This promises to be an interesting project, as I know Good Experience has a ton of people on their mailing list.  I submitted my coffee maker(we’ll see if it makes the cut). 

The unit has 3 states:
-Not brewing (off, or stop)
-Brewing now (on, or go)
-Set to brew when the timer goes off (Auto Start, or wait)
Why it’s broken:
The designers choose the wrong color LEDs to indicate state:

We’re conditioned by traffic lights to associate green with “go”, and red with “stop”, but if I want the coffee maker to “go” (make coffee now) I have to make sure the red light is lit.  If the green LED is lit, I won’t get coffee till the next morning.  A yellow LED for “Auto Start” and a green LED for “On” would have made much more sense.

Simple simple simple - search has to be simple.  I’m wondering if the Search page I put on this site a few days back is actually too much.

I’ve posted a few pictures from yesterday’s joyride in the photoblog.

Today God provided a perfect Michigan day.  It’s in the high 70’s, partly sunny, and the humidity is low.  I found myself with the unlikely combination of a gassed-up, topless Jeep, a couple of free hours between meetings, and nothing pressing sitting in the inbox.

I took a joyride. 

I headed south - straight into Michigan farmland.  I saw barns - old and new.  I saw farms that had to add other businesses - this one does excavation, that one landscaping.  I saw a young farmer in a wide-brimmed hat, crouched down, repairing some machinery.  I paused at a corner and saw a red-winged blackbird settle down on the diagonal of a powerline support wire.  I stopped on the downside of a small hill, and heard the grass rustling in the breeze.  I slowed down - letting the old Jeep cruise at a comfortable 40 MPH.  I got passed by people with somewhere to be.  I stopped on a bridge over a small creek, got out, and leaned over to look in the slow-moving water.  I watched the water skeeters shooting around it’s surface.  I looked at the reflections of clouds in the water.  I drove past 3 young kids in brightly colored swimsuits, leaving wet footprints up a blacktop driveway, heading towards the pool.  I passed by a shirtless young boy riding his bike - and noticed that it was a bike much like I had as a young boy, with highrise handlebars.  I saw people loading haybales onto farm wagons.  I saw men building a pole barn, with a front-end loader raised high to hold supplies.  I saw a church sign for a small town, not so small that it didn’t have both a Christian and Christian Reformed Church, but small enough that they shared the same sign.  I saw lots of campers - some out in the yard either being loaded or unloaded, and lots more stored out of the way, waiting to be pulled out.  I saw a farmer fertilzing his field, small trails of dust kicking up behind his tractor.

I savored every moment of that hour, and wonder - as always - why I don’t take more joyrides.

When’s the last time you took a joyride?

For you photography buffs out there…