Two Reds from 2012

Christmas Dinner was a pot of chili, roasted lamb, wilted garlicky greens and arugula and tomato salad. Wines were two from the 2012 vintage, one from California's Central Coast, and another from the Ribera de Duero   2012 Workman Ayer de Facto Central Coast Red   A gentle, soft, easy to drink red made from … Read more

A Tale of Two Roses

I continue to feel that 2015 and Rose wines will go down as one of the best vintage years around the world. Every 2015 Rose I've had from France and the USA which I've had the good fortune to open this year or taste on my travels continues to show me how good of a … Read more

Deep Cellar Confessions

My friendship with the staff and owners at Akasha and at AR Cucina has blossomed over the year since Thanksgiving night 2015. It truly is now "Moose of L.A." for me. I guess being nice, sharing and caring pays off. What this has allowed me to do is something that only those with a "Deep … Read more

Why Do Calls Sound Worse Today?

In the early days of VoIP we all were affected by things like packet loss, buffering and jitter. Most of that has gone away with the arrival of faster last mile access, faster and more powerful processors on our PCs, in our desktop and mobile devices and most of all better compression with codecs that … Read more

Roam Like Home

On the heels of Truphone closing its VoIP app, and going whole hog into the global corporate roaming business, Rogers Canada has expanded Roam Like Home to work on more plans. This service is very similar to Travel Pass from Verizon here in the USA and other services that have long been available in Europe. For example, … Read more

2008 Patricia Green Croft Vineyard Pinot Noir

The 2008 Patricia Green Croft Vineyard Pinot Noir was another one of these ageless Pacific Northwest reds that I love to find in my cellar. The wine had a Grenache like spicy nose, likely due to the bigness of the wine. This was a big Pinot Noir, rich, ripe and meaty. The flavor was in … Read more

Calling On The Plane

I don't know what the big debate is about when it comes to making calls from airplanes. USA Today and other media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal all covered what is a religious like debate between the FAA, the FTC and various factions in air travel over the viability, technical capability and passenger disturbance factors surrounding … Read more

T-Mobile Has Your Digits

T-Mobile has started to roll out a new beta program called Digits. In many ways it's a next generation FindMe, Follow Me type service that goes somewhat farther than GoogleVoice.  While I've yet to try it, what seems the most appealing to me is the ability for a call to be placed or received on … Read more

Cord Cutters, Never Corders. Now Meet The Dish Dumpers

The market for OTT (over the top) mobile cable and broadband to the home is growing. It is becoming the mode to watch content by the younger, hipper millennials who still consume linear television, but are also rapidly moving to the SVOD (subscription video on demand) approach being offered by Apple, Amazon, Hulu and Netflix to name … Read more