I was in an "uppity" restaurant the other day. When I asked for coffee, the response was, "Would you prefer the Ethiopian or Guatemalan blend?"

Actually, I was hoping you had Blue Mountain Coffee from the Blue Mountains of Jamaica.

Ever fallen in love with something and then realized it wasn't love at all?

I started drinking coffee in St. Charles, IL in 1994. It started with French Vanilla coffee at Dunkin Donuts and eventually moved to Starbucks Venti Mocha's. Last month I was drinking a Venti Mocha almost every morning, a Grande Coffee in the afternoon and then some Chai at night.

All together these drinks packed a combined 610mg of caffeine - not to mention the other stuff that is added (sugar, 2% milk and whipped cream).

The Mayo Clinic suggests that anything over 500mg can be an issue and lead to problems while using it. Not to mention the problems you can have if you try to stop...

And that's what I did recently. Eight days ago I stopped drinking caffeine of any kind. And within 24 hours I was hating life. Apparently 100mg per day can trigger withdrawal symptoms...who knew? WebMD has more on caffeine withdrawal symptoms here.

Why Stop?
I have tried stopping before, but never really had a good reason...until recently.

On the Today Show one morning they talked about how caffeine can affect people with back problems by causing swelling in the discs between the vertebrae. Interestingly enough I was diagnosed with a protruding disc last year.

I also did some reading about caffeine and the affect on SCUBA divers. Apparently it can have a negative impact on you if you're using Nitrox (Enriched Air). I'm going to Florida in a month and we'll be diving with Nitrox the whole time...

Needless to say, it's time to stop.

The problem is, I love coffee. There's nothing better than waking up early to drink coffee and work on websites.

I guess it all comes down to priorities. And right now there are other things that take priority.

Coffee: I love you. But you're gone.

I thought it was interesting that Starbucks decided to close down operations for a few hours the other day to get back to basics.

It wasn't to do inventory, or to make repairs to machines in stores around the world. No, it was to do some targeted training with Baristas - training that would hopefully ensure the consistency of the product.

In summary - Starbucks is trying to get back to basics after focusing on everything but the product.

Good for them. And inspiration for us to dust off the 'product' every now and then just to make sure we haven't lost focus.

I was at Starbucks the other day when I overheard:

"I'll have a Grande Non-Fat, No-Whip, Extra-Hot Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha to go..."

And it occurred to me that, though I sometimes get a bit creative with my orders, I am light years away from what the Sbux Barista can handle. I mean, the order above doesn't even scratch the surface.

I read here (page 2) that there are at least 19,000 possible drink combinations available at Sbux. If you're confused - go here to read how to order correctly.

This means I'm a drop in the bucket - and yet valued at the same time. "Let your customers customize your product" is just one of ten things they do that makes them successful. Read the other nine here: 10 Things You Can Learn from Starbucks.

So it occurred o me that if this (these) ideas work for coffee, why wouldn't they work for us, the church?

I need to take some time to dig into these 10 things and find the direct application when it comes to our websites, but I'm confident that there will be many. Just a quick glance gets me excited - especially 3, 4, 6 and 10.

I'm thinking Barista - are you?

If you still have that quizzical look on your face: sbux (Starbucks) IV (IntraVenous) 99 (the year I was married and yes - Wayne Gretzky)

I'm currently on once and a while for Halo 3 and possibly for Call of Duty 4 in the future.

I'm by no means good, so feel free to teach me a lesson :)

By the way - how funny is this picture? I would typically make something like this from scratch for the blog, but I did a Google image search just for the fun of it and this came up on the first screen...

So the other day I found someone that loves coffee (Starbucks Coffee to be precise) even more than I do. His name is Scott Hodge and apparently he has been in a long-term relationship with the coffee giant. It's so bad that he even has a category in his TypePad account called "caffeine" in which to dump his great coffee posts. His blog is a great read - yes - even the non-caffeinated posts.

This is probably my first coffee-related post on WDC and it may be the last - or will it? I have been inspired by Scott so I may have to do a tribute post every now and then.

From where I sit I can see two Sbux coffee mugs, two venti 2go cups in the trash and a Sbux sticker on my laptop. Hmmmm...

I'm thinking of hitting the drive thru on the way home...

Long live the Barista!