The Return of the Xmas Bleuch

Dammit, Silvia and Rocky!  Because of the two of you I've had to go back to drinking Starbucks VIA Xmas Bleuch in the morning!  Because of you, I needed to down it with a stupid sesame-poppy-seed cracker and water.  But this morning the water cooler was out of order, so I had to drink the tap water and THAT tastes like water with dissolved metal in it.  Fie upon you Rocky and Silvia!  Fie!

Chartreuse Mug looks pretty pissed off.

I tried, Silvia&Rocky.  I tried.  I even looked up stupid online videos about how to use you.  You know what I found out?  I found out that you, Rocky, never actually dispense the right amount of coffee.   So I tried eyeballing the amount of coffee that was going into Silvia.  But no dice.  NO DICE.  The coffee was still weak and revolting. 

I surmised that possibly it was the coffee.  But the coffee is fancy-ass Black Cat Classic Espresso coffee!  It's supposed to be The Shit. 

Being the good little former-scientist I am, I decided to just try my own coffee in the Silvia.  You may remember (if you exist) that my coffee had made the office a little insane when I made it initially.  I expected the same effect this time.

Alas, this was not the case.  I made a double with my coffee and it was OK.  It was way, way better than with the fancy-ass Black Cat coffee, but it still wasn't the same syrupy-strong cup that the Silvia made initially.  Nor was it as tasty as the coffee Desktop Espresso made. 

Obviously something has happened to Silvia in the past two weeks that I've been away.  And obviously Black Cat Espresso is not The Shit.

As such, Silvia&Rocky's Evil Empire has been defeated by the scrappy Desktop Espresso Team.  For now, at least.

Which One's Han Solo?

The Espresso Strikes Back

A: 50 engineers and 1 Technical Writer

So it came.   The Rancillo Silvia made its appearance in the office today to great fanfare and rejoicing.  All the engineers crowded around it and tried it out and everyone made the "How many engineers does it take to make an espresso" joke.   When I say that everyone made that joke, I literally mean that every single person who walked into the break room made that joke.

After everyone got over their bad selves, it became obvious that neither the Rocky grinder nor the fancy-ass coffee had arrived.  My stash of espresso was "volunteered" to serve as the office coffee until the real coffee arrived.  

My office coffee is, shall we say, not the best.  It's tasty, yes, but it isn't made for a high quality machine.  Consequently, the coffee that the Silvia made was bitter and insanely strong.  And by "insanely strong" I mean that people were bouncing off walls and unable to focus. 

The work of Imperial Stormtroopers?

Meanwhile, Desktop Espresso sat dismantled in a corner of my cubicle.  It reminded me of that scene in Empire Strikes Back where  they're in the cloud city and they've just been taken prisoner by the Empire and Chewbacca finds C3P0 dismatled. My Desktop Espresso reminds me of Headless C3P0.  That's very sad.  But I don't think Desktop Espresso has anything to worry about:  There is so much clean-up needed for the Silvia that I'm pretty sure that laziness will prevent the engineers from using it.