Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

If some day you call my business and find that the phone is answered by a robot, it'll be because of something like this.

Credit card processing companies are getting more aggressive in their cold calling lately, but I get multiple such calls every single day. That level of attempt to waste my time only ensures that they will never get my business. (best way to sell me on your service is to send enough information to make an informed decision on paper sent through the mail and never call me)

Fortune cookie says international travel is in my future. I'm on my third passport so I guess that checks out.

Wrote a new section for chapter 5 that I noticed was missing. It's the touchstone that connects everything back to what I was writing about in chapter 1.

The down side of Bloomberg dropping out is his campaign people spent a lot of money on drinks in my shop. Tipped generously, too.

It's a cat.

The grocery store had a pack of giant inflatable lions. Why does the grocery store have giant inflatable lions?

Drank too much espresso today. Need a nap.

Thinking the book might need a glossary of terms. I intentionally deviate from some common terminology and doing this gives me a place to put jokes and more math.

One of the spreadsheets being used to organize this event was shared with me. Clicking over to a different tab revealed organizer comments about all the presentations. The one next to my session reads, "Very popular teacher at SCA events. Class always sells out."

I hear there's still attendee space available for the next event I'm teaching at. I'm scheduled for the 2nd block of time after Mike Ebert's class and before lunch. I'll be talking about decisions that can be made when creating a coffee roasting plan and will have some coffees available to taste to demonstrate the outcomes of some very different decisions, each of which is something that a company might plausibly choose for use in their product line.

https://northcentralcoffeelab.com/pages/north-central-roast-summit

As espresso a bit of chocolate comes out of the darker roast and there's enough intensity that it should hold up in a milk drink. While it could work in an emergency, the overall flavor profile lacks the complexity I like in an espresso. Should work well as an ingredient in a blend.

The lighter roast only had slight changes from the initial exploratory roast which again boosted intensity, this time of a nutty flavor that I wanted to highlight in this coffee, but also had the pleasant surprise of introducing just a little bit of a honey flavor that connects well with the sweetness in the cup.

The roasting plan for the darker roast is likely to look strange to people who get their roasting plans from others. I massively stretched out the period after the color change from yellow to brown prior to first crack and then pushed faster through to the end. The goal was to get a cup where the smoky flavor expected of a French Roast dominated the cup without sacrificing intensity of flavor (identified as a problem in a faster exploratory roast) or body.

Test batches with the new coffee from Brazil turned out very even in roast. 0.4 points difference between whole bean and ground degree of roast measurements on the medium roast, 0.0 points difference for the darker roast.

By project all I really mean is a folder where I can start dumping files as I work on things. My expectation for this one is that it's something that I'll work on a little bit at a time over the next year or two. I'm not in any hurry to work on it as there are two other books in progress that I want to get out first.

Did some work figuring out the roasting plans for a new coffee from Brazil. I've also set up a new project where I can collect my notes for that roasting journal project I mentioned earlier and typed up today's work into that.

The past week was not great for finishing the book and I think the earliest I can possibly get it to the point that I'm ready for feedback is end of day Tuesday. I'm getting exhausted and need this to be done. Then I need a day off for intensive napping with the cat.

I want to get at least one more figure done for the book tonight, but it'll have to be after I eat some food. Lots of good text revisions done today as well.