jenniferbrola.com

You know, I really like where things are headed with the iPhone. I guess I should admit, though, that I'm a big fan of touchscreens in general (although they all currently "shaft" the blind). I wonder if Apple will introduce some kind of speech gesture recognition software to make it more accessible for people with disabilities? Maybe I can't find the "2" key beneath the glossy glass touchscreen, but I could draw a "2" with my finger. It's possible!

In any event, it'll be awhile before I consider switching over. Consolidating devices (browser, phone, music, email, etc.) is physically liberating, but it also introduces a single point of failure. Your music machine dies and guess what? You can't make a phone call, either! Mwah-ha-ha. No, I'll wait and see how things go. I'll let my supervisor be my guinea pig on this one. Maybe by the time I'm ready, they'll be giving these things away for free (or nearly free). You never know!

"When the iPhone was first announced, my co-worker, Adam, peeked his head over my cube wall and said, 'Your whole life has been leading up to this moment.' I burst out laughing, but realized how close to the truth he was," Porterfield said. Read more...

One machine I was a first adopter on was the Plymouth Neon. Ok, so it's a car, but a car is a machine! I knew they had screwed with the body design until it was a mere shadow of it's original peppy self, but I didn't realize that they had stopped making them altogether. How sad. Thanks to the trade-in habits of my parents, it was both my first car (a blue/turquoise SOHC base model) and my second (a fully-loaded purple DOHC espresso model). Sigh. Goodbye Neon. Though your trunk may have flooded in the rain (espresso, I'm looking at you), you both got me to Philly and back safely, not to mention rush hour through Charlotte during the height of I-77's reconstruction.

While the Chevrolet HHR and Toyota Matrix continue to be sold alongside the Chevrolet Cobalt and Toyota Corolla on which they are respectively based, the five-door Caliber is significant in that it replaces its sedan predecessor altogether. Read more...

It's only been a week, and I can already say I'm flunking the "live like you have a huge mortgage payment" lifestyle. Ok, maybe "flunk" is too strong of a word, but running out and buying a $200 coffee machine? In my defense, I've wanted a Keurig (Dutch for "neat") coffee machine since my days at the Arts & Entertainment Television Networks. And while the machine we had at home was great, the husband and I always fought the "CAFFEINE! NO...DECAF!" battle. He drinks one, I drink the other, and neither of us ever wanted to do the clean-up.

This is wonderful. No more messy filters to clean, no more remembering to fill the pot at night or stumbling to the pot in the morning, no more wasted coffee down the drain. Read more...

If you enjoy coffee but avoid making it at night because for just one cup that whole pot will go to waste - I think you owe it to yourself to try this brewer out. Not just in the store, but blue and glowing in your own kitchen. Read more...

I'll admit, the pump is a little loud, but it's a lot less brash than a coffee grinder. And while coffee purchases require a little forethought, you can get individual K-cups for a wide range of coffees (caffeinated, decaf, seasonal, flavored, etc.) and a variety of black and herbal teas. At less than $0.50 per cup (a steal over $2 Starbucks), you can get K-cups from well-known brands like Celestial Seasonings, Gloria Jean's, and Green Mountain - the latter even has fair trade and organic offerings. Now if only the Green Mountain Fair Trade Blueberry coffee was available in decaf!