Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Resolved a technical support request for a company running a nearly decade old version of some software I wrote. It's doing what they need so nobody is touching it and honestly, that's fine. I'm hoping that the next version can be set up in a way that the issue they had can't happen, but companies tend to be extremely reluctant to upgrade to the point that I often have conversations where someone will make a feature request and I'll tell them I added that years ago.

Not that it's going to happen but I wonder at what point a few Rs in the house just vote for the D as speaker just to get it over with and move on to anything else while their party tries to remember how to get a deal done.

I'll get over it before too long but videos of humans losing at chess to Mittens the cat bot can be pretty entertaining.

Calculated the food bank donation. We're sending a couple hundred dollars more than last year, though still down a bit from the year before last. This doesn't include whatever customers have tossed in the cash box.

Agreed to do a short coffee roasting lecture at a poetry event next month. I'll also be busting out the Chemex and doing pour overs throughout.

@mhoye I hear you're not supposed to talk about your orb experience.

The cat has moved on to intense hugging.

The cat is shoving her head into an empty mug.

Sticky notes came with instructions.

New shopvac filter arrived. The one I got at the local hardware store was awful so I'm looking forward to getting the new one in and catching up on some cleaning. This is that order where I added on some sticky notes to bring the order up to get free shipping so of course the filter and the sticky notes are shipping separately. I wonder how much they lose on extra postage for cheap things that wouldn't have been ordered if it weren't for the cut off for free shipping being where it is.

Removed Holiday Blend from the web site. There's still a little bit available on the shelf if you're local, but I don't intend to make any more. There'll be a new recipe toward the other end of the year.

People were setting off explosives last night, but at least everything was audibly distinct as fireworks, not gunshots. It's harder to tell some years.

Today's spam wants me to buy into automated cryptocurrency trading as an "Insanely Easy Way To Become Rich In 2021". I'm thinking that if I had a time machine to go back to the year 2021, I could probably sort out something better.

It's that time of the day when the cat uses my elbow as a pillow. She thinks that's relaxing.

Outlined another book. I still need to get the last one I wrote out for sale. There are a couple of open questions that I want to resolve before I seriously start on the next one so I'll just let it stew for a bit while I work on other things. I kind of want to do something weird with the first section but I don't want to spend too much on research equipment so I might be looking to see if someone can hook me up with some machines I don't currently have access to.

Tossed a pack of sticky notes onto an order to bring the total up to a value that qualifies for free shipping. The total with the sticky notes was less than the total without so it's like I'm getting paid to accept sticky notes.

@Taweret I'm not ready for the Internet.

Tasting exploratory roasting on the next decaf Colombian coffee. Nice chocolate notes. Crazy huge sweet spot where there's not a ton of difference regardless of where in the range you land. Makes it easy to recommend to home roasters if I had any who were interested in decaf as customers, harder to pick out where I want to aim that for production.

The cat is yelling at me.

@stux It's less that I'm the cat's guardian and more that she's squatting in my house after breaking and entering, but she's cute so I let her stay.