Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

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.

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.

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.