I was with you until the minute late thing. That’s crap. Grace period?

Not that I try to be late, I’m 99% early. But I’d be ticked to lose an hour because of couple minutes late on a bad morning. Though I guess some people may need that painful motivation to not abuse the system.

Believe it or not

I should try this. Sounds amazing.

Random guy here, stumbled onto this thread.

I can only drink decaf, doctors orders. My wife doesn’t drink more than a cup a day usually, caffeinated.

We have a breville espresso machine, got it during COVID because we were home so much.

We made coffee every day, sometimes several times a day. But now that we’re more or less back to normal, we’re not home often enough to use it regularly. Perhaps once a week.

We still love fancy coffee, just not enough to get up a bit earlier to make it, and take it with us, and then clean the thermos later. Bah.

So we go through a pound or so every few months. It’s actually a bit annoying because the coffee gets less fresh as the weeks go on.

As for what coffee we buy? We buy local, there’s a roaster near our house, which always smells amazing when you drive by. Their coffee is fine, quite tasty even, it just all kind of tastes similar, if that makes sense. Even if I go for some fancy flavors, which I’m guilty of doing (in a separate special grinder), they all taste very similar in base flavor. Maybe people like that 🤷‍♂️ it’s fine.

Our favorite coffee is schuil in Grand rapids Michigan, super tasty, and their flavors are phenomenal (if you like that kind of thing).

Edit: beans are about $9-11/lb here in Michigan.

This is very insightful, thank you

I’d have to check my logs, but it was something like spring or early summer. Honestly though the solar cycle has a much larger effect on propagation, and right now we’re near solar maximum so things are really hopping. At the beginning of COVID we were just starting to come out of solar minimum.

I haven’t been super active lately, so I can’t comment on how often you’d be able to make contact. But with some coordination it’s definitely doable. Especially if you get some decent metal in the air.

You still have US citizenship? You might be able to do your testing in the USA over zoom and use a reciprocal license, though I haven’t looked deeply into it.

I had a similar but very different experience. At the beginning of COVID my buddy and I got our ham radio licenses.

One of my earliest contacts was a guy in Japan, over 6000 miles away! Nothing between us but some wire strung up in a tree, and a couple of radios. Using the ionosphere to bounce our signals around the world.

So. Stinking. Awesome.

I’ve been hooked ever since.

It’s funny because it’s almost the opposite of your story, you were using the amazing new technology and infrastructure to make the trip. These days we take that very infrastructure for granted.

It’s fun to try doing it with as little infrastructure as possible!

Most of the 24 hour Walmarts and similar stores in my area stopped doing that during COVID, and then never did again. Most close at 10 or 11. I miss going into Meijer at 3am and getting… Whatever I wanted 🤷‍♂️

Kids these days

Why make it a card then? If it’s meant to be stored as a document then it should be the size of an envelope, or a standard A4 sheet.

I keep mine attached to the envelope sized paper it came on. But it shouldn’t be a card shape, that encourages people to carry it. My grandpa always carried his.