Royce Eddington

Best. Baby. Pacifier. Ever.

And the dad in this photo is enojying it as much as the baby.

If *anyone* knows where to get one, please email me. This was originally on reddit, but nobody there knows where the original is from, either.

You know those self-serve “cappuccino” machines that vend all different kinds of flavored coffees? The ones that look like this…

I saw one that was left open yesterday. While I wasn’t expecting a barista on duty, I wasn’t expecting to see this either…

It’s all powdered mix.

The powdered mix is apparently measured out and sprinkled over a hot water tube and, at least at this location, dispensed through never-cleaned spigots.

Yummy!

Oh, and that spinning whirring noise when you press the button before the “coffee” flows? It’s not a coffee bean grinder revving up – it is just a special effect to sell the product.

I don’t know why I had assumed there were actual coffee beans somewhere in those devices. From now on, I’m sticking to the real stuff.

I didn’t think the Archos series was that expensive.

An inspirational quote for Friday morning…

Success is…

For those with image blockers…

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and by the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.” – Orison Swett Marden

Saying I have a “thing” for cigars is like saying Cookie Monster has a “slight predisposition” to cookies. I love cigars. Loooove cigars. To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a cigar I didn’t like.

Unfortunately, the local specialty “cigar shop” is full of overpriced, mold covered, dried out, busted drek. Literally. Check out these photos…

Local Cigar Shop 01

Local Cigar Shop 02

Blasphemy! Sacrilege! It should be illegal to beat down cigars like this, I tell you.

Since I have no local shop to rely on, I’ve been buying everything online at either at cigar.com or cigarsinternational.com.

I haven’t had any kind of problem whatsoever with either website. Both have outstanding customer service, both have great everyday and sale prices, and both deliver their shipments a day or two earlier than promised. Both have great weekly deals, and between the two of them, I can get just about any cigar I’m craving.

I will always go with cigar.com first, though. No contest.

With absolutely everything else being identical, here’s why cigar.com is the king…

Cigar.Com Shipping

Every shipment from cigar.com, regardless of the cigar’s retail price, has a HumiCare pillow in every thick-walled heavy-duty ziploc.

A HumiCare pillow is like a mini-humidifier. It has hundreds of little beads inside that absorb distilled water and regulate the humidity in small enclosures for a brief time. You can reuse those little pouches as many times as you want by just opening the HumiCare pouch, dipping the inner “pillow” in distilled water for a few seconds, letting any extra water drip off, and putting it back inside the HumiCare pouch again and again and again.

A little portable pouch is no replacement for a real humidor, but when I open that outer ziploc from a new cigar.com shipment, the cigars smell fresh with a capital F. The temptation to not smoke one right there and then? Almost impossible to deny.

All because of that little well saturated HumiCare pillow.

Cigarsinternational.com shipping?

CigarsInternational.Com Shipping

A wafer thin plastic baggie with no HumiCare or humidification packet at all.

If UPS or FedEx delivers a cigarsinternational.com shipment at the end of a typical south Texas summer day, I usually smell cardboard packaging looooong before I smell the cigars. Sometimes the ziplocs pop open inside the UPS box, too, and I find loose cigars all over the shipping box.

Don’t get me wrong. The quality of the cigars from both companies are outstanding. Give a Liga, Ave Maria or a Cohiba from either company after a weeklong dip in my humidor, and I couldn’t tell you which one came from where.

Can cigar.com save some time and money by not including a “prepped” HumiCare packet with every shipment? Definitely. But knowing my cigars, regardless of price range, will always arrive fresh and in good condition? That’s worth the “first view” when I go shopping every single time.

Suddenly I have a craving for a cigar…

Just a pic of the South Texas skies this last weekend.

The last few weeks summarized in one morning photo…

I forgot I had some photos of a fire in downtown McAllen.

Back on January 26th, there was a fire in one of the medical supply warehouses in downtown McAllen.

I was on my way home when I saw the smoke and pulled over to take a photo.

Fortunately most of the fire was put out quickly.

Just some quick photos of the big freeze here in the Texas valley. It doesn’t look like much compared to what I’ve seen when I lived in Dallas and Oklahoma, but to the original residents of the valley, this is epic.

All car windshields were iced over.

Hats to cover your head with? Gone (@ the local WalMart).

Gloves? Nothing but one or two non-insulated work gloves left (again @ the local WalMart).

Ice scrapers in the Texas valley do not exist. The closest things you can use are putty knives or hard rubber squeegees (and both of those were sold out.)

We’re due for one more day of freezing weather, but this weekend we’re back in the 60s and the coming week is forecast for low 70s.