KGB Report

I swear there's a person at Hamilton Beach whose sole function is to review products before they're manufactured to make certain each contains at least one maddeningly stupid design flaw.

The last Brewmaster® I owned had the dispensing spout so close to the side of the coffeemaker that you could only use "regular" thin-walled coffee cups. Have an insulated cup or one with a slight lip? Watch the amazing Brewmaster® as the coffee pours down the outside walls of your cup!

When I saw this model in the store, I thought... aha! An aluminium pot with a hole in the side! How can you possibly screw this up?

Oh, Hamilton Beach, you adorable knuckleheads... I underestimated you.

At ten cups, the flow slows to a trickle. At six cups, it's below the spout opening. But don't tip the pot, because safety!

This coffee is what's left below the spout opening. It exists to remind you that perfection is a goal to be attempted, not achieved.

As the photos show, at the ten cup mark (60 ounces, using the six-ounce coffee cup standard), the coffee level reaches the top of the spout and the flow slows to a maddening trickle. At four cups (24 ounces), the coffee level drops below the spout. Since the instructions admonish the user not to tip the pot, this means you're waiting forever for the last six accessible cups, and throwing away the remaining four.

So, you may ask, why buy this sterling example of a badly-engineered consumer product and recommend it to others?

Well, it's cheap. It's well-made. It brews ok. It keeps the coffee hot. Its irritating behavior doesn't begin until the bottom of the pot, at which point you should be sufficiently caffeinated to deal with it without flying into a seething rage or collapsing, sobbing uncontrollably, into a fetal position on the kitchen floor.

If your household drinks a lot of coffee, it's more convenient than making several 10-12 cup pots.

And in some perverse way, the fact each Hamilton Beach coffeemaker I've ever owned has had some dumb design element is somewhat endearing.

I picture a decent, dedicated guy in Ohio somewhere working feverishly to come up with the Next Great Thing and, just like Wile E. Coyote, being crushed when the first manufacturing run from China comes in and he realizes he just designed a coffee pot capable of dispensing only 90% of what it produces.

And then some middle manager-type, like Lumbergh in Office Space, saunters over to his cubicle and says, "Ah. Yeah. So I guess we should probably go ahead and have a little talk. Hmm?"

Hey guy, it happens. Hang in there. I'm rooting for you.

Which is why I keep buying HB coffeemakers. It gives me something to anticipate in my advancing years. I used to say I hope I live to see my grandchildren. Now I say I hope I live to see HB produce the perfect coffeemaker.

Who knows? Perhaps when I buy my next unit in two years (the average HB coffeemaker lifespan; about a nickel a day, which isn't bad), they'll have a 16 cup unit with a programmable timer, a spout design that accommodates cups of all sizes, and a pot that fully empties.

And, just for old times' sake, a power cord that's only three inches long.

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Categories: KGB Opinion, WTF?

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Joseph Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 - January 18, 1936) was an English short story writer, poet, and novelist. He is chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India and his stories for children. He was born in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902), Kim (1901), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888); and his poems, including "Mandalay" (1890), "Gunga Din" (1890), "The White Man's Burden" (1899), and "If-" (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift." (Click here for full Wikipedia article)

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A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

All gods have good points, just as have all priests.

And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was like eating an egg without salt.

Bite on the bullet, old man, and don't let them think you're afraid.

Enough work to do, and strength enough to do the work.

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

Four things greater than all things are,-
Women and Horses and Power and War.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

I keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem- for purely religious purposes, of course- to know more about iniquity than the unregenerate.

More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies.

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of your compliments reaching the proper ears.

Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your own fears.

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a clever woman to manage a fool.

What you do when you don't have to, determines what you will be when you can no longer help it.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
-The Young British Soldier (1892)

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

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Q. Do you like Kipling?

A. I don't know; I've never kippled.

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Categories: Quotes of the day, Rudyard Kipling

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