Skip to main content

Gotta Lotta Latte

Thirsty Work by ~Deere About six months ago Erin and I got an espresso machine, and our house has never been the same. I keep joking that I’ve become a decent barista. If you look at my counter you might agree, I have syrups in the following flavors:

  • White Chocolate
  • Chocolate
  • Cinnamon Dolce (delicious with white chocolate)
  • Orange (delicious with chocolate, like a chocolate orange)
  • Peppermint
  • Almond (also called Oregot, did you know that)
  • Hazelnut
  • Vanilla
  • Egg Nog
  • Amaretto
  • Cookie Dough
  • Gingerbread (almost out of that, and it’s Rachel’s favorite)
  • Caramel

I have pumps for them and everything. Quick tip, one pump from a spout is 1/4 of a shot (or 1/2 an ounce). So when you’re at Starbucks and they say 5 shots, you’re getting 2 1/2 ounces of sugar there.

Recently I’ve been listening to the Scientific American 60 Second Science podcast. They recently had one titled Caffeine Cuts Workout Plan which has completely reinforced my latte habit.

It turns out that people who drink coffee right before a workout actually have less pain during a workout, this study mentioned bicycling, and are able to exercise longer. In this study a pill equaling 3 cups of caffeine was given to a group of people, and that group had a much better workout. This worked even for people who were heavy coffee drinkers.

So, my venti (20 oz) lattes each day are actually good for me! If only I worked out after drinking one, though I consider wrangling kids and getting them to school counts.

Want to come over for an Iced Mocha or a White Chocolate Cinnamon Dolce Latte? We can walk to Starbucks afterward.

Peace,
Tom

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Using an Array of Objects in C++

 I've been programming for years (over 35 at this point, which is crazy  to think about). My career right now is much more Software Architecture, and much less Software Developer, but I still get some time to write out GraphQL APIs in TypeScript, Vue 3 UIs, GitLab pipelines, and just generally making "big" decisions and helping make them a reality. It's nice every now and then to come across different articles and ideas that get me to remember life in college when I was using C++. Who would have thought C++ was the "hot new thing" right now (though I suppose it's more like Rust and Go, both great languages as well). One of the things I find frustrating with most technical posts is where they focus on the "how do I build an app" and not so much on "how do I do this one slightly useful thing". I figured I'd throw one together what was front of mind, using user attributes for permissions (i.e., Attribute Based Access Control - ABAC) ...

Red-Gate SQL Compare

Every now and then I come across a program that becomes so ingrained in my daily work that I hardly know how I'd get by without it.  I'll probably break down a couple over the next few days, but for database work, I have never found anything as good as Red Gate's SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare .  Essentially these tools let you compare two SQL Server databases (all objects, users, permissions, functions, diagrams, anything) and update changes to whichever database you want.  This is amazingly useful for deploying database changes to a test or production environment (do it to production with ridiculous care, even though it will generate a SQL Script for you and run all updates in one transaction), and making sure everything is synchronized. For releases we can just generate the compare script, confirm that the changes match the updates we want to go out, and store it all in one place with the release details.  This is true for both the structure and the d...

Kids Activities

I find myself often in a situation where it's some morning, I have the kids for the afternoon, and I'm not sure what to do with them. We could go to a movie, or play Legos, but living near Washington, DC, I want the kids to love the museums as much as I do, or to see what else is going on. This Sunday, while my wife was travelling, I took the kids to the Chocolate Festival in Old Town Fairfax. I didn't even know there wad an Old Town Fairfax, much less a chocolate festival. It was okay overall, but the best was seeing any type of chocolate you could imagine, and letting the kids pick something for themselves and their teacher. For finding cheap or free stuff going on nearby with the kids, I have to say About.com has consistently been the best. I tried si.edu (the Smithsonian Website) which is also good, but a little hard to navigate, partly because they have so much going on. At About I did a search of what to do with my kids this weekend, and a bunch of items came ...