The Downside

Yesterday, I mentioned some the benefits of being home alone while Kellie takes a vacation without me.  But there are also some disadvantages:

• Kellie’s dogs will not use the doggie door I installed for their convenience if it’s raining outside; they are perfectly content to do their business on the living room floor when the weather is inclement. 

• Day old oatmeal sticks to a pot like cement. 

• With Kellie gone, her dogs follow me everywhere.

• My bed is cold, and spooning with the dogs isn't much fun.

• Three nights by myself = Three nights of eating ravioli.  It would have been four nights, but our friends, Dave and Melissa, feed me dinner yesterday.

• I have not learned how to make a half a pot of coffee that doesn’t taste like mud or coffee colored water.  

Apparently, the coffee to water ratio is not linear as you vary the number of cups brewed.   I could do some experiments to derive an equation that describes the coffee concentration as function of: the number of cups brewed, the quantity of beans, and the fineness of the grind used to brew the coffee. Mathematically, it might look like this:

coffee concentration: f(j, o, e) = aj^x + bo^y + ce^z

where:

a, b, and c are coefficients

 j = number of java beans used

o = ounces of water used

e = effective cross section of the ground beans

I need to find a way to measure the concentration of the coffee.  If the concentration is inversely proportional to the amount of light that can pass through a given quantity of brew, then I could use a laser and a light detector to measure the concentration. Once I’ve brewed enough coffee to collect sufficient data, I can do a regression analysis in Excel to derive the needed equation.  Or, I could just go to Starbucks.

I think, maybe, Kellie should come home soon.

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