unsolicited product endorsements

02Apr06

it’s been a while since i ran one of these, so there’s alot of catching up to do.

on my flight to barcelona a couple months ago, there was a container of dannon la creme vanilla yougurt packed in our breakfast. this is the best tasting tasting, richest yougurt ever. the french are well known snobs about food and wine, but specifically they are picky when it comes to 1. anything creamy, 2. anything vanilla. and well, this seemed to satisfy all the francophones on my flight in addition to practically bringing me to orgasm (fuck chocolate). you can buy a 4 pack for about 3 bucks in the store. it’s a bit expensive for yougurt, especially non organic or hippy friendly yougurt, but it is so rich, so smooth and so naturally vanilla that well, it’s worth it.

rich knows that the way to my heart is through my coffee machine and sent me a few ESE pod samplers a few months back. one of them was the brand called bristot. with pods, you never know exactly how they will taste since it’s tough to discover the blend of beans each brand uses. but this one is smooth, strong and kindof cocoa-y, and makes for a great macchiato.

i’m considering putting together a real home office. while looking for a chair to stock it with, i came across a wired test report on online tax services. they raved about how clear and user friendly turbotax was, so today i checked it out. i was skeptical because the last time i tried to do my taxes online, it was a very user-unfriendly experience. everything was in tax or accountant jargon and referred to all sorts of forms i’d have to fill out, not to ones i had in my hand. turbo tax was the exact opposite. it led me step by step through the forms i had, and then asked a ton of plain english questions to figure out all the forms i’d need to fill out. when the questions weren’t in plain english, there were always really helpful definition links (“what’s this” or “this is not very common”) to help me along. it took me about twice as long do it myself than to go to h+r black, but it was only 1/3 the cost. plus they let me fill everything out and pay at the end, so if i got frustrated and stopped, i wasn’t going to waste my money. but i didn’t get frustrated. and i feel great. i also feel great because i actually put away more money than i needed to pay my taxes. not a whole lot more. but it’s always nice to be on the plus side of things.

also while checking out chairs on wired, i discovered human scale. a cool little company making high tech but good looking and simple office furniture.

finally i found something on the net that i’m thinking of copying. there are plenty of webisites that tell you what’s going on in SF. there’s no shortage, in fact. nor are there a shortage of cool hunting and gadget blogs. but thrillist does something different. they take the coolest nyc restaurants, and bars and send out info on them mixed with cool art and gadget stuff in tiny bite-sized pieces. i’m thinking it’s high time there was something like this for san francisco. there’s plenty of source material. but no one place to get it. you have to sift through fecal face for art, upcoming and squidlist for live events, the local weeklies for concerts. flavorpill tries to do it, but i don’t think they the get the indy nerd vibe of SF. they’re more for the bubble 1.0 fabulous crowd. so i think i may have found another calling. we’ll see if i can put it together and still have time to actually do things.

and finally, if you haven’t played fancy pants go have some fun right now.

Filed under: Food and Drink, good design, shopping, web   |  1 Comment