Coffee

Two unrelated coffee experiences today.

1. We ran low on Dunkin Donuts ground coffee at home and headed to BJs to buy the bulk bag. We brew a pot everyday so the 2 1/2 pound bag is not too much for us. This bag used to be $15.99. When we got to BJs, the DD coffee was $22.99!! Looking closer at the unit price, it was $9.20 per pound! Wait a minute, not only is this a big price increase, but I could swear it was $7.99 in the DD store. Checking my Android phone quickly, yes, it was $7.99. And I only had to buy one pound at DD. Something seriously wrong here. Quick conclusion: BJs creates the illusion of discounts on many products to lure you in. Their customers (me until today) assume that everything in bulk must cost less. Not so. You must be a smart and informed shopped there. And when DD has their big sales on coffee, I'll be sure to stock up. BTW, I told the guy at DD about the BJs story and he was so amused, he gave me an extra 10% off, so that's $7.20/pound.

2. I do like Starbucks too. AT&T pushed out a new OS upgrade from Google for my Android phone last week. Today, my Starbucks app crashed when launched. A little searching around on line and I found many others were having the same experience. But what was surprising is that Starbucks is nowhere to be heard on the topic. I'd expect at least a message posted that says, yes, we know, we're working on it, please be patient, Love, Starbucks. No such thing. I've posted a message on Twitter to them hoping for a reply. I've noticed that many companies monitor Twitter so a complaint or question there gets a quick reply because everyone is watching. An email sent to the company is a 1:1 correspondence, so you can wait.

UPDATE: Someone (Jason, you're the man) figured out how to fix the incompatibility of the Starbucks Android app with v. 2.3.4 of the the Android OS. Go the Application settings for the Starbucks app and Clear Data. This causes the app to open properly and it won't force close. You'll just have to log in to your Starbucks account again from your app to get your Starbucks card associated with the app again. Too bad Starbucks couldn't be more proactive and notify us all of the fix. Fail!

3. I know I said there were two experiences today, but my tweat on #1 above yielded a comment from someone on Twitter that they found a Dunkin Donuts K-cup for Keurig brewers. I've been looking for and wondering about this for a long time. This would be a great find. I'll post an update if my search is successful.

Virgin America Offers Free In-Flight Laptops

Again, leading the way, Virgin America (VA) now will provide you with a free laptop with Free WiFi on select flights. I flew Boston to San Francisco yesterday and asked about the new promotion. For the first 20 passengers who request one, VA provides a free Chrome Book. These are sleek Samsung laptops that only run Google Chrome (their web browser). No other apps, all you get is a browser. Advertised battery life is 8 hours so you won't run out even on a coast to coast flight. To top it off, your WiFi is free with a Chrome Book, a $12.95 savings.

Of course, if you plan on doing work, all your work files might be on your own computer, but without any apps on the Chrome Book, there is little you can do with these files, no local Word, Excel, PowerPoint though there are on-line editors. You can also upload your to a cloud service like GoogleDocs and access them over wifi. For work email, your company needs to have webmail service if you want to access that. But basically, this is a surfing machine and with that said, it might be limiting. When I surf only without apps, I'm often looking at rich media content (movies, YouTube, streaming video) all of which will be painful on the comparatively slow in-flight WiFi. You probably need to stick to more text & photo based content like email, Facebook, news/sports/weather, chat, eBay, on-line games, etc. BTW, the Chrome Books are (Adobe) Flash-enabled, not like our friends in Cupertino sitting on their iPads.

Sounds like a great deal though it is short lived (July 1 - Sept 1). I hope to try the service on my return flight if can get one of the first 20. If so, you'll see an update below, in fact, I'll write the blog post on the plane, having all the tools I need, courtesy of Google and Virgin America.

UPDATE: 7/22/11. Early morning at SFO. There are still Chrome Books available, but as I thought about it, I have my own laptop, an excellent MacBook Pro. Let someone who doesn't have a computer enjoy the Chrome Book because there is a limited # per flight. But I did play with the demo units at the Chrome Book station. It's great if you have no laptop for the trip, but it is limited to web browsing. There is the impression of apps on the home screen, but these are shortcuts/aliases that point to a URL.

ISS & Space Shuttle Flyover Sightings

There is a great little app on the NASA website that will tell you when the Int'l Space Station (ISS) will be viewable from anywhere in the world. If you've never seen a flyover before, it's quite a thrill. I've seen the Shuttle several times, the ISS, and even the docked Apollo-Soyuz in 1975 when I was a teenager.

It's best if you are away from city lights and have a good view of a low horizon. Unfortunately, prime time for most of us is mid-evening (8-11 pm). Flyovers during the day are impossible to see and unless you want to set your alarm for the middle of the night, you're going to have to wait for a convenient time, but be patient, it's worth it. And actually it is better and easier to view with the naked eye than with a telescope.

Here is the URL: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ I found the link on the left side of the page that says "Sighting Opportunities" is easiest to use. Click "Go to Country" and follow the directions to specify your location.

The Light Bulb Ban

Many people are getting all riled up about the ban of the standard incandescent light bulb. People, calm down. Your civil rights are not being trampled upon. This is no different than Congress passing laws over the last four decades that cars must improve their gas mileage. Now they're saying our light sources need to be more efficient. It is long overdue. No one is going to come into your house and take your incandescent bulbs or stop you from using them. The reality is that they are just too inefficient and continued use causes us to build more electricity generating plans that we need for other things. Why should we waste 60% of our lighting energy on inefficient bulbs. Imagine the amount of energy this represents. Well the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has; it means $12 billion per year by 2020. NRDC also estimates the standards would eliminate the need to build 33 coal-fired power plants by 2020, when the standards are fully in effect. Now I don't know if this is bullshit math or not, but I know that the inefficiency of incandescent bulbs is real and the savings is too.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/07/11/news/economy/light_bulb_ban/index.htm?iid=HP_River

The Real Owners of America

Another George Carlin monologue on the real owners of America from his 2006 second-to-last HBO special "Life is Worth Losing". George as usual has a good bead on the situation. George, we miss you.

Warning: Strong Language.

Ocean Tides: Beyond the Basics

Living at the shore, ocean tides are part of everyday life here. Everyone knows the basics, I think, that the moon’s gravity affects our tides, that there is a high and low tide twice a day and that the tide times change a little everyday. But that’s where common knowledge seems to end in my experience. So here are some details and then we'll piece together the big picture.

Both the moon's and the sun’s gravity impact our tides, but the moon has the greatest affect; the sun’s influence is less than half that of the moon’s. So while the moon will drive the tide times, the position of the sun will increase or decrease that tide. More later on this.

The moon’s orbit around the earth is just over 27 days. Our months (derived from the word moon) are 30 or 31 days, save February, so the full moon for example is not the same day every month.

The moon’s orbit around the earth is not round or equal distance. It is an ellipse or oval and the earth is not in the exact center of the orbit. So during the moon’s orbit around earth, it is closer to the earth at one point ("perigee") and farther away ("apogee") at the other. So when high tide happens during the perigee of the moon’s orbit, the tides are higher (and lower).

The earth’s orbit around the sun has similar characteristics of the moon’s orbit around the earth. Elliptical shaped, sun is off-center so there is a perigee and apogee to our solar orbit. (Earth is closer to the sun in our (northern hemisphere) winter and further away in our summer. Of course, summer & winter are governed by the tilt of the earth’s axis, not by the closeness of our orbit to the sun. But with that said, the southern hemisphere’s summer is warmer than the northern’s because they get the combined affect of the axis tilt and perigee to the sun. But back to the moon.)

So these forces and positions can accumulate to give us greater (higher & lower) tides or mediocre tides:

• Point #1: The moon overhead increases the tide. Every day, our location on earth rotates to face the moon. Twelve hours later, there is another high tide as you are furthest away from the moon; the explanation of this is complicated with lots of math so just go with it. The higher high tide is called sublunar because we are as close to the moon as we can get in the earth's rotation that day and it has a greater effect being so close to our waters. The lower high tide is called antipodal when the moon is directly opposite the sublunar high tide on the opposite side of the earth pulling on that side more.
• Point #2: High tide when the moon is new or full increases the tide. Phases of the moon do not in themselves make greater tides, but the position of the moon as a full or new moon means that the moon and sun are for the most part aligned so that their combined forces can produce greater tides. When this happens it is called a Spring tide. When the sun and moon are are right angles to the earth, like the sun at 12:00 and the moon at 3:00 with the earth in the center, it is called a Neap tide.
• Point #3: When the moon is closest, the tide is higher. When the moon is in its perigee of orbit, it is closer to the earth so its gravitation pull is greater and therefore causes great tides.
• Point #4: Earth being closer to the sun helps. When the earth is in its perigee of orbit around the sun, the sun contributes more to the tides.
• Combining any of these forces makes for greater tides.

So what would be the highest of high tides in any given area? Just wait for the combination of all the above to happen:

• Sublunar tide - the higher daily tide
• Perigee Moon – orbit of the moon closest to earth
• Perigee Earth – orbit of the earth closest to sun (in the northern hemisphere’s winter)
• New Moon – Moon and sun on the same side of the earth pulling together.

Of course, while all these effects have their own schedule or clock, they are still independent clocks. The grandest of tides can be predicted but they just don’t happen on a particular date. It’s sort of like waiting for a solar eclipse, as the saying goes, the planets must be aligned.