It was a grand experiment.

I went Vegan for almost two years. No meat. No cheese. No nothing that was ever part of anything that walked, crawled, swam or waddled. I felt so proud. I felt so socially responsible. I fell asleep at odd hours.

Ya see, while it’s a grand gesture, it’s a serious pain in the ass.

For the past year, I’ve been traveling a LOT doing Dozen engagements all over the country. That means a day of travel, three days with clients and back on a plane. So that meant sometimes living on nuts and berries in airports. Picking meat out of dishes. Eating catered sandwiches that ended up being bread and lettuce.

It’s a serious pain in the ass.

But I pushed on. Made it almost two years and I finally caved. And the first thing I noticed is that I had a lot more stamina. I didn’t have to eat every couple hours. I felt stronger. I felt BETTER…

Go figure.

Not to say that it’s bad. I guess we all find out what works for ourselves. I guess I’m just a bit of a carnivore. Hell, I was in a restaurant and asked the waiter if he had a vegan menu and he looked funny at me and said “you don’t LOOK like a vegan.”

Maybe he was a lot smarter than he looked.

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I love great design.

And so does the whole world. Look at Apple. They’ve done very well competing in a business where everyone thought the cheapest would win. But they approached the market with the idea of making truly beautifully designed products and do you ANYONE that doesnt own an Apple product?

I bet you know plenty of people who don’t own a Dell product. And the ones that do, probably brought a laptop home from work and WISH they had a Mac.

So good design works.

Well, recently I was on the hunt for a new coffeemaker. My last coffeemaker had lasted five years and was failing. Lots of bells and whistles that stopped ringing and whistling. So I decided to find out who made the best coffeemaker in the world and WHY it was better.

It was a short study.

Technivorm.

Terrible name. But maybe not if you’re Norwegian. Maybe it means “World’s Best Tasting Coffee…”

So here’s the secret. Coffee tastes best if it’s brewed right at boiling and brewed quickly. So most coffeemakers fail because they throw in a lot of silly gadgets but get cheap on the hearing element. The goofy, science experiment looking Technivorm has NO gadgets but a really big, overbuilt, copper heating element.

It heats up the water uber-fast and uber-hot. You brew a pot of 10 cups in 6 minutes.

And it tastes as good as a fresh cup at Starbucks. Really. Not kidding.
It’s fantastic and there is nothing to break or go haywire. Pour the water in, turn it on and you get a full stainless steel, insulated pot of fantastic coffee.

It’s not cheap. It’s $300 and looks pretty bizarre next to the techno models with all the grinders and timers and facial recognition scanning devices. But it should be making great coffee for many years to come.

Hurray for great design. It wins again.

Now maybe Technivorm should send me a box of coffee filters or maybe a trip to Norway in the summer.

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