In fact, I am not alone and about 54% of adults in the United States are also habitual coffee drinkers/coffee addicts consuming approximately 146 billion cups of coffee annually. That is about three times more than tea drinkers. However, through the years of research, coffee was deemed bad for you. Because of its habit forming traits, coffee was analogous with smoking, associated with insomnia, and renamed the “devil’s brew.”

Well, now times are a changing. New research demonstrates coffee is in fact good for you, as coffee consumers could be lower at risk of type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, as well as liver and colon cancer. For men, a 2009 study showed coffee drinking are lower at risk for lethal prostate cancer. Moderate coffee addicts consuming 3 to 5 cups a day are proven to have lower risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease later in life in comparison to less or more frequent coffee drinkers.

Women who regularly drink coffee were found to be less likely to die from various causes in relation to their counterparts. Also, the consumption of decaffeinated coffee drew similar results, therefore researchers do not believe caffeine is at work in the recent developments for coffee consumption. A University of Scranton professor of chemistry, Joe A. Vinson, Ph. D., found, “Most people drink it [coffee] for the caffeine. But it’s the Number 1 source of antioxidants in the U.S. diet.” Antioxidants are nutritious compounds found in berries, beans, and vegetables, but those foods are consumed much less than coffee. So have a cup o’ Joe, and have a good day (or life).

POLITICS:

The Best:

1. Obama, Obama, Obama. The country stepped up, proved it was only partially prejudice, and elected the best person for the job based on qualifications and charisma, and NOT color. No other story dominated the political landscape like this one and deservedly so.
2. Saturday Night Live: Any Sarah Palin or Keith Olbermann parody. Ben Affleck’s Olbermann was his best acting since Good Will Hunting!

The Worst:

1. Sarah Palin, but not for who she is, but for the choice to choose her. Her choice to be the VP running mate of John McCain could go down as one of the biggest political blunders in history. Unproven, unknown, and completely nuts, she proved to be a distraction that could not be overlooked or ignored. The thought of her being one breath away from being President was reason enough to not vote Republican regardless of the other issues.
2. Rudy Giuliani ONLY campaigns in one state (Florida( and quickly fades out of the Presidential race.  Just a terrible decision that he will regret for the next 4 long years.
3. Jeremiah wright: “God Damn America” is all that needs to be said.
4. The War that never ends. Time to bring home the troops as quickly and safely as possible.
5. Governors, Mayors and other CORRUPT public officials. If it was not bribery, X-Rated text messages, or illegal deals, it was something else EVERY WEEK. The negative news stories never seemed to end with politicians abusing their power and positions in 2008.
6. Bailouts: No one understands them or where the money is coming from OR going. Confusion is universal and people perceive billions of their tax dollars going to bail out some rich corporate guys and keep them in their private jets.
7. The fact that Osama bin Laden is still alive (we think)

MOVIES:

The Best:

1. The Dark Knight: Hands down our winner for best picture of the year, and multiple individual awards. You can read our full review here.
2. There Will Be Blood: People forget that it came out in wide release in January of 2008. Daniel Day-Lewis is a scary good actor. Intense and gritty, there were few movies this good in the past year
3. Iron Man: Great comic book action movie with a fantastic plot and actors. Made a boat load of money.
4. Juno: It was released the last week of December 2007, so we will call it 2008. Ellen Page, who we LOVED from Hard Candy steal the entire movie and is a big star in the making.

The Worst: Meet The Spartans (been there, done that), The Love Guru (horrible), The X-Files (so boring, what a let down), Vantage Point (what a let down. A great idea, terrible execution), Superhero Movie (see Meet The Spartans), The Strangers (not scary), Semi Pro (horrible and not funny), Disaster Movie (see Meet the Apartans and Superhero Movie)

FOOD:

The Best:

1. The grill. Nothing in our house was used more for cooking food in the past year then the grill out on our deck. We literally use it to cook our dinners 3-4 days a week when I am in town and not traveling for business. We cooked steaks, burgers, chicken, many different types of sausages, endless grilled veggies, and much much more. I am out there if it is cold, raining, or a perfectly clear night.
2. Five Guys. Unquestionably the best burgers in my opinion. The chain is growing FAST and it seems like they are in every town I visit now.
3. Sweet Tomatoes. We LOVE Sweet Tomatoes. It is the greatest all you can eat salad bar in our opinion. Add in the soups, pastas, and deserts and it is a perfect meal every time. Highly recommended if there is a location in your area.

The Worst: Coming Soon, but in general, I love all food.

TRAVEL:
The Best: none.
The Worst: That there were no personal vacations in 2008. We just could not afford to go away with rising costs of everything and less coming in. There was just less money available to spend on non essential items.

Best KIDS SHOWS As Voted By My 2 Year Old Son: This was a year DOMINATED by 2 shows - Little Einsteins and Mickey Mouse Club House. My son was COMPLETELY brainwashed by Disney and he now basically starts his day saying “More Mickey!”. It is both cute, and scary at the same time.

Best Electronic GADGET: For the first 9-10 months our choice would have been the Blackberry Curve, if it had not been taken over by the HTC Fuze in early November 2008. The Fuze is my new phone, music player, movie player, calendar, organizer, email, text, work, 32GB mini computer power gadget. It does everything and is awesome. I posted a full review here and you will understand why it is so great.
- Best Gadget Application. For me this was Spb Mobile Shell. This program REALLY made my touch scree mobile phone TAKE OFF. It is feature rich and really allows you to take advantage of everything windows mobile has to offer.

Best INTERNET SITES: I spent a lot of time online this year. Here are the sites that I really like and visited on a regular basis. The list is in no particular order.

1. http://www.smartphonejunkie.com/ - Smart Phone Junkie is a GREAT Windows Mobile site with a ton of information and programs for people with a windows mobile or smartphone. Highly recommended and I visit this site daily.
2. http://www.mockforums.com - not for the faint of heart, Mock is a place where insulting and mocking is welcome and encouraged. While sometimes mean spirited, it also is filled with a ton of interesting threads and information worth checking out if you like all of the cool stuff the internet has to offer. I visit this site daily.
3. http://forum.xda-developers.com - xda developers is the main site for smartphone and windows mobile customization, hacking, and specialty programing. Some very smart people are doing some great things to your favorite gadgets on this site. I visit it daily.
4. http://www.perezhilton.com/ - I admit it. I l love the gossip and read this site sometimes a few times a day. The stories and gossip are endless and fun.
5. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ - whether I agreed with the stories on this site or not, during the election I did visit The Huffington Post multiple times a day.  It is the 485th busiest website in the world and is very well done.
6. The Daily Duke - http://thedailyduke.com/ - has become one of my favorite sites to visit on a daily basis. Duke has a unique perspective on the world around us, and one that I enjoy reading.

MUSIC: I listen to a VERY wide wide range of music and always have 700-1000 songs on my player and am always adding, removing, and searching for new tunes that move me.

The Best:

1. Estelle featuring Kanye West - American Boy. Every year there are a few songs that just stand out as fresh, new, and memorable. You don’t necessarily have to like the artist or the music, but you can appreciate that it is memorable. This artist and the song, was one of those moments in 2008. Obviously having Kanye West on the track helped the song. The song seemed to be in my head all year and is my song of the year.
2. Beyonce - Single Ladies. It seems that Beyonce puts out big music every single year. And she always seems to have one or two songs that become huge. Single Ladies was another song that just crossed over and everyone seemed to react to. It also created one of the BEST comedy moments of the year on Saturday Night Live with Justin Timberlake in a leotard and high heals as one of the back up dancers in Beyonce’s video for this song.
3. Everything Lil Wayne in 2008 was strong. He was easily the most seen and influential rapper this past year and to his credit the music he produced was quality in my opinion.
4. Kevin Rudolf featuring Lil Wayne - Let It Rock. On top of being on my top music list for his own music he was part of this song that I am still obsessed with.
5. Joshua Radin. I love this guy and especially 2 songs - Only You and One Of Those Days. Really a nice voice.
6. Brett Dennen is one of the most unique and strange new singer I have heard in a while - and I love it. Check out these songs Ain’t No Reason and There is So Much More.
7. Britney Spears - Womanizer. The song is a GREAT pop and dance song. You can not deny it and she still has “it”, whatever that is.
8. Rihanna - Please Don’t Stop The Music and just about everything she put out. Rihanna is a strong contender to be the biggest female singer on the planet every year. Her songs are well produced, impossible to get out of your head and fun. Please Don’t Stop The Music with the Michael Jackson sample was one of the biggest of the year and one of my favorites.
9. M.I.A. - Paper Planes. We might NEVER hear from this group again, BUT this song was AWESOME. It had a real “80’s” feel. I could have easily imagined it in a John Hughes movie with Anthony Michael Hall. Good song.

The Worst:

1. Kid Rock - All Summer Long. I TRIED to like this song and it drove me nuts that they played it literally 5 million times a week on every channel. But in the end the entire song is a rip off of 3-4 other songs and Kid Rock can do better. I am a big Kid Rock fan, and while this song was a HUGE commercial success and he made a ton of money, it was not his best in my opinion.
2. Katie Perry - I Kissed A Girl. Once you got past the taboo topic (to some, not me), the song was a maddening teenage pop song that finally went away after about 20 endless weeks of being overplayed to no end.
3. Many more “worst” music to come soon…..

Biggest Musical Disappointment: Guns N Roses. I waited 20 years for that?? I SO wanted Chinese Democracy to be great. But in the end it was only marginally good. It clearly DID NOT need 15 years of rewrites and revisions. Axl’s obsessiveness and endless delays seemed to only accomplish one thing in the end - the band’s core fans moved on to newer and better things.

SPORTS

The Best:

1. Michael Phelps wins 8 gold medals. For one amazing summer, the entire country came together night after night to cheer on Michael Phelps. This was far and away the biggest story of the year.
2. The US Men’s Basketball team winning the gold medal BUT ALSO playing with class and style and gaining back the respect of the world. The best players in the world are still in the United States.
3. Tiger Woods wins the US Open with literally a broken knee that would have put ANYONE else in a wheelchair. The world knew he was hurt, but no one knew how badly until after. He would miss the rest of the year after the tournament, but still BEAT the best in the world with one leg. Just incredible.

The Worst:

1. The Patriots blowing the 16-0 regular season. Sure they still had a great year and still went to the Superbowl, but they lost to the Giants. If they would have won it all they would have been considered the best ever. Instead no one ever remembers the “first loser”. In the end their 16-0 regular season was completely wasted.
2. The Detroit Lions. Even if they win a game, they really suck. They are the perfect example of how to NOT run a professional sports franchise and the players have given up completely on the team and their teammates. It is sad to see.

Television

The Best

1. True Blood: HBO has another winner with the sometimes gory, but always intense and interesting vampire drama. Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame hits another home run with off beat and deep characters that never fail to surprise week after week.
2. Fringe: The modern X-Files, just better. The show has been a hit, which means it will get a second season. That is important because right now it is still pretty confusing on what exactly is gong on and who is on which side. One thing is for sure, there are some strange things going on in the Boston area.
3. House: I did not think it was possible that this great show could get better, but it did. Hugh Laurie is the best male actor on TV today.
4. Heroes, Prison Break, Lost, CSI: Many of the consistent dramas were equally as good this past year with strong plot lines and acting. Heroes actually got better in 2008 in my opinion

The Worst

1. Knight Rider - just horrible
2. Almost ALL reality shows. Who else is just sick of these already. They get more and more boring with each passing year. We can only hope they will go away soon.
3. Secret Million. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for these rich people who are “roughing it” for a few days? Of course not. It is clearly all set up and gets old very fast.

Shows I Am Not Sure Yet: 90210 has been pretty good, but will it return as strong or at all. Life on Mars is a original idea and so far has been very well written. But the big question is if people come back week after week to see if he finally wakes up in his time again?

More to come between now and December 31st. Check back for regular updates!

This is only a test and your regular program will resume shortly.

The htc FUZE is an advanced Windows Mobile phone and that means you can program it however you want, tweak it endlessly, and do things to it that most other phones will never be able to do. Well today Google made it even better then it already was with the release of Google Maps Street Views for phones like mine. Basic Google Maps was already available and was fantastic with satellite views, maps for directions, and a variety of other info features.

Now they added the very cool street views you can get on your PC for your phone as well. You can see a video about it here.  The picture to the right is from my phone and of a house a few miles away from where I live. As you can see you can literally see the house, yard, road, cars, and more. Pretty amazing. And you can take it a step further with walking directions with similar pictures, addresses, and phone numbers. It is really incredible and I am continually amazed these days. Such fun!

Here is my review and thoughts after spending the past 2 weeks reading EVERY website, installing MANY applications, programs, plug ins, etc, and then taking some out if I did not like them. I have installed all the advanced config. tools and tweaked and tweaked for performance, etc etc etc…..etc.

1) The battery life is a joke for power users. So far the phone never ever makes it through the entire day without having to be charged up a little or again somewhere along the way. Now this is not that big of a deal because I can leave it plugged in to my laptop when at my desk and I have a car charger if I am out of the office for meetings. When traveling in the airport I always have the charger in my computer bag or the cord to my computer to charge when needed. My next purchase will be a back up battery to keep charged and in my bag.
- I have 4 emails accounts being pulled to the phone. One way I saved battery life was to change the settings to pull over much longer time intervals instead of every 5 minutes. Making them pull at the longest intervals you can deal with adds considerable battery life
- I immediately turned off the automatic weather update, which is also a power drain. I turn it on once in the morning and get the days weather and then turn it off. It still pulls each time a send/receive is done, but not all the time which saves battery life.

2) This is FAR AND AWAY the best all around mini computer phone I have ever used. I am a person who needs actual keys, so an iphone or phone without a full set of keys just will not work for me. I do a ton of typing on the phone all day long, so keys are a must. The keyboard is great and easy to use.
- What I don’t like is no classic auto word correct feature where you can just enter what words you want to auto correct (like in normal Word). The T9 feature is VERY tricky to get used to and many times you have to manually shut it off while typing because it will not recognize something. Also if you type fast it has a hard time keeping up, even with all the tweaks and fixes added in.

3) I LOVE all the sites (see below) where you can get programs and help to add to the phone. Smartphonejunkie and xda are particularly great. I HAVE NOT added a custom ROM or flashed any radios. I want to get the most out of the phone as-is before I start really hacking into it.

4) While TF3D was neat and cool - it takes way to much scrolling around to get to the actual applications in my opinion. it is flashy and the animation cool, BUT not practical for a heavy business user. In my opinion the SPB Mobile Shell program is the best add on for the phone and makes having the touch screen worth it. I have it set so i do not see my today screen ever anymore and the mobile shell screens are the only thing i see. (I like mobile shell way more then the Winterface program.) That being said I WISH mobile shell was customizable a little more then it is. It is still great, but if you could do a few things it would be incredible.

5) The Contact screen is HORRIBLE as is in my opinion. It is hard to find contacts with the keyboard closed and the screen to small. I installed iContact which is much much better, but is not customizable with mobile shell the way I would like. I can still easily access it and use the features so that is very positive.

6) I currently have a 4 gig memory card in the Fuze and I have ordered a 16 gig card that I will get soon. I have all my music, pictures, videos, power point presentations, etc on the card and it works great. I can easily access pictures and files to show clients or friends. and someday I will have a 32 gig card, which will make this phone beyond anything else available.

7) It is RIDICULOUS to me that there is not an included headphone jack ON the phone. Just NUTS. The included usb attachment works fine, but is huge and bulky. This was a BIG BIG mistake by AT&T and I am willing to bet a lot of money that future versions of the phone will have the headphone jack on the actual phone and not through an external jack. Obviously they are trying to push wireless stereo head sets but come on - I use my ipod headphones and they work great.

8. It is easy to move around the youtube application to use it (it is there, just hidden) and I installed the FM radio cab also, which works when the headset is plugged in. So the phone becomes a walkman with FM radio also. Pretty cool IF you use it. I use Sirius (see below).

Programs I really like and consider must haves.

• Spb Mobile Shell - way way WAY better then TF3D in my opinion. This one program will be the main thing you use to get everywhere on your phone.
• MyMobile - a MUST. lets you see your phone screen on your desk top when attached with usb cord. Way easier to do things on your computer then the phone sometimes, especially installing programs.
• Advanced Config Tool - a must to tweak the entire phone. But to get this on your Fuze you are also going to have to change your NetCF. At least I had to.
• G-Alarm - the best alarm clock in my opinion. Just so feature rich, works with your songs on your system, great snooze, etc.
• Google Mobile Maps. works great and I use it instead of the gps many time and saves tons of battery life. Gives great and accurate directions and finds exactly where you are located and gives perfect directions to where ever you want to go.
• Mobile Sirius - If you have a Sirius account this works perfectly. This does drain the battery but I now listen to Stern live at the gym just like I was listening in my car. It is great.
• Total Commander - you have to have this to make registry changes to the phone.

Here are SOME of the Forums and Blogs about htc phones and windows mobile I have been researching for my FUZE. You NEED to read all the info on how to do things at smartphonejunkie and xda BEFORE trying to do anything big to your phone. But once you take the time to learn there really is no limit to what you can do with the FUZE.

• http://www.smartphonejunkie.com/ - one of my favorite FUZE and WM sites. Dash, Fatal_Error and the other people there are VERY cool and extremely helpful.
• http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=437 – the biggest and most serious developer site for mobile phone features. Raphael is the code name for our phones
• http://discussion.wmexperts.com/forumdisplay.php?f=208 – forums for htc products, including our phones
• http://forums.wireless.att.com/cng/board?board.id=cingular – AT&T forum for htc products
• http://www.fuzemobility.com/ - great blog with months of articles and links to features for the phones.
• http://tiltmobility.com/forums/ - forum with tons of info
• http://wmpoweruser.com/ - another very good blog with info
• http://www.mytodayscreen.com/ - very good blog

There are TONS AND TONS of great Windows Mobile (WM) sites out there. I probably forgot some of them and will update this article regularly and add more.

Summary:

Pros: So far I am very enthusiastic about the features and options of this phone. BUT it should be noted that it does take a lot of playing with, tweaking, and customizing to really make it work the way you personally want it to. It is like buying a new computer that the store or Dell has preloaded with a bunch of basic programs. You have to add to it to really take advantage of all of the things it can do. I can see adding features and adjusting programs on an ongoing basis. There is a VERY active development community online which is really positive. Upgrades and new programs become available regularly and innovation is constant. The phone is also very stylish in design and look. Diamond back plate is interesting and nice, but also a finger print magnet.

Cons: The battery life really sucks. Having to use an attachment for stereo headphones sucks. Currently there are VERY few options for form fitting cases (like silicone or thin hard plastic) that protect the phone but allow you to still use it, without being a carrying case you have to pull the device out of.

There is NO REASON that gas should go back up again in my opinion other then the gas companies raping us for profits and end of the year bonuses. In my opinion they have made enough at this point to stick it to us again during the holidays.

And hopefully if we can really start moving towards cars that don’t rely only on gas we could really move away from the coast associated with paying at the pump. Either way, it is going down currently and that is a positive for me. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for even lower prices

BUT our backyard does not look like the these in any way. Our grill is just sitting outside by our back door. I would love to have an amazing outdoor kitchen like one of these. The best thing in my opinion would be all of the cabinets and just having all the cooking tools right there. Right now I have to bring everything outside every time we grill. Since we grill so much that is a lot of walking back and forth from the house to the grill with all the utensils and grill tools. If we had an outdoor kitchen like this everything could be stored right by the grill. That would be heaven.

Finally, look at the COOL swim up bar found here. That would be taking my outdoor dream yard to a whole new level. A pool and an outdoor kitchen … a dream, oh what a dream!