After weeks of laziness, I finally hooked up my Starbucks card to the free AT&T wireless Internet service available at many of the company's zillion stores.

The catch, such as it is, is that you must have a Starbucks card — one of those little gift-card-like things that can carry a balance. That card must have a balance, have been used recently ... and you get two consecutive hours of service:

Complimentary Wi-Fi for Starbucks customers When you register your Starbucks Card and use it at least once a month, you'll receive tstrong>two consecutive hours a day of complimentary Wi-Fi, courtesy of AT&T.

Complimentary Wi-Fi for AT&T DSL customers
AT&Ts more than 12 million DSL customers already qualify for free Wi-Fi at their neighborhood Starbucks.

Competitive pricing for paid Wi-Fi
All other customers can receive two consecutive hours of Wi-Fi access for $3.99.

So if you already have AT&T broadband service, and if you live in the L.A. area, chances are good that you do, you can get the free Wi-Fi without even registering your card. (I have DSL Extreme, which uses AT&T's lines but its own routers and equipment, and thus doesn't qualify, but I figure two hours should do it for me.

For those hankering to know more about my experience from the technical side — and I know you do, especially you, Sharon Kaplan — I tested the broadband speed at this very Starbucks with the CNET Bandwidth Meter Speed Test and got the following results:

509.3 Kbps

That's not bad for 802.11b wireless. For comparison's sake, the average DSL connection promises bandwidth between 384 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps. My home connection used to hover around 1 Mbps but has been more 600 Kbps since an AT&T "repair" restored the connection when it was down, rendering it operable but slower.

But free and 509 Kpbs are totally acceptable things when grouped together.

And since this laptop, the venerable $15 Laptop, a 1999-vintage Compaq Armada 7770dmt running Puppy Linux 2.13 and the Seamonkey Web browser, has no battery (but curiously can accommodate two — one in the battery slot and a second in the CD/floppy slot), I needed electrical power and found it. Teat of Starbucks, I'm sucking on you pretty darned hard.

And in case you were wondering — and I know you were — they were out of dark roast when I reached the front of the line. The baristas were ready to make a fresh batch, but I'm tired of complaining and have resigned myself to a life marked by cup after cup of Pike Place Roast. I'm tired of waiting, tired of complaining, and free Wi-Fi is going a long way toward pacifying me.

Score one for Howard Schultz. I like free.

Today appears to be the day for Starbucks stores that are being shut down. That's buried in the comments over at Starbucks Gossip.

Supposedly there will be meetings today at the doomed Starbucks locations where employees will get the word.

For more on the Starbucks situation, go to this Starbucks Gossip post, which has links to the AP story, the Starbucks press release on the closures and the CFO's prepared statement.

I was over at the Canoga and Oxnard location today, and there's a bit of gallows humor afoot, at least on the customers' part, with a lot of "I hope this store doesn't close" kind of talk from the people in line to their favorite baristas.

And it is a nice crew over there, no doubt.

I have a cup of the Pike, and I'm not even going to bitch about it.

On an agricultural lark, Ilene and our little girl decided to put a dry garbanzo bean — you know, the kind you buy in bulk at Whole Foods — into a small cup filled with dirt.

They watered it. The bean sprouted. Eventually we moved it to a pot outside, and it grew a bit.

It flowered recently, and a few bean pods are now hanging off the plant.

Homegrown garbanzo beans in the San Fernando Valley — looks like it's going to happen.

Photo by Ilene, who's writing about what we eat at Foodspace.

We all gathered around the TV this morning to see the Daily News' own Greg Hernandez get a commendation from the L.A. City Council and plenty of praise at Los Angeles City Hall as part of the city's second annual LGBT Pride Month Celebration.

Greg was there with Daily News reporter Beth Barrett, managing editor Melissa Lalum and former editor and current muckraker Ron Kaye.

Councilman Bill Rosendahl praised Greg for his groundbreaking work on Out in Hollywood — one of our most popular blogs — as well as his relentless stream of features that run in the Daily News.

I don't watch a lot of council meetings. OK, I don't watch any. I don't have cable. But I was surprised to see them let Greg make a speech about what he does, the passion he brings to the job and how the Daily News gave him free reign to be an out gay journalist (did I phrase that right?) writing about what matters to him — and to others.

One of the things I like about Out in Hollywood is the personal tone that Greg uses. That lends a unique take to everything from revisiting entertainment legends to introducing the next generation of stars. And then there's all that gossip. It's a crowded field, gossip that is, but it adds an essential spice — and it doesn't hurt a bit that it's wildly popular.

Councilman Rosendahl spoke the truth when he said that Out in Hollywood has had over 2 million page views since its inception in June 2006. I can also tell you that the blog has been growing in popularity lately, and I think there's plenty of room for it to get even more popular.

And the way that Out in Hollywood feeds the print edition of the Daily News — mainly in the form of Greg's daily columns on Page 2 — is exactly the way all of this is supposed to work. In any news organization where there are print and online components, the information needs to flow both ways. Whatever we see online should influence, inform and shape what we see in print, and vice versa.

All of this is due to Greg's relentless pace. He is a journalism machine. And when it comes to things like blogging and tapping into the celebrity zeitgeist, he gets it — and is able to follow through with the work required — more than anybody I know.

He knows what readers want, and he delivers (even if it's celebrity beefcake, but we'll leave that discussion for another day).

My sun-protective hat is off to the folks behind Homegrown Evolution, a blog about sustainable living in ... Echo Park.

Yep, they have chickens. Crops too. And they also have a book called "Urban Homesteading" that they will talk about and sign this Thursday (aka tomorrow) in L.A.

I just discovered blog and book (via BoingBoing), so there's lots to look at.

Now I know of three serious L.A.-area homesteader-types. Can you guess the other two?

Starbucks, we need to talk.

After deciding that the "Coffee" portion of the name Starbucks Coffee was somehow an unimportant afterthought, and continuing a campaign of folly to replace your previous coffee choices with Pike Place Roast, I saw light at the end of a long, dark, watery tunnel.

Dark roasts would be brewed after noon at customer request. This after a period during which the worthless and weak Pike Place Roast (my opinion of the blend has dipped considerably of late) is the only brewed coffee offered during the afternoons.

Never mind that I seem to have trouble getting a dark roast in the morning on many if not most occasions at the various Starbucks locations I stop at during my travails.

Due to this dark-roast deficit, I've gone from, say three or four visits a week to Starbucks down to maybe one.

Let me be plain:

Your lack of coffee is driving me away.

Today I stopped at the Tampa Avenue and Victory Boulevard Starbucks in Reseda.

The line was long. Only two people were behind the counter. The wait was longer than five minutes.

I get to the front of the line. There's a dark roast on the board: Yukon. I like Yukon.

Me: "Can I have a venti drip dark with room?"

The barista goes to fill the cup.

A half-cup comes out.

Barista: "Would you be wiling to wait a few minutes until a fresh pot brews? It'll be free."

Me: "No thanks, just give me the Pikes."

She did end up charging me. I have no problem with that. I don't need to be getting free coffee. I need to be getting good coffee, and after a not-short wait in line, I don't need to be waiting — as I have at this location on more than two occasions — for them to make coffee.

I figured, maybe the Pike Place isn't as bad as I remembered it. At one point, I even said it's not as bad once it cools off.

Allow me to submit Pike Place Roast, as brewed on this day and at this location, for another review:

Horrible.

Howard Schultz, you can futz about the food, revel in your rock-star status and think you're saving the company.

If this Pike Place thing was your idea, just admit that it was a poor one and move on.

If the decision to abandon the drip-coffee business by further restricting the brewing of Starbucks' signature dark roasts was also your idea, just admit that it was a poor one and move on.

If these ideas were cooked up by other Starbucks executives and then OK'd by you, just admit that you made a mistake by willfully gutting your company's core product, do what needs to be done to fix the situation and move on.

You know, it ain't all that hard to make coffee, and I've been doing it more and more. Simone Schramm made a pot today, and I have a pretty good feeling that even though I bought the cheapest coffee in the biggest can I could find at Vons, that it holds up pretty damn well compared to this Pike Place travesty.

I feel bad for Pike Place Market, that iconic Seattle spot at which fish are tossed, for having its name cheapened by such a poor excuse for coffee.

Remember the House Blend? That's way better than Pikes. Even Breakfast Blend, which I'm not particularly fond of, is better. ANY dark roast offered by Starbucks is better.

Stop the bleeding, Howard Schultz.

You had a three-hour nationwide training session on how to make espresso, even though your company uses automatic machines to do so.

How about an eight-hour corporate meeting in Seattle.

Put this Pikes situation on the table.

Admit that Pike Place Blend doesn't measure up.

Start making good coffee again.

Do it for me.

Free WiFi is good, but it just another Starbucks Music, or scary-looking breakfast sandwich taking away from the core business.

Make the coffee. Just do it.

Here's the second part of BoingBoing TV's visit to Intelligentsia Coffee. If there was a God, and if said God cared about such matters, an Intelligentsia would open up in the Valley. No breath being held.

Previously: Intelligentsia Coffee video, Part 1

I got the link from Starbucks Gossip to a Portfolio magazine profile of returning Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

First of all, he hates the food. No argument there. He's not keen on turning Starbucks into a full-fledged record company. Another good move (diluting the product = bad).

Nothing new here, but it offers a bit of background on the state of Starbucks:

Starbucks is closing 100 underperforming stores and cutting way back--at least by its own exponential standards--on expansion in the U.S.  There's a super-duper new Swiss-made espresso machine, one promising mass-produced perfection. (It is also lower-slung, allowing baristas to make all-important eye contact with customers.) There's the Clover, an ingenious and expensive--$11,000 a pop--machine for French-pressing coffee by the cup. (So dazzled was Schultz by it that he bought the company.) And there's Pike Place Roast, a new blend designed to strengthen Starbucks in the world of drip coffee, where McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are nipping at its heels. The blend's name--honoring the location of what has come to be known as Starbucks' flagship store--is a nod to the company's roots, and so is the packaging; it features Starbucks' originally zaftig, busty mermaid, which had been bowdlerized many years ago to placate American bluenoses.

Also addressed is the move from hand-pulled espresso to the automatic variety:

In his book, Schultz admits he was afraid that Starbucks could become "just another soulless big chain." It was highly symbolic in 1999 when he replaced the manual La Marzocco espresso machines with automatic behemoths. The reason, he says, wasn't efficiency but ergonomics: The old models caused repetitive stress injuries. Besides, he insists, the new machines are more reliable.

For many, though, the coffee has never been the same. "The taste of the espresso coming out of those new machines is pure crap," Double_Tall_Latte wrote on StarbucksGossip.com. "There's no crema. No sweetness. No depth." Not that many Starbucks patrons noticed. By now, many of the coffee snobs have gone elsewhere, replaced by teenyboppers determined to do anything to blunt, or obliterate, the taste of coffee.

It's a long, long interview ... read the whole thing if you dare.

A longer version of the Wall Street Journal story has appeared:

With the switch, stores stopped brewing a second coffee in the afternoon, when brewed coffee is less popular, to reduce waste, according to the company. Some customers also said it became more difficult for them to find bold coffees at Starbucks in the morning. The changes prompted some complaints from fans of Starbucks's more-robust blends.

"Because of your many requests for a bolder coffee choice throughout the day at Starbucks, we are bringing it back in the afternoon to many of those stores that sell lots of freshly brewed coffee all day long," Starbucks said in a message posted on its customer feedback Web site Tuesday. The company said it will brew a bolder variety for customers when they ask for it. "This will sometimes mean a small wait, but it will also give you the absolute freshest cup of coffee possible," the company said on the site.

"When they ask for it?" Again. It's Starbucks Coffee. Coffee.

They should just suck it up and make the damn coffee.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Starbucks has decided to stop offering only the light, weak Pike Place Blend and resume brewing "bolder" roasts.

This all I can get of the WSJ story:

By Janet Adamy

Starbucks Corp. is adding back bolder varieties of brewed coffee at some locations after replacing them with a smoother roast this spring.

In April, the Seattle coffee chain introduced a blend of brewed coffee called Pike Place roast and made it the default drip coffee at locations across ...

That's all I've got ... details forthcoming.

And to think I only complained about this yesterday.