Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

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.

New part isn't tuned so initial warm up takes approximately forever. Will need to check the manual and see if it'll let me just outright disable the derivative term.

Right now the old controller is in its pre-hard fail mode just sometimes not bothering to send power to the heating elements where turning it off and then on again usually fixes it, but that means it's only a matter of time before that fails more completely so it's better to just swap the part now.

Received a new part for the heat sealer. What arrived wasn't the cutout size I was expecting, but it is the size of the original panel which I removed a few controllers ago. Dug out the old panel, mounted the new controller in it, and that's ready for installation once the current packing shift is done.

Has there been a Christmas movie in which some awful spoiled kid's parents get killed, he asks the mall (real) Santa to bring his parents back, and Santa necromancies the parents back as zombies?

I suspect people will end up parking there illegally anyway, especially if they're police.

Signage changed so there's no longer legal parking directly in front of my shop. That space is now a bus stop that used to be earlier on the street but can't be there anymore because of changes in the sidewalk. Parking options include going a little farther down the street and walking less than a block, parking on the side street, or there's a 2 hour free section of parking lots off the nearest side street that businesses in the area pay to keep un-metered.

Last night the cat stepped in a glue trap and made sad noises until I removed her foot from it. She's usually smart enough to not do that, but at least it was just the bottom of one foot and not rolling around getting a bunch of fur stuck in it. After that she wanted extra cuddles.

Punk does not seem to have made any of the lists of top cat names in 2021.

I wish I had a donut.

Saw a new option for account "security question".

"Where were you when you first heard about 9/11?"

While I'm not a fan of security questions in general, this one in particular seems like an odd choice for no shortage of reasons.

The fictional work space on the cover of the latest batch of office depot coupons looks like a horribly soul crushing place to be.

(the only reason I got that was because it was made from leftover parts that weren't needed for a project to take donated machines and set up a program for one of the local schools where students could borrow the machines and a tiny printer so they could take those home and type up their papers. I was one of the kids doing the repair and setup work and we got to keep the spares as sort of a thank you gift)

My first laptop computer was an already then obsolete thing with a 286 processor, a 3 color screen, something like 10 or 20 MB of hard drive space, and 3.5 inch floppy drive. The thing weighed quite a lot and was at least an inch thick. I would happily give back some of the reductions in weight and thickness if it meant getting a keyboard that doesn't wear out before the rest of the computer does.

Downside of nobody making good laptop keyboards: I end up needing to leave external keyboards scattered about in the places I use my laptop. Upside of nobody making good laptop keyboards: random people walk up to me to tell me my keyboard is cool.

The cat wants yogurt.

Just in time for the dual holidays of Black Friday and Small Business Saturday, there's now two way traffic in front of my shop, hopefully marking the end of the two years of road construction. It'll still take a few months for people's driving habits to get back to normal, but we shouldn't have a big project out front for a couple decades now.

Got paid for the last class I taught. It was a bit odd in that the check was made out to my shop but mailed to my home and included an amount equal to the invoice from the shop to cover materials plus the separate amount to cover my teaching which should be a separate check made out to me personally, but it's not a big deal for me to split that up on my end. Last time it was two separate checks each mailed to the correct address.

Costa Rican coffee just got delivered. I'll need to spend some time to decide on roasting plans for that, but I should have that available after Thanksgiving. Special thanks to my salesperson who found a company long on their contract willing to let me take it off their hands.