The Wayward Celt

At my day job, I am a knowledge manager for IBM Rational Support. In this position I am helping to drive a concept known as “KCS”, or Knowledge Centered Support.  I like KCS, because it allows me to do what I have been doing all my life when it comes to information: reuse.

I’ve always found my patience tried when pushed to repeat myself, so I would fall back into a pattern of reusing information I previously provided. Oddly enough, however, it took me YEARS before I began actually reusing content for one of the questions I am most commonly asked: “What whiskies do you recommend?”

So, two years ago, I answered that question in the form of a blog post on my whiskies tasting group site: www.3DrunkenCelts.com

Since it was around the Christmas holiday, I framed the original post in the context of gifting whiskies to someone else, but the concepts and recommendations are still solid if you are just buying for yourself.

This year, I am going to fall back on the best practices I’ve learned over the years and simply reuse my old content, as it still holds up today:

• 3DC: Need help buying a whisky lover a Christmas gift?

So, jump on over to my tasting group’s site at the link above and read through my post on buying whiskies as gifts… and maybe even take a look at Raz’ recommendations for non-whiskey whiskey gifts too. Who knows, you may just find that perfect something for the perfect someone, or just for yourself

A sad day hit the household this weekend; our drip coffee maker developed a leak.

While this was not entirely catastrophic, it did give us the excuse to finally replace our little Mr. Coffee with a proper drip machine that would bring our Stumptown roasts to full flavour. After some solid refreshers on my previous research (I spent a full year researching my purchase of the Rancilio Sivlia and Rocky combination for my espresso setup), I had narrowed our choices down to 2 within hours: a Capresso MT-500 or a Technivorm Moccamaster .

Further discussion and a final trip to a local kitchen store, Kitchen Kaboodle, resulted in us coming home with a Technivorm Moccamaster Thermal carafe drip machine:

Such a beautifully simple drip machine. It has only one switch with two settings: on and off. No timer, no clock, no bells and whistles. The brilliance of the machine is the power it wields, as it is one of the only machines on the market which will actually heat the water to the perfect extraction temperature of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It is also one of the very few machines (possibly still the only home drip machine) which can boast an SCAA certification/approval for meeting its standards.

Now, with the old coffee maker in the garage, I have disassembled it in preparations and attempts to see if I can rebuild/mod it into a steampunk style Mr. Coffee at the suggestion of a good friend. If I am successful, you can expect a full process write up on this blog.

Of course, while we were at Kitchen Kaboodle, we also ended up replacing our 13 year old Hamilton Beech 7-cup food processor with a new, larger Cuisinart Custom 14 cup food processor:

I think that should pretty much settle any future kitchen appliance purchases for another 10+ years. If we had kids, these two appliances would be handed down to them when we pass; they are built that well!

With that, I’ll go have another cup of Stumptown, perfectly brewed at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Ah coffee, how I love you!