Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Today's coffee tasting is two new decaf coffees. Buying decafs is a challenge right now as supplies are fairly limited, stuff isn't all located in the same warehouse, and prices are way too high, but telling people, sorry, we're dropping decafs until market conditions improve is not something I want to do. Anyway, the new decaf Sumatran coffee is delicious across a broad range of roasts, but I decided to go with one that's sort of right on the edge between what I'd call a medium or a dark roast.

@mntmn or facebook

Them: Can we set up a zoom to start a half hour before closing during the holiday season for a totally unimportant chat?
Me (in my head as I ignore the request entirely): What is wrong with you?

Bought more coffee. It's all more expensive than I'd like but I knew it would be. Trying to balance being able to afford it, having a good selection, and not having too much stock when prices come back down so that I can lower my prices when market conditions improve. It's hard to do that this year.

@mhoye I have pet the dogs already.

@mhoye Have they added the cat to that game yet? I heard that was a planned update but haven't checked back in on it.

@stux I've been to a lot of places that were easier for me to enter than it sometimes is trying to get back into the US even as a citizen. There's certainly still a lot here that I think is worth a visit, but I'd seriously consider alternatives at the moment.

@mhoye I still remember the Hypercard stack that came with my first Mac that goes through things like point, click, drag, feed the fish. Big paper manuals full of screenshots were also a thing and they assumed far less familiarity with operational concepts. These days I feel like I could use one of those just to know what capabilities have been hidden behind invisible gestures.

@fribbledom Wait, AI is putting cats out of work now?

Food bank food donation box is up. We don't normally have those until closer to New Year's but it seemed like having an extra round of collections might be useful. They'll bring a cash donation box around later, but those had been stored on a shelf too high to safely retrieve. We'll have those up for a couple weeks and then after the holidays we'll bring them back again.

Assuming Congress continues to be useless it looks like my health insurance bill will be almost exactly 3x higher in 2026 compared with this year for a plan that's slightly worse.

It took a while, but the new limited edition Sumatran coffee is up for sale on the web site now. I've copied in some of my notes from the product development process as well that some might find interesting even if they don't want to buy the coffee. https://wilsonscoffee.com/products/sumatralimited.html

Got one of those power strips that can be mounted on to the side of a table. The cord on that is long enough that I can run it from an outlet where I don't have to create a trip hazard and I get a little more flexibility in how the stuff plugged into that is arranged now. It also has USB charging ports (A and C) but I don't have any immediate need for those where I've put this.

Grocery store didn't have everything I wanted to buy, but I was able to hit some good sales to the tune of 30% of the bill.

@mhoye Also, maybe don't build a robot army?

Tried and failed to come up with this year's Holiday Blend. Hopefully I have a chance to get better focus on this tomorrow.

Any offer I'd be willing to accept right now would have to be substantially above a fair market value to compensate for the annoyance and expense of finding another place to live and moving all my stuff there.

Kind of wish the home investors would collectively take me off their mailing list. I have no interest in the hassle of moving, don't want to have to go looking for another place, and the unsolicited offers are coming in at half of what the house next door is listed at. I've been in that house. Mine is better, so the offers seem frankly exploitatively low ball and unserious.

There was mystery bakery waiting for me when I got to work today.

Found a very nice coffee dead center in the range that I consider as where potentially delicious light roasts can be found. There was also a neat dark roast a bit lighter than what I had with breakfast where it's not so interesting on the first sip or when fully cooled, but if you chug it when half cooled it's great. But between the very limited supply that I have and the high price I'm going to need to charge, I think it makes more sense to only offer the lighter roast.