“If you had to lose to somebody, at least you know it was somebody better than you!”
— Foglio Scion of DoomCoffee 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”.
Isekai: 1.2
Naturally she skipped out without paying. One moment she was eating her third tofu-and-artichoke pizza, the next she was gone. Which was odd, since I’d been checking her out every thirty seconds for the past hour. Mostly because she was a very enthusiastic eater and wasn’t wearing underwear, just a skimpy little outfit that walked the fine line between party dress and party favor.
Maybe I should have noticed that her dress had no room to hide a wallet, but the things it was hiding, barely, were a lot more interesting. She did leave a note behind that read “see you soon”, which was both promising and a bit worrying.
I checked the street outside, but there was no sign of her. I asked the three other customers if they’d seen which way she went, but they’d barely noticed she was there. It wasn’t until I got off work that I found out where she’d disappeared to: my apartment. More specifically, my shower, which she was coming out of as I walked in. Naked. Her, not me.
“You owe me $47, lady.”
“Think of it as buying me dinner first, so we can move on to the greatest night of your life. Also the last.”
Dear Amazon,
I received two packages today. The first was a lightly-padded envelope shipped UPS, containing a nozzle, so small that it took me a while to find it. I honestly thought the envelope was empty at first.
The second was a large cardboard box containing a few token air pillows for padding, along with three Bluray discs and a cast iron griddle. Only one of the Bluray cases was damaged by the five pounds of cast iron bouncing around in the box, but it looks like the actual discs survived the experience.
Isekai: 1.1
It wasn’t an amazing life, but it was comfortable. I had a job, an apartment, a hobby, and even the occasional girlfriend. Okay, the job was assistant manager at a pizza joint, the apartment was upstairs, and the hobby was an obscure martial arts school on the third floor, but the nearby college was chock-full of pretty girls, which meant the restaurant was, too.
It was slow when she walked in, that mid-afternoon lull when everyone’s finished lunch and gone back to work or class. She was pretty enough that I was surprised she was alone, but when I went over to take her order, I understood: she was nuts.
Usually it takes at least a few minutes to figure out that a college girl is completely bonkers, but then, they usually don’t open the conversation with, “tomorrow you will die, and then I shall assume control of your fate”.
“I’ll be right back with our vegan menu.”
3D Cheesecake 34: Be of good cheese...
You can tell a lot about people by which deaths they celebrate, and which they lament.
“The average liberal thinks that if we’re nice enough, we can reach an understanding with Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck can’t be reasoned with.” – John Hawkins
I think a celebration of life is in order, and what’s more lively than pretty girls wearing a smile and not much else?
Promises, promises...
Q: What do you call a Biden voter crushed by student-loan debt?
A: Sucker.
Good thing, too, since if he had canceled their loans, they’d be suckers with a 1099-C on the way, promising a hefty tax bill. All those $150,000 Woke Studies degrees would become taxable income with the stroke of a pen.
(not so coincidentally, there’s a new bill in Congress to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy…)
Unrelated
The Kindle version of Solo Leveling is out now.
Isekai: Prologue
I was not run over by a truck.
I also wasn’t shot, stabbed, electrocuted, poisoned, buried alive, eaten by wild animals, or chased off a cliff by angry bees. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain that I actually died. I only have her word for it, and she wasn’t a reliable source. Hot, though.
She said I’d have five months to learn my way around, master my powers, and forge alliances, then defeat a rampaging Demon Lord and save the world. That was ten years ago. I haven’t seen her since.
I haven’t seen anyone since. Not a human, elf, dwarf, orc, goblin, dragon, ghost, giant, sentient tree, or talking rock. Well, there was that time I ate some rather spectacularly purple berries and everything talked to me, but it went away after a few days.
Also, powers? Unless you count “not dying from hunger”, nothing’s shown up yet.
In short, no powers, no Demon Lord, no friends, no enemies, no monsters, no villages, no damsels in distress, no damsels period. Nothing but trackless wilderness and tasty-looking animals that are really hard to catch.
I am the chosen Hero.
I am alone.
I live in a cave.
I eat bugs.
Summoned To Another World To Defeat The Demon Lord, I Arrived 5,000 Years Too Early, So I’m Stuck In A Cave Eating Bugs
Cash Leveling
“Tomorrow, we have to decide which country we want to buy”
Went through the first pass on my taxes last night, and came out better than expected. That is, the two different employers, large severance check, and stock sales (options, ESPP, RSU) were effectively balanced by the extra amount I had withheld and the amount my new job over-withheld for Social Security, etc, leaving me with my usual close-to-breaking-even little refund checks. I’ll let it bake a week in case some late paperwork or surprise changes arrive, but it looks like the money I carefully saved for potential tax payments goes into my pocket instead. And there’s a semi-annual bonus on the way.
But I’ve already said that I’m not buying a new car this year, or a new computer, or a new camera, no matter how Sony tempts me. Oh, my. Wait, this one has gigabit ethernet?!?
We haven’t finalized the dates on the re-re-re-rescheduled Japan trip, but it’s currently “three weeks in November”, with enough time in Tokyo for me to spend way too much money. Probably not on camera gear, unless I find myself in a shop full of classic Minolta lenses…
Maybe this will be the trip where we take a few overnight trips off the beaten path. I’ve already penciled in a day trip to Kamakura and a whistle-stop tour of Nagoya (mostly for the Totoro House) on the way from Tokyo to Kyoto, but Nikko and Amanohashidate would benefit from full days, and a return visit to Ise would be cool, too. My sister’s not a big fan of cable-car rides, but she might go for an overnight stay at one of the many temples on Mt. Koya.
Solo Leveling Offline
File under peculiar the fact that the first half of the Solo Leveling light novel is out today in paperback only. No Kindle edition listed at all. I’d have to wait an entire day before I could start reading it. I think I’ll hold off for a week or so to see if the ebook turns up.
Which reminds me to check up on the online comic, which was supposed to start back up this year.
