Nice phone time with MM. I’m looking increasingly forward to the top of July… it’ll be here before I know it! I hope Newtie’s on better behavior than he was with Kev. I may be heading to Dragon*Con at the top of September this year, too, if everything works out as well as I hope.
Bad Phone time with Bro. looking to mooch – asked about places to sell plasma.. I don’t sell it, I donate it. wanted to drive me around for gas money… I told him it’d cost him more in gas to drive his truck up here. He needs to just get the heck out of Hollywood.. every time he goes there, he goes back into his old patterns.
via pilarcruz
Leave your name and:
1. I’ll respond with something random about you
2. I’ll challenge you to try something
3. I’ll pick a color that I associate with you
4. I’ll tell you something I like about you
5. I’ll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I’ll ask you something I’ve always wanted to ask you
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on yours
Okay, 8 is totally optional.
Added Bonus, Sedef will be in town in September, and hopefully the Weezle, too!!
Glad I waited on watching last week’s Dr Who with this week’s…. a two parter. Quite well done, too. Hooray for Zeppelins, Parallel Earths and Cybermen! (The Term “Maximum deletion” is rather silly, though.)
I’m going to give Tarpo’s scavenger hunt a try next weekend. (I’d prefer to be going to Balticon, but that doesn’t look likely, with work and such… My boy EN is off to Idahos, so I’ve got to snag his shifts if I can’t fob them off on anyone else.)
Moment of Lyric – mp3
Well she sneaks around the world from Kiev to Carolina,
She’s a sticky-fingered filcher from Berlin down to Belize,
She’ll take you for a ride on a slow boat to China,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Steal their Seoul in South Korea, make Antarctica cry Uncle,
From the Red Sea to Greenland they’ll be singing the blues,
Well they never Arkansas her steal the Mekong from the jungle,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
She go from Nashville to Norway, Bonaire to Zimbabwe,
Chicago to Czechoslovakia and back!
Well she’ll ransack Pakistan and run a scam in Scandinavia,
Then she’ll stick ’em up Down Under and go pick-pocket Perth,
She put the Miss in misdemeanor when she stole the beans from Lima,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Oh tell me where in the world is… Oh tell me where can she be?
Ooh, Botswana to Thailand, Milan via Amsterdam,
Mali to Bali, Ohio, Oahu…!
Well she glides around the globe and she’ll flimflam every nation,
She’s a double-dealing diva with a taste for thievery,
Her itinerary’s loaded up with moving violations,
Tell me where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
Ah, my idea for a coffee bomb has been reproduced in nature. Those Wolfgang Puck self-heating lattes are being recalled. Sometimes they catch fire, explode, and/or dump the heating chemicals into the coffee itself. It seems one can in five is bad.
Once considered the “next big thing” by excited coffee lovers and technology buffs alike, the Wolfgang Puck Self-Heating Latte is being withdrawn from shelves because of concerns that many of the innovative cans are defective, and possibly dangerous.
Last month, Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Inc. sent a letter to its licensee, Newport Beach, Calif.-based BrandSource Inc., demanding it ask retailers to remove the 10-oz., artificially-sweetened coffee drinks from shelves so that product defects could be reviewed. The recall demand came after BrandSouce CEO Robert Groux informed Puck’s company of a growing number of complaints from retailers and consumers alike.
Launched to great fanfare in the spring of 2005, the lattes quickly made it to the shelves of thousands of stores, including large, end of aisle displays in Kroger and Albertson’s supermarkets and Sam’s Club warehouse stores.
But in less than a year, the team that produced the innovative product has fallen apart. The can’s design and manufacturing team is suing BrandSource, the company that licensed Puck’s name in order to bring the product to market, and BrandSource is facing the possible loss of its celebrity partner.
Groux, however, says the problem stems from the faulty construction of the cans themselves, designed by OnTech Delaware, LLC., which is based in San Diego.
Consumer complaints have ranged from the product’s failure to reach an appropriately hot temperature to it actually overheating, spurting product from the can, leaking out of the can, or the calcium oxide heating mechanism adulterating the coffee itself, according to Groux.
“We have reports of chunks of white product, which we believe to be calcium oxide, that was found in the product, which means the heating element most likely leaked,” Groux said. “We have complaints of can meltdowns, curdled product, sour product, leaking cans.”
Last month, a Las Vegas woman named Dee Harris claimed she had been badly burned by one of the drinks when she activated it in her hotel room. She claims it overheated and then blew up, sending her to the hospital.
“I went to pick it up, but it was too hot,” Harris said. “I pulled my hand off of it, it exploded. It was just sitting on the counter, no one had touched it. It just blew all over everything.”
When it works, the coffee heats when a seal at the bottom of the can is pushed in, releasing a small amount of water that, when mixed with the calcium oxide in a cone within the package, causes an exothermic reaction that heats the liquid to a toasty 140 degrees.
Groux blames his can suppliers for designing and manufacturing defective products, and his company is currently involved in litigation with OnTech, which trumpeted its design of the self-heating mechanism and subcontracted its manufacture on behalf of BrandSource.
“We’re just the marketers, and the name,” Groux said. “We don’t make the can, we don’t fill the can, we don’t make the heating elements or the components or anything.”
But OnTech CEO Jonathan Weisz made it clear he believes the problems with the cans are a smoke screen for Groux’s financial problems.
“They owed us a lot of money – over a million dollars – and this is purely a retaliatory move,” Weisz said.
Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Products Safety Commission are investigating problems with the product, according to Groux. Representatives of both agencies refused to confirm those investigations. Weisz confirmed having been contacted by the FDA.
The letter from Puck Worldwide requesting the recall indicated that the company had become aware of what it termed “government scrutiny” of the lattes, among other issues.
According to Puck spokesman Robbie Vorhaus, the consumer complaints have become a large enough issue for the company to consider withdrawing BrandSource’s license to use Puck’s name to market the product.
“The product is not at the place where we, as the licensor would like it to be,” Vorhaus said. “What we have told Bob is, and what we’ve made very clear, is that with the quality and the standard that we expect, that there is always extra scrutiny. We suggested to him that he look at this more carefully.”
Featuring the name and reputation of the famous, Spago-owning Puck, the lattes debuted in the spring of 2005 to praise from mainstream news outlets and food-and-gadget-centric web sites alike. But complaints began to trickle in to BrandSource in the early fall, Groux said. They eventually became a pile several inches high, he said, and they were soon accompanied by returns of damaged and unwanted products from beverage retailers and distributors.
Lewis Hershkowits, the COO of Big Geyser, a New York-based beverage distributor, said his company stopped carrying the Wolfgang Puck product after about two months.
“I don’t think it was the right item for us anyway, but there were a lot of complaints from our customers,” Hershkowits said. “Retailers were complaining – their customers were saying they didn’t work, that sometimes they were sour or they just didn’t work.”
“The girls in our office liked them, but every fifth can was bad,” he added.
OnTech reportedly spent $45 million over 11 years developing the self-heating technology. In December, the company launched a similar line of self-heating coffee drinks under the Hillside Coffee label. The company also manufactures self-heating soups, hot chocolates, and teas.
OnTech’s launch campaign for the self-heating product is “It Does What?”
“It takes time to educate the world to what [self-heating] is about,” Weisz said.
While the move to develop Hillside was not a response to problems with the Puck partnership, Weisz said, the relationship had nevertheless soured because BrandSource had not been willing to pay for the increase in production costs that have accompanied rising oil prices.
“We’re not willing to ship any more product to them,” he said. “Right now, the cost is a bit high. I had hoped that the Wolfgang Puck relationship would have survived, but we’re very excited about what we have going on right now.”
OnTech has filed suit against BrandSource in a California court, seeking payment for the products it made for the Puck partners.
BrandSource, and Groux himself, is planning a counter-suit against OnTech and the two companies that have been part of the manufacturing process, claiming it has lost millions of dollars because of the defective products.
“They cut me off when I stopped paying, because they refused to stop issuing us credits for returned product,” Groux said.
A beverage industry veteran, Groux says his credibility – and his bottom line — is in shambles as a result of the problems that have resulted from the problems with the cans.
“I wake up to a nightmare every day,” he said. “I have retailers calling me, suppliers calling me, I have to let half my people go, and I’ve been devastated all around.”
1 year ago – superhero meme ,Wayne Dyer not my thing, alien invasion from the ocean tv themes, vader 20Q, Tofu flavored like human flesh (for the vegetarian cannibal), It only makes me laugh, walkabout graffiti pix, tiny tiny text!,
2 years ago – S&W apart, Dawn of the dead, Saw Shrek 2 last night, palm doodle, walkabout pictures, lilo & stitch experiments, pre-inca graveyard found, silly snape / puppetpals, Apeshit, bro
3 years ago – wants, slashdot blocked, best family guy line ever, nig newtie-eyes, book meme, rain
4 years ago – I was compared to Travis Tritt, an image of MyCn18, a broken link or 2,genetic music, Sleestak music, fresca and goldfish crackers, got thecomplete prisoner TV series on DVD, I restocked some clothes,discovered line-through deleted journals on bio-page.
5 years ago – – propitiate, chaplet, sweetheart went out for ice cream, I’ve got naughty thoughts, brasilein, friends only review of new work arrivals. (all but one of whom still work at FMM.)
6 years ago – April interviewed for Barnies, EMAGE goes downhill, my first “who I am” post. I was friended by sunusku, meemee & christin, and first thoughts about developing Newtcam.
