Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

The latest coffee sample is the nicest coffee from Burundi I've had in a long time. Sweet, floral, bright, good body, well balanced, very good intensity of flavor, no defects, holds up very well as it cools. I want to buy some.

The code I just wrote smells (but works correctly and without presenting warning messages), but the alternatives I can think of all look worse.

Hopefully the book I'm writing gains some traction a little faster than that.

My "How to Develop a Roast Profile" video on YouTube has gotten it's 1000th like. That took almost exactly 7.5 years. It took a couple years before anybody noticed it was there, but a lot of coffee roasting companies have since used it in their training materials. It's also available on Amazon Video Direct and any PeerTube server that follows https://video.typica.us/

Did some recording for what may or may not become a new video at some point. Also found the secret pre-installed Windows 10 screen recorder. You have to tell it that the program you're using is a game and it's super obnoxious, but it exists.

"It is time to get excited!" seems like an odd way to start an email letting me know that replacement water filters have shipped. Does anybody get excited about replacing their filters? Maybe if you're switching to some different kind of filter and getting better tasting water out of it, but not so much for routine maintenance.

Finally got around to merging my latest hand written notes into the book draft. That added a couple more pages but that'll expand quite a bit once I turn those notes into a proper draft. This is just about leaving enough of a placeholder in the right places that I can remember to do that later.

cat

It looks like the seller is going to eat the price difference. On the one hand it's technically a nicer machine. On the other hand, I'm not thrilled with the increased space requirement. Everybody is making their 2 group semi auto machines bigger than they used to be. (There are good reasons to make an espresso machine bigger but the work space was designed for the machine that's there. I'll have to figure something else out when the other machine goes.)

Plus side, the price includes installation (ships to an installer) so that at least won't be an extra charge.

So apparently the espresso machine that I ordered (listed as in stock so I guess not so much) isn't being built anymore so the place I bought it from is working with me to figure out Plan B. Plan B might be an Aurelia Wave. The major down side is that it's a physically larger machine. They're trying to figure out how to make it fit my budget.

Meanwhile, the little sample roaster has made it back to the manufacturer on schedule. They're probably not going to tell me anything about that until some time Monday-Wednesday. I will have to continue using the 1Kg lab roaster for samples (I might have been anyway as I expect it'll take some practice to dial in my standard sample roast on the new machine).

This is replacing a slightly modified La Marzocco Linea 2EE (I have another one about the same age that's holding up a little better that also will need eventual replacement).

Ordered a new espresso machine today. The one it's replacing is coming up on a couple decades, has outlived multiple service companies, and past techs have screwed enough up on it that I'm no longer capable of fixing it. It's a Nuova Simonelli Aurellia II Semiautomatic 2 group.

Credit card fraud protection is weird. I can buy >$8K commercial equipment, expensive lab instruments, industrial parts, hotel rooms in foreign countries and it's not a problem. Instead it flags things like, "are you sure you bought groceries in the same city where we bill you?"

Rushing ahead got me the bad end which apparently happens if you just don't bother with a bunch of bosses.

In othet news, the cat is trying extra hard to lick my hand.