Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

My shop ended up on another one of the best coffee shops in all 50 states listicles, but since those alphabetize on state and I'm in Wisconsin, nobody is going to see that. Of course, all these lists lack credibility anyway as it's done by aggregating reviews and other lists with nobody actually checking the places out and using a rubric or even authorial judgement. But yeah, if you're in the area you should totally buy my coffee. It's the best.

One of my orders recently shipped with a sample pack from $UNNAMED_BIG_COFFEE_CORP and reading the marketing text all I can say is that I've worked with enough of the people making that product to know that not only is the marketing text a lie (who would have guessed?) but the company also has sensible well documented policies in place that only make sense if the marketing text is un-true.

The Illinois Tollway says I should give the gift of a road toll transponder. I will not be doing that.

Today's weird clickbait title: "These are the 12 Myths About Cooking Chicken People Don't Know." If people don't know them, how are they myths? Is this really, "We Made Up Some Bogus Stuff That Nobody Thinks is True and Hope You'll Click So We Get That Sweet, Sweet Ad Revenue"?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59703523

Got a Christmas card from my mother. She usually does boring and sappy, but this year she went with cartoon cats in festive attire, which is a big improvement.

If anybody wanted to start a Takuya Holding Things blog, here's something to start with. #GenshinImpact

Laptop failed to start up multiple times. Systemd won't get me to a login prompt. Dig around as best I can and it looks like a hardware issue. Open the case, remove the dust, fail to find anything in the obvious and easy fix category, try turning it on again before putting the case back, it's working flawlessly. Hopefully that continues to be true once I've finished copying some files off the encrypted drive, turn it off, and put the case back on.

Specialty Coffee Association sent me a new pin as thanks for my work on an education program that I quit the committee making that in protest of the organization's terrible stewardship of that. My name will be in materials I'll never see unless someone leaks it to me because I'm not a "real instructor." These days they just let me make up my own classes independent of that program because my workshops get good reviews and keep selling out. I don't really get it.

I tried the new healer artifact set in #GenshinImpact on my Qiqi and the most common advice about how to build this set on her is wrong (if you main Qiqi).

https://www.hoyolab.com/article/1610218

Woke up to discover some joke comment I made on a web forum blew up and has more likes than the parent post has views. Not sure how that happens, but I suspect it's another case of computers not knowing how to count.

@fribbledom Every so often I get an email asking for MySQL support in software I've written. While the main reason I've resisted is that it would be a lot of added work for absolutely no benefit beyond saving a small number of people the hassle of learning to click Next a few times in a different installer, it's always nice to see people who are more informed reach the same conclusion I did when making the initial decision. (I do, however, think the even bigger PITA of adding SQLite is worthy)

Once again, I need to buy food.

Web site for the shop updated. No longer mentions being closed on Thanksgiving, coffee from Costa Rica available for sale through the web site.

https://wilsonscoffee.com/

Local COVID case numbers bringing the risk level back up to severe. It didn't need to be like this, but I don't think it's surprising to anybody working in retail.

Got a Christmas card from my chocolate and vanilla powdered smoothie mix supplier.

Idea for a new gameshow: Jazz or Cat. Contestants listen to a short passage and need to identify if what they're hearing is a jazz solo or a meowing cat.