Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Some of the food on Korea Air flights is complicated. For one of the meals I was asked if I'd had it before and when I said no I got a big leaflet with step by step instructions on how to assemble the food from the ingredients presented on the tray. That was neat, though challenging in the limited amount of space in an economy seat.

In case any of you wanted to know what infrared gas burners looks like, here's a picture. My larger roaster has two of these running down the length of the drum. They're considerably less polluting than the more common atmospheric burners, but you need to read farther ahead on your roasting plan because it takes a while between changing the burner setting and seeing the impact of that change.

In the mean time, we've been roasting the coffee in 2 pound batches on the little machine (thankfully calibrated so the same roasting plans work on both), which works in the short term but would not be sustainable at our volume.

The big roaster has been down (got an email when I was at ICN on my way home). After rather a lot of troubleshooting I happened to notice that the wire going to the spark plug had fallen out, which would explain why the burners weren't lighting. Part ordered. Thankfully I'm in a zone where USPS is 1 day so if that ships out tomorrow I should get it Saturday with only slightly obscene shipping costs rather than private shippers wanting more than the part itself costs for next day.

video games: remember to take frequent breaks.

also video games: here's a 100 level area with no save points.

While I was away, it seems that at least one mouse moved into the house. Cat was hunting that when I left for work. I should investigate further and deploy the traps again when I get home.

With a working CPU fan, the system runs about 20C cooler under light loads, the keyboard is no longer vibrating, and there's no buzzing sound. Those last two problems (along with the whole sometimes the fan just fails and the whole system powers down) have made it challenging to work on stuff (no new vlog episode last month because of this).

Time to roast some coffee.

New fan installed. So far, so good.

Third attempt at getting the replacement fan looks like it might be the right thing. It took 27 days to get to this point, during which my laptop has been difficult to use. Have you ever typed on a vibrating keyboard? It doesn't take long for your fingertips to go numb.

Retrieved the cat.

New fan should be arriving tomorrow. Hopefully it's the right one (the last 2 times it was the same wrong part). It's gotten to the point that I keep a small piece of metal that's thin enough to go through the vent to give the fan a bit of a manual spin so the computer doesn't just shut itself off after a couple minutes.

One of my afternoon staff called in sick so I'm covering her shift instead of picking up my cat. Not coming into work while sick is the right call and I hope she's feeling better soon.

Landed at ORD

Book store in the airport has a surprisingly large selection of Cardcaptor Sakura jigsaw puzzles. I bought a new notebook instead. You can never have too many notebooks.

The end of a passage

answering email while sitting in an art installation

Today I pet a dog. I think one of its eyes probably didn't work, but that didn't seem to be bothering it any.

banana chips