Weeknotes #5, August 17–23
This week ended with the news that the trade talk between Canada and the US collapsed. Once I read why, I was immensely grateful that we (Canada) have someone like Mark Carney at the helm. The negotiations must have been incredibly intense, and I just cannot imagine a career politician like Pierre Poilievre (Carney’s opposition in our last federal election) being in Carney’s position and handling it nearly as well. The new tariffs from the US is no doubt going to hit our economy hard, but, again, at least we’ve got an actual economist with solid credentials in and work experience on exactly handling the economy at the national scale. I hope Canada will pull through.
I’m tired of living in turbulent and unprecedented times, boss; can the world be just 1% nicer, please?!
What brought me joy
- New coffee grinder: 1ZPRESSO K-Ultra!
This is my coffee grinder endgame triad: ZP6 for light roast, washed process coffees; K-Ultra for all other beans that won’t benefit from ZP6’s high clarity and light body; and OutIn Fino for espresso.
I tried the K-Ultra with some natural Columbian beans from Rogue Wave Coffee that were too “winey” with my ZP6 and the K-Ultra was definitely a better grinder for this coffee.
The K-Ultra is also my first grinder with a magnetic catch-cup. It’s really one of those things that you didn’t know you needed until you try it. It’s such a nice quality-of-life improvement over having to screw the catch-cup in and out.
I also love the design of the K-Ultra (and the ZP6); these are such eye candy on our kitchen counter!
- New coffees
I used to buy coffee directly from roasters, but lately, I’ve been enjoying buying from Canada’s Eight Ounce Coffee because it allows me to order 2 bags of beans, each from a different roaster. Previously, I’d never wanted to buy beans directly from roasters outside Canada because I was worried about customs and shipping times, and Eight Ounce solved that worry for me. Some roasters, like Hatch, have rather expensive threshold for free shipping and buying from Eight Ounce solved that problem too.
I’ve heard a lot about Hydrangea—an American roaster—and I’m excited to finally try it!
- I bought a new SwitchBot CO2 monitor1 for our living room. We have one in our bedroom that we bought a while back, and one thing I really didn’t like about it is that if you run it on battery rather than plugged in, it could only update the sensors once every 30 minutes, which was way too infrequent for the readings to be useful. When I was shopping around for a second one, I couldn’t find any other alternatives that were as good or better, so I just ordered another one of the same. Upon setting it up, I was pleasantly surprised that it gives you the option to have it update as frequently as every 5 minutes on battery now! I was almost ecstatic because that meant I no longer had to worry about the cable and I could place it anywhere as needed. A small quality-of-life improvement can really make a big impact on usability.
- I use YNAB (You Need A Budget) to manage our finances and it’d been a while since I last audited the budgeting categories. The lives of my wife and me have changed and those categories were in dire need for a revamp. I spent a whole day rejigging them and I was quite happy with the results. One of the things I did was decoupling purchases of coffee beans and coffee gear from the
Groceriescategory. I’ve been drinking more coffee lately and I just want to keep an eye on my coffee bean spending to make sure I’m not spending too much. - I finally escaped the shackle of expensive phone plans. I’d been with the provider, Fido, for as long as I’m in Canada (since 2013) but they continuously refused to offer good, cheaper plans with less data. I was paying $54 for 80GB of data, which wasn’t too bad2 but I only use several GB of data a month (why and how do people use so much mobile data???). I tolerated Fido for many years because it felt like a hassle to switch providers. However, the recent price hike was the last straw that made me go, Yeah, fuck this. I’m leaving. I’m now with Freedom Mobile’s $159/year for 40GB/year prepaid plan, which equals to $13.25 for 3.33GB per month—amazing. My wife is happy to switch as well but she wants 10GB a month so I’m weighing her options.
Piano
In last week’s weeknotes, I’d said I wanted to play more than the minimum of 3 times this week—I didn’t do that, but I’m still happy that I met my minimum goal. It was a busier week as my wife and I were out of the house for family obligations twice, so it was harder to find the time to play the piano. But still, thanks to the tracker, I managed!
Other stuff
My birthday is next week and I took the whole week off work! One of the things I want to do is to play Hollow Knight. It’s been almost a year since I last played any video games and I miss gaming. I used to be really into time-sink games like The Wither 3, Banished and Foundation that I’d play long hours for weeks, but I feel like I’m just too old for that now. Platformer isn’t a genre I typically play so I look forward to trying something new. I’m hoping Hollow Knight will get 50% off again next week!
A latte art I attempted this week turned out looking like Grinch:
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In case you aren’t aware, high concentration of CO2 can have negative health impacts. For my wife and me, we get lethargic and drowsy, and have difficulty focusing, so we keep track of the CO2 levels in our home.↩
At least by Canadian standards because our phone plans in general are notoriously expensive.↩