“I want peace and quiet. You disgusting little anthropoids promised me some peace and quiet, didn’t you?”
"yes, sir."
“Do you remember what I said I’d do if I didn’t get peace and quiet?”
"you said you'd kill us all to death."
“That’s right.”
— Lord Phaeton in Mumsie's Bar, GwimbearIsekai: 1.7
After a while, I’d given up waiting for her and started exploring more seriously. I hadn’t visited the cave in a few weeks, but fortunately nothing had moved in while I was gone. This trip, I’d followed a river to where it joined a bigger river, and then on to where it finally emptied into a lake. Great place for a settlement, I thought, but apparently nobody on this world agreed. If there was anybody on this world; after ten years, I had serious doubts. The fish were a nice change of diet, at least.
I’d like to think that I had a reason for coming back to the cave, but it was really just reflex. I always came back, just like I always checked out the rock she’d left me on.
Which for the first time since my arrival was occupied. From here, all I could see was white skin and red hair, but I broke my personal record for the Hundred Yard Frantic Scramble getting down there, all the while wondering whether I was more interested in wringing her neck or begging for sex. At least one part of me had already voted for the latter.
It wasn’t her. I’d come up with a lot of scenarios over the years, some naughty, some nice, some dark and bloody, but I’d never thought I’d find a different redhead.
Worse, she looked about twelve.
On Common Grounds
Pod Vase-ing
This Nespresso capsule holder model is almost extremely well done. It holds 30 original-type pods in a compact hexagonal shape, and significantly reduces filament use and print time by being designed to use vase mode. It’s slightly too tall to fit on my printer, which I fixed by scaling the height down, and the slots are slightly too tight to easily hold Gevalia’s compostable clone pods, which have a thicker rim.
But the real problem is that the matching slots in the separate base are slightly too tight to fit the top into. This can be worked around with careful slicing parameters, if you know about it in advance, but if you went ahead and just printed it, like I did, you’ll need to break out the hot glue.
So close.
Speaking of pods…
Target has a house brand of Nespresso clone-pods called “Archer Farms” that includes three flavors designed for a lungo pour. They’re crap.
Not the coffee, the pods. Licensed pods use a solid aluminum body with a foil cap. These use a slightly-off-spec aluminum body with foil at top and bottom, and the result is that my Essenza Mini strains to push the water through and gives up about halfway. There was nothing wrong with the coffee that made it out, but paying half the price to get half the coffee doesn’t seem like a good deal, especially if it ends up stressing the machine.
On the bright side, Target is the only retailer I’ve been in for months that had my Gevalia Mocha Latte k-cups in stock. If I didn’t already have a three-month supply, I’d have picked up a three-month supply.
A Moo by any other name…
I stopped buying Land-O-Lakes butter when they killed off the Indian and kept the Land, but I’ve still been buying Mini Moos, their single-serving half-and-half packets. Because I dislike artificial creamers, and because two Moos is only 20 calories, but mostly because it’s the only brand my local groceries stock in that form factor.
But as my Nespresso Adventures rapidly depleted my stock, I decided to go looking for a different brand, and found Carnation Half & Half tubs, in the giant industrial-family-sized package. 360 of them is a lot for one guy, but coffee isn’t the only use I put them to, and hopefully they don’t arrive with an imminent expiration date. These days, packaged meals that include “milk” or “cheese” use low-fat, low-flavor stuff to attract the masses who’ve been indoctrinated by the State Church Of Wrong Dieting, and they benefit from a little 10-calorie touchup.
Well, 11.5 from now on; Carnation decided to set their serving size at 3 tubs instead of 1, so they fall under different FDA rounding rules (see page 129), and thus each tub officially has 0.3333 grams of sugar instead of being “sugar-free”.
I just have to figure out what to call them now. Carns? Calfs? Halfs?
Unrelated, “Alexa, please stop sucking.”
J: Alexa, what time does Safeway close?
A: Safeway pharmacy on Constitution Blvd is currently closed, but will…
J: Alexa, stop. What time does the Safeway grocery store close?
A: Safeway pharmacy on Constitution Blvd is currently closed, but will…
J: Alexa, stop. What time does the nearest Safeway close?
A: Safeway pharmacy on Constitution Blvd is currently closed, but will…
J: Alexa, stop. What time does the Safeway on North Main Street close?
A: Safeway on North Main Street in Salinas is open today from 6am to 10pm.
“No, seriously, stop.”
J: Alexa, play “Sex (I’m A)”.
A: Here’s “Sex Type Thing”, by Stone Temple Pilots, on Amazon Music.
J: Alexa, stop. Play “Sex (I’m A)” by Berlin.
A: I couldn’t find sex-ima by Berlin, but here is other music by Berlin. (begins playing “The Metro”)
J: Alexa, play “Sex” by Berlin.
A: Here’s “Sex (I’m A)” by Berlin, on Amazon Music.
[Update: this one turns out to be particularly tricky: the results depend entirely on how you pronounce “A” when you ask for the song. If you pronounce it the way they do in the song (“I’m a man/I’m a goddess/…”), Alexa won’t find it, but if you carefully enunciate it as the letter “A”, it will.]
Isekai: 1.6
With only five months until DL-Day, my priorities were simple:
- stay alive
- find people
- become hero
- save world
Hoping that she’d return with something more than fantastic sex and terrible notes, I moved into an unoccupied cave with a good view of “our” rock and easy access to fresh water, collected some pointy sticks and sharp-ish rocks, and went looking for signs of civilization.
I quickly settled into a routine of picking a direction, walking as far as I could until midday, climbing a hill or tall tree, looking around for anything, and then returning home disappointed. And usually hungry. I ate pretty much anything I found, at least once, which is how I discovered that grilled beetles tasted a bit like bacon.
Oh, yes, I had invented fire. My sensei was big on perseverance, and it turns out that if you bang enough rocks together, eventually you’ll find the kind that make sparks.
Fire was good for more than cooking, of course. It kept me warm and uneaten at night, and was sure to attract attention from the locals eventually. All I had to do was get out there and find them.
By the way…
Pod People
At 9:45 AM on Sunday, I ordered some more coffee pods from Nespresso’s web site, enough to get free shipping and the one-time $10 discount that came with my machine. They arrived at 9:45 AM on Tuesday.
I hadn’t expected that kind of service, so when I’d gone out to the grocery store, I’d bought three flavors of Peet’s and one of Gevalia (which, naturally-but-sadly, wasn’t the sort that comes with a mocha froth packet).
The sampler had told me that I was more interested in the Lungo form-factor than the Espresso, so that’s what I’d mostly ordered online. Neither Peet’s nor Gevalia sells a dedicated lungo, but all of the Peet’s seem to work fine at that size with a Moo and a Splenda or two, or sugar-free Torani and some milk. The most striking characteristic of the Gevalia pods is the fine grounds that end up in the cup; their pods are compostable rather than recyclable, and I think the caps just puncture differently when you load them. The end product tastes a bit thinner, as well, at least in the “Luminous” flavor; it does not work as a lungo pour (he says, disguising the fact that he doesn’t speak even Coffee Italian, and just means pressing the Large button instead of the Small one).
Also, it turns out the Essenza Mini has three drip trays, one of which is “my countertop”. With the Keurig, I’m used to just topping off the water reservoir while it’s still attached to the machine, rather than carrying it over to the filtered-water dispenser on the fridge (which it doesn’t fit into anyway). The Mini’s reservoir has an odd little locking system that requires you to tilt it away from the body of the unit to open the lid, which breaks the seal at the bottom.
Net result, if you try to refill it in place, it will slowly leak until it’s firmly reseated, leaving a small puddle on the counter.
By the way, browsing the Nespresso sub-reddit revealed another downside to their long-dripping pod design: mold. Not just the potential for it to form if you don’t rinse out the pod-catcher and drip trays, but the apparent inevitability of it if you go along with Nespresso’s recycling system, which involves collecting about a hundred pods at a time and sending them off in their free prepaid mailers.
The recommended way to avoid mold is to store the used pods in your freezer until you have enough to fill the mailer.
Related, I hacked on the OpenSCAD source for this pod-holder design to make a version that would fit on my 3D printer, stand up on its own, and not take 8+ hours to print, even with a 0.3mm layer height. STL file here; I might refactor the code to use the BOSL library for everything and upload it as a remix, now that Thingiverse acknowledges my existence.
One thing that Nespresso has really done better than Keurig is make the products attractive and stylish, including the consumables. People buy and make elaborate display stands because the pods are pretty.
Isekai: 1.5
I’d heard that bugs were a good source of protein. I’d never planned to test it, but the thing about paleo diets is that they’re the only option when you suddenly end up living paleo. My crazy redheaded kidnapper had dumped me in the middle of Outer Bumfuck Forest, completely naked and armed only with a post-it note.
What was it with this chick and notes, anyway?
This one was long on drama and short on details, but it covered the basics: Hero good, Demon Lord bad, five months until the big fight. Nothing about finding food, shelter, weapons, or pants.
With wilderness skills that would make a Cub Scout sneer, it was quite a while before I had basic survival covered and could focus on exploring my new world. And it definitely was a new world, because the first time the sky was clear at night, I discovered that the moon had a ring around it.
Which meant she wasn’t crazy, and I was dead. Back home, anyway; here, I was definitely alive, or I wouldn’t have been so cold and hungry.
(I’m up to just under 6,000 words on this, by the way; hopefully I’m not the only one amused by it)
(also, I finally found out what she is, when I hit 5,000 words)
Isekai: 1.4
She was gone in the morning, leaving only a note that said we’d meet again once I was safely dead, and a huge mess in the kitchen that said she was only vaguely acquainted with the concept of cooking.
Three weeks later, I’d almost forgotten about her. I mean, she was right about it having been the greatest night of my life, but the details just seemed to slip away, like I wasn’t supposed to remember her. No one else did.
So it came as a bit of a shock to wake up with her on top of me, with the action already in progress. It was some time before I noticed that we weren’t in my apartment. Or anywhere else familiar. Or even indoors. In fact, I was lying on a slab of rock in the middle of a forest, wearing nothing but a satisfied-looking redhead.
“Welcome back from the dead, hero! Ready to save the world?”
“Is that where I get to be on top?”
“Eventually. I brought you here so that you can get ready to defeat the Demon Lord and his army. Here, I wrote everything down.”
This time I saw her vanish. Couldn’t miss it, really, since we were still attached.
Isekai: 1.3
There is a great wisdom handed down across generations, from father to son, from brother to brother: never stick it in crazy. In this case, crazy was a natural redhead with the most lick-able freckles I’d ever seen, scattered across a very healthy figure.
“Are you planning to kill me with those?”
“Only metaphorically; I don’t know precisely how it happens, just that it’s certain, it’s tomorrow, and that if I choose, you’ll rise again to serve my needs.”
“That’s more of a double entendre than a metaphor.”
“Do you want to fuck me before you die, or not?”
I stuck it in crazy. I lost count of how many times I rose to serve her needs.
Coffee spiders
Supply, Chained
I am no longer short on liquid pie. Last week I spotted a marketplace dealer whose price on Gevalia Mocha Latte k-cups was sensible, and today my monthly subscription arrived on schedule and without a surprise cancellation, so I’ve got nearly a three-month supply, with the earliest expiration date in November. I still haven’t seen it in stores, but Corona-chan was bad for variety in a lot of areas, and I think big-chain buyers are still playing it safe.
Usually I limit myself to one of these per day, and with the supply uncertain, sometimes less, but now the only thing holding me back is the calorie count. Which is reasonable (110, with two Mini-Moos), but still adds up during cold* weather.
(* for the California coast)
Continuing with my recent trend of Amazon shipping fails, one of the 36 k-cups in this shipment somehow managed to burst, spilling finely-ground coffee everywhere. Fortunately the boxes were in a sealed outer bag, but I had to open them all up and wipe down every k-cup and froth packet. There was no sign of rough handling, so I’m inclined to believe it was that way before it left the warehouse, and whatever human or robot did the packing didn’t notice or care.
Another coffee machine!
Despite money burning a hole in my pocket, I managed to keep myself to only one new toy, a Nespresso Essenza Mini espresso machine. I worked my way through the supplied variety pack of coffees, and, taken straight, I honestly can’t tell the difference between most of them. Maybe it’s just that they all seem to be darker roasts, but the high-pressure extraction method produces less-distinguishable flavors than my Aeropress.
So far they’ve all responded well to Splenda and Mini-Moos, though, and their “Fortissio Lungo” topped off with whole milk turned out quite nicely. I don’t have a milk frother or steamer, and I don’t plan to buy one any time soon; that just seems like work. I usually only buy milk for cooking and baking, and for the past year I’ve gotten into the habit of buying UHT whole milk in 8-ounce lunch-packs, to avoid supply-chain disruptions while keeping it from going bad on me.
I didn’t have any actual demitasse cups in the house, but a saké ochoko will hold an espresso shot, and the larger thick-walled ceramic guinomi set I picked up cheap at Daiso has room left over for a Moo, and holds the heat nicely.
After having lived with k-cups for a number of years, the biggest surprise with the Nespresso machine is how much, and for how long, liquid drips into its two drip pans afterwards. I’ve never had to empty a k-cup drip pan, only give it a quick rinse when I’m cleaning the kitchen.
Chicks In Chains
Coming back from a trip to the Nob Hill south of town, I was pleasantly surprised to see nearly-completed new construction at the local mall. I hadn’t known that Chik-Fil-A was coming to town, but I’d expected it to happen eventually. The hate-fueled campaign to destroy them backfired big-time, and they’ve greatly expanded their presence in California since then. They’ve been putting in stores north, south, and east of me, so it was only a matter of time before Salinas got one.
Interesting that they skipped Morgan Hill and Gilroy, especially with the big outlet mall, but maybe the timing just lined up better with the construction at my mall.
Doin’ whatever a spider kin
I’m still idly watching That Spider Show, and episode 7 was the first time I didn’t actively hate the crew of the B Ark. Well, some of them, anyway. For a few minutes.
Undocumentation
The 3D printer nozzle that arrived yesterday was for an experiment that I can’t really start yet. I’ve built up a pretty solid Cura profile for the Dremel 3D45 with the standard 0.4mm nozzle, and I thought I’d come to understand its inheritance system, but I just can’t get the damn thing to locate the correct quality profiles when I add variant nozzle sizes into the mix.
It seems to require a config file for each (material, nozzle, quality) tuple, but when I generate them with a script, it can’t find a match, and the log messages are not helpful. The only good thing is that it’s not complaining that they’re corrupt and asking to reset everything to defaults.
It would be significantly less work to just generate a completely separate config for a “3D45-0.8” model printer.
UnDirecTV
I officially no longer owe AT&T for the DirecTV equipment that I immediately returned after canceling my account. The proof is that they sent me the money I’ve been owed since November. On an $8.79 prepaid Mastercard debit card that I have to figure out a use for.
Secure By Design
I’m just going to leave this here:
“…the malicious package is said to leverage the macOS Installer JavaScript API”
I find this approximately as comforting as if they’d said, “the Installer’s PHP-based SQL interface”.
