Brew and Go

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I get a new coffee maker…again.

It’s disposable products all over again.

Brew and GoI’ve been using a Black and Decker coffee maker called “Brew and Go” (formerly, “Cup at a Time”) for about fifteen years now. I like fresh-brewed coffee every morning, but Mike doesn’t. It’s silly to make a whole pot — even if I do want a second cup, I won’t take it from a pot that’s been sitting on a burner for 30 minutes. So I make a single fresh cup every time I want one.

(And in case you’re wondering, I usually don’t drink brewed coffee in restaurants. Burner sludgification is one reason. The other is that most restaurants out here don’t know how to put enough coffee in the brew basket to make a strong enough cup. I think it’s because it’s pre-measured and it comes in bags. This is the same reason I’m avoiding those “pod” coffee makers. You can get decent restaurant coffee in New York and on the west coast, but in the midwest, southwest, southeast, and elsewhere, the only way I can get a cup of coffee that’s strong enough for me is to order a latte at a coffee shop.)

The other day, I bought my fourth or fifth one of these coffee makers. They work fine for about two years, then they start getting unreliable. The usual symptom is that they stop brewing before all the water in the reservoir has been heated and pumped up to the grinds. You wind up with a 2/3 full cup of coffee with leftover water. It isn’t a big deal to push the button again — usually that’s enough to get the rest heated and brewed. But experience has taught me that this is only the first of the pot’s symptoms. The next step is that button getting broken. And when that happens, the coffee maker won’t work at all.

So I consider the funky button a warning sign. I’ll need a replacement soon. So I went online and found a replacement for a good price on Amazon.com. (Note to my critics: Sadly, you can’t buy anything like this in Wickenburg, so shopping locally was once again out of the question.)

Oddly enough, they showed two models and the only difference I could see between them was the size of the machine. Since both were under $20 with only a $4 price difference and I figured that I could use one in my hangar, too, I bought them both. I was curious to see how they differed.

They arrived yesterday. Their boxes are identical with two exceptions:

  • One box says “Deluxe” (that’s the $17.99 model) and the other doesn’t (the $12.99 model).
  • One box illustrates and identifies a stainless steel travel mug (the $17.99 model) and the other one illustrates and identifies a plastic travel mug.

I opened the deluxe model and got a good whiff of the plastic aroma that accompanies many new appliances made primarily of plastic. I pulled out all the packing material, plugged it in, and brewed through some plain water. Then I decided to read the instructions for some tip to get the smell out. The instruction book only had four pages in English — not much to instruct.

Of course, the unit is made in China. I’m not sure if the original “Cup at a Time” was made in China. It was a long time ago. It was probably Taiwan back then.

I brewed up a cup of coffee using the built-in filter basket. I usually don’t use that thing because grinds get through it into the coffee. I like my coffee very strong and usually grind the beans to the first “Fine” setting on the machine at the supermarket. The “gold” filters that come with many coffee makers simply aren’t fine enough to prevent the grinds from going through. But I figured I’d try it a few times. If I could make a good cup of coffee with the reusable filter, I’d save a few bucks on paper filters — not to mention the time it takes to cut the #2 cone filters down to size. I’ll experiment over the next few days and maybe even get some coffee ground a litte coarser.

The first cup of coffee tasted a bit like the plastic I smelled. Or at least I assume so — I don’t make a habit out of tasting plastic. There’s a puddle of finely ground coffee at the very bottom of my cup, like mud on the bottom of a pond. The first problem will be remedied with time, the second will probably require a grind or filter change.

But the coffee maker performed flawlessly, using up all its water and making a nice, hot cup of coffee.

The old coffee maker is now sitting in the trash like the three or four that came before it. As we all know, it’s usually more expensive to get these things fixed than to buy a new one. That’s how the disposable economy came into being.

A little side story here. Our original DVD player only lasted about 5 years. We tried to get it fixed and everyone we brought it to quoted us a price to look at it that was more than the thing was worth. Then we tried to give it away to a school or electronics repair training facility so the students could use it to learn about the machine and/or how to fix it. No one would take it. Mind you, this isn’t a machine that had been abused. All of its parts pretty much still worked. It just didn’t play DVDs anymore. The only option was to throw it out.

I recently sold two very old Macs (an 8500 and a beige G3) on eBay. I got 99¢ for one and $9.99 for the other. Plus shipping, of course. Although I’d spent a total of more than $5,000 for the machines years ago, I was willing to take the money. Not because I needed the $10.98 but because I didn’t want to take the two machines — which were still perfectly functioning — to the landfill.

I guess their new owner will do that one day.

It’s time for another cup of coffee.

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Stand Up for Your Principles

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I’m baffled by people who can’t.

I consider myself a person with principles. My principles might not match yours and you might not even think they’re any good. But that’s not the point. I have principles and I stand by them.

For example, I believe that if a man and a woman are in a relationship, they should be faithful to each other. That’s one of my principles.

I believe that people should not lie, cheat, or steal. That’s another principle.

I believe that people should be tolerant of other people’s religion, political beliefs, and sexual orientation. More principles.

These basic principles — and lots more where they came from — are what guide me in my daily activities.

I stand up for what I think is right. That’s why I write so many opinion pieces on this site and wickenburg-az.com. I see something I don’t think is right and I want people to know it. I want them to see — even for a moment — why the thing is wrong. Or at least why I think it’s wrong. I want them to look into it for themselves, think about it with their own brains, and make a decision. Then I want them to act on that decision.

One of the biggest complaints I hear these days is that a single person can’t make a difference. I think that’s a cop-out, an excuse not to try. The trouble is, too many people believe it. Too many people are willing to ignore their principles because it’s the easy thing to do.

Everyone can make a difference. If you believe in something, let it guide you. Don’t settle for less.

And don’t give up, just because it’s easier than trying.

Outsourcing, Continued

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Visitors start a lively discussion, but may be missing my point.

My “Just Say No to Outsourcing” piece has gotten a little discussion going in its comments. It appears that some readers are confusing “employ America” with “buy American.”

I’m all for the first, but have limits on the second. While I’d rather buy American-made products, I do have to spend my money where I’ll get the best value for my dollar. Nowhere is this more important than when making a major expenditure, like one for a car.

As I was growing up, my aunt was vehemently opposed to buying anything not made in the US. While that was possible back in the 1950s and 1960s, it soon became very difficult. She stubbornly stuck to her guns for a very long time, buying US-branded televisions and cameras and cars when she could have gotten better quality products, often at a lower price, from Japanese or German manufacturers. In the end, she had to give in, at least on the electronics stuff.

There was a time when the US was at the top of the game, when US-made products were technologically advanced and of better quality than you could get anywhere else in the world. But with some exceptions, that’s changed. For years, people have been recognizing that they can get more value for their hard-earned money by buying products made and marketed by overseas companies.

Personally, I think it’s tragic. I believe that America’s failure to stay at the top of the product manufacturing game is a result of laziness on the part of R&D teams and cost-cutting measures on the part of management. It also has a lot to do with pay levels, benefit packages (often required by unions), and the cost of living in this country. Even if we could make the best product in a given category — say, digital cameras — we couldn’t afford to make it or sell it. All these things combined — not to mention our smug “America is the greatest country in the world” attitude — have led to our manufacturing downfall. After all, it’s hard to make yourself better if you already think you’re the best you can be.

And things are getting worse, as goods mass-produced in China and Korea at rock bottom prices flood the marketplace, replacing quality with items so inexpensive that we can buy with the atittude that when it breaks, we can just throw it away and get another one.

I tried to buy a leather wallet in a leather goods store about a month ago and couldn’t find a single one that wasn’t made in China. It scares me when we get to the point that we simply don’t have a choice. I know now how my aunt felt when she bough her first Canon camera. But at least she was getting a quality product from an established and respected manufacturer.

Anyway, before I alienate any other readers with what will likely be taken as an unpatiotic attitude (a dangerous position to be in these days), I just want to remind readers that if they love America, they should support it any way they feel comfortable supporting it.

Although I’m not comfortable enough to buy a Ford, I’m very happy to avoid doing business with US companies that send customer service jobs overseas. And I’m not afraid to speak out against overseas outsourcing.

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Netflix

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My capsule review of the Internet-based DVD rental service.

I joined Netflix about two months ago and, in general, have been satisfied with the service. That’s not to say the relationship has been trouble-free. It hasn’t.

Netflix offers four plans for membership. I chose the cheapest plan: $9.99 per month for one DVD at a time with an unlimited number of DVDs per month. The plan is perfect for us in that it enables us to watch, on average, two DVDs per week. That brings the per DVD rental cost down to less than $2 per title — cheaper than pay per view and both cheaper and more convenient than going to the local video rental place.

Here’s how it works. After setting up an account, you browse or search the extensive movie library for titles, actors, directors, etc. that interest you. See one you want to watch? Click an Add button to add it to your Queue. Once a movie is in your Queue you can shuffle it around in the list order. The ones on the top are the ones you’ll see first, in the order in which they appear.

What’s kind of neat is that you can add a movie to your queue before it’s available in DVD — even before it’s been released to theaters. As soon as it’s available, just shift it to the top of your queue to get it right away.

In my plan, I only get one DVD at a time, so the plan is pretty simple. Netflix sends me the DVD at the top of my queue. They send me an e-mail message telling me that it’s been shipped and giving me an estimated receipt date. Since the local shipping point for me is in Phoenix, I usually get the DVD the day after it ships. So something that ships out today will be in my mailbox tomorrow.

The DVD comes in a red tyvek envelope that contains a white tyvek envelope with a sticker describing the movie. There’s no DVD case and no liner notes. Just the movie. I pop the movie into my DVD player, watch it, then pull it back out and stick it back into the red envelope, which has a tear-away portion that removes my address and replaces it with Netflix’s. I drop the envelope in the local mail box and it goes back to Netflix. It usually gets there in a day or so, depending on the day of the week. (There’s no mail service on Sundays, so that’s a dead day.) Then the whole process starts all over again.

At the beginning of this piece I alluded to a less than perfect relationship. That’s because I’ve had two problems so far:

  • One of the DVDs was scratched to the point that it would not play properly. Although most of the movie played, there was about a 15-minute sequence that was messed up, with lots of skipping forward. This is evidently a common problem, since Netflix has a customer service form with this listed as a possible reason for contact. They offered to provide a replacement DVD, but it wasn’t so bad that we couldn’t see the movie, so I let it go. Still, I’ve since looked at the underside of each DVD and have been shocked at the number of scratches on each one. Is it that the tyvek envelopes don’t properly protect the DVDs? Or are other subscribers downright careless with them? I don’t know.
  • The other day, I got an e-mail confirmation that the movie I’d returned had been received at Netflix. The only problem is, I never saw the movie. It was shipped to me and then shipped back without ever getting into my mailbox. This was a problem that was not on the customer service form and I had a heck of a time finding contact information to report the problem. Netflix responded the next day, saying that occasionally the envelopes get damaged in shipping and, when the outer envelope gets torn off, the DVD simply comes back. (Either that or one of my neighbors enjoyed the movie and graciously returned it for me.) They promised to send a replacement movie while my next selection was on its way — so I could “catch up,” so to speak. Trouble is, they sent the same movie that was next in my queue, so I got two copies of the same movie. I guess that’s what happens when you let a human take the job of a computer.

I use the “three strikes and you’re out” rule with customer service. Netflix, so far, has two strikes — in less than two months! They aren’t the only organization offering this kind of service. Blockbuster, in an effort to save their failing company, has also launched an Internet-based DVD rental service. If Netflix drops the ball again anytime soon, I’ll surf over to the competition to see what they have to offer.