For those with no thumbs

I present the SealSkins Technical Winter Glove:

Coffee, leading the way to office productivity

Want to improve office productivity? Offer coffee instead of water!

No, really. And it's not the caffeine. Read on. . .

So, one of the clients I'm spending a lot of time with lately has a little break room with a water cooler and one of those automatic pod coffee machines - the kind that let you select from a variety of coffee and tea products in little single-use pods, pop one in the machine, hit a button, and wait a few seconds. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of most mass-market coffee products, but the stuff this one produces is actually pretty good. And the people in this place go through enough of it that it's usually fresh.

Now, about that water cooler. The office recently switched vendors, so the old machine went away and a new one took it's place. It's slow. s. . . . .l. . . . . o. . . .wwwwwwww. . . . . . . . . Slow to the point that some of the diehard water-drinkers started pondering the coffee machine, instead.

So, I timed them. (yes, I'm a geek.) As it turns out, assuming an astute and proficient user, the coffee machine is FASTER than the water cooler. Yes, it takes less time to heat up 8 ounces of water and force it through a small puck of coffee than it does to simply dispense it from the water cooler.

So, want to increase productivity in your office? Ditch the water cooler and get a coffee machine, instead. People will be back at their desks several seconds faster after each refreshment break.

Help me out here, people

So I noticed that Wiggle, the UK equivalent to Perfnashbance Bike (though arguably with better selection and higher quality goods), has an add on cyclingnews.com that orders over 100 GPB get free shipping to the US. Last time I checked, they didn't ship to the US, so this was news to me.

I eagerly clicked the add, then tried to find how to get their US-targeted site. Near the top, there's a section displaying that you're viewing prices in X currency for shipment to Y location - X and Y are links that allow you to change. So, for instance, you can specify shipment for the Vatican City State, if you so desire. There's even text that proclaims the site will be filtered to show only the goods they can ship to your locale, with correct shipping costs, etc.

I clicked the currency link and changed it to USD, then clicked the location link and changed it to USA.

Immediately, I noticed the currency had defaulted back to GPB. So I changed it back to USD.

. . . at which point the location defaulted back to UK. So I changed it back to USA.

. . . . which caused the currency to bounce back to GBP.

To make sure I wasn't off my rocker (I say this ironically, since I was sitting in a rocking chair at the time), I checked from another browser. Same result. I checked from a third browser, on a different computer. Same thing. Yet another browser, on a different computer. Same thing. I tried obscure combinations of the two, and each time, when I'd switch one variable, the other would default back to the UK-centric choice.

I even went to the length of finding the cookie wiggle.co.uk had put on my computer and manually editing it to reflect the correct choices.

Defaulted right back.

So here's my challenge - can anyone out there in blog-land get this site to recognize a non-UK currency AND a non-UK ship location?

Ok, for real now:

Catching up:

1) I had two races last season I never posted about. One kicked ass (hard to argue with an age group win) and the other sucked (almost 15% off my goal pace).

2) I really like my Garmin Edge 305. It makes for an interesting conversation with other geeky cyclists I know. We can all sit around and compare heart rate graphs for that big hill on such and such street. More than anything, it's a motivator, in the sense that it doesn't lie. It's easy, when training, to either lull yourself into underperformance or work yourself to death. Having data at your fingertips can help prevent either of those extremes.

3) Also really like the new trainer. I dunno if it's pure luck or something special about this particular model, but it doesn't seem to eat tires like other trainers do. Right now I have cyclocross tires on one of my bikes, and I ride it on the trainer often. I'd expect a trainer to shred a cross tire, but it shows no wear.

4) Need to get/stay motivated. See second set of race results mentioned up top. In addition, lots of other things going on in life right now (not about to yack them all over this blog, don't worry) so it's been tough to stay in shape. I think I'm finally getting back on top of my game after months of crap, so hopefully this is the "real thing" and not a fake motivational boost.

On a related note, how do you know if a year is going to be "the" year? I feel like I've had certain bike-related goals for a few years in a row and they've never been realized.

This just in. . .

I have recovered from the freak dirigible accident (which involved a bird, a remixed jazz album, some red paint, the language of automation, and a spoke wrench) and promise to blog regularly once again.

So for all .03 of my fans, I'm back.

(No, I was not in a hot air balloon accident, but it sounds more interesting than the truth.)

Oh, and. . .

My Garmin was delivered this morning! Two days ahead of schedule! Yay! Thank you, Amazon. Thank you, USPS.

Grrrrr at the fact that it is now sitting on my doorstep back home. Lonely. While I'm stuck in a hotel until Friday, my bike looking oddly naked without a computer on it.

Garmin-Chipotle names Tour squad

As captured in this posting on velonews.com. People will probably anticipate my next statement: I'm really depressed to see DZ isn't on the list, since that basically confirms the rumors that he hasn't fully healed from his accident.

On a happier note, CSC released their squad, too. Both of the Schleck brothers made the cut, which makes me happy. Seeing the two of them cooperate in the peleton has always made me happy.