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"Espresso! My Espresso!"
An Ongoing Internet Novelette
by Randy Glass - Copyright 2010 - All rights reserved
E-mail me at EspressoMyEspresso@gmail.com
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Happy Birthday Friday, October 22, 2010 
Yes, its a special day today. Sure, it's my birthday (so what), but more importantly, nay, of prime importance, today is the tenth anniversary of "Espresso! My Espresso!" I made the first announcement of teh birth of "Espresso! My Espresso!" on Usenet in alt.coffee, and searching back through the Internet's electronic aether, you can still read that announcement on GOOGLE GROUPS How long ago that was in coffee years, and how very far I have come, right along with so many of you as well as the entire coffee industry. It would have been incomprehensible in late 2000 to even imagine that I would be where I am today in the world of coffee. Just consider the level of equipment that I use on a daily basis at home! My wife thought I was crazy to consider the amount I spent on Silvia, Rocky, and the Hearthware Precision on my first purchase. The grinder I use today alone is worth some 160% of that entire first order! Ten years ago I didn't even know you could roast your own coffee, and from those ignorant beginnings I have grown to the point of writing the owner's manual for one of the most popular coffee roasters available for home use. People actually write to me to ask my opinions and get guidance as to how to best roast coffee - ya, I know.. it sounds just as ridiculous to me. A decade ago I thought one hundred and twenty-five dollars would be plenty to spend on an espresso machine, and now am proud to have written the owners manual for a machine that sells for over ten times that amount (and makes espresso at least one hundred times better). I would have had to do an Alta Vista Search back then to become enlightened as to what an SCAA was, and now, each year, I register as an exhibitor at the shows. One un-moderated online forum became socially diseased and crumbled into ruins and another, fully immunized took its place. Some faces are gone and dearly missed, and many new ones have arrived. I now patiently (mostly) answer the same questions over and over, because they are the same questions I asked when I began back in late 2000. But let's not get too full of ourselves. The representatives from Mazzer at the SCAA exhibition still giggle a bit when I tell them that I have a Kony... at home. I have friends who are afraid to tell me that they drink coffee made from pre-ground that comes in large, red, plastic tubs from the grocery store. But when I give a friend a jar of my home-roast they grip it like it's the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. "I doan gots to cho you no stinkin' Folgers!" I have a feeling I have used that line before, but after ten years (and being ten years older with ten years' less memory from which to draw) you'll have to forgive me. So ten years later, I make better coffee than I ever thought was possible. In that time I hope I have helped more than I have hindered. I hope I have pleased more than I have pissed off. I have sipped more than I have spat. And the next ten years? I will be well into my curmudgeonozoic era, so some of the previous statements in this paragraph may not ring as true as they currently may, but I will give it a shot and see how it goes. Thank you to all my kind readers who have written me over the years thanking me for assisting them. It is nice to know that all this work has found value beyond keeping keyboard manufacturer's in the black. As much entertainment value as my readers receive, I am also entertained, and I giggle aloud every time I get an E-Mail such as: "I really have learned a lot about coffee from your website. Thank you for all the hard work. By the way, I wonder if you can help me with this problem?..." As if I need a buttering to teach what I know. Teaching is not what I do. Teacher is what I am.
and... CHEERS! |
