A return to drip

A recent unfortunate incident at the coffee shop close to my office prompted me to stop going for my morning americano (it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad) and return to using my drip brewer at home.

I hadn't made coffee in a while. I have to admit that when I ground some (good, fresh) beans, added water and hit the button, what came out wasn't very good at all.

To put this in perspective, I was pretty sure this wasn't my equipment. I have an electric burr grinder from Bodum - it's not super expensive but it's not cheap either. By all accounts, I have a pretty fantastic drip brewer insofar as those are concerned. I even have pretty good water (though, candidly I don't filter it).

So I investigated and it turns out there were a few things I got right (good fresh beans, medium grind), and something I got very wrong - the amounts of my ingredients, namely beans and water.

As it turns out, one of the recommended (and simple) ways to measure these two important ingredients is by weight. A simple digital kitchen scale that can measure down to tenths of a gram is appropriate here.

I like to take my coffee to work in an insulated tumbler (btw, while they wear out after a while, I like the Starbucks tumblers more than any other I've found) that has a capacity of 16oz. In order to make ~16oz of coffee in the morning here's what I measure out:

• 20g of coffee beans (before I grind them)
• 500g of water (before I pour it into the drip brewer)

Throw the beans into your burr grinder (don't use a blade grinder if at all possible, there are a number of articles others have published about that) using a medium grind setting. Throw the coffee grinds into a paper filter in your drip brewer (fold the seams before you put the paper filter in there - I like to fold each seem towards the opposite side). Throw in the water and hit the button to brew. That's it.

After this small change of measuring my coffee beans and my water before I brew, I've been getting a consistent great cup of coffee day after day for many weeks. Of course I'm buying a lot more coffee beans, but spending a lot less at coffee shops.

I hope this little change (it takes 2 extra minutes in the morning in my experience) makes a little, but important, part of your day better. Let me know of questions, and if you're more advanced than I am at brewing a great cup of coffee, feel free to leave expert tips for anyone else that stumbles across this post - I'd love to learn more as well.

Windows Phone 7 Updates

I really enjoy my Windows Phone 7 device and I've been tracking on Windows Phone 7 very closely since November 2010. As such I'm posting Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Updates status link here for those of you in the US who are patiently waiting for Copy & Paste like I am:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/features/update-schedule-usa.aspx

HP Slate 500

I spent last week with an HP Slate 500 Windows 7 tablet. I don't recommend purchasing the device but that's a topic for another time. This post is about something HP calls "system recovery." Here's a little background:

HP's business support site says to use "system recovery to restore the computer to original operating condition," and further goes on to define system recovery as formatting the windows partition of the hard disk and re-installing Windows, the applicable drivers and software for the machine.

Now the fun part. The HP Slate 500 comes with two DVD's for restore purposes, one is Windows 7 Professional 32-bit and the other is the drivers and software disk to make all the extra bits like the camera and touch-screen work correctly. Neither of these disks have an automated system recovery procedure though I've seen on the various HP message boards that installing off the Windows DVD and then installing all the software from the auto-run procedure on the drivers and software DVD accomplishes a similar feat.

That said, I had trouble getting my external USB-connected DVD drive to boot the Windows DVD that came with the Slate (as it turns out HP support tells me that the DVD I have is bad) so I looked around a little more and heard about a USB thumb drive system recovery option from HP (you may have seen information posted elsewhere as well).

I spent about 3 hours on the phone with HP business support and here's the important piece of information that makes this long post worth the time you've spent reading it...

HP support can overnight you, for free (assuming you own or are supporting the HP Slate 500 and have the relevant ownership information) a USB thumb drive that does an automated system recovery.

The HP support rep can find the part number 638737-001 in their internal "CD order tool", specifically:

Item Number - 638737-001 KIT

Item Description - Windows 7 Pro 32-Bit Slate 500 USB STICK

When you receive the USB thumb drive you have to do the following:

1) Fully shut down the HP Slate 500

2) Plug in the HP Slate 500 with the AC adapter

3) Plug in the USB thumb drive to the USB port at the top of the device (it won't look like it fits all the way in but it does)

4) Boot the device and hit the "-" hard key at the top of the device to go to the boot menu

5) Select the boot device options by scrolling with the "+" and "-" hard keys at the top of the device and confirming your selection using the "home" hard key at the top of the device

6) Select the USB thumb drive from the boot devices using the same keys as in step 5

7) Next through the HP system recovery UI, selecting the options you want (Note that Tab functionality is accomplished with the "Keyboard button" hard key on the left side of the device)

8) When the device is ready to reboot, leave it plugged into AC power, remove the USB thumb drive and use the "home" hard key to tell the device to reboot

After that, all the rest is automated and after waiting a bit for the system recovery to complete you'll be asked for a new Windows user name like you were (or maybe someone else was if you're doing support for someone) when you started using the device the first time.

Ford SYNC

A few notes from my experience with syncmyride.com live chat:

-SYNC Gen1 - V3.2 is for 2011 models (as opposed to SYNC Gen1 - V3.1, currently the latest version for 2010 models).

-You can Master Reset SYNC. I don't have a touchscreen so for those of you that have SYNC without a touchscreen, here's the relevant instructions from syncmyride.com live chat:

"To perform a Master Reset on SYNC: Press the PHONE button to access the PHONE MENU, then follow this path: SYSTEM SETTINGS > ADVANCED > MASTER RESET > OK to confirm. The Mater Reset will begin and will complete in a few seconds. A Master Reset will remove all corrupt files and bugs that were causing the issue, as well as all paired phones and media players (your updates will not be affected). They will have to be paired again. Note: if you can not find a specific option, then select RETURN, press OK, and look again."