Neal Wilson ✅ @neal@social.typica.us

Two days in a row with a phone call to my personal number that I bothered to answer. Today's was someone with an association that I was expecting money from and they wanted to clarify how to write the check. Yesterday's was from another person who roasts coffee on a much larger scale than I do just to talk shop for the most part, but also because he's helping me teach a class soon.

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Above written by the cat. I think she just likes to hear the keys click.

Okay, change of plans, coffees from Costa Rica and Guatemala just got delivered so Guatemalan coffees should be back on the shelf tomorrow and Costa Rican coffees not too far behind.

Coffee selection on the web site has gotten much smaller than I like, but the stuff that I most want to add is stuff that I can't get yet. Probably later this week we'll have a new decaf Brazil and a coffee from El Salvador that's likely to get roasted a couple different ways. After that the usual Guatemalan coffee will return followed closely by a different lot of the usual Costa Rican mark. Decaf Sumatra is expected after that, but then coffees from Papua New Guinea and Sulawesi are months out

If I tried to use it as a printer over USB, what happens is it'll let you queue up print jobs, not print them, and then when you restart the computer it will print the queued jobs, but not any new ones until you restart the computer again. But at least the generic PCL driver works for all the printing features if I go over a network.

Added another switch on the wired network at the shop so that a wireless printer can be a wired printer (I can't just use the USB cable between the computer and the printer for printing because the printer driver is so awful that it works a lot better as generic PCL printer over IPP, but the scanning side of that works fine over USB). Hopefully it'll work better that way. As long as I was messing with the printer settings anyway, I also have it no longer conflicting with some lab equipment.

The cat wanted me to stay home from work today, but I can't do that.

It was nice while it lasted but local covid data has moved enough in the wrong direction that we're putting mask requirements back in place at the shop. Just a quick reminder, being abusive toward your barista isn't going to do you any good so please save everybody the trouble, get your shot, and don't make an ass of yourself with people you trust to make something you plan to ingest.

It's coffee from Sumatra and coffee from Colombia tossed into the roaster at the same time and roasted rather different from how they're roasted separately for the shelf. The drip roasts for those each have characteristics that are both overwhelming and unpleasant in an espresso preparation (to the point that they blend poorly), but I worked out a roast to diminish what I don't like and leave what I do, and that seems to have worked.

Tried out something new as espresso. I'll want to try it again tomorrow as it was only roasted about 5 hours ago, but early indications are promising.

I've failed at home toilet repairs. Fortunately it's all stuff in the tank that's wrong so I've disconnected the water to prevent it from doing any more damage and I've got a bucket that I can use for flushing until I get a plumber out to take care of it. Why do people install toilets so close to corners such that there's no way to see what you're doing and can't get a wrench in the space? Maybe I'll give it one more try.

With the new computer for the roaster I have a good excuse to do a rework of the software that I've wanted to take care of for several years now. It's nice finally being able to take advantage of C++ features introduced after 2005 so I'm writing considerably less code in some cases and am able to do certain things in ways that have fewer corner cases to watch out for.

cat: what's a posture? can I eat it?

Done with staying late at work to train the new person for a while. Now other people can take over most of the training.

Someone left a bunch of VHS tapes about Alaska on the book shelf at the shop (which I'd rather see people using to share books). Do people even still own VCRs on which to view such things?

Ma'am should pretty much never be used these days, especially if you're trying to be polite to someone you don't know with a full beard.

The utility shutoff scam is making the rounds again. If you get a call from someone claiming to be your power company saying they're going to disconnect your gas/electric for lack of payment, that's probably not real. If they want you to buy gift cards to make the payment that you don't owe, that's definitely not real.

cat: what you're doing is cool, but wouldn't you rather be petting the cat?