DIY Coffee Roasting

I recently grabbed a coffee with a former coworker of mine to catch up. Among the many things we discussed was his enthusiasm for home-roasting coffee, which intrigued me as someone who occasionally brews beer and who regularly drinks coffee. (Thanks go to Mike on the former; blame goes to Andrea for the latter.) So I figured it'd be an interesting thing to try, and given the super useful info and pretty cheap goods from Sweet Maria's, I was able to get started for little green and in little time.

The super cheap way is to use a standard popcorn air-popper (of a particular design), which Sweet Maria's sells along with some sampler beans. Roasting outside to prevent mess and smell inside, I got setup behind the house:

It's crazy simple: put a small amount of unroasted beans into the air-popper and turn it on.

I had an apprentice roaster to help me monitor the process:

After only a few minutes, the beans started moving around more easily due to the moisture having been burned off; the chaff from the beans started coming off; and we started getting our City roast (with an audible crack).

After about six minutes, I stopped the roasting to cool off the beans. Being my first go at the process, I opted for under-roasting rather than over. Here's the color comparison between the smallish batch and the original green bean.

I did this three times at approximately the same time:

This gave a pretty light bean:

Protocol is apparently to let these off-gas their CO2 for the next few days, so we'll be trying these out fairly soon.

Financial anatomy of a European vacation

This last week, Andrea and I returned from our first trip abroad after a very long time without any significant vacation. Aside from camping trips and weekend getaways with friends, our last vacation was before Jacob was born.

We decided on a trip to France, including Paris, Versailles, Marseille, and Normandy. Never before or during the vacation did we discuss any sort of holding back on our spending. Since this is the first vacation in a decade, we did what we wanted and we paid what we paid.

That said, I still kept decent documentation on our expenses because I'm a data geek, and I wanted to get an idea of what we can expect next time around. I started collecting receipts from coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores (we did a fair amount of eating by way local groceries, which surely saved us a ton of money), museums, and so on. After returning home, I crunched the numbers in a Google Doc, cross-referencing with our credit union and my credit card.

In summary, our expenses were as follows:

conversion fee	€29.19
clothes	€105.90
gifts	€139.70
coffee	€145.73
groceries	€166.02
entertainment	€228.00
meals	€261.72
tours	€304.40
untracked	€517.97
transportation	€704.90
home-sitting	€717.43
airfare	€1,474.03
lodging	€1,635.13
Grand Total	€6,430.12

Some notes:

• For simplicity, I converted everything into euros since most expenses were in that currency to begin with.
• Dollar values, when applicable, are converted at a rate of 1.09 dollars per euro. This rate was roughly the same across transactions that I linked up between point-of-sale and what posted to our bank account. (Bing indicates the exchange rate was a little lower at the beginning of our trip and climbed the whole time.)
• All those conversions incurred some type of fee, which at a glance seemed to be about 1% of the dollar equivalent of the transaction for both ATM withdrawals and point-of-sale.
• "Coffee" covers when we went out for coffee, beer, wine, smallish snacks, etc. - not quite a meal but also not something from a grocery store.

Untracked Expenses

Due to my poor record-keeping during the trip, I wasn't able to keep perfect sense of expenses. The majority of our transactions were in cash, and when I lost or failed to get a receipt, that money dropped into this abyss. Fortunately, I still knew exactly how much cash we got from the ATM throughout the trip (€1000), so it's all accounted for.

(Side note: European cash is awesome. My pocketful of coins was frequently around €10, more than enough for two drinks and two snacks. Also, no dealing with tipping or with taxes, which are baked into the final price.)

Home-Sitting

My parents were awesome and flew out to Seattle to watch our kids, house, and dog for the duration of our trip. We paid for their airfare and their expenses during their stay, which was a steal for us - even a reasonably short trip to Minnesota for us requires we board Shasta for $500-1000. In all, paying for gas, groceries, their airfare, and incidentals incurred a reasonably small bump in the overall cost.

To be fair, Mom and Dad waived some of the expenses under the excuse that they got to spoil their grandkids at their own expense. Win-win-win.

Transportation

A friend advised us to take Le Bus Direct from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris. This cost us €34. Had we done our research, we would have discovered the awesome metro system that would have (likely) cost us about €3.50 and maybe even been faster. Lesson learned.

The majority (71%) of our expenses in the transportation category, though, come from renting a car, buying expensive gas (something like $6/gallon) and paying tolls on the autoroute.

Lesson: take the train.

Lodging

During our time in Versailles, some newfound friends advised us against going to Marseille on account of it being spring break in France. All the students and families were heading down to the coast, making the high-speed train tickets expensive (almost $250 for the two of us) and aggravating the already terrible Marseillais traffic. So we decided at the last minute to head to Lille instead. This gave us the opportunity to also make a quick side trip to Bruges, Belgium.

However, because of this last-minute change, we had to forfeit the Airbnb that we had reserved. This cost us a couple hundred dollars, but was probably worth it.

Quick Take-Aways

After it all, it appears that our two week vacation to France cost us a hair over $7000, which, given a few minor hiccups, was pretty reasonable. Next time:

• Better planning on lodging will avoid The Marseille Problem of throwing money away.
• Travel, insofar as it can be done without a car, should be.
• Looking at currency exchange trends and executing at the right time can save a little bit, but probably not enough to make it worth it.
• Grocery stores will still save a ton of money versus eating out.
• Tours, while not an insignificant cost, should still be done to a great extent.
• At-cost baby-, house-, and dog-sitting will beat all other methods of saving by a huge margin.

In which I complain about being a mid-30s professional transplant

I've got a pretty damn awesome life. If I had been born in the paleolithic era, on average, I'd be dead by now. (Average life expectancy: 33 years. Also, 100% of people from the paleolithic are now dead.) Or in recent time, only 150 years ago, if I were British, I'd probably be a lovable chimney sweep. Or if I was born in, say, the DRC, I might have ended up a child soldier. Who knows?

Instead, I grew up in rural America, have a life expectancy of ~73 years (if I don't screw it up), took a bunch of math and science classes, and got myself a shiny bachelor's degree in computer science, which must put me right up there with four of the top ten wealthiest people in the world, right?

Actually, despite the grief my housemates in college gave me when I switched from Computer Engineering to Computer Science (personal hygiene and social ineptitude jokes abound), that was an awesome choice. Not only do I think I'm much happier swimming in code than I would have been in Fourier transforms (I still don't know what the hell they are), it turns out software engineering is a pretty damn lucrative industry.

This is how computer science and biology majors roll

The US Census Bureau's stats bode very well for me. And for that, I'm very thankful. Andrea and I are incredibly, ridiculously fortunate to have the financial security we do. (Despite taking a huge loss on the sale of our 2004-purchased home, we're very comfortable.)

On top of that, the Pacific Northwest is killer. We've had a hell of a ride in the last almost four years that we've lived here. As terrifying as it was to make the move here, it was one of the best decisions I think we've ever made. Who knew you and your dog could hike up a mountain post-Thanksgiving and have such a gorgeous view? (Also, we have an awesome dog.)

Woof.

And I get to do all sorts of cool stuff like summit Mount Rainier.

Colors!

And then a year later, Mount Shuksan.

Not as high as Rainier, but still pretty awesome.

But there's also a downside to all of it - and here's where I start bitching: it sucks trying to make friends again when you're older.

I'm inclined to think Malcolm Gladwell's infamous 10 000 hour rule applies to friendships, and all those people I used to be so close to are (or were) my friends due in no small part to how much time we spent together in elementary and high school, college classes, and in the dorms.

As it happens, when you're spending 9-10 hours every day at work (plus commute time), you don't have much time to hang out with people for fun. And those folks you used to hang out with all the time are now spread around the country, making it hard to keep up the inertia of existing relationships. The extremely unsatisfying and unsettling heat death of friendships fucking sucks. Pardon mon français tout le monde.

This is the point at which, as a stereotypical male engineer, I want to dissect the problem and control for various factors, but this post isn't problem-solving but rather complain-into-the-ether -- a problem I, admittedly, am very privileged to have.

Tiny living for a weekend

This last weekend, as my birthday gift from Andrea, she, the boys, and I went to Olympia to stay in the Bayside Bungalow, a tiny house on Airbnb.

We got to the Bungalow late-ish Friday night and settled in.

The tiny house in the daylight

Jake and Reed were giddy at the prospect of sleeping in the loft

 Saturday included a trip to Olympia for breakfast, some grocery shopping, and a trip to a park for some underdogs and checking out the jellyfish in the Sound.

After that, it was back to the house for some R&R. There's a path down to the Sound, so the four of us walked down there to hang out for a while.

It was a somewhat chilly, quite rainy Saturday, but that didn't stop the boys from trenching a more optimal path for the rainwater to get to the Sound.

Later in the day, we returned to Olympia, played laser tag for the first time (the boys loved it, wanted to do it again, asked for us to buy them laser tag gear so they can play at home), hid up the arcade, then returned to the Bungalow.

Take the train and see America (very slowly)!

I've been meaning to write up a little something about our Christmas travels this last year in which we took Amtrak home instead of our usual flight. Usually we spend something like $400/person for our airfare between SEA & MSP, and I think we've had to pay as much as $500. Turns out a lot of people travel around Christmas, and supply and demand means it costs more to travel at that time of year. Go figure.

On the other hand, I found that one-way airfare (SEA->MSP) was only about $125/person, and a one-way train ticket was $150/adult, $75/child. After taxes and fees, we spent $600 to fly to Minnesota and about $500 to take the train. For all four of us. On the other hand, a return flight would be something like 3.5hrs versus 34hrs for the train, so we're trading a day and a third for $1000ish savings. And the experience of seeing the country.

The St. Cloud Amtrak station is about as big as one airport terminal gate seating area but with no coffee or gift shops. Instead, there was a broken water fountain and a (working!) 7-Up machine from the Taft administration.



We got to the station around 11:30pm after a busy day at my parents' house. Both boys zonked out for a while, though Jacob had been so extremely tired that before falling asleep, he got a severe case of the sillies and was Andrea's and my comic relief for about twenty minutes.




When the train arrived around 12:40am, we carried the boys outside, but they woke up on their own, extremely excited to take the train. Jacob told me, "Dad, it's real! I pinched myself and it hurt!"


Once on the train, we found the seats to be pretty comfortable, the ride smooth, accommodations... acceptable. The boys actually enjoyed it surprisingly well.


Though the ride took a day and a half, we were at least able to get out at several of the stops (though I only did so on one).

Unfortunately, the better part of our daylight on New Years Eve day was through North Dakota and Montana -- all very flat and boring. We did have a nice sunset, however.



By the time we got to Glacier, it was nighttime and nothing to see. We got to Spokane around midnight-ish, and we didn't get any light until around the Cascades. The snow-covered trees and mountains were beautiful, though unfortunately, we were so close that we didn't get any good shots of the scenery.

The western side of the Cascades were a nice welcome home.



The final stretch from Everett to Seattle was right along the Sound and was gorgeous, though I was too busy gawking at it to take any pictures. The arrival at King Street Station was a nice break to stretch and walk around before we hopped into a taxi to get home.

All in all, it was a good experience. I'm glad we did it -- not just because it barely offset the cost of boarding Shasta for our two week trip, but it was also was a fun experience in and of itself. Hard to say, though, whether and when we'll do it again.

Another year at Microsoft, another position change

A little over a year ago, I moved from Bing to DX, part of Microsoft's evangelism group to work on a project that still has not yet been disclosed. Tomorrow will be my last day within DX as I move to the Windows and Devices Group (WDG) to work yet again on some truly big data + machine learning.

In Bing, I worked on a few projects utilizing Microsoft's Cosmos distributed and massively parallel processing system before moving over to do some tented work on Azure and websites and other secret things. Starting next week, I'll once again be doing severely large-scale work in analytics and prediction, with some natural language stuff thrown in for good measure. Or so I'm lead to understand.

The position sort of fell into my lap, so it's with some trepidation that I'm leaving a project where I get to do some cool stuff and implement a lot of neat features -- which, of course, I can't yet discuss. Maybe once my soon-to-be-former team goes public, I'll do some blog posts about what I've been doing.

Climbing Mount Saint Helens

Yesterday, I climbed Mount Saint Helens with my friends Tim and Mike. We started at Climber's Bivouac at 6am. After about an hour, when starting to get above much of the dense forest, we got an amazing view of the sunrise.

Sunrise looking at Mt. Adams (left) and Mt. Hood (right)

Looking through the trees at a layered sunrise.

In short order, we reached the treeline and the start of the very rocky, ashy incline up the mountain.

Mike looking up the trail

It quickly turned to a straight shot up the mountain over decently sized boulders.

When we started off, it was rather foggy at Climber's Bivouac. Throughout the day, the clouds stayed down at the bottom, providing a beautiful blanket across the national forest.

Scrambling up all the volcanic rock made some form of gloves a very useful addition to my gear for the day.

A couple years ago, I bought the boys some small stuffed black bears at REI. Reed's bear "Junior" somehow got lost in some of my gear, so I had a stowaway for the day.

The last 1000' or so vertical feet was through very soft ash and gravel. Here, I'm looking down the mountain at Mike, Tim, and the dozens of other climbers.

At the top, the wind varied from nil to extremely strong, blasting sand into our faces. Between that and the sun, I'm a super squinty guy.

We had an amazing view of the crater, lava dome, etc. I tried to get a few decent panoramas to try to illustrate how incredible the sight is. Here's a decent stitch; the steam coming out of the middle is, I believe, methane gas.

I got a quick shot at the top showing how windy it was:

It took us a little over five hours (6:00-11:20) to get to the top. The descent back to the Bivouac took until 15:00, but not without a few more photo ops:

Looking back up the mountain during the descent

Junior was on the mountain illegally, as he didn't have his own permit.

Making the new house home

Last week, we moved into our new home in Renton. On Saturday, Andrea and I spent nearly the entire day unpacking boxes, cleaning out old carpet scraps from the attic, hanging curtains, and so on.

I've been meaning to take some pictures of the house now that we're in. With the progress we made this weekend, here are some significantly more representative shots.


The garage needs a bit of work but is coming along nicely. We plan to put Andrea's car in there once we make enough room. The washer and dryer are here (bottom left corner) and the attic is just above the ladder.

I expect I will seal the floor with some epoxy this August when Andrea and boys are in Minnesota.

Maybe add a workbench at some point?

The kitchen is basically done. It's easily several times as large as the one we had in Magnolia. Andrea and I made dinner together last night for some guests, and there was more room than we knew what to do with.

We're experimenting with our seating arrangements. We'd planned on putting this green bench against a different wall by itself, but that didn't seem to work too well. This may be more convenient, if not proper interior decor.

With the exception of the partially-assembled floor lamp, the living room has come together. The mirror above the mantle is setup just as it was in Clearwater. I re-installed the glass in the quilt rack Dad made.

I really like the way the end table works out here.

Andrea bought me this print for our ten-year anniversary. I wasn't so sure about the placement (on the wall between the kitchen and bathroom; across from the office), but the more I walk down our only hallway, the more I like it.

 The office is the one place that still needs some real work. We don't have our internet connection setup yet, so my computer is pretty much useless.

Still need to install my sheepskin throw on my IKEA chair

One of the less glamorous jobs on Saturday was cleaning the attic. Without a roof vent, it was quite hot up there. We found old, empty jars of hamburger relish; hanging lights and scraps of carpet that hearken back to the 70s; a newspaper from 1968 (pending a high quality digital scan from the fine folks at Sigh of Relief Organizing); a box filled with masking tape; various plant pots and stands; and a variety of other things that clearly hadn't been used in many years.

Jacob and Reed really wanted to join me in the attic, so after we cleaned out most of the old stuff and I swept as best I could, I gave them each a pair of gloves, boosted them up, and let them play. This was one of the most exciting things for them. They stacked the tape into a big pile then knocked it down. They explored the barely tall enough roofline without getting impaled by the roofing nails. And when it was time to get down, they promptly asked when they could go back up there.

We had some friends over for dinner last night, and as they were leaving, the boys found what we think are plums falling from the neighbor's tree. The two of them collected the small fruit and started pelting me, and an all-out food fight started. Luckily, it's not as dangerous as the apple fight I remember having at my Grandma Shirey's farm over twenty years ago.

Our boys are perhaps more enthused about our new house than we are. But I'm not far behind.

June 22-28 in Pictures

Dad, the boys and I explored for crabs at Elliot Bay Marina

The boys sleep in their nest just before our move

Moving day!

Reed uses his homemade bird feeder (thanks, Rachael!) to "walk" his carseat back to the car

The one casualty from our move is our trusty KitchenAid mixer

The family joined me for breakfast at work

Jake shows me the biggest strawberry ever, saved for tomorrow's breakfast