[editors note:  I haven't had anything worth ranting over lately. Seriously.  Every cup of coffee I've had from an establishment has been either delicious, or already ranted on previously.  So, I'll spare you any crapified coffee rants over places I've decided to re-try in hopes that their poop brew has changed, when in fact, no...they haven't.  This following rant is on ordering coffee, not necessarily the coffee itself...primarily because I was the barista in question.  I wouldn't rant about myself, of course.  Why rant on awesomeness?  Also, understand, that I'm not ranting about my church friends.  I love all of my church friends...and loved all of my previous customers.]

Last Sunday, I was given the opportunity by request to ‘man’ the espresso bar at our church.  I was excited for a few reasons:

1. I haven’t run an espresso bar in over a year
2. Their espresso bar is real. Not your push-button crap. Full on real-life espresso. Adjust the grind. Tamp the portafilter. Steam the milk. Pull the shot.
3. I’m picky about my espresso…which means, I can tell when a shot isn’t going to be good.  I’ll throw a shot away if I think it’s bad. Wasteful?  Heck yes. [side note: If you’re ordering a drink with 2 or more syrups, order decaf, or ask that your milk be ‘extra hot’, just know that I’ll give you a crappy shot.  I won’t waste a good shot on you because you won’t even taste it.

But I digress.  And know that this isn’t a slam against my church friends.  It’s the way they ordered it that reminded me of exact conversations I had with coffee shop customers, so very long ago. Read on…

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This screensast was created by guest blogger @gabeanzelini.

@gabeanzelini explain how to use the amazing Yahoo Pipes to make your RSS feeds more targeted to the content your care about.  In this example, he shows how Mac users who enjoy reading the popular blog Lifehacker, can manuelly filter out all posts relating to Windows users. This example, of course, isn’t just limited to Lifehacker, but any RSS feed you subscribe to and want to filter.

Learn more about Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo Pipes: Fine Tuning your RSS Feeds from Evan Calkins on Vimeo.

The steady downgrade of our American society can be easily blamed in many things. Our poor education system, the constant change of our moral climate, our lack of self control, our debt issues or even our failure to remain out of other peoples busniess. I believe it comes down to one defining issue: Chili’s.

You may have difficulty comprehending this, and that’s understandable, I mean how could a simple restaurant chain be responsible for the problems of a nation? Let me take you on a journey through time.

We’ll start in 1920 Germany, the Nazi party was newly formed and starting to work itself into power. They needed backing. Their scholars began researching. Looking into more supernatural and paranormal routes they finally landed on an ancient evil, and evil so evil that it could not be called by its true name. It was known as “Heilige Scheiße, das ist Übel” which loosely translate as, “Holy Crap, that is Evil”. They decided that the name was too long and after much deliberation, came up with “Chili’s”. How you ask? The original documents go like this “This is as evil as Hell, Hell is hot, hot peppers are hot, hot peppers are called chili’s, so we’ll call this great evil Chili’s” It made sense to them.

The Nazi party marches with its original symbol of evil. (1932)

From the beginning they adopted the symbol of the Chili as their mark, but as Hitler came to power in 1933 he changed their symbol of rule to the commonly known swastika. He had plans for the Chili symbol yet, but it was not for territorial conquest. He would use it to start a prominent restaurant chain. He knew the Nazi regime wouldn’t last forever, and He knew He could carry on the evil without even trying. If disguised properly the mindless populous of the world would do it for him. This was His true vision of world power.

Adolf Hitler gives a salute to his minions outside his restaurant (1939)

After Berlin fell and Hitler was found dead in 1945, it all seemed to be over. Evil had been defeated and Chili’s was no more. Thirty-years passed, and in 1975 a quasi-familiar restaurant was opened in Dallas, TX. Chili’s was making its comeback. By the early 1980′s Chili’s had grown to 22 locations and was just getting started. Its dominance grew rapidly, soon opening up international borders.

Now that you know a little of the history of this sinister corporation let me explain its impact on today. While it is no longer backing a devilish regime that is slaughtering millions, it is inducing irreparable damage to tens of millions if not hundreds. Its insidious ways of brainwashing people into thinking its crappy food is indeed “good” or well prepared has fooled nations. Just by walking into a Chili’s you subject yourself to this indoctrination. In eating the food you poison yourself, no not in the “I’m going to die” sense, but you poison yourself with the mindset that Chili’s is a decent establishment. You begin to want to eat there more and more, you want to have family outings and social events there. You always say to everyone “It has a great atmosphere with the pleasantries and quality of a sit down restaurant and the convenience and affordability of fast food!”. What you don’t realize, is that its a cult and you’re slowly spreading its doctrine of evil.

Its power grips you, causes you to think differently. You begin to lose any and all good taste. Soon you want to start driving a PT Cruiser with chrome borders. You begin thinking that the movie “Taken” wasn’t so bad after all. You start to feel that Mark Walhberg deserves an Oscar for his performance in “The Happening”. You have the urge to grow a mullet and bleach it. You begin to spend time with dense friends and become dense yourself. You think that Microsoft makes a pretty good OS and don’t understand why people would want to use anything different. You begin to think that Starbucks is the only coffee in the world, and Folgers is just an offshoot. You start maxing out your credit cards with no restraint on TV informercial products and sales at Macy’s. You see the world through the eyes that Chili’s wants you to. You want to be a washed up Abercrombie model.

These are only some of the horrors. I cannot divulge too much information as my person is now on Chili’s hit list for exposing the truth. Take this information and do what you will with it, but please heed my warning. It’s not to late.

We are anonymous. We are legion We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

Satire: 1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc. 2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

I’ll admit, I’m a Mac guy through and through, but for 8 hours of each weekday I am required to work on a Hodgman. My Industrial plasticy looking Dell Precision is actually pretty spot on with 6 gigs of RAM pushing the *infamous* 64 bit Windows Vista. Not only have I found ways to cope with my “dull little box preforming dull little tasks“, but with the help of co-worker @gabeanzelini, I’ve been able to very much enjoy my work flow as of late.

Here is a great little trick for making the best, most simple To-Do lists on your PC:

What You’ll need before you get going:

• A Gmail Account
• Google Chrome
• Optional - MaxTo

Here we go:

1. Open Google Chrome and navigate to your Gmail account.
2. Log into your Gmail account and click on ‘Setting‘ in the upper right menu.
3. Click on the ‘Labs‘ tab.
4. Find ‘Tasks‘ in the list of features and enable it and save your settings.
5. Because Google Tasks is built for your mobile device, a special URL is needed to access it from a regular web-browser on your computer. If you go to http://mail.google.com/tasks you’ll see why. Instead: visit https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig
6. Thanks to the thoughtful application window option in Chrome, which is designed to give a web application the appearance of a desktop application ( no browser toolbars ), you can click on  the paper icon in Chrome in the upper right and select ‘Create application shortcuts…‘
7. If you would like to actually create a shortcut to your to-dos, leave the desired box checked; otherwise, uncheck all boxes and Chrome will launch a new, clean looking window to run your tasks in! This window can be well managed sized way down to save screen real estate.
   

   Google Tasks in Google Chrome's Application Window

This is a great way to get a free, minimalistic to-do solution that leaves a great interface on your PC, while giving you the same interface on your Mobile device. ( Mobile users navigate to http://mail.google.com/tasks )

Go further ( I know, “Go further” sounds like one of those lame side notes in a high school textbook)

With the help of the genius application called MaxTo you can better manage window positioning on your PC. This is definitely not a requirement to run Google Tasks, but for me it helps immensely. With MaxTo I can designate a corner of my screen real estate just for Google Tasks. I also use MaxTo for other applications like Witty ( my current favorite desktop Twitter Client ) and Outlook (boo). I’ve been able to cut way down on annoying application switching. Download it. You’ll thank me for sure, and you may or may not send me some Turkish Delight.

I’d love to here some of your favorite to-do methods, or more generally, anything that helps make your PC experience more bearable.