but I believe they are all coming from inside the same box we’ve been in for the duration.

It’s time to think and work outside that box.

[It’s a mess no doubt. I know why the company I work for has a login ( and then some ) but I wonder about others all the time. ]

Source: Doc Searls Weblog

My Favorite Enemy

My Favorite Enemy:

And, of course, the more pain that comes your way when you race, the ­better you are doing. Whoever has the highest pain threshold is a winner, or is at least guaranteed to have a good race, to play an ­important part. I think often about what Eddy Merckx once said: When a race feels easy everyone can attack, but when you’re in awful pain that’s the moment an attack really matters, because all the others are hurting as much as you. Those are the moments that decide races, Eddy believed—and who am I to not respect the opinion of the greatest cyclist of all time.

There have been many moments in ­races when I have said to myself, “Okay Jensie, you are a good rider and if this hurts you this much then everybody else around you must be close to quitting, too.” That’s when I just refuse to give in, to let myself get intimidated by how much pain the race is raining down on us.

I would not exactly call pain a friend. But it is a constant companion in my life. Sometimes I say that pain is my favorite enemy. We have this love-hate relationship. We keep watching each other and waiting for the other one to show some weakness, to give in. Every morning when I jump on my bike, it takes only seconds for me to think, “Ah—there you are my old enemy, let’s get it on for one more day!” The pain and me, nothing can keep us apart. It keeps me going. It keeps me young.

[I need to apply Rule 5 to my rides.]

Source: Hardly Serious with Jens Voigt

TSA Misconduct on the Rise

TSA Misconduct on the Rise:

CNN: 

And the stories of its failures spread faster than a speeding jetliner: TSA officers stealing money from luggage, taking bribes from drug dealers, sleeping on the job.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that a new Government Accountability Office report, citing a 26% increase in misconduct among TSA employees between 2010 and 2012, is striking a nerve with some travelers who’ve had to endure the shoeless, beltless shuffle on the trip through security.

Shut them down.

[They need to go.]

Source: Daring Fireball

Dear Recruiter

Coyote Tracks – Dear Recruiter:

So this letter isn’t as much a waste of your time as yours was of mine, I’d like to offer a new slogan for your firm, free of charge: “Matching miserable people with miserable jobs at miserable companies since  YEAR .” It has a nice ring to it, and it’s exclusively yours,  RECRUITER NAME  of  BUZZWORDS STRUNG TOGETHER INC !

[Oy. Just Oy.]

Getting kicks at 66

Getting kicks at 66:

Funny, a few months back my 16-year old son asked what the point of “range” was with radio. He’s a digital native who is used to being zero distance from everybody else on the Net, including every broadcaster.

[I grapple with this all the time, as even my 8 year old has a different reality about music and video.]

Meanwhile here I am with a giant pile of trivia in my brain about how AM and FM broadcasting works. It’s like knowing about steam engines.

[I know a lot about various steam engines as well… sigh. At least the development world keeps me honest about the newer stuff.]

But mostly I keep living in the future. That’s why I’m jazzed that both VRM and personal cloud development is rocking away, in many places. Following developments took me on three trips to Europe in May and June, plus two to California and one to New Zealand and Australia. Lots of great stuff going on. It’s beyond awesome to have the opportunity to help move so much good stuff forward.

Speaking of distance, the metaphor I like best, for the birthday at hand, is “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66.” Composed in the ’40s by Bobby Troup, the jazz composer and actor, it has been covered by approximately everybody in the years since. The Nelson Riddle sound track for the TV show Route 66 was evocative in the extreme: one of the best road tunes ever written and performed. In addition to that one I have ten other versions:

  • Erich Kunzel
  • John Mayer
  • Chuck Berry
  • Nat King Cole
  • The Cramps
  • The Surfaris
  • Oscar Peterson & Manhattan Transfer
  • Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby
  • Manhattan Transfer
  • Asleep at the Wheel

My faves are the last two. I’ll also put in a vote for Danny Gatton‘s Cruisin’ Deuces, which runs Nelson Riddle’s beat and muted trumpet through a rockabilly template of Danny’s own, and just kicks it.

Anyway, my birthday is happy, so far. Thanks for all the good wishes coming in.

[Because any blog post that mentions Radio, Route 66, *and* Danny Gatton is a sure winner. Bless you Doc! Many happy returns.]

Source: Doc Searls Weblog

Is there a good monoculture?

Ants are laying siege to the world’s chocolate supply – Ed Yong – Aeon:

P infestans is only one of the many plant pathogens that changed the world. Back in the 19th century, Britain’s drink of choice was coffee, and its colony Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was the world’s greatest coffee producer. That all changed with the arrival of the East African coffee rust fungus, which found a ready-made feast among Ceylon’s dense, back-to-back plantations. The British government sent Harry Marshall Ward, another pioneering plant pathologist, to deal with the problem. He issued a now-familiar warning: planting crops in vast monocultures is an invitation for virulent epidemics. No one listened. Within two decades, the fungus had slashed Ceylon’s coffee production by 95 per cent, forcing the industry to relocate to Indonesia and the Americas. The crippled plantations were replaced by tea bushes, and tea displaced coffee as the quintessential British beverage.

If Marshall were around today, he would probably be disappointed that his advice still goes unheeded. We still tie the fortunes of entire regions to single staples. Around 90 per cent of the world’s calories come from just 15 types of crops, most of which are highly inbred monocultures planted over sprawling acreage. These monocultures skew the evolutionary arms race in favour of pathogens, and create the conditions wherein old threats can easily evolve into new virulent strains.

[It appears that monocultures are “unnatural” in the most significant sense… they run counter to evolution. Diversity seems to win every time.]