eJava and Wine shop

There is a new shop in town in South County, e-Java and Wine. I went to visit it today. It is located in an old License Bureau (huge – 4K sq ft probably). They painted the walls, hung a few pictures, and threw burlap green coffee bags over the old service windows in the back. There are a couple of PC’s for public access and free wi-fi. The majority of the store is dedicated to adult beverages (_beer and _wine mostly) – all on QuickTrip type shelving. In the back corner is a small coffee bar with a super automatic machine. There are a few tables along the edge of the building, hidden by the shelves. There were some bins of coffee beans, priced pretty reasonably ($7.50/lb). It doesn’t look like a coffee shop at all. Looks like a_liquor shop with a coffee bar in the back. The prices for coffee are very high, most higher than Starbucks. I ordered an Americano, knowing with a super I’d get a decent drink if the espresso blend was any good. It was only fair. The barista (if you could call the person that) asked me, “that has two shots in it right?” – Hmm…. After I was handed the drink she advised me to take a sip to see if she “messed it up”. They don’t open until 8:30 AM and close at 10PM (on the weekends, even though next to the theater). They only sell adult beverages to go, no serving drinks – it is a_liquor store. These folks aren’t going to make money on coffee. They make a big deal about free wifi but I can get that up the street at Panera/Breadco with a much better atmosphere and better/cheaper coffee. If they don’t get a a lot of people in the area looking for high priced eclectic booze I don’t think they’ll make it…

More big $$ coffee

Caribou Coffee is doing an IPO. Great for them. Somebody needs to give *$’s a run for their money – well sort of. Starbucks (*$) opened more stores last year than Caribou has total. I’ve never been to one, but there is one in the town I grew up in, so I’ll have to visit sometime.

The only stores around me are Starbucks. Closest local shop is 15 minutes away. 🙁

Yahoo Music Engine

Wow… Over 1 million tunes for $60/year. I’d say $5/mo (like the Yahoo ad does) but that would be a lie. If you want to pay by the month it is $6.99. Still a deal. Less than half of what the cost of a similar offering from Rhapsody (Rhapsody to-go is 14.99/mo). Downside is of course they are DRM enabled Windows Media files. You can use them from 3 computers however, and unforunately I don’t have a lack of windoze computers around the house. You are “renting” a music collection and you know what? I’m fine with that. The albums I love I’ll probably still buy. Today I buy quite a few albums that I don’t care for except a song or two. I can buy just those songs on Yahoo for 79 cents now (If I still like them after hearing them 20 times). You can also take the music to a DRM enabled MP3 player.

For $5/mo it is worth it to listen to just about any music you want. The WMA files can be downloaded to your hard drive for offline use but they will expire I guess if you don’t connect or cancel the subscription. The software is pretty buggy. It logs me off periodically and then after I log in it doesn’t let me stream music – restarting the program fixes it. It is very web centric and is pretty slow right now. How would you like to size that application deployment?

Ok, so when can I do this with movie and TV shows Yahoo?

Back online

Finally had a few moments to upgrade WordPress to a version that can
handle bulk spam… So everything is now working again.

CoffeeFest – Chicago 2005

Went to CoffeeFest a few weeks back (http://www.coffeefest.com. It was a good time learning more about the specialty coffee business and drinking free espresso samples all afternoon. Saturday Kim and I did a cupping seminar where they taught all the basics of cupping coffees. It was very well done and enjoyed it.