Ten Things I Like

Boulevard Beer and The Roasterie - Two rockin' local companies that produce some the best beer and coffee around. Boulevard is Missouri's second largest brewery, shipping beer all over the Midwest. Their Pale Ale and Bully Porter are especially nice. The Roasterie makes custom blends for many local restaurants and coffeehouses, and can be found online or at most grocery stores.

iSync - Allows me to easily synchronize my address book and calendar between my computer and mobile phone.

WordPress - An incredibly easy and flexible weblogging system. It's great for both public blogging and private journaling/notetaking. New features and plugins are introduced almost weekly.

Kansas City Action Center - Lets me easily and effectively bitch to City Hall, and usually get results relatively quickly. If it's a pothole, overgrown vacant lot, or neighborhood nuisance, the Action Center figures out which part of the bureaucracy is responsible and notifies when it's fixed.

Free WiFi around KC - especially at the Central Library, Coffee Girls, Crown Center, Union Station, and Westport Coffeehouse.

Bloglines - The web-based RSS reader lets me see all of my news feeds and keep tabs on my favorite blogs from any computer anywhere.

FastMail - An excellent email service that offers near-GMail amounts of space, custom domains, file storage, web mail, and most importantly IMAP and SMTP access. There are a variety of price plans, including ad-supported yet tasteful free email.

Katy Trail State Park - Stretching two-thirds of the way across Missouri, it's the country's longest rails-to-trails conversion. The section between Rocheport and Hartsburg is especially beautful, dramatically sandwiched between the Missouri River and high bluffs. The trail is dotted with lovely old railroad towns brought back to life with bike shops, antique stores, and bed & breakfast inns. Hopefully someday we'll have a direct connection into Kansas City.

Bike trails - KC has over a hundred miles of trails within a 30 minute drive of the city. Missouri's rolling, wooded terrain provides for a surpisingly good MTB experience out here in the hinterlands.