I was first introduced to them by Tammy and Clarence when they purchased their single cup coffee maker a couple years ago. The single cup brewing using the single serving size K-cups worked well for them. We’ve got one of the office in Houston now as well and really, they’ve become pretty common. I’ve noticed that about half the time, I brew six cups of coffee (my minimum brewing amount due to taste) only to drink a single cup. Connie is almost always a single cup coffee drinker. I think that we started to realize that our coffee drinking patterns were changing so that a Keurig made sense. Combine all that with Mother’s and the upcoming Father’s day and you have yourself a nice gift idea.

The new single cup system uses specially packaged K-cups of coffee to quickly brew a single cup (three different possible sizes). It takes about 4 minutes to warm up the pot when you first turn it on (you can set a timer to turn it on at a preset time or just leave it on) and then it takes less than a minute to brew a cup. The whole process if fast and has minimal cleanup. We’ve found this to be true. I tend to get up in the morning as late as possible to make it to work and typically would not get to enjoy a cup of coffee with my breakfast. Now I can. In the evening, I would make a pot and drink a cup. Now I just make a cup. On the weekends, late nights or when we have company, I still brew a pot in our Mr Coffee. I’d say that Connie and I both enjoy it.

The downside of the Keurig is the expense of the K-cup. The maker itself is expensive, but after looking at coffee makers recently I’d say that the cost of even standard coffee makers have gone up considerably. Some would say that you can make up some of that cost by looking at the wasted coffee when brewing a full pot of coffee and only drinking a cup. To me, that cost isn’t that much. There is an accessory for the new maker called a My K-Cup that allows you to use normal coffee, but cleaning the filter of it is a hassle. I’ve largely stopped using that accessory. So controlling the expense of the K-cups means buying in volume and buying them at a discount. Sams Club has some good prices as well as Staples if you look for the 24 pack or use a coupon. I still feel like this is a luxury item, but we’ve been enjoying it and seem to be spending more time drinking coffee together.

I wish that I had a nice picture of the kids with Connie, but in all of the haste to get ready and get to church this morning we forgot to take a picture. On top of that, I forgot my camera at home. With only our phones to take pictures with, we didn’t get any great ones. I did take a picture of them when we got home, however the freshness dating on the kids was already past. Maybe next year.

In order to protect yourself, don’t use the same password on multiple sites. To do this, create a very secure root password (upper/lower case letters, numbers and special symbols) and then annotate it with something specific to the site. You can write down the site specific part (just not the secret root part) without giving away your entire password. Here is a great info graphic that McAfee posted on their site. It gives some great advice.

She’s been practicing so hard the last couple months, so her hard work was rewarded. It’s exciting for her since Quinn also won this contest when he finished up the music program and that was in the back of her mind. Graduation from the music program is just a week or so away. Congratulations Emma!

I think I should refrain from calling these outings “fishing” trips as fish don’t seem to be a part of them. I did lose a big one due to a broken line which was most likely due to a sticky drag. Oh well, I had a good time and I never regret spending some time with any of my kids. I thought I would at least post a few pictures of our morning. I did get to see some sea snails taking over a patch of marsh grass.

What has been interesting to me is the progression of this from our first child Quinn to our fourth child Maggie. For the Quinn, we spent a week trying to prepare him for the loss of that first tooth, just watching and waiting. We would carefully place the tooth and provide the dollar (going rate in our house) under the pillow for the next morning. This routine was repeated for each tooth and was largely the same for Hayden, but without as much hoopla. Emma was so fearful of losing a tooth, but that was sort of short circuited by the extraction method. Even though Maggie was two years younger (and probably only 2 at the time), she was the catalyst for Emma losing 3 of her teeth. Once to a kick and twice to punches (not in a real fight, but just the rough housing of the girls).

Now with Maggie, we have come full circle. She usually has to tell us that she’s lost a tooth. She will work it and work it until she can pop it out herself. We generally don’t even know the process is going on until she presents the tooth along with a view of her teeth and the missing space highlighted. The sad thing is that the tooth fairy doesn’t have any cash these days. We generally don’t carry cash around (which a whole other post) and so we have to “borrow” from Quinn to allow the tooth fairy to deposit the dollar under her pillow (or on the dresser). To make matters worse, this is usually halfway through the next day when we realize that we shirked our duty.

I kind of feel sorry for Maggie getting the “tooth fairly lite” routine. I wonder if she will continue the story with her own children. I guess it’s really not that big of a deal as the stories only purpose is the help the process along and Maggie didn’t need any help with that. She just wanted to get paid.

Now we could argue about specific items in the budget, but I think a more productive first step would be to eliminate the deficit. To do that we would increase taxes until our expenditures are met. No one would be exempt and everyone would share the additional amount equally. Next year, same thing. Also, each person would receive a special statement showing their total tax bill.

Something tells me that after everyone had some “skin in the game” that we would become more frugal pretty quickly. Just a thought. We might even vote differently.

Although the morning looked promising, things got a little rough when the wind picked up. It was a steady 15-20 mph out of the south.  We had been able to seek some refuge from the wind by paddling on the down-wind side of the marsh grass. We were on the other side of the open water when we realized that the wind had gotten even stronger. It was about a 2.5 mile paddle back to the marina, but honestly it felt more like 5 or 6.

You know, it’s pretty difficult just to paddle a kayak around for that long. This situation was much worse as we were in danger of not being able to paddle fast enough to make progress. The alternative was to call for help or just wait around and hope for the wind to die down. We decided to try to make a run as the wind didn’t seem to be slowing. We spent about two hours just to get across the open water and up against a line of marsh grass. Quinn was completely exhausted after that run and we still had a good bit of ground to cover. We dropped anchor and started to fish a little more. That gave us a short break to rest our arms and shoulders.

Just after noon, we decided that we had enough. I caught a small redfish, but Quinn hadn’t caught a fish. We headed toward the marina not realizing just how far we had to go. As we pressed on, I could see the fatigue in Quinn’s countenance. He was tired. Onward we continued until we eventually reached the dock. I really have to hand it to Quinn, he complained very little and pushed through to the end. When I commended him for his effort he explained his motivation. “What was I going to do? It was either paddle or get blown out to sea.” I guess that would keep you going. I’m very proud of his effort. Next time, we check the weather a little closer before we drive. Personally, I had a great morning with Quinn.

There were lots of ducks out on the water. We also spotted an owl, several cranes and a nutria hanging out in the swamp. Here are a few of the pictures that I took with my cell phone.

It was a fun trip. At six miles of paddling, it wasn’t a very short trip. We must have been moving pretty quickly as we didn’t spend but about 3 or 4 hours on the water. Nice to get out though.

One thing that has extended Facebook’s reign in the social media world is the use of the service as a platform for other companies (games, portals, etc..). Where MySpace was largely a social media delivery system, Facebook provides a lot more basic services (ex. chat, contact management and gaming). I though about deleting my account, but that would remove a lot of information from my People Tile on Windows Phone 8. So instead I’ve just been pruning my friends list to those people that I know well (or to which I’m related). Still have more work to do.

I’ve started “following” a few influential software developers recently and that’s opened my eyes a lot more to the usefulness of Twitter. In fact, I’m just realizing that you need to continue to tweak your follow list on Twitter to make it most useful. For example, SpaceX was launching another cargo ship to the ISS a couple weeks ago. So I started following them on Twitter to get the details. After the de-orbit of the Dragon module, I just removed them from my Twitter feed. I wasn’t interesting in their constant flow of PR, I just wanted to know about their Falcon 9 launch. The search works well for finding companies and people of interest.

To spell it out, social media just keeps changing. I don’t think any of the services provide everything that people need. It seems that as they grow, their need to monetize drives them in a different direction than people naturally want to go. For my needs, I try to find a place where I can manage the amount of “noise” that I absorb.