Category Archives: Reviews

Phenom

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I’m currently finishing up Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcom Gladwell. It’s been a best seller for quite some time and if you’ve walked by a Borders or Barnes and Noble lately, then I’m sure you’ve seen the book.

Gladwell notes early on in the book that one reason that some people are super successful is the extrodinary amount of time an individual puts into his/her craft. For example, Bill Gates started programming very early on in high school. He had unprecedented access to super computers that only a few hundred people had back in those days. By the time he got to Harvard and dropped out, he had amassed over 10,000 hours of programming computer software. 10,000 hours! I started college in 99 and I’ve probably put in a ballparked 5000 since.

Gladwell argues that 10,000 hours seems to be the magic number that someone has to put in before he becomes a master of the skill. Hardwork, coupled with luck, helps to explain how someone like Gates could have built his mansion with stacks of Benjamins if he wanted to.

Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because while I was @ the doctor’s today, I picked up a copy of SI and on the cover was a picture of a baseball catcher who looked like he was 25-ish. The a headline read, “The Chosen One”. No, the article wasn’t about Lebron James and how he could dominate baseball if he played. Instead, the artcile was about a 16 year old kid from Las Vegas and how he is the next A-Rod + Pujols + Griffey.

While reading the article, I thought back to Outliers. I later found an interview ESPN did with  Bryce where he talked about how he would play roughly 130 games a year and how at 3 years old, his dad put him on his  6 year old brother’s little league baseball team. So lets just say that Bryce plays baseball for about 2/3 of a year and that each game or practice lasts about 3 hours. That’s roughly 9000 something hours, just 1000 shy of the 10,000 hours he needs of being great! And he’s only 16.

Of course, there are still several things that need to happen before the guy even steps into the bigs and becomes the greatest baseball player ever.  But if there’s an example of an outlier or phenom in the making, Bryce Harper would be it.

Web Camper

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If you can’t go camping because you work too much, the next best thing is to blog about it @ CampingTourist. Nice find TL!

A cool find courtesy of TL via campingtourist is the sleepwear sleeping bag from Selk. I like their “not so serious” (what’s a better word?) approach on their website to marketing their sleeping bag, although that lends the product to being seen more as a novelty than as a real sleeping bag. But then again, how can you seriously market a yellow body formed sleeping bag without being a bit goofy about it.

You want one.

Yoga in warmth

Fail: Head and Shoulder

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A while ago, I blogged about H&S and their mumbo jumbo on the back of their shampoo bottles. Now I’m finding out that H&S might be the cause of my hair loss. Although blogging isn’t the same as scientific proof (yet), the BaldingBlog (there’s a blog for everything these days) posted about a possible correlation between the use of H&S and hair loss. 200+ people left a comment mostly sharing experiences of hair loss after using H&S. It’s convenient to point my finger at H&S for making look even more like my dad but that would be wrong and unfounded. There are probably other reasons like fungus or genetics. Who knows. Nonetheless, I’m going to play it safe and terminate H&S. The costco sized bottle of H&S is going to my dad….. to recycle, not to use la!

* Thanks to Ng for the heads up

groundwork

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Clever name for a coffee place, don’t you think?

I was looking to try out Lamill Coffee that GS recommended but it was out of my way so I yelped for some places in the ‘hood and found groundwork. It’s a hole in the wall looking place on Rose in Venice, kind of grungy and organiky. They’ve got a bunch of their own roasts, with Gold Coast being their most popular. I bought a half pound plus a cup of Bitches Brew. The Bitches Brew isn’t anything to write home about, but then again, it could have been the soy milk that I added. Note: soy milk sucks.

So into the Grind and Brew the Gold Coast beans went  Monday morning and now I’m hooked (wow, this sentence is so passive-voice and horribly constructed) . The Gold Coast is way richer than the French Roast that I bought from Whole Foods, rich enough that I had it black this morning. I was tempted to make another cup tonight but I had to clear out some of the beer that is hogging all the space in the fridge. Talk about a good problem to have…..

I’m using the same amount of beans (3.5 scoops), but I’ve upped the amount of water to roughly 15 oz (or a bottle of the Kirkland water) to account for the missing 2oz that seems to disappear. I’m also leaving the carafe out so the water builds up in the “well”, or whatever it is called, so the grinds and water can soak a little longer.

Man, I can’t wait for tomorrow morning so I can get my coffee fix on.

Cuisinart Brind and Grew

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I don’t know what I’m more jacked about, Fish laying Scalo out, Doyers 13-0 record at home, or this imaginary cup of coffee that I just made from the coffee machine (imaginary because it’s too late to be drinking joe). Shout out to TL for picking the Grind and Brew up at Costco (yes, another appliance from Costco).

Water: 12oz @ room temp
Beans: Whole Foods’ French Roast Dark
Scoops: 3.5 cuisniart spoons
Result: The press pot will only be brought out for camping trips. Although the B&G can’t make coffee like the pricey “grind and pound” machine, it’s still by far a better coffee making machine than the PP. The advantage of the B&G is that the beans are freshly ground inside the machine which makes for a stronger taste. I guess I could have purchased a grinder to complement the PP, but there’s nothing like pushing a button on the B&G and having it all done for me. The only thing I don’t like about the machine is that although I put in 12oz of water, it seems like I only get 10 oz of water. What gives? Oh well.