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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | DECEMBER 2023 17 By Steve Benoff Last year I started drinking real coffee. For as long ago as I can remember, I've been drinking decaf coffee with milk and sweetener. I can remember when I was an undergrad at UCR … Wait, let me tell you how I came to attend UCR. I've never been a very good student (except for my first year at USC Law when I scored so well I made it onto law review. I even won an award for my law review work which I didn't know I was to receive at the graduation ceremony that I didn't attend). I combed the University of California information book and discovered that I could gain admission, regardless of grades, if I scored well enough on the morning and afternoon SAT exams. I studied like crazy and did well enough to gain entry to the campus of my choice. I had planned to attend UCLA which was close to my home. But a family friend happened to be the dean of the UCLA College of Fine Arts. He advised me to go to a smaller campus for my undergraduate work. He recommended UCR. So, that's where I went. (As planned, I later went to UCLA for a masters — in theatre arts of all things.) Back to coffee. Many a late night found me in a Riverside coffee shop for a snack of a baked potato and sweetened, lightened decaf coffee. I continued that tradition (the decaf, not the potato) until last year. Be patient — there will be an app here somewhere. Last year I came to the realization that I had no appreciation for real coffee. I think the inspiration came from reading about how many pro bike riders benefited from caffeine intake. I decided to try drinking caffeinated coffee in the morning. Furthermore, I decided that if I was (maybe that should be if I were) going to drink coffee, I should learn to appreciate its true taste; that is, without milk and sweetener. That lead me to exploring various coffees. Not satisfied with the K-cup choices available for my Keurig machine, I first bought ground coffee, then started grinding the beans myself. Unsatisfied with my experimentation for various reasons, not always having to do with taste, I searched for a non-K-cup single-cup brewing system. I decided to try Nespresso. Nespresso is a unit of the Swiss conglomerate Nestle, and their machine was first designed as an espresso maker. But they later expanded to full-cup coffee. I found a machine at a sizeable discount which turned out to be their most advanced model with a range of serving sizes from 2.7 oz. to 18 oz. Well, let me tell you, I found my coffee nirvana. I now start each morning with a very large cup of fabulous black coffee. Of course, like just about every electronic device these days, it has an app. You can use the app to order recyclable coffee pods or to interactively see the state of your machine. One of the outstanding features of Nespresso is their customer support. In the early days of learning about my unit, I had occasion to call them early on a Sunday morning and was connected to a representative after a short wait. But, of course, you don't need an app to do that. More recently, I wanted to descale my Nespresso coffee maker. I thought I followed the detailed, step-by-step instructions correctly but wasn't able to get the unit to descale. So, I called customer support and soon was talking to someone who understood the process much better than I did. Now here is the moment some of you have been waiting for since the rest of you have, no doubt, stopped reading. The woman I was talking to wanted to see what was going on. Having made connection with the app, she sent me a link to my phone. I clicked the link, granted the appropriate permissions, and, using the camera on my phone, was able to show her the blinking light on my machine. Using the video from my phone, she was able to diagnose my issue. I'll not burden you with the embarrassingly simple solution to my problem. The amazing point of all this is, using the Nespresso app, I was able to solve my issue interactively using not only voice but also video. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! The Best Part of Waking Up

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