Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

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.

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.

The cat is requesting praise.

The cat has been trying to toot lately, but my instance doesn't let her post 6000 dots in a row.

New license plate stickers arrived, but it's raining so I haven't put those on yet.

The cat says it's time for hugs.

Found a USB stick that's been missing for a while. Even with a phone strap attached to it (which is essential because otherwise there's no place to grip it on some of the things I want to plug it in to) the thing is too small.

The new hardware for the coffee roaster that took 8 months to ship. Do you need 1000 measurements per second to roast coffee? No, but it opens up some possibilities and a 24 bit ADC is vastly preferable to some of the stuff I've used.

FedEx wasn't committing to anything for a delivery date but yesterday thought my hardware might get from Germany to Wisconsin by the 12th. It arrived today instead.

This morning I needed to use the KDE Connect feature to have my laptop ring my phone. It was under the cat as it usually is, but the cat was extra good at hiding it under herself this morning and having the screen light up makes it harder for her to do that.

And then right in the middle at and a bit past 2C I'm finding exactly what I expected for a nice medium roast where that acidity is still present, but balanced against good body and not overwhelming against flavors someone might reasonably identify as coffee.

On the medium dark side of things there are a couple roasts that are pleasant, but the coffee isn't offering anything that I can't get from an existing offering in the product line. Going darker still, it makes a solid French Roast, which is unusual for this particular mark. Something to keep in mind in case the coffee I planned to switch that to next doesn't pan out.

Lighter cups in the range pre-2C had a really interesting fruit punch aroma that's not at all what I'm aiming for but was kind of interesting. Unfortunately, none of that carried through to the flavor and especially on the first sip they're just unbearably sour. Good learning opportunity for staff at least to taste what something I wouldn't pick to sell is like.