Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

It looks like my next workshop is getting advertised now and at least one person I know wants to help me out as a station instructor so that's nice.

Email: Dear valued client
Me: I have never done business with you.

Might not be able to do that since there isn't very much code there to begin with, but there are certainly some opportunities for sensible refactoring.

Doing some work on the shop's web site and I figured as long as I'm in there I could do a little bit of cleanup. It would be neat if I could add a new feature and end up with less code overall.

My cat will be inheriting all of her cat's stuff.

My mother's cat, Autumn, has passed away. She'd been pretty low energy for a while and had been developing some movement issues, but today she was very clearly in pain. All of the possibilities that the vet could come up with for what might be wrong weren't fixable.

Fun fact: the cat the lives with me is a big fan of Hatsune Miku. Since Miku Expo moved online this year, she got to attend that last night. The cat enjoyed the concert.

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.