The Raising of Lazarus

This is the new home for personal entries formerly held here: http://blogs.sun.com/rama. Stay tuned!

HOWTO: Fix a Leaky Espresso Machine

(Woah, I can’t believe its been five months since my last entry. Gonna work on that…)

I’ve got a several year old Gaggia 16002 espresso machine that does a fine job of making espresso, but a mediocre job of steaming milk. Its been on mothballs for the past year as I’ve favored french press coffee to the time consuming morning ritual that is cappuccino making. Now that my holiday vacation has started and my mornings are not rushed, I decided to roast an espresso blend and dust off the machine for a change.

This Gaggia has a small boiler, so properly frothing milk has always been a challenge. The problem has been compounded by a steam valve that hasn’t been sealing well, so a lot of the steam gets vented through the group head rather than building up in the tank for the steam wand. Sitting (drained) for a year made the problem much worse, so it was time to take it apart and see what’s going on. It was simpler than I had anticipated- I really should have done it as soon as the problem started. If for no other reason than to give everything a thorough cleaning. It seems running Urnex Cleancaf through the machine every few months (and a brush on the group head after every session) was no where near enough to keep things tidy. This is a photo of the group head (screen and steam valve removed) after a Cleancaf cleaning:

You can see coffee build up that the brush and solvents didn’t touch, and hard water build up on the head assembly. This same build up was also present on the steam valve parts, which was preventing it from seating all the way, causing the steam lost through the group head during frothing attempts:

That part should be black, no grayish/green. (ignore the bubbles, I didn’t bust out the camera until after it was soaking in Urnex).

Cleaning was pretty simple once it was all apart. I used my fingernail to scrape off the deposits on the valve part, so it wouldn’t get nicked, and a stiff nylon brush and a dental pick to clean up the valve seat and group head assembly:

That’s all it took to get the Gaggia back into shape for steaming. Looking forward to the cappuccinos tomorrow morning!

Coffee Roasting with a Hottop

I’ve finally replaced my popcorn popper coffee roaster with the Hottop KN-8828B drum roaster. Why? The most pressing reason was the need for larger batch sizes. The Poppery could only handle up to 4.2 ounces at a time, and doing back-to-back roasts made the second batch go way too quickly- often with no time between the first and second crack. You could approximate a roast profile manually by flipping the heat switch on/off, but most of the time its just roasted too quickly- and you have several under developed beans.

Why the Hottop? It does 9oz at a time, very evenly. It does internal voltage monitoring, so you don’t need to mess with a Variac. I’m also into light roast coffee lately, and the Hottop has a really slick cooling cycle to stop the roast really quickly. Here’s a short clip initiating the cool mode manually- embedded below. The high pitches “pop” sounds are the beans in second crack (this particular bean called for a darker roast than most I favor):

Its quieter than the Poppery, so hearing subtle cracks is not an issue- and it has a nice viewing window to keep tabs on progress.

But it does have its down sides. It is higher maintenance than a Poppery, with not one but two proprietary filters that eventually need replacing. It also has anti-lawsuit programming: when certain temperatures are reached, you need to hit a button within a short timeframe or it dumps the beans, whether you like it or not (due to potential fire hazard.) Lastly, the internal temperature monitoring is inaccurate, and while there is a fully programmable model, it should be avoided.

However, I am happy with it. It makes really good coffee with practically no effort (if you choose to roast on Auto), yet has plenty of room to grow with its option to save roast profiles. If you’re just getting into coffee roasting, I’d still suggest a popcorn popper to learn the ropes. Once you graduate from that, the Hottop is a solid machine.

Wine for Tech Support

This weekend wasn’t the first- and certainly won’t be the last- time I’ve offered up my help technical support with a friend or family member’s computer problem. Helping my Mom and Pop stay current is recently paying off in the forum of old family photos scanned in and sent via email. This time the reward was a half case of wine, care of a brother-in-law with a dead computer and good taste!

The haul was a bottle each of: 2004 Kongsgaard Chardonnay, 2003 Turley Rancho Burro Zinfandel, 2005 Brewer-Clifton Ashley’s Pinot Noir, 2005 Zin Alley Vicolo Della Zinfandel, 2006 Roar Gary’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, 2003 Aida Vineyards Vineyard 29 Zinfandel.

I’ve had each of these before, besides the Turley, and am a huge fan of the last four. Thanks Joe! Perhaps I should extend my tech support offer to anyone with an impressive cellar.

Bean About Town (aka A 6th Day in the Life of Bean)

I promise I’ll come up with something to blog about myself, but for now, here’s another report, on our now 18 month old, from my lovely wife:

We took a ride to Burlingame this morning. Now that her car seat is facing forward, Bean is able to recognize places, so when we hit Burlingame Avenue, she clapped and shrieked with delight and didn’t stop until I unbuckled her from the carseat.

Our first stop was to hit the drycleaners to drop off your dress shirts. Bean helped me carry the pile of shirts and kept pointing to her shirt and my shirt to let me know she knew what it was she was carrying. As we walked town the street, a fire truck came by with 5 firefighters inside (it had a huge cab in front). Bean saw this and started waving like mad and they returned her greeting with a 5 bell salute and lots of hooting and hollering and waving. Bean was in her glory.

Still on a firetruck high as we entered the drycleaner, she waved and smiled vigorously at the joyless, unfriendly employee who stared blankly at bean. This lack of response only inspired bean to be more friendly and she waved and smiled with more gusto and threw in some grunts for good measure. Blank stares made way for blanker stares and we left with our ticket and headed for friendlier turf. Bean likes the music and the drinking fountain at Anthropologie and I like the merchandise, so we stopped in and made a bee line for the fountains, conveniently located in the sale rack room. Bean has at last mastered the art of drinking from a fountain and was so excited by her new accomplishment, she threw up a half cup of the contents of her stomach all over me, herself and the floor. Fortunately (or not), she missed the clothing racks so I didn’t have to buy anything. Another joyless woman (it is spring, people, get happy!) witnessed our little regurgitation incident and shot bean and I a dirty look and made a tsk tsk sound as I quickly cleaned up the mess with a baby wipe I pulled from my purse.

It was a beautiful day and not even a surprise barf or a second encounter with a bitter woman could break our spirit, so we proceeded to Gumshoe, a rather upscale but friendly shoestore for kids. Bean let out some noises I’ve never heard before, which I translated to mean: OH MY GOD WE’VE FOUND MECCA. Tiny shoes displayed at heights ideal for toddlers’ roving hands opposite big poofy round seats to climb and lounge on. Bean was drawn to a pair of sandles with big chunky metallic flowers as well as the entire row of euro-looking boys shoes. She proceeded to rearrange them as if she were the display merchandising director and the sales girl came over and applauded her efforts and for some reason started encouraging her to pick everything up and relocate it. I apologized for bean, but she said as far as she was concerned a kid that cute could do whatever she wanted in the store. Bean quickly caught on to the powers of her persuasion with this woman and proceeded to show off. Teeth were flashed, eyelashes were batted and shoes were traded back and forth. Bean then started grabbing from the top shelf ($80 and above toddler shoes) and pulling the price stickers off each shoe. As I frantically tried to match her de-stickering pace with reapplying the sticker,s the very kind and bean-smitten lady said: she can put the price stickers wherever she likes. Since I had no plans to buy anything, I decided we’d better hightail it out of there and I said something like, we’ll be back with grandma. The sales girl replied: Come back anytime – you don’t need to buy anything. And as we walked out the door, I heard her say to her colleague: “OMG, I want that baby!”.

So for every 2 joyless women, there is one kindhearted one that makes you forget about the others.

A 5th Day in the Life of Bean

I think @mcjenveigh was encouraged by the Life of Bean series feedback, she sent me a whopper tonight:

I’m writing this down while its still fresh, or otherwise by the time you get home from tennis, I’ll have forgotten the details.

So I usually hit the proverbial wall in terms of entertaining bean by about 4:30 pm each day, and then I just lie on the floor and let her beat on me with her bath toys until you get home. But since I knew you were playing tennis after work, I decided I should probably plan ahead in terms of additional options for keeping her majesty happy and productive. Here’s how that went down:

{But first, a sidenote about the CRAZED GREEN-EYED MONSTER you call ‘the cat’: Some good news and bad news:The bad news first: Around 4 or so, she managed to undo your temporary barricade on the auto kitty feeder and pulled out about 20 kibble, ahead of the regularly scheduled dispensing time. I put the remnants of the destroyed protective mechanism you built on the breakfast nook table. The last bit of plastic from the original guard she broke also came off in this latest scuffle. The good news is, the replacement guard the auto cat feeder people sent arrived in the mail today.}

Now back to bean. I knew I wanted to take her downtown, maybe pick up some dinner because getting her out of the house not only wears her out, but generally makes her happy. Before we left, we went to inspect the cat auto feeder to make sure it was clear of debris, and all of a sudden bean leaned down on all fours and put her face in the bowl and started making chomping noises, followed by a series of meows, and then, because she apparently is one who believes in embodying the entire character of that whom one is mocking, she cupped her hand like a paw, and began tapping the auto feeder’s kibble tower to try and release the food. I_am_not_making_this_up. I took that as a cue to leave and so we headed downtown.

We parked 2 blocks from Draegers. When I took her out of the carseat, Bean immediately started hooting and hollering(sp?) like horshack from welcome back kotter (eww ewww eww, mistuh kottah, mistuh kotter!) only without the mistuh kotter part and so I asked her to show me what she was excited about. She pointed towards draegers and we walked the 2 blocks until she led me (with pointed finger) to the frog shaped cookies behind the counter at the bakery section. I asked her if she wanted the frog and she said: YEAH!. There was a kid in front of us, also getting a frog cookie. She looked at his selection and then pointed to the smiley face cookie and requested that instead. I tell you this, because it makes me proud that she already has her own style and is not afraid to veer from the pack.

Next we browsed the wine section where she pointed out her favorite labels to me (she’s big on those with animals – frog’s leap, rabbit ridge, etc.). Then we headed upstairs to the housewares section. They have about 100 different soaps and candles and we had to stop and smell every single one, including those without any fragrance. At that point she spotted the section with children’s things – most intrigued by the selection of about 10 different stuffed animals. Her favorites were a giant panda and shark. We had to touch each one’s nose about 30 times. At the end of this strange ritual, she gave me the biggest, unprompted hug in the world, which unbeknownst to me, was witnessed by an older man on his way to the men’s room from the Bar at the Restaurant down the hall. He said: Wow, she is like an angel isn’t she? And I smiled. And then he came back (and oddly enough he smelled a little like Negronis with a hint of lime) and looked at her again, and said, I just wanted to make sure she was a girl after I said that. I was ok with this, since most people just assume she is a boy for I don’t know what reason. We said goodbye to him, and to the giant panda and shark and then on our way out, bean insisted we stop to smell every single bucket of flowers, including the artificial ones.

We headed down the street and I noticed a tour bus of people parked in the lot apparently getting their gourmet shopping on while the exchange rate is still decent. (this applies to the story later). We walked past the pizza joint and bean stopped at the window and waived to every single patron and employee. Only the employees noticed her, but they all waved back, which made Bean very very happy. We headed to the japanese takeout place, got a teryaki bowl, and bean said her variation of “thank you” upon our exit and then made our way back to the car. As we walked by the parking lot, the tourbus was exiting and bean waved to the entire bus. I think she got a few waves in return, but by this time it was dark and I couldn’t really see very well. As expected, she was having too much fun and cried and kicked and screamed when I put her in the car seat. I noticed that she stopped crying once I shut the door and then resumed when I got into the car. I can only chalk that up to her understanding of the principles of energy efficiency.

After the short ride home, I went to retrieve her from the car and I asked her if she was still mad at me. She said: “YEAH!” but I felt okay with that answer, only because she doesn’t know how to say “no” yet. But once inside she proceeded to stomp her feet for 30 seconds as if to close out the episode of anger with a physical manifiestation of an exclamation point. And then she was back to her old bean self.

We ate dinner without incident and I discovered that an unexpected perk of having this particular kid is that she will eat my broccoli! Then after I applauded her for eating the veggies I can’t stand (without revealing my disdain for them), we went upstairs to get her bath ready. For kicks, I started shouting out commands to see what she would do. “Go find your rubber duck”. “Go get your frog”. “Pick out your pajamas”. “Grab a fresh diaper”. “Take out the trash”. She completed all but the last without faultering, and we went into the bathroom and began to draw the bath. She wandered away from me and I looked up to find her walking in circles as the toilet paper she had grabbed began to envelop her like a mummy. It was too funny to stop and I knew that ultimately the roll would run out. It finally did and she gracefully stepped out of her paper toga and proceeded to wipe the floor with all of the toilet paper. And since the floor is not exactly sparkly, I didn’t stop her. Eventually the tp started breaking apart, which she seemed to view as a welcome challenge. She picked up every last piece and put them in the trash, again unprompted. OH HOW I LOVE THIS KID.

The rest of the night went on as usual — playtime, milk, 1/2 a yo gabba gabba episode, books, a little bit of bedtime protest, then sleep. Oh, except she definitely missed you. Everytime a daddy came up in the books we read, she looked around. Now I sleep.

A 4th Day in the Life of Bean

I’m guessing only Liz appreciates these, but here’s another daily update on our 17 month old:

(1) We went splashing in puddles at her request. Unfortunately I did no know in advance this was her agenda, so her leather/suede shoes are pretty close to ruined (drying out on the heater vent now).
(2) She picked up one of the chocolate wrappers off the floor, opened the cabinet under the sink, and threw it in the trash (w/o me prompting her)!
(3) She protested sleep so I told her I would read her one book; we read the book and she immediately stood up, grabbed her frog and hippo and paci and climbed on me to take her to bed (w//o me prompting her!)

Little bean is growing up.

New Org: Cloud Computing at Sun

I’ve mentioned before my recent career choice to jump back in the trenches. And now, thanks to some smart people taking smart actions (I’m not sure I’m at liberty to discuss in more detail), most of my old organization is now part of Sun’s new cloud computing effort.

I’m crazy excited to be working with the likes of Jim Parkinson and Lew Tucker again, and (continuing to work for) Will Snow.

Sun Forums Reaches 4M Messages!

Sun’s discussion forums has just exceeded four million messages! And one million contributors is just around the corner too. Linda has the full scoop.

SSH Tunnel Pitfalls

Hilarious video. Be patient- its worth it: