Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 9

Good coffee and sandwiches, maybe a bit expensive. They also sell artisan honey and beeswax products. Lots of tables inside, and a large patio with covered tables outside. Free WiFi and a couple of outlets in the dining area. Small parking lot plus street parking. Restroom door is outside.

Is it better than stopping by the bank every other week for more rolls of quarters? Maaaaaybe. It was during the 2020 covid-lockdown coin shortage, but now?

It means doing my laundry depends not just on the washer and dryer working, but on the control box working, the control box’s internet connection working, my phone being charged, my phone’s internet connection working, and the CSC online servers working.

I can’t remember the last time the washer or dryer broke down. But there’ve been plenty of times when the app couldn’t find them, or couldn’t find my account.

On the plus side, it is nice to be able to check whether a machine is available before going to the laundry room. And sometimes it alerts me when a cycle is done. (It’s supposed to always, but it doesn’t.)

But that’s a lot of extra points of failure for not much improvement.

Update August 2024: They’ve started sending me ads through system push notifications, which I consider an abuse of notifications. So I’ve turned off notifications from the app entirely and lowered my rating. The only alerts a laundry app should be sending you are “your cycle finished” or “the machine you were waiting for is available.” And that never worked reliably to begin with.

An extremely lightweight Linux distribution that still packs a lot of modern capabilities into it, including smooth package installation, removal and updates. I use it for small (1GB RAM) cloud servers because of its low resource requirements and smaller attack profile on installation. (It would also be a good choice for old hardware or low-powered physical machines like a Raspberry Pi.)

Desktop environments work smoothly, though it does take a little effort to set one up.

The main things that have tripped me up:

• Remembering which set of commands I need to manage daemons. (openrc vs. system vs. systemctl vs…)*
• Remembering that apk uses add instead of install.
• Occasional compatibility issues when building (or trying to run precompiled) third-party software that doesn’t work well with musl.

On the last one, the two that stick in my mind are a bug where super-long threads crashed Snac on musl systems (the dev ended up adding a configurable limit to how far back it would try to fetch) and being unable to run Servo on a desktop VM I’ve been using for testing.

This is serious coffee.

They don’t even have WiFi – you come here for the coffee and food (and maybe to hang out), not to park your laptop for the day. The hours are a bit short (they mainly serve breakfast and lunch, and close by mid-afternoon), but they make up for it in quality.

Two Guns brought the Flat White here from New Zealand in 2011, long before Starbucks started serving it – and the authentic version is not to be missed! Their mocha is the perfect balance of coffee and chocolate (most places are too heavy one way or the other), with just enough sweetness and no more. Even their chai lattes are just sweet enough.

On the rare occasions I’m there for breakfast or lunch, I usually go for the Stanwich, but the veggie burrito is really good too.

The original Manhattan Beach location on PCH was one of my regular stops for years before the shopping center closed down to make way for new construction at the end of 2022. Thankfully they’d already expanded to a small chain in that time, and all the locations I’ve been to have been just as good as the original.

Locations

El Segundo: Lots of indoor seating and a good-sized patio across from the Civic Center. Next door to Rinaldi’s, which is a good sandwich place, though Two Guns has a full breakfast/lunch menu here. Lots of Pokémon Go stops and gyms in the area too. (321 Main St. / map)

Manhattan Beach Blvd: Mostly pickup only, though sometimes they put out one small table in front. (There isn’t room for any more than that!) A good place to stop while walking to or from Downtown Manhattan Beach from PCH. Street parking only. (875 Manhattan Beach Blvd, between Poinsettia and the Urgent Care / map)

Manhattan Beach/Highland I’ve never been to this one. (3516 Highland, just south of Rosecrans / map)

An indie* coffee shop that opened in a space vacated by CBTL a few years back. I’ve only been there a couple of times so far, but I’ll definitely be back! I’ve been “working” through their signature drinks. So far my favorite is the Cardigan (coffee with cardamom, a few other things and salt). One of these days I’ll get there early enough to try their pastries.

It looks small from the outside, but there’s actually quite a bit of room inside. Multiple booths and tables for socializing (though it gets echoey), and a counter for solo coffee drinkers and computing. Free WiFi. A few small tables out front.