I drink too much coffee, therefore I blog.

Every coffee shoppe in Seattle has open, unsecured, free wifi. Every coffee shop I see, requires that I stop in to drink 1 (or 2) cups of coffee. Every cup of coffee fuels the urge to write.

Living as a geek has left me with terrible penmanship.
Open Office (free and comparable to MS Office) has predictive text, which guesses words as I'm typing them. (Finally getting use to working on my eee PC.)

These thoughts lead me to believe I should blog more.

Ian, you would love Pike's Place Market. Have you been? It's like a farmer's market, a flea market and a young hippie hangout all in one. (is there really any difference?)

I was in the original Starbucks at Pike Place for 45 seconds.

It's a gift shop for Starbucks memorabilia – how disheartening. No place to sit. No coffee featured, just an empty soul of a coffee house, devoid of art, coffee and enthusiasm. Starbucks was a beautiful marketing experiment of the late 90s, but it has no future. It's soul was sharing the love of great coffee with mainstream Americans. While it was different, it was strong. Starbucks is like a song overplayed on the radio or a great book turned into a bad movie. The growth addiction of corporate culture is a spreading cancer that devours every last light of the living Starbucks soul. Dear Howard Schultz, you could have kept the company private and carefully organized a bond issue to expand locations. You could have franchised stores, giving some artistic control to the franchisees. You should not leave power in the hands of your shareholders. Read Machiavelli.

Fortunately, there's 600 other places to sit and enjoy coffee. Currently, I'm sitting in Local Color. This is the coffee house of my dreams: They serve coffee, wine and beer; ham and cheese croissants; there are stools and small tables for road warriors; groovy black sofas and chairs for reading and lounging; art for sale all over the walls; jazz playing in the background. (They are not blasting the music in an attempt to peddle CDs.)

The Experience Music Project is being in the house of a wealthy and equipped audiophile. Jimmy Hendrix, James Brown and Nirvana were some of the major features. On the third floor is a music studio, fully-equipped with mixing gear, instruments and instructions (should you choose to use them.) There's nothing – musically – more exciting than doing a live remix of Jimmy Hendrix songs on some ass-kicking mixing gear.