Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

So a while back I let Amazon give me the free prime which I'll be canceling because it's not worth it for me (YMMV) but in the meantime why not see what's on Prime Video? Current rights holders are making questionable choices with their 90s anime line up.

Went home for lunch after evaluating 2 production test roasts and adjusting 5 blend recipes. The cat appreciated the extra time to sit on me.

As for the medium roast, that's a closer match, which is good since I have advance orders on that and wouldn't want to have to go back to those customers and tell them that a coffee I thought would be very similar to what they tasted has turned out very different and have to renegotiate those sales.

Tasting production test batches for coffees made from the new lot of Brazilian coffee. I sell this both as a medium roast and it's usually the coffee that becomes labeled French Roast. The darker of these is slightly milder than the previous lot, but the overall flavor profile is right and I don't think there's much to do about the slight reduction in intensity that wouldn't throw things off worse.

Just noticed that a metal part of my left shoe has been warped beyond repair. Whatever did that must have been enough force that I'd think I'd notice if I had been wearing the shoe at the time so although I have no idea how she would have done it, I'm blaming the cat. Rather disappointed. The rest of the shoe is still in pretty good condition, but I'll need to replace that before I take any kind of non-remote training/consulting gig.

Now that I have access to a Mac that can run a version of Safari new enough for CRUCS, I'm able to notice that they've got a minor rendering bug that I didn't see on iOS. The next version update will include a little more CSS that as near as I can see has no visible effect in Firefox and presumably other browsers that were already doing the right thing but gets Safari to also do the right thing.

In other news, I have secured access to a machine that will let me put out a build of Typica for current Macs once the next release is ready. It was looking like I was going to need to skip Mac builds for 2.0 so this is welcome news.

Another usability win for Linux. My laptop noticed the new printer on the network immediately and let me print without any setup at all. Windows required that I go into settings, look for the printer, and add it manually. In both cases there's no way I'm installing anything off the disc the printer came with.

New printer for the shop arrived with an extra piece that doesn't appear to go anywhere and isn't mentioned in any of the documentation.

The cat is demanding hugs.

First we're taking the California Zephyr out to California to spend some time with my sister in that part of the country, then overnight on the Coast Starlight to get over by my nephew, and then Empire Builder back home.

Some time back I was planning to do a train trip instead of flying for a trade show but then COVID hit, the trade show got cancelled, and the trip no longer made any sense. So when my mother said she wanted to do a road trip with me and we started talking about it I tossed out the idea that if I were doing the trip on my own I'd probably take the train. I guess she liked that idea because now we have train tickets.

Buying train tickets with Mom.

I had put a different compatible screw in place of the one that had dropped, but this one was a nicer and visually distinct screw so I've put it back where it was supposed to go.

Found a screw I dropped last week.

Needed to pull into the driveway very slowly to avoid hitting a bird that really wanted to be there.

The cat is not a fan of the storm outside.

Helped a customer pick a way to do what he wanted for about a quarter of what he had in mind for a budget.

Working through the Guatemalan coffee helped me decide on what I'll do with the El Salvador. New Guatemalan was lovely at a pretty light roast while going into the medium and dark roast ranges I could find acceptable but unimpressive representations that frankly aren't worth what I'd need to charge. Assuming production test batches come out as expected based on the cupping, I'll just do the Guatemalan coffee as a light roast and do medium and dark roasts on the El Salvador.

The new coffee from El Salvador turned out very nice across the whole roast spectrum with some interesting shifts in flavor profile as it progresses from light to dark roasts. The medium to dark roast transition is particularly distinct and at a higher temperature than many coffees make that switch. This, of course, makes it harder to decide which I want to try replicating for production, but I can at least confidently recommend it for home roasters as it'll be hard to screw up too badly.