15
October
2006

Episode 18 of Upon Further Review!

We’ve finally reached voting age, and to celebrate our new ability to make decisions (well, sort of) we’re rolling out all new opinions in Episode 18 of Upon Further Review! In this show Clea rethinks her suspicion of GPS receivers before we move on to the main portion of the show: first, we browse through the Internet megastore known as eBay; second, we whip out our plus 3 Boots of Buttkicking as we review the Munchkin card game; and finally, we venture (with not a little trepidation) into the world of biotechnology with our review of the Futures in Biotech podcast. Thanks as always for listening, contributing, and telling others to do the same! (Special thanks this week to Weird Al Yankovic for his musical contribution to the show; as usual, podsafe intro music is provided by Sharif (“You’re My Girl”), outro by David Henderson (“We Gotta Go”).)

Reviewed in this show:

eBay

Munchkin

Futures in Biotech

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7 Comments

  1. Bernadette in Australia:

    Sure it’s fine for you to make jokes about Starbucks stores proliferating around my house…I do a 5km walk to work each day…a couple of years ago all I passed were a half-dozen or so Italian cafes which had been around for 20 or 30 years…each one owned by a different family of Italian immigrants who worked hard and gave my city much-needed decent coffee and great food…where a coffee and a smile could be had for $2 and the only concession some of them made to the 00’s was to offer a low-fat milk option in the cappuccino (and only if you asked nicely)…now there are two Starbucks outlets, 5 or 6 clone outlets and all but one of the Italian cafes is gone…coffee is a minimum of $5 and whenever I order my ‘basic’ coffee some pimply teenager wastes my time trying to sell me a syrup or flavouring or some other addition I never wanted and everyone in the store looks at me like I’m some kind of freak becausse my favourite drink doesn’t have 14 adjectives to describe the contents

    So yes I’m bitter and twisted about Starbucks and their soon to be 40,000 stores…not only because I can no longer get the coffee I like from the people I like but because before I’ve even reached 40 years of age I’ve turned into my parents…bemoaning the loss of the good old days and grumbling about pimply teenagers…I hadn’t planned on becoming a grumpy old woman just yet :)

    off to take my medication now :)

  2. admin:

    I hear a half-caf decaf mocha cream is good to take medicine with.

    *ducks*

    Greg :)

  3. Tim Byatt:

    Look I held back until now but here goes….

    Starbucks to me seems to be all about marketing and being the ‘cool’ (that’s what the kids say right Bernadette? :)) place to be. I once paid 4 or 5 dollars for a coffee at Starbucks and it turned out to be one of the worst coffee I have ever tasted. I swear I am not making this up. I got through about a quarter of it and threw the rest out.

    But, hey, each to their own and they must be doing something right to be able to have 40000 stores.

  4. admin:

    Personally I agree with you–I don’t even drink coffee, so for me it’s about the tea, hot chocolate, and (of course) the pastries. The fact that it costs like $4 for a hot chocolate is of course absurd…but Clea is a huge fan of chai lattes, so what can I say? I’m hoping that some healthy competition will pop up eventually…

    G.

  5. AJ:

    Sadly I was banned from ebay in 2003 for not paying a $2.38 seller charge, despite repeated attempts to do so. I admit my bias based on this incident and give ebay a 1 out of 10 – mainly because you gave war a 0 and ebay’s probably better than war.

  6. admin:

    Glad you think so, AJ…it has big problems, but not quite on the war scale. :)

    T.R.

  7. Chris:

    Clea, Greg,

    Thanks again for providing something that rises above the sea of drivel on the net! Wonderful show!

    Thanks for the review of Munchkin. I’ve got a card game that I haven’t played yet called “Give Me the Brain”. Think I’ll dig it out. Maybe I’ll share it if it has any merit (totally did not mean to rhyme there, but, whatever).

    Starbucks seems to be a hot topic. How about a review of Dunkin Donuts, its blue collar competition? I go back and forth between the two. Would love to hear your opinions.

    Thanks for your hard work! It always pays off in my book!

    See you on 19…

    – Chris

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