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Replacement Hopper for Starbucks Barista EL60 Grinder

Starbucks Barista Burr Grinder with New Hopper
Starbucks Barista Burr Grinder EL60
Starbucks Barista Burr Grinder EL60

A while back, my treasured Starbucks “Barista” Burr Grinder suffered a nasty fall.  It’s a long story. Not my best day.

The grinder itself was just fine, but the coffee bean hopper that sits atop the grinder didn’t fare so well. The “business end” of the hopper was ruined. I call it the business end because without the hopper installed, the grinder won’t run for safety reasons. It also is used to set the coarseness of your grind.

Broken Hopper for EL60 Burr Grinder
Broken Hopper for EL60 Burr Grinder

Locating a New Hopper

This should be no problem, right? I’ll just search Google for “starbucks barista grinder hopper” right?

Oh boy.

It turns out that Starbucks has sold a few different private label grinders wearing the “Barista” moniker. There were a number of results in Google that made me think I’d have no problem finding parts for my grinder. Unfortunately, though, it became clear pretty quickly from the photos on the sites that my grinder wasn’t the one they were selling parts for.

Starbucks EL60 Grinder
Starbucks EL60 Grinder

In the end, I turned the grinder over and located this sticker, which told me that I have the “EL 60” burr grinder specifically.

While that was nice for informational purposes, it didn’t seem to be much help online when hunting for parts.

Ultimately, I decided that my grinder was manufactured by Solis, a Swiss company which offers this model which appears (from the photo, anyway) to be identical to mine. Other searches revealed that my grinder had been sold as the “Solis 166” at one time.

Nice to know, but no parts.

After a few more rounds of Google searching, I decided that it might be worthwhile to contact Baratza, which appears to make (or at least import) the successor models to the EL 60—both for Starbucks’ “Barista” line and otherwise.

Prior to purchasing the replacement hopper from the Baratza website, I contacted their support department by filling out a form on their website.

I was very impressed with the great service I received—especially since I was only planning to spend $10 on the hopper (or, as it turned out, $14 including the lid). After inquiring as to whether or not they sold the replacement hopper I needed, I received the following via email:

Hey David,

Our hopper does not fit right onto the Barista. However, I did have one crafty customer modify one of our hoppers, he made a guide for doing the job. I have the guide attached- sorry it is in two parts, but the customer sent it to me already in PDF form like this.

Regards,

Pierce Jens
Baratza Email Support

Nice!

The PDFs that were attached were somewhat helpful, but unclear in some ways, so I decided to create this post as a way to “upgrade” the available information about how to make the Baratza hopper work on the Barista EL60 / Solis 166 grinder.

I ordered the grinder right away, and added the lid as well. I had a suspicion my lid (which was intact) would fit, but I could see that the Baratza hopper was kind-of a “smoke” color, whereas mine was clear. For $4, why not get the matching lid?

Opening the package, I decided the grinders Baratza sells today indeed must share some common ancestry with my grinder, as the hoppers are exactly the same diameter at the point where they come to rest on top of the grinder.

However, the “notches” that allow the hopper to adjust the grind—not to mention get “seated” properly in place—are not where they need to be on the Baratza replacement hopper.

EL 60 Grind Adjustment Notches
EL 60 Grind Adjustment Notches
Baratza replacement hopper as shipped
Baratza replacement hopper as shipped

So… I reviewed the modifications made by the generous and helpful person who created the PDFs that Baratza sent me, and went for it.

How I Modified the Baratza Hopper to Work in My Barista Grinder

The guides Baratza sent referenced a “rotary tool” which the customer apparently used to grind new notches in the Baratza hopper to make it fit. I’m guessing it was a Dremel tool of some sort, which I don’t have.

So I read and re-read the guides and decided that an super-sharp razor blade just might do the trick.

WARNING: Razor blades are incredibly dangerous. Seriously… use every possible precaution to avoid injury if you try this. Clear the area of any bystanders or spectators, and proceed at your own risk.

I started with 2 vertical cuts on the side that didn’t have anything in the way, as shown below. By cutting straight down, no body parts were in the “line of fire” (so to speak) in the event that the razor blade were to slip.

Baratza hopper mod: first cuts made with razor blade
First cuts made with razor blade

I was quite pleasantly surprised at how easily my sharp razor blade cut through the plastic hopper. If I got a little stuck, it just took a little forward or backward motion (not enough that I’d refer to it as “sawing”) to make progress.

I took my time, and when I had two nice vertical cuts, I very carefully made a horizontal one to finish out my notch.

Once that first notch was cut, I turned the hopper around and tried to discover what needed to happen on the other side. From what I could see, my hopper was slightly different from the one pictured in the guides I received. In my case, there was a “tab” that ran all the way to the “top” (when sitting upside down as it was when I was working on it) of the hopper rim. After some tinkering, I decided that at least part of it (enough to match the height of my other notch) needed to be removed. I decided not to remove all of it because it seemed like it may have had some purpose. Honestly, I’m not sure.

Baratza hopper mod: tab to be partially removed
Tab to be partially removed

Again, the razor blade really seemed like the ideal tool for the job. I worked very slowly and kept body parts out of the way in case of slippage.

Tab partially removed
Baratza hopper mod: tab partially removed

Once that was done, I cut a notch in the “rim” of the hopper just like the first one.

With both notches cut, I did a little comparison to even things out a bit, and ultimately cut both notches a bit “taller” than I had done originally. Once they seemed to match, I installed the hopper onto the grinder…

My Starbucks Barista grinder with its shiny new modified Baratza hopper
My Starbucks Barista grinder with its shiny new modified Baratza hopper

Voila!

The new hopper now works just as the original one did. By rotating the hopper, the grind can be adjusted from “coarse” (with the little tab above the french press as shown in the photo above) to “fine” just as before.

And… as before, the safety cutoff switch is activated properly only when the hopper is properly installed and rotated far enough to be “locked” into place.

Thank You to Baratza and the Unknown Crafty Customer

I wouldn’t have attempted this mod if it weren’t for the fantastic service from Baratza (thank you, Pierce!) and the anonymous Baratza customer who blazed the trail and wrote up the guide to the modification he or she made.

Hopefully, this guide is helpful to you. If I can answer any questions, I’ll do my best! Just add a comment below.

With this nifty mod, I plan to enjoy my Starbucks Barista EL60 grinder for many more years. It has truly been the best grinder I’ve ever owned! And… next time I need one, I’ll be buying a grinder directly from Baratza.

Enjoy!

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Steve Rinehart: Sarasota’s Newest Custom Home Builder

Those of you who know me well already know this: I’m a huge fan of entrepreneurs.

Especially the “chase your dream, innovate and adapt as necessary, and work really hard ’til you see it come about” variety.

Steve Rinehart: Sarasota Entrepreneur
Steve Rinehart: Sarasota Entrepreneur
Photo Courtesy of Rinehart Homes

And this is precisely why I was intrigued when I first met Steve Rinehart. It was about two and a half years ago now, and a good friend of mine was providing some entertainment in a local night club venue. He suggested that I meet up with the owner, because he had real vision but had run into some difficulties in the business.

The venue was “The Loft Ristobar,” and it was located in the building that had previously housed Sarasota’s highly popular Tex-Mex chain restaurant, Don Pablo’s.

The Loft was a concept that was either ahead of its time, or perhaps just better suited to a bigger market. But the idea, I thought, was brilliant. Restaurant by day, live entertainment venue in the evenings, and then… after hours on weekends, it transformed into a full-on night club.

But, as you might imagine, those are at least two (and possibly three) different businesses all rolled up into one. This meant that the business was surprisingly complex, with lots of areas that needed specific attention.

Creating a clear marketing message out of the three of them was what I was immediately tasked with doing. Let’s just say it wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever been asked to do.

And to top it all off, Rinehart Homes, Steve Rinehart’s day job, was busy and complicated enough that it demanded lots of his time and most of his attention. The management Steve had in place at The Loft did a bang-up job, but it just wasn’t enough to get the concept to really take off.

Why Not Franchise?

As Steve related to me, many times during the course of his time operating The Loft Ristobar, people would come in and ask about Don Pablo’s. Where did it go? What happened to it?

The reality was that the Sarasota store had long been one of the chain’s top-performing restaurants. But when the parent corporation ran into financial troubles, it closed all but 38 stores—the ones that were geographically easier for them to manage. A new company bought the brand and those 38 stores out of bankruptcy and they were doing OK.

The idea of coming back to Sarasota was a good one, but the company wasn’t ready to take the plunge yet as they were taking a measured approach to growth.

So Steve did what any enterprising entrepreneur would do: he seized the opportunity and negotiated the chain’s first-ever franchise deal. In May of 2012, five years or so after it had closed, Sarasota’s Don Pablo’s reopened as a franchise operation.

That business has been through its fair share of ups and downs, but today it is humming along with a great management team in place. Steve has high hopes for its future.

In the meantime… Sarasota’s real estate market had begun to pick up.

Building Custom Homes in Sarasota

Since 1994, when Steve Rinehart first obtained his Florida General Contractor’s license, he had attacked the home-building business with gusto. Not one to get stuck depending upon others, Steve went out and got his roofing license and a pool contractor’s license as well. This enabled him to be highly flexible and churn out homes at a surprising rate.

The business model is pretty simple in this world: you find a big tract of land and make a deal. Then you carve it up, stick up a model home or two, and build a community.

Steve’s reputation—and that of his boutique team—in that business is very good. Over the years, he and his team have built more than 300 homes that way, and provided many affordably-priced, but very nice homes for a lot of people.

But as he tells it, when the real estate market starts to heat up—especially in an intrinsically attractive market like Sarasota/Bradenton—bigger and bigger national players are willing to come in and pay far more for land than it’s worth.

That makes this business less and less attractive to a boutique team like Steve’s.

And so… the handful of higher-end projects that Steve had taken on in the last few years had started to become more and more interesting.

With a few completely custom projects on Sarasota’s Siesta Key (along with a high-end renovation or two) under his belt, Steve decided it was time to launch another new entrepreneurial venture.

With the help of 20-year veteran real estate investor Joel Match, Steve recently launched Rinehart Elite Homes. Their first project under this new name? A gorgeous home in Lakewood Ranch’s exclusive golf course community, The Concession.

As you might imagine, Steve’s life is never boring. But given his passion for excellence, his hands-on attention to detail, and the track record of satisfied home owners, I think it’s safe to say that Rinehart Elite Homes is going to be a luxury home builder to contend with.

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More Details About a WordPress Attack Making the Rounds

Since the same type of attack has hit my websites on a second web host, I want to provide some more details about the attack I recently experienced prior to writing about why you need to update WordPress and your plugins.

Yesterday, I logged in via FTP to a separate hosting account on a completely different web host, and found some of the same signs that accompanied the original attack on my 1and1 account.

The first sign is a suspicious file in the root of the website. The filename is “.. ” — as in ‘dot dot space’

This is particularly insidious, because the filename is designed to make the file hard to find. This is because “..” by itself is a unix/linux standard for “parent directory.” (It’s the same way on Windows & DOS systems as well.)

Thus, if you aren’t paying attention and looking specifically for it, it’s hard to notice. Also, since most systems don’t give you any sign of the “space” in the filename, it’s hard to open the file. (Here’s where I have to give credit to a sysadmin at 1and1 for helping me discover the space in the filename. I kept telling him it was called “..” and he said, “that’s impossible.” He was right.)

Either way, I have found that you can simply rename the file and then download it via FTP to open it up and see what’s inside. Here’s the code inside the “.. ” file:

This is obfuscated somehow… perhaps encoded with base64 or some other method.

I’m not certain what it does, but my guess is that it only works when in combination with the code that was inserted into PHP files. Here are the filenames targeted by the attack:

  • wp-config.php
  • index.php
  • header.php

While index.php & header.php are common filenames in a wide variety of php websites, wp-config.php is unique to WordPress. Thus, I’m fairly certain that the creators of this attack were particularly interested in attacking WordPress sites.

The wp-config.php file only shows up in the “root” folder of any given WordPress installation. On the other hand, index.php appears in a number of folders in a typical WordPress installation. Here are a few examples:

  • the “root” folder of the site
  • the wp-admin folder
  • wp-content folder
  • wp-content/themes
  • wp-content/plugins
  • wp-content/uploads
  • the main folder of any given theme
  • the main folder of some plugins

The header.php file, on the other hand, is most likely to show up in one or more of your theme folders.

My guess is that whatever script gets uploaded to your server gets busy locating files that match those filenames and injecting the malicious code.

The code is intended to be hard to spot. First of all, the PHP files are edited without modifying their timestamps. Thus, they don’t look like they’ve been edited recently.

Also, the code contains an opening <?php tag, and then is immediately followed by 1183 spaces. This means that even if you open an infected file in a typical code or text editor, the malicious code will be so far off your screen that you won’t notice it. You can scroll down and see all of the untouched PHP code that you’re expecting to see in the file.

From being attacked in the past, I was already aware of both of those techniques, so I opened the files and scrolled all the way to the right, finding the code.

Here’s an exact copy of what’s being inserted into these files.

What Does This Code Do?

Well… the only reference to this particular attack that I’ve been able to find online is found in this thread (in German). That confirmed a suspicion I had held which led me to believe that there was something inserting some ad code into the WordPress admin pages (the “Dashboard” specifically) of my sites. Thus, it is only visible when logged in as an admin user, and is intentionally targeting WordPress site operators.

1and1 insisted that my sites were injecting malware into visitors’ browsers. Perhaps this is the malware. Perhaps the code was doing more than just displaying the ads I saw.

In any case, I had originally attributed these ads to a recently-added Chrome extension which I immediately disabled.

Now that I’ve seen the German thread, I’m more convinced that the sites which were displaying that ad were, in fact, the ones infected with this malicious attack.

So… I have no proof as to what this code actually does. It’s all obfuscated and it’s beyond my pay grade to figure it out anyway. My only hope is that by writing this up, someone (or perhaps more than one someone) will be able to use what I’ve discovered to help make sense out of it and put this sort of crap to an end.

If you have thoughts about this, don’t hesitate to comment below or hit me up on Twitter. Thanks.

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Sarasota: #2 Moving Destination in the United States (Combined with Tampa)

Sarasota: #2 Moving Destination in United StatesFor the second year in a row, Sarasota made the “Top 10” list for moving destinations in the United States.

In its annual report published January 22nd, Penske Truck Rentals shows Sarasota climbing from the #10 slot last year (based upon 2012 data) to the #2 position this year (based upon 2013 data) in a new combined entry with Tampa. The company analyzes its one-way truck rentals in order to determine where people are moving within the United States.

Atlanta remains the top destination in the US for this year, and the Orlando—the only other Florida city in the Top 10—holds on to its number 4 slot.

Not surprisingly, Penske cites “the Northeast” and “the Midwest” as big originating points for many of these migrations.

Given this year’s harsh winter conditions, it’s easy to picture this trend continuing in 2014.

Why Combine Tampa and Sarasota?

The report acknowledges Sarasota’s previous #10 ranking, but fails to mention the rationale behind combing Tampa and Sarasota into a single, new entry for this year’s report. I guess we can speculate that Tampa, which didn’t make the Top 10 last year, must have seen an increase throughout 2013. CNN Money apparently believes that Tampa is the only city worth mentioning, as they dropped Sarasota completely from their story about the report. HuffPo managed to get it right, including Sarasota in the #2 slot.

As any resident of the region knows, the Tampa market and the Sarasota market are significantly different. In an infographic published with the report (see below), Penske compares a couple of key market dynamics which they compiled from other sources.

It paints a somewhat amusing picture of the region, showing Sarasota’s median income at $40,813 (6% less than Tampa’s $43,514 figure). Seeing that number compared side-by-side with the average listing price, which is $613,779 for Sarasota (compared to Tampa’s $258,675 average listing).

So… on average, we make 94% of what Tampa’s residents make, but our real estate costs 2.37 times as much as theirs!

Well… that’s the conclusion someone might draw who looks casually at Penske’s data, anyway.

The true story, as we know, is much more complicated than that. Thanks to the perfect storm of 2008, which combined the collapse of the residential housing market and a local Sarasota economy overly dependent upon new construction, our real estate is still a jumbled mess of foreclosures, an unusually high percentage of rental properties, and vacant or abandoned houses. That mess, alongside so many high-end properties on Casey Key, Longboat Key, Bird Key, and Siesta Key (let’s hear it for the #1 beach in the US, right?), makes for a statistician’s nightmare.

In any event, it’s nice to see Sarasota make the list again, even if we were combined with Tampa to get to #2. Perhaps the real estate market will really finish its rebound! Well… one can hope, right?

Top Ten Moving Destinations 2013 - Penske Truck Rentals

Infographic: Penske Truck Rental
Photo of Sarasota: Stephen B. Goodwin via Big Stock

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The Day Rand Fights Back

Senator Rand Paul Suing President Obama Over NSA Spying

Senator Rand Paul Suing President Obama Over NSA Spying
Senator Rand Paul
Photo: Gage Skidmore (Flickr: Rand Paul) [CC-BY-SA-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Yesterday, this website joined thousands of other websites in promoting The Day We Fight Back, a protest against massive illegal spying on US citizens by the NSA and other federal government agencies.

On one of our sister sites, I took the time to explore in greater detail why it’s time to pay attention to the NSA, which offers a bit of a primer in just how egregious this violation of our 4th Amendment rights really is.

The Day We Fight Back was more than just a protest, actually. With a banner displayed at the bottom of participating sites, visitors were given the opportunity to contact their legislative representatives via email and a phone call in order to express their views about the illegal activities and to request the support of two bills: the USA Freedom Act and the FISA Improvements Act.

More Legislation Is Not the Answer

I hope you took the time to contact your legislators and express your views about this issue. (If not, you may still do so—as of today, anyway—at the protest site linked above.) The sitting representatives need to hear from us about how we feel when our Constitutional rights are being violated.

…which brings me to why I believe more laws are not the answer.

The fact is that we already have a law, the supreme law of the land, which already guarantees our rights where this is concerned.

And that supreme law is being violated.

I appreciate the fact that members of Congress need to author bills because it’s part of the game they play. It ignites support from their constituents, and it’s great when you’re doing your fundraising (they’re always doing fundraising, aren’t they?).

But why should I, as a US Citizen, feel any better because a new law guaranteeing me freedom from oppressive government activities gets passed?

This is why I believe Senator Rand Paul has the right idea. In a press release issued yesterday, Senator Paul announced:

“I am filing a lawsuit against President Barack Obama because he has publicly refused to stop a clear and continuing violation of the 4th Amendment. The Bill of Rights protects all citizens from general warrants. I expect this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court and I predict the American people will win.”

The lawsuit will also name National Intelligence Director James Clapper, outgoing NSA Director Keith Alexander, and FBI Director James Comey. Joining Senator Paul in the class action is Matt Kibbe, President of FreedomWorks, and lead counsel Ken Cuccinelli.

While I’m sure this won’t hurt Senator Paul’s fundraising efforts either, this action is the right idea for our country. Congratulations to Senator Paul on using the checks and balances designed by the framers of our Constitution by going to the judicial branch of government to restrain the executive branch.

Now it’s our turn… it’s time for “we the people” to use our power as Citizens and vote based upon how well these politicians do or do not uphold the Constitution.