Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Today's junk mail at the shop included a pitch to get my staff trained as "cloud engineers". This is a coffee shop. My staff makes cappuccino and such. Not a ton of overlap on those skill sets.

Lately I've noticed a guy near where I work (but just far enough away that it's inconvenient to walk out and chat with him) and his thing seems to be standing in that very specific place, very still with good posture, while wearing a very nice suit. That's it, just standing there, sometimes checking his phone but mostly standing at attention, for who knows how long, in a suit.

The drive home had a cat sitting in the middle of the road, but it at least had the good sense to move to the sidewalk when I slowed down to navigate past it.

Saw an especially crazy squirrel on the way to work today. It darted out in front of the car in front of mine, then turned to run between its wheels before continuing to the yellow lines and then it turned again to run between the wheels on my car.

Saw someone out walking their lizard.

Discovered that Linux support for some really nice data acquisition hardware that I have may have improved to the point that it's usable on non-obsolete distros (and only a decade too late to matter!), but wow has the price of the nearest thing they still sell gone up. Is it good? Yes. Is it so good that it's worth paying nearly $1000 when there are comparable options with better support closer to $50? Not so much.

How to Klee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeviiH9YVVA

Have to wake up early tomorrow to talk to a reporter about our mask requirement plans. The health department has asked the city leaders to end the mask mandate and I expect the politicians will all go along with that. Once that's official, our stand is going to be masks required for entry but optional for fully vaccinated people handled on the honor system, free masks still available for those who want them, and still no customer seating for a while.

I have been informed that it is time to praise the cat.

Sketched out the start of a design for what could be a new coffee roaster control console and I kind of want to order parts and hack out a prototype because it could be a lot better than what currently exists.

Strongly tempted to replace the data acquisition hardware on my roasters to all stuff that works with Linux. Just spent entirely too much time fighting with Windows (an update messed up my login settings because surely I didn't really want the local account that I explicitly went out of my way to create in the first place) instead of getting my work done.

I guess it's bill paying day. Water, property tax, mortgage, car stuff, electric, domain names, &c.

It's been a long time since I've been there. Looking forward to some good creole food.

Looks like I'm going to be teaching my next class at an event in New Orleans at the start of October. Planning to just drive down for that.

I think today's online class went well. Lots of good questions from students (most of whom did not turn in their homework but it's fine, they're not getting a grade from me). Oddly, the cat stayed out of the way. She usually likes to be my co-instructor.

25 years ago, Captain Janeway murdered Tuvix and Voyager was a worse show for it.

For this session, I decided to go with one coffee taken to 3 different ending temperatures, and for each of those ending temperatures, adjusting the roasting plan so there are three different ways of getting to each of those. 9 roasted coffees total. The ones that are roasted to the same end temperature are closer to each other than to the other groups, but there are more subtle differences within each group as well.

Tasted the class coffees today. I believe they work for the educational objectives.