This (sorry, german only) is a sneak peak into my future profession. Expect details tomorroy. Stay tuned!

A short list of coffee-things I've been up to lately:

• 
  new tampers
• 
  new (old) grinders
• 
  new (odd) portafilter
• 
  new t-shirt
• 
  new (BIG) machine
• 
  not for me this year

The last post was two months ago, and a blog without posts and without comments seems a bit boring. Anyway, what am I up to currently?

Edit: Comments work again, and spamprevention should now keep away most spammers.

Well, I stopped working as a barista. The last two years have been really interesting and full of ups and downs and I came around quite a bit (I really miss meeting the people even more than I miss travelling) - but I couldn't really get university on the one and being a barista on the other hand to work together well, so I had to make this decision sooner or later (People who know me know that I absolutly hate to admit this: I need to earn money more efficiently. So back to computers and networks for now). But this has lead to some interesting side effects: since I no longer have access to the two-group Reneka at work, I really had to start working with my old LaCimbali Junior at home. And it is an old, picky beast. During the last few weeks however, with the help of the naked portafilter and Bruce's LaCimbali grinder, my shots got better and better. I learnt dosing from the doser with the typical thwack-thwack-thwack, and I now can dose quite repeatedly the same amount of grounds without a timer or scale and without waste. I learnt distributing the grounds so as my machine doesn't spit the coffee out anymore, and I learnt getting shots from blends I haven't mastered before and I'm quite proud of that ;) I'm not saying my techniques were rubbish before (they weren't, I went through a hard school during the last years), but new, commercial and well-looked-after equipment is just so much more forgiving than old, not-quite-looked-after, semi-commercial machines. I learnt being a home-barista, and I'm loving it. Only if it weren't so damn expensive! And at the same time, I'm confident that my dull-machin-mastering-skills will be of use in a professional environment, too.

At the end of the week, I expect a delivery of 7kg of Walter's finest (as green) and I really look forward to it - promises to be much fun in roasting, cupping and generally enjoying mighty fine coffee. Maybe even a competition coffee? Who knows!

Oh, and as you see, I got completly mad on the grinder front last month (but don't ask about my bank account, please).

Oh my. During my shift yesterday, one of our two machines broke down. On a saturday midday during rushhour. Not funny. All of a sudden my shift extended itself by about 2 hours - so I was in the shop from 8am to around 7pm.

I then went to a friend to borrow her car for the night. While driving home, It's dynamo broke down, too. Not funny.

Next day, the car was working again. Drove 60km to bring my fiancee home. Drove back. After 20km, the front-right wheel went bang. Not funny. Well, however, the funny thing was that that very wheel already was the spare wheel. Really not funny ...

I think I need some sleep. Maybe I just shouldn't touch any mechanical thing in the next days. How good that computers are mainly non-mechanical ... argh.

I hate technical meta-nonsense on weblogs. Nevertheless, the feeds do work again.

Due to my technical incompetences, feeds are unavailable for the moment. Need some time to work on it.

Jetzt hab ich schon wieder nen neues Blog. Der Code ist zu finden im Subversion Repository und basiert auf Django's nun offiziellem "Magic Removal" Zweig. Kann ein bissl mehr, der Feed sollte funktionieren wie vorher. Jetzt muss ich nur noch die alten Einträge konvertieren :)