See, the battery...

In his article Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret, Bjorn Lomberg writes the following...

For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main argument is that their electric cars [...] don't contribute to global warming. And, sure, electric cars don't emit carbon-dioxide on the road. But the energy used for their manufacture and continual battery charges certainly does—far more than most people realize.

The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When an electric car rolls off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car: 14,000 pounds.

While electric-car owners may cruise around feeling virtuous, they still recharge using electricity overwhelmingly produced with fossil fuels. Thus, the life-cycle analysis shows that for every mile driven, the average electric car indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon-dioxide. This is still a lot better than a similar-size conventional car, which emits about 12 ounces per mile. But remember, the production of the electric car has already resulted in sizeable emissions—the equivalent of 80,000 miles of travel in the vehicle.

So unless the electric car is driven a lot, it will never get ahead environmentally

Reducing our energy usage is problematic because many of the ways that we reduce that energy usage - solar cells, windmills, mag-lev trains, dams - use the energy on the front end to produce it.

I'm coming to think that the only way we can eliminate our damage to the planet is to stop existing.

The Cincinnati Enquirer slits its own throat

The newspaper industry is dying.

You know it. I know it. The newspaper folks know it. Heck, The Onion knows it.

And in these trying economic times, the Cincinnati Enquirer is doing everything in its power to remain solvent and profitable.

They've consolidated the Cincinnati Post and Enquirer together (a few years back).

They have shrunk the size of the print edition at least twice that I know of.

They've outsourced the writing of most of their neighborhood content to local people looking to promote their own events, setting up a largely web2.0 article generator.

Now they're putting their online content behind a pay wall, allowing folks only twenty (or maybe it was thirty) free articles before locking the rest of their articles down for subscribers only.

Before hitting this pay wall, though, readers are treated to full-page, click-through ads for Furniture Fair (I tried to do a screen cap, but the ad disappeared as I hit the print screen button)...animated advertisements with rain and skidding cars...pop-up banner ads...

pop-up window ads for LowerMyBills.com...

...banner ads across the top and right-side of the screen...

...a slide-back countdown for the number of free articles the reader has left...sponsored links at the bottom of the page...another floating banner ad at the bottom of the page...

and a website that hasn't been redesigned in at least five years.

For all of this joy, sorry, for all of this hassle in trying to actually read their content, they are offering a digital-only option for $10 a month. Or readers can go digital AND print for $13 a month, meaning that the print option is worth a grand total of $3 a month...ten cents a day.

I can't promise that the post-subscription website still has all those ridiculous ads (I haven't paid), but I'm guessing it still does. The neighborhood content looks to still be free, as does the list of news stories within each category (news, local, sports, business, etc), but everything else directs you to a screen that looks like this...

Clicking on the close X sent me back to the main news page.

I get that the NYTimes has been partially successful with the transition to a paywall (temporarily suspended in the wake of Sandy), allowing ten free articles per month before a reader has to pay for more access. The Cincinnati Enquirer is not, however, the New York Times. They aren't remotely the New York Times. They are a local paper with a website designed to annoy rather than to inform.

They are, however, the only game in town. Nobody else in town covers the Cincinnati news market, though I'm thinking there might be a market for one soon because I'm just about done with the Enquirer and their grasping at monetary straws instead of improving the consumer experience.

The miracle of evoshield...and the hilarity of their next steps

Calen's kid is a bit of a baseball player, and he got a new toy that's pretty fascinating.

He got a new wrist protector from a company named evoSHIELD. A new wrist protector in and of itself, of course, wouldn't really be much news if it weren't for the outstanding science that the wrist protector seems to exhibit.



See, the evoSHIELD is a two-part system. It's got a neoprene compression sleeve that holds the protector in place...the same exact place every time. That's kind of important because of thhow the second part works.

The second part starts out as a gel material that's sealed in an air-tight foil pouch. Once the pouch is broken, the gel material is placed in the neoprene sleeve and worn as it would be in a baseball game. The very flexible material - sort of like a gel shoe insert - starts to harden then, taking the next twenty or so minutes to turn to a remarkably rigid plastic molded exactly to the shape of the wearer's wrist.

When that rigid plastic then takes an impact - from a pitched ball, for example - it distributes that impact over the entirety of the rigid plastic all of which is in even contact with the wearer's body, spreading that impact until it has a lot less power to do any damage. If the hard plastic wasn't molded so perfectly, the impact wouldn't be spread as evenly and would instead concentrate that force on one place on the wrist, leaving the wearer open to injury.

The physics here is pretty cool, sure, but that's nothing more than snowshoes - spread the force out, do less damage.

The chemistry, however, is phenomenally cool. The material turns from soft and pliable to rigid and permanently formed in about twenty minutes upon exposure to air. And once it's formed, it's formed perfectly. It's not going anywhere.

That does mean that the evoSHIELD can't be loaned to anyone else, but it also means that it's a spectacular protective device. The company makes the same product in pads for football, softball, baseball, lacrosse, even to protector your shoulder when shooting a rifle. The can protect your ribs and thighs, chest and back, shoulders and pretty much whatever you need - even if it's a special medical need like an enlarged spleen, missing rib, or implanted device in your chest.



It's pretty spectacular materials science right there, folks. It's a cheap material ($14 for a replacement wrist protector without the neoprene sleeve) that can be molded by anyone with almost no training, and it's rock solid once it's set. I teach chemistry and run materials science workshops, so I wanted to find out how the material works.

Step one after I check the limited 'how it works' info on their website was to give the company an email. Ask 'em how it works. Here's what I sent...

I am a high school science teacher and am leading some of ASM's materials science teacher camps this summer...

http://www.asminternational.org/portal/site/www/foundation/educators/teacher-material-camp/

One of the other camp leaders today showed me her son's evoshield baseball wrist guard before/after/during fitting today, and I was blown away. The material that your products use is absolutely fascinating, and I was hoping that you might have some literature that I could share with the teachers in the camps over the next few weeks. Do you have any such literature explaining any part of the science behind the hardening process that I could have and share?

Simple enough...just asking for some background info on the material. It couldn't be that simple, however... Here's what I got back.

Hi Lonnie,

Thank you for your email and for reaching out to us. The only person who can describe specifically how the technology works is the chemist who patented the technology and he is no longer with the company. We are not sure specifically what the patent entails, but the main premise is that our shields harden when exposed to the moisture in the air. I apologize for the vague response, but the details of the technology are not well known at all.

Best,
Justin
--
EvoShield Customer Service
300 Commerce Blvd.
Bogart, GA 30622
PH: 770-725-2724 | FAX: 678-753-0100

Wait. Your company is making this materials - an admittedly phenomenal material - and you don't have anybody on staff who knows how the stuff works? Seriously? That's hilarious and outstanding and brilliant. But I'm determined, so I asked further. (I do now at least know that the material cures on exposure to moisture not air.)

Thanks for sending me something to start with as an answer. Do you happen to know the patent number under which the material is registered? I'm curious enough to do a little more research. Or would you be willing to share the chemist's name so I could see if I could contact him? I promise that I'm not looking to compete but rather to get students and teachers excited about some of the exciting/revolutionary materials being made today.

I figure I can do some research on my own. I'll go looking. Let's see what they offer up.

Hi Lonnie,

Thanks for the interest and the enthusiasm. I really wish I could help more, but unfortunately all of that information is kept very secretive, even from most employees. It's treated just like Coke's secret formula. I know you're not looking to compete but there have been several copycat attempts already and they are very protective and cautious about giving out any information at all. Very sorry and have a great week Lonnie.

Looks like my searching via evoSHIELD is a dead end. Now I need to find out how to search for a patent on a material.

In the mean time I'll just be impressed with the awesomeness of materials science and evoSHIELD. Thanks, Calen.

Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist

I initially found Penelope Trunk's blog from her post about Asperger Syndrome in which she explained how she deals with her own sensory integration disfunction at her office.

Rarely do I find a blog that is actually useful, but this one does a marvelous job of actually providing usable pieces of information that could help all of us in the workplace.

I hate Kroger and Wal-Mart...and don't know how I feel about Sprint

Some days, man...some days...

The campaign started today, the Pasta for Pennies campaign, that is.  We had students collecting at four or five stores around town - Krogers and a Sam's Club this weekend.  It would've been at a Wal-Mart, too, but the only one that had allowed us to collect canceled on us not even thirty hours before our first collections at that store were to begin.

Then I got news today that at least one of the Kroger stores at which we had scheduled store collections notified our kids that they were cancelling our second two weeks of collecting - because of the frickin' Girl Scouts.

It doesn't matter that I have a form signed by one of the store's customer service folks saying that PHS students are allowed to collect for the LLS on all the dates listed (Saturdays and Sundays from today through Valentine's Day).  Nope, the Girl Scouts decided to get started a little early this year, so our kids are going to get chucked.

And if one store is forced into letting the Girl Scouts in at the start of February, then I'm guessing that there are a bunch of Krogers that are going to kick our kids out - nothing to do about that tonight, though.

Of course, calling the Forest Park Kroger and effectively yelling over the phone at the manager on duty didn't help my mood, leading me to close the conversation and send my cell phone buzzing across the room into the sliding doors where it flew apart into a half dozen pieces - two major ones and a bunch of smaller ones.

So, off to the Tri-County Sprint store because the cell phone has become a necessity in my life - particularly as I'm likely to be getting more and more phone calls on the next few weekends.

"Nope, you aren't eligible for an upgrade yet.  Not 'til June.  Let me see what I can do."

Turns out that with a little creative finageling, the customer service person was able to add a third line to our account - costing us $10 more a month - but then offer us a 15% discount, bringing our previously $80 bill per month down to about $77 per month (before taxes and stuff).  In the process, I got a phone that is supposedly $249 for only $50 - and I can send in a rebate form to get all by $2 bucks back.  The new third line had to have a new phone number, but once the accounts got activated, my new phone was switched so it's on my old phone number.

So, I shattered my phone, got a new phone, (and a third line - 226-5041, in case anybody wanted to know, though the only thing attached to that number is a destroyed cell phone), and will end up paying slightly less money per month than I was beforehand.

The business world - as I have said before - make no sense to me at all, and I want as little to do with it as humanly possible.

At long last Rumpke...and a lesson on publicity

So, Mount Rumpke is bursting at the seams.

They've been running bus tours for a while now on top of what appears to be some kind of underground fire smoldering. Heck, they've been looking into expanding the mountain of trash for a few years now.

Mount Rumpke, in case you weren't aware, is our local landfill, a giant monstrosity of a pile of trash begun by a local family that started out taking in trash to feed to their pigs and eventually worked their way into being one of the largest sanitation corporations around, taking in trash and recyclables, renting out port-a-lets, funding a softball team, and even inspiring a local bluegrass band.

That's not the story here, though.

The story here is a little change in their recycling collection business locally. They're been doing curbside recycling for a number of years, charging us eight or so bucks a month to haul away PETE (#1) and HDPE (#2) plastics, glass bottles, paper, and cardboard - as long as it was broken down. In that time, I've gotten increasingly frustrated with friends in other markets who are able to throw all of their plastics into their bins while I have an increasing pile of polypropylene (#5) plastic - yogurt tubs, deli tubs, whatever.

But, this past week we got a revelation.

On Thursday I heard a news story on NPR that Rumpke and the City of Cincinnati were announcing a big increase in the products that Rumpke's curbside recycling would be accepting, adding in all plastic bottles (but not butter tubs) and pizza boxes as they had improved their recycling processing plant. More materials into the recycling bin mean less into my trash can and less into the every-growing Mount Rumpke.

I saw the same story on two different six o'clock local news programs, but I didn't get all the details in either quick little news blurb, so the next morning I headed onto the web to get the full story.

Nothing on channel 5's website...nothing on the Enquirer's website...nothing on channels 19 or 12...heck, the only two blurbs I could find were one on channel 9's website saying that there would be an announcement coming Thursday afternoon and a four-sentence story on the NPR website without any more details than I heard knew before. That last site directed me to the City of Cincinnati's website to find the full list of recyclables - which hadn't been updated since 2007.

From there, onward to the Rumple Recycling website because they must have the new list posted. I mean, the news had just given Rumpke as much positive press in that one day as they'll likely get in the full year.

At least when I called them, they'd know all the details, right? Nope. They just directed me to their website where I actually pointed out to them that the updated list wasn't there.

They wouldn't dare not have all their ducks in a row, right?

Nope, they dropped the ball in every way possible.

They didn't make sure they had updated their website.

They didn't make sure the news websites had any information about the coverage.

They didn't make sure the City of Cincinnati had the info front and center.

They didn't make sure their employees had the new list.

C'mon folks, if you know your company is making an announcement, you have the website already updated - or at least ready to be updated at the touch of a button the moment the announcement is made.

You make sure every front line employee knows the details and is ready to field all calls about the announcement.

You certainly don't drop every possible ball when you get finally some good publicity.

PS - The only thing I can get out of the Rumpke folks is that they're now taking all plastic bottles but not butter tubs. The phone folks couldn't tell me what numbers or specific plastics they were going to be taking, just that they wouldn't take butter tubs.

They are also taking in pizza boxes, too.

Of course, none of this helps me get rid of those deli containers and yogurt tubs. They're neither plastic bottles nor butter tubs. It also doesn't help me get rid of the clamshell packages that I keep finding stupidly used.

An ode to muxtape

Look like Muxtape is no longer. In case Justin takes down his message explaining the situation, I'm posting the message he has here. It's an excellent glimpse into the issues that the music industry has at the moment as they try to open up their content to as many people as possible without freely opening up their content to as many people as possible.

I love music. I believe that for people who love music, the desire to share it is innate and crucial for music itself. When we find a song we love, we beckon our friends over to the turntable, we loan them the CD, we turn up the car stereo, we put it on a mixtape. We do this because music makes us feel and we want someone else to feel it, too.

The story of Muxtape began when I had a weekly show at my university’s radio station in Oregon. In addition to keeping the station’s regular log I compiled my playlists into a web page, with each show represented by a simple block that corresponded to a cassette recording for that week. At the time, mixtapes were already well into their twilight, but long after my show ended I couldn’t stop thinking about how the playlist page served a similar purpose, and in many ways served it better. Like a mixtape, each playlist was a curated group that was greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike a mixtape, it wasn’t constrained by any physical boundaries of dissemination, but… it also didn’t contain any actual music. Someone might come across the page and smile knowingly at the songs they knew, but shifting the burden of actually compiling the mix to its intended listener defeated the purpose entirely.

Five years later, internet technology had advanced significantly. I was working on experimental user interfaces for web sites when I started thinking about that playlist page again, and ultimately set out to bring it to life. My desire to share music (in the mixtape sense) hadn’t gone anywhere, but the channels to do so were becoming extinct. Popular blogging services allow you to post audio files in an ephemeral sort of way, but it wasn’t the context I was looking for. A physical cassette tape in your hands has such an insistent aesthetic; just holding one makes you want to find a tape player to fulfill its destiny. My goal with Muxtape’s design was to translate some of that tactility into the digital world, to build a context around the music that gave it a little extra spark of life and made the holder anxious to listen.

The first version was a one-page supplement to my tumblr, and was more or less identical to what it would become later. The feedback was great, and the number one question rapidly became “can you make one for me, too?” At first I started thinking about ways I could package the source code, but the more I thought about it the more it seemed like massively wasted potential. Distributing the source would mean limiting access to the small niche of people who operate their own web server, whereas I wanted to make something that was accessible to anyone who loves music. The natural conclusion was a centralized service, which suddenly unfolded whole other dimensions of possibility for serendipitous music discovery. What seemed before like the hollow shell of a mixtape now seemed like its evolution. I knew I had to try building it. Three weeks of long nights later, I launched Muxtape.

It was successful very quickly. 8,685 users registered in the first 24 hours, 97,748 in the first month with 1.2 million unique visitors and a healthy growth rate. Lots of press. Rampant speculation. Tech rags either lauded it or declared it an instant failure. Everyone was excited. I was thrilled.

There was a popular misconception that Muxtape only survived because it was “flying under the radar,” and the moment the major labels found out about it it’d be shut down. In actuality, the labels and the RIAA read web sites like everyone else, and I heard from them both within a week or so. An RIAA notice arrived in triplicate, via email, registered mail, and FedEx overnight (with print and CD versions). They demanded that I take down six specific muxtapes they felt were infringing, so I did.

Around the same time I got a call from the VP of anti-piracy at one of the majors. After I picked up the phone his first words were, “Justin, I just have one question for you: where do I send the summons and complaint?” The conversation picked up from there. There was no summons, it was an intimidation tactic setting the tone for the business development meeting he was proposing, the true reason for the call. Around the same time another one of the big four’s business developers reached out to me, too.

I spent the next month listening. I talked to a lot of very smart lawyers and other people whose opinions on the matter I respected, trying to gain a consensus for Muxtape’s legality. The only consensus seemed to be that there was no consensus. I had two dozen slightly different opinions that ran the gamut from “Muxtape is 100% legal and you’re on solid ground,” to “Muxtape is a cesspool of piracy and I hope you’re ready for a hundred million dollar lawsuit and a stint at Riker’s.”

In the end, Muxtape’s legality was moot. I didn’t have any money to defend against a lawsuit, just or not, so the major labels had an ax over my head either way. I always told myself I’d remove any artist or label that contacted me and objected, no questions asked. Not a single one ever did. On the contrary, every artist I heard from was a fan of the site and excited about its possibilities. I got calls from the marketing departments of big labels whose corporate parents were supposed to be outraged, wanting to know how they get could their latest acts on the home page. Smaller labels wanted to feature their content in other creative ways. It seemed obvious Muxtape had value for listeners and artists alike.

In May I had my first meeting with a major label, Universal Music Group. I went alone and prepared myself for the worst, having spent the last decade toeing the indie party line that the big labels were hopelessly obstinate luddites with no idea what was good for them. I’m here to tell you now that the labels understand their business a lot better than most people suspect, although they each have their own surprisingly distinct personality when it comes to how they approach the future. The gentlemen I met at Universal were incredibly receptive and tactful; I didn’t have to sell them on why Muxtape was good for them, they knew it was cool and just wanted to get paid. I sympathized with that. I told them I needed some time to get a proposal together and we left things in limbo.

A few weeks later I had a meeting with EMI, the character of which was much different. I walked into a conference room and shook eight or nine hands, sitting down at a conference table with a phonebook-thick file labeled “Muxtape” laying on it. The people I met formed a semi-circle around me like a split brain, legal on one side and business development on the other. The meeting alternated between an intense grilling from the legal side (“you are a willful infringer and we are mere hours from shutting you down”) and an awkward discussion with the business side (“assuming we don’t shut you down, how do you see us working together?”). I asked for two weeks to make a proposal, they gave me two days.

I had to make a decision. As I saw it I had three options. The first was to just shut everything down, which I never really considered. The second was to ban major label content entirely, which might have solved the immediate crisis, but had two strong points against it. The first, most visibly, was that it would prevent people from using the majority of available music in their mixes. The second was that it did nothing to address the deeper questions surrounding ownership and usage for everyone else who wasn’t a major label: mid-size labels and independent artists who have just as fundamental a right to address how their content is used as a large corporation, even if they don’t carry quite as big a stick.

The third option was to approach a fully licensed model, which I had been edging toward since I met with Universal. I knew other licensed services so far had met with mixed success, but I also knew Muxtape was different and that it was at least worth exploring. The question about whether or not the labels saw value in it had been answered, the new question was how much it was going to cost.

It was June. I approached a Fifth Ave law firm about representing me in licensing negotiations with the major labels, and they took me on. Two weeks later I met with all four, flanked by lawyers this time, and started the slow process of working out a deal. The first round of terms were stiff and complex, but not nearly as bad as I’d imagined, and I managed to convince them that allowing Muxtape to continue to operate was in everyone’s best interest. Things were going well. I spent the next two months talking with investors, designing the next phases of the site itself, and supervising the negotiations. A big concern was getting a deal that took into consideration the fact that Muxtape wasn’t a straightforward on-demand service, and should pay accordingly less than a service that was. Another reason I liked the licensing option from the outset was that it seemed like an uncommon win-win; I didn’t want the ability to search and stream any song at any given notice, and they were reluctant to offer it (for the price, anyway). Muxtape’s unusual limitations were its strength in more ways than one.

The first red flag came in August. Up until then all the discussion had been about numbers, but as we closed in on an agreement the talk shifted to things like guaranteed placement and “marketing opportunities.” I was denied the possibility of releasing a mobile version of Muxtape. My flexibility was being constricted. I had been worried about Muxtape getting a fair deal, but my biggest concern all along was maintaing the integrity and experience of the site (one of the reasons I wanted to license in the first place). Now it wasn’t so simple; I had agreed to a variety of encroachments into Muxtape’s financials because I wanted to play ball, but giving up any kind of editorial or creative control was something I had a much harder time swallowing.

I was wrestling with this when, on August 15th, I received notice from Amazon Web Services (the platform that hosts Muxtape’s servers and files) that they had received a complaint from the RIAA. Per Amazon’s terms, I had one business day to remove an incredibly long list of songs or face having my servers shut down and data deleted. This came as a big surprise to me, as I’d been thinking that I hadn’t heard from the RIAA in a long time because I had an understanding with the labels. I had a panicked exchange of emails with Amazon, trying to explain that I was in the middle of a licensing deal, that I suspected it was a clerical error, and that I was doing everything I could to get someone to vouch for me on a summer Friday afternoon. My one business day extended over the weekend, and on Monday when I wasn’t able to produce the documentation Amazon wanted (or even get someone from the RIAA on the phone), the servers were shut down and I was locked out of the account. I moved the domain name to a new server with a short message and the very real expectation that I could get it sorted out. I still thought it was all just a big mistake. I was wrong.

Over the next week I learned a little more, mainly that the RIAA moves quite autonomously from their label parents and that the understanding I had with them didn’t necessarily carry over. I also learned that none of the labels were especially interested in helping me out, and from their perspective it had no bearing on the negotiations. I disagreed. The deals were still weeks or months away (an eternity on the internet) meaning that at best, Muxtape was going to be down until the end of year. There was also still the matter of how to pay for it; getting investment is hard enough in this volatile space even with a wildly successful and growing web site, it became an entirely different proposition with no web site at all.

And so I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever faced: I walked away from the licensing deals. They had become too complex for a site founded on simplicity, too restrictive and hostile to continue to innovate the way I wanted to. They’d already taken so much attention away from development that I started to question my own motivations. I didn’t get into this to build a big company as fast as I could no matter what the cost, I got into this to make something simple and beautiful for people who love music, and I plan to continue doing that. As promised, the site is coming back, but not as you’ve known. I’m taking a feature that was in development in the early stages and making it the new central focus.

Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.

I realize this is a somewhat radical shift in functionality, but Muxtape’s core goals haven’t changed. I still want to challenge the way we experience music online, and I still want to work to enable what I think is the most interesting aspect of interconnected music: discovering new stuff.

Thank to you everyone who made Muxtape the incredible place it was in its first phase, it couldn’t have happened without your mixes. The industry will catch up some day, it pretty much has to.

Justin Ouellette
25 September 2008

I wish Justin well and will miss his service even though I didn't take advantage of it nearly often enough.

Genius!

The Girl is a hell of a cook. She's admittedly a little particular about how she wants thing to go in the kitchen so I tend ot steer clear of her when she's working, but the results are usually impressive so I'm good with stepping off.

She's also not always in the mood to cook, so she's smart enough to take a Sunday every now and again and make twenty burritos or a couple of batches of soup and throw them into the freezer so she can just pull stuff out, thaw it, and go.

Which is what made her choice a couple of weeks ago to go visit Dream Dinners a little odd. She already does pretty much what they were gonna do for her.

See, Dream Dinners is a place where they do all the prep work and you throw the stuff together, take it home, and freeze the meals until you're ready for a "homecooked" meal without a whole lot of work. It's marketed primarily to women (admittedly pretty much only to women) who fall into one of a few categories:

• guilty about not cooking for their families
• don't have time but want to eat family meals
• can't cook worth a crap unless they've got the recipe and somebody to prep all the ingredients
• need to impress somebody but don't know how to cook
• wanna have a social afternoon with friends while throwing some food together

The Girl fell into the last category and went to the Bridgewater Falls branch a couple of weeks ago. She dropped about $130 to make thirty-some servings of food (she claimed it worked out to $3.50 a serving, but my math put it more at $3.75, but who's quibbling) in a couple of hours.

Her take on the layout is that it was incredibly well-planned. (Warning: all following descriptions are second hand from The Girl to me. Any innacuracies are entirely the fault of the blogger.) They had four large stainless steel tables with frozen cases set into the center of the tables (like you'd see at a pizza prep place - a bin for each ingredient). Each table was set up for a different dish (they have a set menu for the month from which you choose in advance what you'd like to make.) Customers/chefs moved from station to staion following recipes already typed out and nicely laminated.

The ingredients went into ziploc bags, disposable aluminum plans, or little plastic containers which were then labeled with specific instructions on pre-printed stickers with the Dream Dinner logo. Everything was ready to be grabbed and ended up ready to be taken from freezer to oven to plate to gullet.

With only a limited amount of data to back up my statement (one dinner in - pork chops with apples) I can say that they make for a pretty tasty product. Tonight's dinner is their stuffed pasta shells with red sauce, so I'll know more by tomorrow.

The Girl's general impression is that the business is an absolute genius move. I had visions of the workers chopping and slicing, measuring and sorting ingredients before the customer chefs got there, but it turns out they don't even do that. They crack open Sysco packages, pour them into prettier dispensers, and put the dispensers into the freezer tables. They make sure there are water bottles in each customer chef's refrigerator space. They print up the labels for the food packages, and that's about it. Everything's straight out of the Sysco package, and it's all measured by the customer chefs.

Overhead's minimal because they only order as much food as they're going to need for the week. The rent's a little pricey because they're primarily going into affluent areas, and they've got some money sunken into nicely appointed kitchens - but even those don't have ovens or stovetops to make anything. She reported that they've got a microwave in the place, but that's pretty much just to thaw things out (or warm up the enchelada wrappers to make them more pliable when she was there) as needed. There's some employee cost, but that's not even a lot because they're not open when they don't have reservations.

Genius!

The Girl did report that she think she could do as good a job for a slightly lower cost and with slightly higher quality ingredients from The Jungle, but that's because she knows what she's doing. Lots of other folks don't have a clue.

There is another place doing the same basic thing at My Girlfriend's Kitchen but aiming a little younger, a little hipper, a little more social with their styling. The Girl has promised a try through there and a report back (to me - she honestly doesn't pay any attention to my literary daliances here on what she refers to as The Blog - don't worry, it doesn't get jealous of her...much...)

So the overall review is a solid four stars out of five...probably five stars out of five if you can't do the stuff on your own...