got my haircut and m didn’t even cry. sadly, i had to abandon the shaved head donation option. maybe next time if i have enough patience.

our zojirushi died yesterday in a smelly burning metal and leaky lcd display kind of way. which means that i had to boil water on the stovetop in a saucepan to make coffee and tea today. (we’ll have a new vacuum insulated zojirushi by friday.)

i’m slowly cleaning out the storage boxes in the garage. which means our basic and romantic magnetic poetry sets made it onto our fridge. again. here are some examples of m’s poetic brilliance:

we made sprouts in a jar and they are wonderful!

m doesn’t like the word hack so let’s use the word “engineer” instead. either way, i solved a problem today with brilliant and cheap engineering. my co-worker notified me that our machine was ready to be photographed; that is, after i had arrived at work without white roll or a tripod. i told him i could probably figure out a solution and i did:

• white easel paper (with light adhesive—even better!) served as the backdrop. all i really need is a contrasty background so i can use photoshop to delete it
• an empty monitor box and another box for added height served as the supports for the paper
• the object’s original box served as a lazy susan so i could get photos of all sides (of this 30 lb object)
• lights at 6500K that we had in the office
• aeron chair coupled with an ikea tool set box and a piece of foam functioned as my tripod—complete with adjustable height and sloping seat to adjust camera angle. since the mesh chair seat was so bouncy, i increased the self-timer from 2 to 10 seconds to let the camera settle after pressing the shutter button. the foam helped absorb the motion as well, esp. with the 5″ exposures i was taking

and that is how you engineer your way to a successful solution. it’s even more brilliant than using a bench vise to open fresh, shelled walnuts (which was my y combinator answer for hacking engineering a system to my advantage).

didn’t overthink it, just turned the dial and frothed 6 oz of 2% in the medium pitcher to perfection. there was a ring of ice in the pitcher. it was milk for the second cup so it was colder. can i repeat?!?

oh, fundamental LA… m dreams about your carrot risotto. what happened?!? except for the black garlic panisse, each dish was either one note or unbalanced. as in bitter veg and rotten lemon unbalanced. third time’s a charm.

we finally made it through the ethiopian biftu gudina and at m’s request, i’m continuing with this particular ethiopian at P2 and P5. i start by roasting a decaf to warm the machine up. my rwandan is overroasted—again. my ethiopian P2 (not pictured) is also too dark because it tastes too dark. my etiopian P5 is seemingly less dark than the P2 but we haven’t tasted it yet. L to R: columbian urrao, Brazil decaf, rwandan decaf, ethiopian P5.