Standard and Luxury Coffee Makers for Your Home

There are some standard appliances that are typical to households across the country and could even be include in the essentials. Of course these go slightly behind the major appliances like an oven or refrigerator, and are more along the lines of microwaves, toasters and home coffee makers . And interestingly, each of these smaller appliances was at one time, perhaps when they were first introduced into the popular market, considered to be a luxury kitchen accessory. Could you imagine getting by without a microwave today? Or do you consider your coffee machine to be a luxury item?

Well, that is actually an interesting question. Most households across the nation have a least one coffee maker on the premises, however, certain models could actually be considered to be luxury items in themselves. This is due in large part to the number of models that are available and the amount of additional features that are included with them. And while it’s relatively common to have standard options like an automated timing device or shut off button, there are other great features like espresso options, hot chocolate buttons and other features that could actually help to turn your home into your own private cafe, simply through the purchase of a dynamic and sophisticated home coffee maker.

What it Takes to Join a Pit Crew

Fans of auto racing have no doubt witnessed the importance of the racers’ pit crews. Depending on the type of race, a pit stop is where a vehicle stops at the pit lane for new tires, repairs, refuelling, or mechanical adjustments. Sometimes a pit stop involves a combination of those or, in longer races, a change of drivers. Many diy home mechanics tinkering with their gmc manual dream about becoming a member of a racing pit crew, but only a handful of professional mechanics are willing to face the challenges and risks involved in this high profile career.

In addition to basic training and certification in automotive repair , pit crew mechanics need to have specialized training in high performance vehicles and specific car models. Many racing mechanics start out working for dealership service departments for specific road cars. Manufacturers hold competitions every four years in different categories and mechanics that do well in both speed and proficiency can sometimes use that as a springboard to find jobs in the racing world.

Speed, professionalism, and the ability to work in a highly stressful, physically demanding, and potentially dangerous environment are key characteristics of a successful crew mechanic. Formula One racing pit crews consist of four tire changers, eight tire carriers, front and rear jack men as well as a starter man and a fire extinguisher man. NASCAR crews usually consist of a crew chief, car chief, gas man and catch can man, a jackman, two tire changers, two tire carriers and an eighth man or utility who can only provide drive assistance during the second half of the race. Each year NASCAR holds a Pit Crew Challenge to test individual and team skills.

Finding Peace of Mind with a Home Safe

Many burglaries or home invasions take place in a matter of minutes; the perpetrators break into your home and grab whatever they can take with them: money, guns, jewelry, purses, wallets and laptops. The most commonly stolen items could be inaccessible to burglars if they were securely stored in home safes . However, there are many other reasons to keep valuable and belongings in a home safe. Listed below are some very good reasons to invest in a safe.

Keep guns away from the little ones in the home. Most safe’s now are easily and quickly accessed without fumbling for keys or having to remember a combination, and yet secure from children. Safes are a wonderful place to keep prescription drugs. You can get rid of the safe deposit box at the bank, which can take till the next day to retrieve an item. With a home safe, you can store precious documents from floods and even fire if you purchase a fireproof home safe; today’s fireproof safes are equipped with the best fireproof materials available.

A home safe not only prevents a hit-and-run burglary, they also create a sense of security. You can leave your home knowing your most valued items will still be there when you get home, even if the home was broken into.

Beethoven and Brentano

It is perhaps more difficult to construct a life as it unfolds as it is to construct a symphony, but there’s much more that has to be left to chance. This might be one of the great lessons that the brilliant composers have to leave behind, and sometimes, it seems, rather begrudgingly. There are a number of stories that surround Beethoven , enough to make his life a legend as much as the music is.

The title of the Gary Oldman film, Immortal Beloved, is a reference to his great muse. There are conflicting opinions about who this actually was, but the histories do seem to keep pointing in the direction of Bettina Brentano . Her spectacularly unconventional life seems to have been guided by a muse of its own, and that spirit seems to look a lot like her. She embraced the notion of becoming the muse to great artists and thinkers, and in the process, created herself in that same image.

The story of Goethe bowing to royalty, while Beethoven turned away, is a pivotal one to demonstrate the artistic temperament. Milan Kundera conceived of that moment as one that divided the kinds of artists there could be in the world. It also seems likely that this moment was one that Brentano invented herself. There’s a genius in that, and something of a spark that does indeed hint at intimations of immortality.

Alternatives to Selling

There are many different reasons that lead people to move out of their homes; relocating for a job , outgrowing the current home, looking for a better neighborhood. However with the housing industry struggling it has maintained its status as a buyers market, making it very difficult to sell.

Another option for those who are adamant, or required, to move is renting. Turning a house into a rental property can be the perfect solution for a house that won’t sell. If the house is ready to sell, there is typically not much work that needs to be done to get it ready to rent . Once the house is occupied, the rent check often helps cover the mortgage payment or, if the house is paid off, provide a little extra income.

The most challenging aspect of turning a house into a rental is the legal aspect. There are many laws and statutes to know that will protect the owner as well as the tenant. Many owners hire a property management firm like Transglobe property management . They can help with advertising as well as writing up contracts and lease agreements. Sometimes the Transglobe Property Management services include dealing with tenant complaints and maintenance issues.

When it comes down to it and not moving is not an option, there are other choices out there. Renting could be the best option for the owner and a great benefit to future tenants.

Parlaying an Internship into a Job

With summer ending, college students are returning to school, some for their final year before moving on to further study or going out into the world. For those students who have completed summer internship programs, like those offered by Southwestern Company , it’s the perfect time to think about how to turn that summer experience into a full-time job after graduation.

The first step is to determine if you really want a job with this company or even if you’re still interested in the field. Sit down and reflect on what you learned during the summer experience, not just the job skills you may have picked up. What did you observe of the overall corporate culture ? How did managers treat underlings? Did there seem to be clear paths for advancement? Is the company moving forward in their industry or falling behind new trends and developments? If you don’t want to continue with a specific company, then consider it a summer well spent acquiring that knowledge and plan to take your skills and talents elsewhere.

If you would like to work with the company, it’s best if you still have another summer or two to work in other departments. If you’re a senior, inquire about work-study internships that would allow you to continue to build your relationship with the company while you finish up your school work. The keys to being proactive are to work hard, seek out new projects, maintain a strong academic performance, and develop relationships, even mentorships, with decision makers in the company. Many companies already plan to hire from their intern groups. Some studies suggest that nearly 40% of employers do so, with companies like the Southwestern Company having even higher rates of former interns joining their regular staff. Making a real commitment to the company while you’re still an intern is the best way to get hired after graduation.

The Pandas in Las Vegas

There’s a strange symmetry that runs between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It’s hard to pin down exactly what it is, but both cities have a mutual attraction, and sometimes it’s the opposite, toward what they have to offer. It’s not uncommon to meet kids growing up in Vegas, and then ten years later find they’re making a go of it with their band in L.A. Sometimes it works in reverse, too, and sometimes, like in the case of the Pandas , it’s a bit more complicated.

Perhaps not too complicated, but they’ve been working in the bigger city for awhile before deciding to call Vegas home for awhile. They do introduce themselves as a band from L.A., although they all have connections here that can’t be made in a few months, but come from roots. It’s a nice touch to the music, and gives it yet another layer to gaze into while the sounds are designed to move the head in new directions.

Guests at the Las Vegas Hotels do enjoy some live music now and then, unless they’re dedicated to finding new music. In that case, it doesn’t matter when now or then happen to be, because the moment is calling. In this town, The Pandas attract an exciting following, and although there’s no single plug to the music scene here, these guys have some of the chords.

Tacoma Star Hit by U Boat

The Tacoma Star was a British steam merchant ship owned by Blue Star of London.  It was attacked by a U Boat (U-109) (Heinrich Bleichrodt) on 1 February 1942 on route from Buenos Aires – Liverpool.   The ship sank with 5107 tons of cargo.  There were 87 people on board and no survivors.  Prior to that on 4 May, 1941, the Tacoma Star sank in dock at Liverpool as result of an air raid, but was salvaged and repaired.

At 03.30 hours on 1 Feb, 1942, U-109 fired a spread of three torpedoes at the unescorted Tacoma Star (Master Robert George Whitehead) and hit her with two torpedoes and caused the ship to sink by the bow after four minutes about 500 miles east of Hampton Roads, Virginia. The U-boat was just about to meet U-130 (Kals) for refueling when the ship was spotted at 16.20 hours on 31 January and Bleichrodt began chasing the zigzagging ship. A distress signal from her was received and USS Roe (DD 418) sent to search for survivors but found no trace of the ship. The Germans reported that the crew abanoned ship in five lifeboats but reported a wrong position in the radio message.

More information on the Tacoma Star

Cultural Tacoma

The Museum of Glass  boasts an iconic structure standing near the Thea Foss Waterway; the steel cone of the hot shop is one of the most recognizable structures in the city.

Tacoma Art Museum was founded in 1935 and reopened in 2003 in a new building on Pacific Avenue in Tacoma – now one of three organizations forming the “museum district” (others are Museum of Glass and Washington State History Museum). It is considered a model for mid-sized regional museums.

The Broadway Center for the Performing Arts is the home to three theaters, two of which are on the National Historic Register. Performing within the three theaters are several performing arts organizations, including the Tacoma Opera, Tacoma Symphony Orchestra, Northwest Sinfionetta, Tacoma City Ballet, Tacoma Concert Band, Tacoma Philharmonic, Tacoma Youth Symphony, Theatre Northwest, and Puget Sound Revels, one of ten Revels organizations nationwide.  Tacoma’s Pantages Theater, a remnant of the vaudeville circuit founded by Alexander Pantages.

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot celebrated their 10th anniversary in 2009. Their motto is “taking the fear out of Shakespeare”.  They offer both educational opportunities and inspired theater in and around Tacoma.

Tacoma hosts part of the annual four-part Daffodil Parade, which takes place every April in Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, and Orting.

The Tacoma farmers’ market runs every Thursday, from May through September, in the Theatre District.

Fort Nisqually is a prominent local attraction featuring historical reenactments.

Tacoma History

Tacoma was inhabited for thousands of years by American Indians, predominantly the Puyallup people, who lived in settlements on the delta of the Puyallup River and called the area Squa-szucks. It was visited by European and American explorers, including George Vancouver and Charles Wilkes, who named many of the coastal landmarks.

In 1852 a Swede named Nicolas Delin constructed a sawmill powered by water on a creek near the head of Commencement Bay, but the small settlement that grew up around it was abandoned during the Indian War of 1855-1856. In 1864, pioneer and postmaster Job Carr, a Civil War veteran and land speculator who hoped to profit from the selection of Commencement Bay as the terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad, built a cabin (a replica of Job Carr’s cabin, which also served as Tacoma’s first post office, was erected in “Old Town” in 2000 near the original site), and later sold most of his claim to developer Morton McCarver (1807–1875), who named his project Tacoma City. The name derived from the indigenous name for the mountain.

Tacoma was incorporated on November 12, 1875. Its hopes to be the “City of Destiny” were stimulated by selection in 1873 as the western terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad, thanks to lobbying by McCarver, future mayor John Wilson Sprague, and others. The transcontinental link was effected in 1887, but the railroad built its depot on “New Tacoma”, two miles (3 km) south of the Carr-McCarver development. The two communities grew together and joined. The population grew from 1,098 in 1880 to 36,006 in 1890. Rudyard Kipling visited Tacoma in 1889 and said it was “literally staggering under a boom of the boomiest”.
George Francis Train was a resident for a few years in the late 1800s. In 1890, he staged a global circumnavigation starting and ending in Tacoma to promote the city. A plaque in downtown Tacoma marks the start/finish line.

In November 1885 white citizens led by then-mayor Jacob Weisbach expelled several hundred Chinese residents peaceably living in the city. As described by the account prepared by the Chinese Reconciliation Project, on the morning of November 3, 1885, “several hundred men, led by the mayor and other city officials, evicted the Chinese from their homes, corralled them at 7th Street and Pacific Avenue, marched them to the railway station at Lakeview and forced them aboard the morning train to Portland, Oregon. The next day two Chinese settlements were burned to the ground.”

The discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1898 led Tacoma’s prominence in the region to be eclipsed by the booming development of Seattle.

During a 30-day power shortage in the winter of 1929/1930, Tacoma was provided with electricity from the engines of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.

In 1939 Tacoma received national attention when George Weyerhaeuser, nine-year-old son of prominent lumber industry executive J.P. Weyerhaeuser, was kidnapped while walking home from school. FBI agents from Portland handled the case, in which payment of a ransom of $200,000 secured release of the victim. Four persons were apprehended and convicted. The last to be released was paroled from McNeil Island in 1963; George Weyerhaeuser went on to become chairman of the Board of the Weyerhaeuser Company.

In 1951, an investigation by a state legislative committee revealed widespread corruption in Tacoma’s government, which had been organized commission-style since 1910. Voters approved a mayor/city-manager system in 1952.

Tacoma featured prominently in the garage rock sound of the mid-1960s with bands including The Wailers and The Sonics. The surf rock band The Ventures were also from Tacoma.

Tacoma experienced a long decline through the mid-20th century. Harold Moss, later the city’s mayor, characterized late 1970s Tacoma as looking “bombed out” like “downtown Beirut” (a reference to the Lebanese Civil War that occurred at that time.) Steve Miller wrote a song that mentioned Tacoma in a chorus as well. “Streets were abandoned, storefronts were abandoned… City Hall was the headstone and Union Station the footstone” on the grave of downtown.

This picture began to change somewhere around 1990. Among the projects associated with the downtown renaissance were the federal courthouse in the former Union Station (1991); the Washington State History Museum (1996), echoing the architecture of Union Station; the adaptation of a group of century-old brick warehouses into the University of Washington Tacoma campus; the numerous privately financed renovation projects near that UW-Tacoma campus; the Museum of Glass (2002); the Tacoma Art Museum (2003); and the region’s first light-rail line (2003).

The first local referendums in the U.S. on computerized voting occurred in Tacoma in 1982 and 1987. On both occasions, voters rejected 3-1 the computer voting systems that local officials sought to purchase. The campaigns, organized by Eleanora Ballasiotes, a conservative Republican, focused on the vulnerabilities of computers to fraud.

In 1998, Tacoma installed a high-speed fiber optic network throughout the community. The municipally owned power company wired the city.

Tacoma’s Hilltop neighborhood struggled with crime in the 1980s and early 1990s.  The problems have declined in recent years as neighborhoods have enacted community policing and other policies.  Bill Baarsma (Mayor from 2002-2009) is a member of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition,  a bi-partisan group with a stated goal of “making the public safer by getting illegal guns off the streets.” The coalition is co-chaired by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In 2004, Tacoma was ranked among the top 30 Most Livable Communities in 2004, in an annual survey conducted by the Partners for Livable Communities.

Beginning in the early 1990s, Tacoma has taken steps to revitalize itself and its image, especially downtown.

The University of Washington established a branch campus in Tacoma in 1990. The same year, Union Station (Tacoma) was restored. The Museum of Glass opened in downtown Tacoma in 2002, showing glass art from the region and around the world. It includes a glassblowing studio.

Tacoma’s downtown Cultural District is the site of the Washington State History Museum (1996) and the Tacoma Art Museum (2003). America’s Car Museum is currently breaking ground in Tacoma. The glass and steel Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center opened in November 2004.

Downtown Tacoma has a thriving Theatre District, anchored by the 89-year-old Pantages Theater. The Broadway Center for the Performing Arts manages the Pantages, the Rialto Theater, and the Theatre on the Square. Other attractions include the Grand Cinema and the Temple Theatre.

The area around the Theatre District is the center of Tacoma’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender culture. Three of the city’s gay bars are here as well as the Rainbow Center.