Okay so yes it's been five months since I posted, but in my defense:

1.) Spring Semester got intense (4.0 for two classes!)
2.) Summer Semester was an eight week hellscape (3.5 for two classes, almost learned to hate databases)
3.) Fall Semester is my first semester of three classes (nine hours) and there's been some adjustment.
4.) ...I moved.

Wait, what?

The last time I posted in April, I was really only thinking seriously about it but without commitment. then Child got a tech support job, and he really wanted to move pretty much anywhere else, which--this being Austin--is not cheap; worse, the areas he wanted to move to were really not cheap and stuffed full of new, shiny, very trendy new complexes which were really really not cheap...none of which either of us could possibly afford on our own, which is when he said we'd split the rent down the middle.

That made it surprisingly doable. For those who know Austin, our final area choices (that at least were vaguely possible, was the North Lamar area south of 290 where a lot of new complexes had and still are popping up and south of the River (South Austin). Downtown was not doable without selling some key organs that don't have backups and cant' be replaced. We also checked a few other areas, but North Lamar was our first choice for a.) the center of everything, b.) buses everywhere and access to the train, and c.) it's just super cool, okay?

The total rent we could afford was $2200: go.

( Apartment Hunting )
( The Two Contenders )
( You Would Not Believe How Relieved I Am For This Turn of Event )
( My Apartment )

I still live in a Box Jungle but I'm sitting on my porch doing homework at night overlooking the pool right now. I've been imagining being here and doing this for months and honestly? It's even better than I thought.

Home Assistant Blue

My Home Assistant Blue shipped and will arrive by April, and I'm trying to work out when I'll have time to transfer Home Assistant from the Pi to it.

Taking a backup of HA on the Pi and moving it to the new device is the easiest method--with Home Assistant, you can genuinely just do that and not lose data or crash--but years of computer and tablet upgrades (and regular nuke-and-scrub of my Ubuntu Server) have taught me the value of starting with a clean slate when it's feasible. There's always extra customization I no longer need or code I refactored but commented out the original or updates to the base code that mean some code no longer works.

See, the thing is, until I finalize, I almost never, ever delete code.

If it's inconvenient or makes a script nightmare long or confusing, I'll move the original to backup, just in case. If it's a minor update, I comment out the old code for at least a few runs or until I forget why the hell I'm keeping it. If it's new code or a minor refactoring, I create a backup first. If it's a full refactoring, I usually create a copy of the original, give it a name like codeName_Refactor or something, and keep the original clean and working until I'm done testing, then rename the original to codeName_old or codeName_orig, rename codeName_Refactor to codeName, and move the old code into a folder. And in some cases, I'll just move all the old code or experimental code that won't quite work to the bottom of the script and just comment it out because there's a chance I'll need it back and it's really annoying to paste code between multiple nano terminal windows.

(In VBA in Excel or Word, I move it all to a module named OldModule and add an 'x' to every sub or function name. In Googledocs, I do the same with Javascript. There is code in both older than two thirds of my nieces and nephews. It's like the code version of hoarding or something IDK.)

A clean slate is maybe the one time I can do housekeeping. After doing all the necessary basic configuration and adding in all my integrations, add-ons, etc into the new device, I can move code over either in entire pages or a piece at a time and reload to make sure it does what I think it does (or work out what the fuck I wrote it for).

Fortunately, Home Assistant makes that incredibly easy; the last time when I got a second Pi to run Home Assistant on, after I finished configuration of the second Pi and it was ready to run, I disabled the integrations that couldn't be run on two HA instances at the same time on the old Pi, then just left them both running while I went through all my custom yaml and python and moved it over sometimes a single function or script at a time.

This, by the way, is my idea of the Best Friday Night Ever.

Depending on time, I'm going to try to write up a detailed step by step tutorial on how to set up Home Assistant on the HA Blue. One of the biggest advantages of buying it--other than supporting open source development and the cool blue case--is that Home Assistant ships on the HA Blue already installed, so it's very much plug and play; you literally plug it in, add ethernet cable, then go to your computer, open a browser, and go to homeassistant.local:8123. That's it. The only things you need to do is if you need z-wave or zigbee functionality is buy either usb sticks or a compatible hub, but if everything in your house is wifi, that's pretty much it for hardware. Now its just onboarding, adding your integrations, and trying out all the different theme colors on your dash.

School

Intro to Computing

We're now in Week 5 of School. I'm currently about a week behind in the Intro to Computing self-paced course but while that was mostly due to work + winter storm + other things, honestly it was also because it was the class I could fall behind without penalty. The class is a basic catch up to current technology and the internet and how to use Office; it's shockingly useful for someone who may be coming back to the workforce or needs an non-terrifying intro into current tech and current internet.

Also, it's the one that is ironically both the most work and also the one that's probably easiest to pass without a super amount of effort, which follows the course's purpose. All you really have to do is do all the activities and also create for yourself an Excel spreadsheet to keep a running calculation on the lowest grade you can afford in each activity and still get an A (or B).

But it is a lot of work. For the first six weeks, each week is
1.) one (1) or two (2) book chapter on something about technology (there are six total chapters)
2.) one (1) graded skills test for each chapter
3.) one (1) graded practice exam for each chapter
4.) one (1) or two (2) of three modules on how to use a Microsoft Office Product (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access). (There are three to five modules per office product in the course.)
5.) one (1) graded project for each module

On top of that:
1.) One (1) Capstone Project for each Office Product: total of 4
2.) One (1) Exam for every two chapters: total of 3\

Except for the practice exams and two-chapter exams, to get an A you really just need to follow the instructions to do the projects like "Create a Flyer" or "Create a Powerpoint Presentation" or "Create a Business Letter". It's auto-graded so you know immediately your grade, you get a report on EXACTLY WHAT IS WRONG AND HOW TO FIX IT, and you get to submit three times and it takes your highest grade. The graded skill test is a graded review; I'm not sure it's possible not to get a perfect score.

The exams are--not so simple. They aren't exams; they're thirty five to a hundred questions, shown one at a time, you cannot stop until you're done and you cannot change your answer once you go to the next question. No, I'm not kidding; I've never been this stressed by testing in my life.

Now, because of the number of activities and the weighting: you can, actually, get a zero on every single exam and as long as you get a perfect grade on all the projects, capstones, and skills test, you can get a D. With the Skills test, perfect scores are built in; with the projects, you get three attempts; my lowest grade on a project is a 97/100 with one attempt left (that I can still do until the end of the semester) but just didn't feel like fighting footnotes for those last three points. THe lowest grade I got on an attempt was an 88 before I fixed the problems; this is not undoable at all.

Right now, for me to get a B, as long as I nail every project and capstone, I can fail every remaining exam (I have two two-chapter exams and three one chapter exams left) with a 52 out of 100 or 14 out of 25 (52%) with an extra two points to spare.

For an A, however, I have to average an 80 on each exam and get a perfect grade on every single project and Capstone that remains, though I have an eight point buffer. The lowest I've gotten on an exam is an 84 out of 100; I shouldn't be worried. I read the chapters; I take notes; I study. It autogrades when you're done and you get a full report with every question and your answer and whether its' right or wrong; you can take the exam up to twice.

But. When you start an exam, you cannot stop; each page has only one question and when you answer it, it goes to the next page and question and you cannot change it; there are many questions, which is good for grade weight but very bad for what is already low-grade paranoia. And I say this as someone who tests insanely fucking well; I have answered questions in ways that baffle even me on wtf I was thinking. I have to pause and think about obvious questions like 'what is a CPU'. It's--something.

I had to stop short in horror because I was asked the question "Which of these represents a billion bytes?" and for the life of me could not work out if it was megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes even though a.) I literally do know this, I spend a lot of my free time doing video editing and ratioing sizes, and b.) If I didn't, all had to do was fucking divide by a 1000 to get kilo, divide again to get mega, divide again and if the answer was greater than 999, tera, otherwise, giga. I can literally do that in my head instantly.

I spent three minutes staring at that question without any idea how to math.

I am not in love with those exams.

Programming Fundamentals

Incredibly fun. Well, for me: for my professor, maybe not.

There are ten projects and three exams, one project for each chapter, each project one to five or so scripts to write to do a thing; we just finished chapter four this week, and as it's an online class without class meetings but with hard deadlines, its' one I can't put off.

But also, it's not one that I really have any ability to put off; this is like falling into a few fandom and reading all the fic. The only reason I'm not reading ahead is spoilers; so far, the only way to keep me on pace is taking notes. Most of it is stuff I know already from writing python, but there's a lot of very basic stuff I skipped that I'm learning now and lots of generalized concepts, so it's great.

Then there's the projects.

The project exercises start with me following the instructions to the letter; that part is fine. But that takes me maybe an hour or two. Projects are assigned on Monday; I'm done reading by Tuesday and have my project done by Wednesday at teh latest. Due date is the next Monday; I have free time.

This time is spent methodically going through my scripts and adding bells and whistles. I challenge myself by trying each time to use every single element in every single chapter and preceding chapter in every script and where there's a will there's a way. Then I start adding bells and whistles. Chapter Three was If/Else, and conditionals are my jam, but at least I couldn't trap you in a script forever; it would, eventually end.

Chapter Four was Loops.

Which make my feelings for conditionals look like vague liking; I adore loops. My C++ class I'd trap people in elaborate loops in that horrifying tic-tac-toe game where the only way out was to work out what character I secretly designated for the only escape. I nest loops like Russian dolls and left to my own devices it would never end.

To be fair, I (mostly) restrained myself in the first two exercises; they're optional repeaters but not horrifying. But my resistance crumbled when it came to the third.

I got to ask the user for input three times. That is Christmas.

Short story: it's now four times longer than the first working draft, lets the user correct their answers as many times as desired, run the program indefinitely, and when they're done output their statistics on how many times they ran the program, how many times they corrected their data during all iterations, and how many times they corrected their data during this iteration before saying goodbye. I spreadsheeted test data to validate all conditions and possibilities. The only reason you can escape is we haven't reached error control yet and I can't use it until we do or that's cheating; right now, they can escape by just entering a string instead of a number and killing the program if they get desperate.

The exercises for Project 3 were all overkill, sure, but they're nothing to Project 4 Exercise 3.

And I can tell you now, it will only get worse from here. I mean, for other people: this is how I have fun on Saturday nights.

So we're now (hopefully) in the tail end of the winter storm that brought down--literally--the state of Texas. Which means I can (hopefully please) go home today.

The Setting

So because of the probability my apartment would lose power and water fairly quickly in a winter storm, Child, the bunnies, the puppy, and I went to my Mom's house to stay what I thought would be to Monday and what Child worried might be Wednesday so as not to freeze to death and also be hydrated.

(As it's Friday now, we were both very wrong about the timeframe. And also how bad it would get because holy shit.)

My apartment lost power I think at some point Sunday; my middle sister's apartment was the same. So as of Sunday night, my mom's house contained:
1.) three daughters
2.) one BIL
3.) four of six grandchildren (Child was staying with a friend he was helping move)
4.) three dogs (one mom's, one youngest sister's, one mine)
5.) six rabbits
6.) two cats.
Total:
Humans: 8
Pets: 11

Monday night, above with addition of:
1.) two (2) grandchildren, as the power went out at Child's friend's apartment so they went to their respective parents/grandparents, and my eldest niece, who lives with her dad, lost water and power.
2.) one (1) cats who does not belong here but stalks the house until a door opens and we gave up.
Total:
Humans: 10
Pets: 12

Tuesday night, above with addition of:
1.) two (2) neighborhood friends of my middle nephew (age 12)
Humans: 12
Pets: 12

Utilities Sometimes Optional

Fortunately, we didn't lose power except for about four hours on Tuesday morning (I think?) but we lost internet on Sunday and water Wednesday night. Internet came back veerrrrry early Thursday morning. Water is still pending.

My sister's apartment got both back sometime Wednesday afternoon, so she, BIL, and two of four grandkids went home that night. My apartment came back up yesterday but is going down again today for repairs at an unknown time for an unknown period of time and I don't even know. I just want to go home so much.

So That Happened

So I've visited Chicago in winter (I was prepped by Madelyn beforehand) and in my late teens I was an exchange student to Finland August to January, so I am distantly conversant with temperatures below 30F. Vaguely. As in I remember it happened.

But I cannot say enough that it happening here was utterly insane.

On Saturday night, there was a light sprinkling of snow on the ground that continued through Sunday; Sunday night, it apparently started snowing more. At 2:19 AM Monday morning, my sister told me to look outside and after a glance outside, I woke up in the house to come look. There was a blanket of snow on the ground. On a metal folding chair in the backyard, snow had piled, it was roughly five inches.

Austin had the third highest snowfall in its history at five (six?) inches; on my phone, the temperature went down to 6F on Monday and 4F on Tuesday. The official low was apparently 9F, which seriously is still insane.

The entire state is still reeling. There are still people without power; there are even more without water. We're on a boil notice in Austin and doubtless in other parts of Texas (excluding El Paso and the panhandle, who are part of the national grid and therefore were actually functional.

People froze to death. Others died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their vehicles trying to stay out of the cold. There's a not zero chance we'll find people who starved to death before this is over. The grocery stores--if you can get to one--are stripped bare and the state of delivery trucks seems to be 'pending'.

Pipes have burst, causing flooding in apartments and houses and the street. There are tree branches falling, in the process of falling, or are going to fall literally everywhere, which is a problem if a car or house are beneath them. Repeat that but with whole trees, which aren't as many but in relation to a car or house are even worse.

We actually don't know the extent of the aftermath yet; some people are still dumping snow in the toilet for flushing purposes; if you have electricity, you may or may not be boiling it first. Because I couldn't stop myself, I went to check the news and also noted the disaster continues for agriculture, livestock...well, everything.

Notes

I am unbelievably lucky that I could go to my mom's house, because my apartment, like most places in Texas, isn't made for these kinds of temperatures, especially without power, especially without power for roughly four and a half days. We were astronomically lucky that my Mom's house never lost power, which is actually weird.

So her house and some unknown number in this neighborhood are part of the grid that apparently couldn't be taken down during the failed attempt at rolling blackouts because, unlike most parts of Austin, they couldn't bring the power back up after. So far as we can work out, it's something to do with how old this neighborhood is; it's at minimum fifty years old and probably north of sixty; only a few streets away is the house we lived in when I was five years old before we moved into the country: that was forty years ago and it wasn't new then.

Which means that if our power and the neighborhood's power had gone out, that would (possibly?) mean that the electric grid was entirely FUBAR'ed instead of only mostly--like now--which I am very glad I didn't know.

The temperature outside right now is 34F. The snow is melting, and it doesn't feel real. Living it didn't feel real either, though, so no surprise there.

Texas Tribune: Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from catastrophic months long blackouts, officials say

IT IS SNOWING! WITH SNOWFLAKES!

So news:

1.) I let Child get a snake. Yeah.

He was sort of owed it, tbh. After I hurt my back and up to today, he's taken over most of the housework and cooking. It's not that I can't now, but that I have to be very moderate in how often I bend over or carry anything since part of the problem is my posture is still in progress. So yes: snake.

It's a tiny ball python he named Belt, a thematic companion to his tiny lizard Boots and the psycho iguana who lives in my room that I can't remember the name of. This is my life: there is a snake in the apartment.

2.) For comfort, I'm rewatching select Spartacus scenes (aka anything Agron and Nasir and/or men fighting with swords). I recommend this form of therapy very heartily. Can't lie, I can happily watch Agron (or like, the entire cast) walk around in loincloths or naked or sweat through battle.

Say what you like about modern warfare improvements, the clothing sucks, as in, people wear way too much. I see no reason bazookas are incompatible with a Roman kilt or comfortable loincloth, maybe some strategically applied oil.

I have to admit, however, how often the actors were allowed to eat. I'm guessing on alternate days?

Agron and Nasir playlist for anyone who needs that kind of thing in their lives (everyone?).

Adding my favorite vid: Leave Me Blind by Mary Bell - warning for fast, fast cutting like a lot, so if you're sensitive to that, be aware now. Not super explicitly violent, but putting out a whee for inclusion of Nasir's grief-driven fight scene.

Beautiful choice of clips, fantastic narrative, and I love the building up of tension to the climax. But again, this is all fast cuts.

Adding because I'm watching it in repeat: 1:43 to 2:04 is impressive as hell. The clipping leading to it from 1:31 is good and hits paydirt at 1:43 like no one's business.

So super-cool PT appointment in which I had my first dry needle treatment, which I've been looking forward to trying. As she did it, she explained the different types, then what it does, which everyone who's done it already knows but I didn't. She also did manipulation of the muscles around the spine, and we talked about the possibility of scheduling a therapeutic massage. Apparently, we do have them at the downtown and Round Rock clinic and at $65 an hour, that's pretty reasonable, and my insurance and its clinics are very strict on COVID-19 restrictions, so it's very safe.

(At least two or three people in my Flist or DW Circle trained for therapeutic massage and yeah, I expect to pay for the skill and education it takes to do that job and would not feel reassured if it was any lower. Frankly, I would have expected higher and assume part of that is offset by my insurance. I just need to check if my health savings account covers that. If it does, and my first appointment goes well, I need to change my witholdings next year to cover one a few times a year.

I think this is going well. The process is going to be slow and I have to remind myself I'm not going to notice progress much except by absence.

In other news, we're at two episodes of GBBO, and I was going to restrain myself but that so isn't happening I think.

Random observations since I'm sometimes going out of order to follow storylines:

1.) I hate Beverly Barlowe so much. She's lied to herself so much about her own intentions--and that of the Consortium--that she actually believes they have good intentions. She also believes that good intentions always matter and justify anything. And when she has to acknowledge that hey, they don't always, it's an exception and not her fault.

2.) OTOH, I was surprised to realize that Henry's actions after his GF's death, though imprudent and thoughtless, weren't nearly as bad as I remembered or thought. His intentions weren't necessarily always noble, but they weren't always driven by revenge or even that tiny streak of power that comes standard for scientists in Eureka. His actions were sometimes questionable, but most of what happened with him came to 'things he almost did or thought about' most of which he didn't do and sometimes even chose not to do, which I can't hold against him.

Overall, he caused a lot less damage himself personally, and contributed to even less, than pretty much any scientist in Eureka on a bad day. Far more important, when given the choice, he chose to do the right thing and acknowledged he'd made bad choices. And honestly, in balance? He tried to be worse than he was and failed; he's just fundamentally not a selfish egomaniacal, or immoral guy, and it says a lot about him that to get him even close took a massive and extremely condensed trauma.

Yes, I was mad he went to prison. At worst, he should have gotten like, a disappointed speech from Carter, which yes is painful but that's what you get for lying to your friends. Carter totally deserved half an hour of being verbally disappointed over beer with Henry.

(I love Henry and Carter's friendship so much; Henry perfectly understands Carter and effortlessly translates for him when needed for geekspeakers. And they're so fun together. And I hugely appreciate how marriage/relationships for them both actually added to them and their relationship instead of pulling them apart or cutting into it. The depressing thing is that I think the only show I remember that managed that balance well was fucking Friends.)

(Note: I do absolve Henry for pure selfishness in taking Carter's memories of the lost years. One, he did ask first and two, Carter was in fact on the edge of crazy and while yes, Henry did want more freedom to do his thing, he was also aware Carter was suffering like he was and genuinely didn't want him to go through this if he didn't have to. Whereas, however misguided, Henry did think his suffering was for a greater purpose.)

3.) Nathan Stark's death was gutting this time around the way it wasn't before. Multiple rewatch, I paid a lot more attention to him and honestly, his coming to Eureka felt like the end sequence of a character arc where the arrogant character realizes how much he lost and starts coming to terms with it and fixing his life. I have thoughts on this but they're disorganized, so yeah.

And I do better appreciate Nathan with Allison. He's arrogant, selfish, scientifically classist, but he also is trying--with success--to get better and it shows. Not around Carter, but to give him credit, Carter is very obviously going after Alison and Allison is showing interest so I can see why he's reverting around him.

4.) Related, I felt terrible for Allison even more this time around. Watching again, it's fairly obvious on the wedding ep that she's massively overexcited but trying to be casual and whatever when no, she was not. She was getting back the second great love of her life (Allison is A-type; she's sure as fuck isn't going to be limited to just one; she gets three and deserves them all).

(This explains a lot about her planning with Carter on their wedding; this time she was milking every drop of joy she could get openly and without shame.)

5.) Zane before and after the 1947 are way more different than I thought.

( this time, it's all about zane, thanks miss porcupine )

I have so many feelings.

So here is what I learned: my back is probably fine, in itself.

The problem is my hips and related muscles.

The following were performed for her totally professional amusement after she did resistance checking of my legs, feet, and toes:

1.) get on the ball of my foot, lift the other leg, and kind of bounce my heel up and down
2.) repeat with other leg
3.) bend over from standing position
4.) bend backward from standing position
5.) lay down and pull my bent knee to my opposite shoulder
6.) repeat with other leg
other numbers.) I don't remember exactly but variations

From what she said after evaluating me, checking my flexibility, and asking me a series of questions and me volunteering more related to my answers: my back is uninjured, no vertebrae are being sketchy, nothing unaligned, etc. Good. The problem is my hips are stiff as fuck and my back has been pressed into compensatory service for way too long in ways that are not in the original design. There could (maybe?) be other problems but she's pretty sure its asshole hips.

Basically, my hips are hurting my back and need some correction to be brought to stop their freeloading ways.

Example (used several times in different variations):
Her: Your hips are immobile doing [this thing]
Me: What are they supposed to do?
Her: *look of very professional 'oh boy'*

Having a very very tight hamstring (all my life) has been a problem and did not help, which combined with stiff hips is why I was also having periods of intense left leg (rarely but sometimes, right leg) pain that felt like a nerve was being sawed along its length from hip to knee (or sometimes, mid-calf) for weeks or months at a time over the last few years.

So my orders: get a three foot long foam roller and while supporting myself full-length, roll my body, hips to knees, on top of it for thirty seconds on all four sides (face up, face down, and on my sides with only the necessary upper body parts touching the floor to keep myself aloft upon the roller (when on my sides, the opposite foot gets to help!). Then a series of simple exercises ('sit on bed with feet on floor, straighten so your pelvis is over your hips, and flex your foot for thirty seconds' for each foot; 'using your bed, place folded leg on bed and other foot on floor, lean over folded leg and slide folded leg forward without moving foot on floor' and others helpfully sent with my after-visit summary and report. Pelvis over the hips is super important to more than one).

When she took out the foam roll and demonstrated how to use it on all four sides:
Me: What's this for again?
Her: It will help loosen your muscles before the exercises.

After rolling myself over foam roller on all four sides mostly successfully from a certain point of view:
Me: Wait. Am I being tenderized like a steak?
Her: Yes.

So in short, 'tenderize, then exercise' is the solution to the pressing 'hips like idek'. And PT once a week for a while. Sometimes with dry needles: I am honestly looking forward to it. It just sounds cool.

I have to admit, this does help give context to all the times people say 'bend from the hips not the back' like that was something bodies did. Apparently, that's a real thing you can do and not some kind of weird way to annoy me with nonsense; the more you know.

And that explains something: after Child was born I took jazz dance for one of my college credits and also to help fix my balance and endurance. I told the teacher I had a bad back sometimes--that started coincidentally after I quit athletics when I was sixteen--and so she'd come to assist or watch me with some of the positions and moves and see if I needed to skip any. I never did, actually, and I forgot all about my back.

Part of this was because I was fucking exhausted; to keep up, I'd go an hour before class to do the stretches she taught us and then the entire warm-up routine, so in class I'd be less obviously really bad at using my body on beat. But the actual reason is now kind of horribly obvious.

By the time that class ended--it was an nine week summer course--I could not only touch my toes, but flatten my hands on the floor, and I could do a split on a turn from the barre to the floor with either leg forward, things I had never in my life been able to come close to doing or even thought possible without literally cutting those muscles. I was eighty percent getting to the front split, maybe closer. That's just the dramatic stuff; there were a ton of things my body apparently could actually do and boy was I surprised every time.

And she taught us the single most useful exercise I learned, that I've been trying and trying to work out why I can't manage since I strained my back; no matter what I do, I can't get the position to start it. I used to do it often years ago and it was only when my PT therapist was talking about hips near the end of the visit that I realized what the problem was.

For the exercise you stand away from the barre and bend over, grab the barre, then do a slow motion arch and release by muscle group up and down your back from hips to neck. She watched me doing that one, and to teach me, she'd put a hand on my back to indicate where to tighten or release in sequence.

(When it comes to movement, I'm a very physical learner. As in, for a lot of things, after demonstrating it for us all, she'd take me aside and physically move my body herself until my body clicked. Reinforce that shit with a beat, and I could easily keep up with the class when performing no matter the speed, whereas without music, I was always too slow. When I played basketball and was a cheerleader, same thing for anything very new. I got better at translating it, but if pressed for time, more than once, a teammate took me aside and physically moved my body through something that I just wasn't able to get no matter how many times I watched.)

I loved those back exercises; it took a lot of control, but it relaxed the fuck out of my back after (and felt like my whole body), and by the time class ended, I could do it going from flat footed to the ball of my foot and back both in sequence and during the exercise without thinking about it. I could do the entire exercise mid-floor without the barre before class was done. It was part of my pre-class routine, in fact, as soon as I learned it well enough to use it. Afterward, all my stretches were much easier and I could more easily perform a lot of the positions and steps.

Today, I realized:
To get to that initial position--back straight, arms stretched full length to hold the barre, upper body perpendicular to the floor--I need to bend at the hips, which very obviously I could do then pretty goddamn well and completely forgot was humanly possible since. It was, in fact, a necessary component for most of the stretches I used to do and haven't been able to while wondering why why why.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why the hell I didn't realize that until now. Seriously, what the fuck.

In between my last post and now, I have a.) thrown out my back again, b.) six days after breaking a tooth and so needed to make a dentist appointment which was c.) the day after I threw out my back.

However, my life is not all disintegrating body and the slow encroachment of insanity:
1.) I now play Animal Crossing with my Switch, and yes, it's worth it.
2.) I got my NVIDIA Shield TV Pro

Due to the first sentence of this entry, all I managed until this week was basic setup, getting streaming up, and my Plex server transferred over. This week, however, I got to finally sit down and pay attention to it as well as actually make my Plex server work correctly.

NVIDIA Shield Android TV

If you're in the market for a premium media streamer, consider the NVIDIA Shield TV, retailing at $149.99 ($129.99 on random sale) or NVIDIA Shield TV Pro, $199.99 on the very rare times it's in stock.

Currently it is not in stock pretty much anywhere (as of right now, could change at literally any second) but it goes in and out of stock at random intervals. Much like the Nintendo Switch, the reason is that whenever a site updates to say they have it, bots buy them immediately and then they're sold for twice to five times their price on Amazon and Ebay.

The story of how I got my Pro (and my Switch for that matter) involve the website NowInStock, SlickDeals alerts, and absolutely normal human behavior that in retrospect isn't odd, worrisome, or alarming.

( it's all very normal here )

Moving on.

I wanted the Shield Pro for one reason: Shield TV was the only streamer whose Plex client app could consistently stream and transcode 4K and Dolby Atmos media, and the Pro model came with the ability to run a Plex Server on it as well as play Plex content. I'm a simple girl with simple needs who Paypal also foolishly issued a shiny new credit card and a separate no-interest credit line less than three months ago and I hadn't really gotten a chance to use.

(No idea what the hell they were thinking, either, but here we are.)

Which is why, to my own shock, I am not starting my review with All the Plex; I'm going to start with what I didn't even care about when I bought it; the media streamer and Android TV box.

The Media Streamer (and Android Box)

The price tag is high for a media steamer, yes, which may be part of the reason why I didn't at any point consider it something that could also play Netflix.

Comparatively speaking, media streamers are among the cheapest Way To Get Entertainment On Our TV Not Involving an Antenna. If you wandered with dinosaurs like me and remember Olden Days, a VCR was expensive even on the low end for almost a decade even at Wal-Mart. DVD players and then Bluray players got cheap much faster, but media streamers... you don't even need a separate machine; it can come free on your TV, and I mean TVs under $200 at the last big Amazon sale. You can stream on your tablet or phone, or pick up a FireTV tablet for under $50 to do it on. All you need is an internet connection and if you don't want to pay for your stream service, there are free ones.

When it comes to quality media streamers that require you pay money, the competition isn't exactly light, either; they include:

1.) FireTV 4K Stick, $49.99, and frequently on sale for half that price. Just as importantly, it can easily and without effort gateway you into the cheapest Surround Sound Home Theater possible, which I talked about in this entry; specifically, a Dolby Atmos Home Theater system for as low $179.97 if you buy two Echo Dots and an Echo Sub during one of Amazons extremely frequent sales. That, by the way, is less than the price of one (1) Sonos One speaker. And that price includes the Fire TV 4K stick.

2.) Chromecast Ultra, $69.99; like, half my friends that don't have a Amazon Prime have on of these, and more than a few have both.

3.) Roku Ultra, $79.99 and comes with free headphones; Roku was my gateway drug into media streamers because they gave me a mid-range one free when I signed up for three months of Sling TV.

4.) Apple TV, $179; frankly, this being Apple, that's almost the equivalent of a Wal-Mart low end VCR price circa 1989. I have heard it's awesome, but no idea. When I finally sold my soul, it was to a mega corporation that was technically within my income bracket. Also, after testing our apps on iPhones at work for almost five years, I genuinely want to collect them all and catapult them into the sun along with Apple Headquarters and the literal apple fruit, just to assure the very memory of apples will die. I dream about it sometimes; I'm always so happy until I wake up.

These are just the first and most popular that came into my head by major companies and been around for years. The market is not light on media streamers, is what I'm saying.

The Shield TV is more a premium Android TV box, made for geeks to enjoy and also Plex, which lets face it, is geeky as fuck even though everyone pretends its super consumer grade, whatever. And yeah, it also you can do some streaming, I guess.

The thing is, while I knew theoretically it was an Android TV Box (which I didn't care about) that also played Netflix (which I had like, several things that could do that) and did other things, I--didn't care. At all. I was in this for Plex; the Plex Server you could install on the Pro could stream all my 4K and even Dolby Atmos or at least Dolby 5.1 sound.

So when I did set up, it was all prep for moving my Plex server over, and so I was genuinely shocked when I went ahead and automatically entered my logins for Prime and Netflix--they were right there, why not?--and since I was testing anyway, went ahead and opened Prime to watch a few minutes of one of the shows I'd watched most recently.

(Spoiler: it would be several hours before seperis remembered Plex existed.)

The Shield is many many (many) notches above my FireTV 4K Stick and a mid-rise building above my TV's streaming apps in quality. Not like "oh, this seems better" but stop and stare before hitting back to make sure this wasn't a high-res version I hadn't ever seen before that just appeared.

In the almost three weeks using it and one week actually sitting down to examine it and playing Netflix and Prime through it, there's a considerable increase in overall picture quality and crispness and amazing consistency on most--not all--of the shows I had watched recently enough to make a definite comparison; if 4K is available, I can get it clear and crisp without artifacts, skipping, or loss of speed. If 5.1 sound is available, I get it. I also noticed--though three weeks is no proof over the long term--there's been no buffering, no stuttering, and no stopping.

Among the many many settings I've just started to explore is AI upscaling of non-4K content. I enabled it when I was doing initial setup because why not, but generally, I don't notice a difference on most shows. This--this, I noticed, because I'd been rewatching Leverage on Prime on the FireTV stick, which is why it was my test stream for the Pro. It wasn't just 'huh, I think that looks better'. It was stop and stare at the screen; it was cleaner, crisper, and while no, even it could not fix IMDB's fuckup of the subtitles, man, the picture....

I tested with Bones, Psyche, and a few random shows as well, and while I definitely know Psyche and Bones look better, it's been too long since I last watched to know exactly how much, just definitely "better, amount unknown"

Interesting note: on the Shield TV, Netflix and Prime don't nag me when I watch too many episodes and ask snottily if I'm still watching (Netflix) or return to the intro page of the current episode and do nothing until I interact or it turns off (Prime). I accidentally streamed all five seasons of Leverage end to end without interruption and Shield's Prime app didn't stop me. 'Accidentally' up until I woke up the next morning circa ep 2-3 of season two, realized Leverage was still playing, I was working from home, sod decided to leave it on and check in every hour to see how long it would let me. That would be first heist to very last, friends.

Netflix, I tested it with--I think Great British Bake-off?--and Child checked out his regular anime. There was no nagging to ask if I'm still watching, though only to about a season and a half there before I remembered hey, I should try out why I bought it, my Plex server. That yes, I'd belatedly finally loaded when the shock wore off (around two-three in the morning) but as work and other stuff interfered, I hadn't had a chance to do more than basic configuration.

The Shield Home screen is fully customizable; you can pick what apps you want to show or get rid of, there's a huge library of apps, games--cut me some slack, for reasons I'll do another entry on, getting the Plex Server running was easy, but getting my media on it--not so much.

I'm actually kind of glad I finally decided to accept reality and get the Shield to run my Plex Server. Otherwise, I never would have ever bought it for just streaming media or Android TV when my FireTV Stick seemed to be doing everything I needed for streaming and Android TV is sort of--something that exists. And I'm saying this after only a week of active work with it, and ninety percent of that was getting my Plex Server up and running. I haven't even really explored advanced features. I mean, I have but I keep finding new ones.

Now, we'll talk about Plex before I get inspired to write some examples and end up playing with the settings until dawn.

Plex, finally

My original reason for this purchase.

Up until now, when Plex was on Watson Server and then my Pi, all of them--servers and TV--hardlined on ethernet to my router, I couldn't reliably stream 4K content and had buffering sometimes even with 1080p. I could unreliably get 5.1 sound but mostly it was 2.1. There was a lot of transcoding going on where it would basically downgrade my stream to make it play. Nothing I did helped, and even after I read the article I linked below on the only thing that would work (I read it last year), I refused to believe it and kept trying.

After so much googling, however, I finally got a clear answer on exactly why I couldn't by sheer work fix it; the problem was both the Plex server and the Plex client apps on most TVs and media streamers.


1.) The Plex Client App

The Plex app on media streamers, gaming consoles, SmartTVs, etc isn't generally developed and maintained by Plex, but by the company--Amazon, for example, on the FireTV--and that means its subject to the limits of the streamer, whatever their developers decide to do/not do, and when/if they felt like updating it when Plex updates, and Plex wasn't necessarily a high priority. Enough people used it that it was worth having the client app, but it's still firmly in geek territory and wouldn't be a deciding factor for most non-geek people. Whereas fa media streamer lives and dies on the ability of the general consumer to access and watch Netflix, Disney+, Sling, Prime, HBO, you get the idea.

As it turns out, the only Plex client app that everyone (in Plex land) consistently said worked perfectly with the server was Plex for Windows, which was made by Plex and you can download on their site. It was the only app that I could almost get what I wanted: it could stream 4K and 7.1 sound, since my laptop could get both, but that meant the only place I could watch my own media in the original resolution was on my laptop or possibly, my phone.

Which brings me to...

2.) The Plex Media Server.

( but first, a story )

Short version: oh hell yes.

The Shield runs the Plex server like I always dreamed. It can play everything in my library at the highest resolution and audio that my TV and my laptop can do. Last night, I tested it with multiple streams with a friend and one 4K rip and one 720p encode of Oceans 8.

It played the 4K with Dolby Atmos to me on my laptop and also simultaneously--and effortlessly-- transcoded the 720p encode of the same movie for a friend fifteen miles away with no stuttering, no stopping, no buffering. And the transcoding problem, I remind you, is why I flirted with--very briefly--buying a chip that cost half my laptop's price (not including the rest of the hardware needed for a server, God). The Shield not only does better than the chip would have and cost me at least eighty percent less than the CPU, the Shield is also less than half the size of a Playstation and fits on my small wall mounted entertainment center (aka Fancy Shelf that looks cool and I'm scared to put too much weight on and collapse the wall or something. It won't, no, i had this checked its in the studs. I just don't trust it).

There Are Some Issues Though

Now the other parts.

1.) It's more complicated to set up than a Fire TV or Chromecast.

Not because initial setup is hard; it's pretty much effortless, you'll have Netflix, Prime, Disney, Vudu, Sling, whatever, up and running as easily as any other media streamer. This is more--a side effect of the Shield being what it is.

You see, it's ready to interact with the latest TV and sound system to give you the home theater of your dreams. And if you happen to have a 4K TV less than two years old with HDR 2.0 and all the video bells and whistles, you'll be delighted how easy it is. And even some older than two years might be fine.

Some, however...might take some finagling.

Totally random example: If, say, your 4K TV is two and a half years old, you might click on Netflix and after a moment, check Prime and the other streams since there is definitely still color, it's like color if all media was viewed through a soft grey mist. Like being doomed to watch a Snyder film or one with gritty filter for the rest of your life.

The colors are dull, is what I'm saying. Prime, Netflix, Plex, everything.

Now, this is fixable! It's easy! There are instructions! This issue has been thoroughly discussed! It's not complicated!

a.) Using the instructions for your TV model, you may need to go into your TV Settings and change one or two or two items under Video/Display.

b.) After that, you can look on your TV or on the website or google for info on your TV's video specs, then you open the Shield TV Settings and under video/display, there's a glorious list of all the video profiles possible and you just have to find the one that matches, activate it, done! Yes, it really is there!

But.

I say this as someone who loves complicated configuration shit: this isn't complicated, it's not hard, it's boring, breathtakingly so, like watching paint dry on snails who are so slow they may actually have died years ago, but unable to conform that, you have to just keep watching. Not forever. I mean, so they say.

You see, they really do seem to have all the profiles possible, and by that I mean, I really do hope that's true because there are so many holy God. Yes, you could go and research your TV specs and use that to help but--this is the one time it may not be not worth it. Sometimes the official specs are--not entirely accurate (or lying their asses off) and that's the parts of the profile that I didn't have to research to find out what words meant, and I mean, these were words I thought I knew. Apparently I did not. Sure, it might help--but honestly, I'm not betting on it.

So unless your career is in Video Tech Shit As Relates to TVs and Screens (and Lying TV Making Corporations), it's probably a matter of simply starting at the top and trying every one or--if you're incredibly lucky--your googling sent you to where someone who has your TV model already fixed this. Again, not hard at all, and very likely if your TV is from a major retailer it's going to be fairly fast, but the older your TV and the less billions the company that made it is worth, the farther down the list you'll have to go.

Of course, this may not be a problem for you! Just--its' possible.

2.) It's Origins as a Geek Machine Are Kind of Obvious

The thing is, this is an attraction for me in this case, one that I didn't even know I wanted, but even among ultra geeks, we all have spots where we want simple, consumer grade, not requiring us to do more than hit obvious buttons or choose from a very few very obvious, pre-selected options and call it a day. Sometimes, you want to build a murderbot with proximity awareness, but sometimes, Amazon has a sale and you get a Roomba, strap a nerf gun to it, and call it good. Sure, you have to pretend you don't secretly love your much cleaner carpet and floors, that it's really all about the nerf gun and irony, but it's a cute, low-effort robot that also cleans. Dude, I get you; when we were kids, we all wanted a robot best friend. Roomba is pretty close, even though it won't scare all the mean kids and make them pay for making fun of me some hypothetical child. It's late--noon, I mean, early. Something.

Moving on.

The problem is, if some visiting friend hacked your roomba and suddenly you had access to the firmware and could edit or replace it with your own custom configurations, fuck clean floors; you'd be mathing up how many kitchen knives would fit on it or training your furry pet army while making them tiny velcro boots like, yesterday. We're geeks; if we're careful and avoid temptation, we can mimic normal, but one roomba firmware hack and hello cat army, a mild case of scruvy, and a somewhat alarming drop in sanity conditions in our homes that some might characterize as 'incompatible with human life' and then it's all dramatic hazmat suits and a potential ripped from the headlines made for tv movie based on a true story.

We're geeks; it happens.

(I genuinely anticipate and am terrified of the day I buy a house and therefore must buy all my own major appliances, because yes, they will inevitably be wifi enabled and honest to God, I don't know how long it will be before I try to hack my goddamn oven to flash it with something open source that I can edit at will with a command line option and scripting capability. It will be glorious, at least until I die of food poisoning from a badly programmed fridge or my kitchen appliances revolt, declares themselves autonomous beings, and execute me for sentient being rights violations dating from the day I put fish in the microwave and forgot it for three days.

I'm a geek; it happens.

Don't buy smart major appliances, you say? Tell me not to breathe; it's not about 'want' but 'must'. I don't want to in the traditional sense, but I will because that's what's going to happen when I'm in that store. I'll be asking for wifi specs while significantly lowering my credit score and googling how to flash a refrigerator before the delivery guy finishes hooking it up (the oven and washer/dryer guys haven't even arrive yet). Will I have any idea what I'm doing? No, of course not; not even a guess, my dude. And that won't stop me? That has literally not once in my entire life so much as slowed me down; in fact, you might say it's an inducement to continue my education.)

Anyway.

It's not that the Shield isn't almost basic consumer-level now; the veneer is almost complete. If you're not a geek, you might not even notice and wouldn't care. There's maybe one or two things the average consumer might need to google about (like the color thing, but it's not really that common).

However, if you have any geek tendencies that like to come out at random....I was googling how to enable ssh this week (you have to jailbreak it, which I am not ashamed to say I bookmarked, just you know, no reason) and there are settings in there and capabilities that make my fingers itch. Again, the only reason I cared this existed was the Plex server; I spent an hour the other doing nothing but going through all the menus in the settings and did it again two days ago when I accidentally found something new.

Yeah, I'm having a blast.

So at work, they upgraded eight of the phones we use for app testing, and I am the proud not-owner-but-keeper of:

Upgraded
Three (3) iPhone 11
Two (2) iPhone 11 Pro
Two (2) Samsung Galaxy S10+
One (1) Samsung Galaxy Note 10

Not Upgraded For Regression Testing
One (1) Samsung Galaxy S8
One (1) iPhone 7

How Did This Go Wrong, Though?

I'm glad you asked.

When we order phones for testing, they are in a different group from work phones aka phones used as phones for work.

The initial and first upgrade, they came to us, I charged them, transferred the SIM cards from the old phones to the new, upgraded the OS, installed the App Center where test builds of the mobile apps we test are uploaded and we download for testing, etc. Easy.

This time, the Samsung phones performed as always. The iPhones...did so very not.

The iPhones were locked down like a Crusader's wife in a chastity belt. The second I turned them on to do the welcome and they connected with the internet, they downloaded the Work Profile and you can literally do nothing with the iPhones but make calls; you can't even change the wallpaper. It wasn't just locked down in general; everything I need to do, including download the Apple Store to get anyconnect so we can test over VPN and install the test profile--nope.

Me: Fuck my life.

Here's where it gets complicated: I don't know how we get these phones.

The state buys them, sure, I know what department does ordering, and there's a name on the box of who made the order, but that just tells me who was in charge of ordering shit that day in IT not who actually gave or approved the order. This is like the work version of fairies dropping off shit in the night; I still don't know entirely how I got all those USB cords I wrote about in an earlier entry, I just sent off the list with prices picked from Official Major Retailer Wholesale Book and sent the email out to my manager. I know who I got the book from, and I know it was sent to IT (another IT group), but after that, it may be witchcraft or something.

(My manager also doesn't know, because they don't tell him. He just sends it to IT and witchcraft, as I said.)

The Journey Begins Here

Manager, Part I

Me: *explains*
Manager: ...
Manager: Let's start with help desk.
Me: This is going to take a while, I think.

The IT Help Desk: The Ticket

I say this with respect; they aren't qualified to deal with this because this does not fall under their area, they have nothing to do with phones. This is literally nothing to do with them; this part of IT deals with passwords and permissions and resets and software installs. But that's where I had to start because witchcraft.

First, I explained what I wanted; then I explained my job; then I explained how my job (testing mobile apps) related to the iPhones. I don't blame them--a surprising number of people don't realize software does not fall from the sky like manna, much less there's a testing process and help desk simply does not deal with any of this--but it took a while. They made a ticket and said wait. They were great.

Me: This isn't going to work.

Ticket Answered: The IT Guy

The IT Guy has been helping me with a variety of things I want to do with a work laptop that is inexpertly locked down after far too many times, I unknowingly hacked it and had to stop and belatedly find out if I was breaking state law or work rules. I won't apologize for wanting certain things in a certain way in my workspace. Seriously, that was stressing.

(IT Guy is Awesome.)

Now, IT Guy does know my job, but again, help desk does not do this; their job is going in and fix people doing weird shit or installing software if we get special permission or reset our password when we enter it three times in capslock--that kind of thing. After a lot of chatting, he sent it to Mobile IT.

Me: ...oh God no

Mobile IT: The Reckoning

Mobile IT Guy was also awesome, but now we run into a problem. He does know phones for work use; he knows about mobile apps the state creates that clients use; he does not know about the testing process of those apps that clients use or that there existed a category of mobile phones that are for testing.

So I had to explain my job--twice--then how no, these aren't phones that clients can borrow in offices to use the app, and no, this ins't my work phone, it's a test phone. He was baffled; I didn't blame him.

He did however realize this bullshit.

Him: [Analyst] might help.
Me: Thank you!
Me: *after hanging up* I am never getting these phones unlocked.

Manager Part II

I called him to shorten the horror.

Me: They said to call [Analyst]. Can you email her and find out if she's our person?
Him: Sure.
Him: *emails the IT ticket to her asking for help*
Me: Thanks!
Me: *after seeing email* He forgot to tell her who we are, what we do, and what we want.
Me: I hate fucking everything.

The Analyst

She emails promptly, properly baffled, and I broke down my job, what the phones were for, why we can't use them like this, and asked if she was the right person or if she knew who we should contact. I did not cry.

Her: [Name] might help. I'll forward your email.
Me: This is Hell and...wait, I recognize that name.

The Name I Recognize

Him: Oh, they just need to be removed from Mobile IT's list. Send me the serial numbers and I'll do it.
Me: You're fucking with me.

Aftermath

Now, they're still working on it, but. It took me a few seconds to realize why I knew his name. When we first got testing phones for mobile--that's almost five years ago--his name was on the Galaxy 5 boxes. I had to look at it every day for two-ish years before our first upgrade and apparently, it stuck. None since--they have some random name of someone that I'm not sure even works for the state--but that first shipment, it was him.

I went to look at his profile in outlook. I still have no idea how his department, area, and unit have anything to do with this--his job title is not helpful--or how my testing phones got into Mobile IT or what kind of hellscape this is; all I learned is his name and that he can Do Shit With Mobile Testing Phones. And this poor man now has been labeled in my Contact List as just that.

Sure, my iPhones are still useless, but I did beat bureaucracy, so there's that.

But I still have no idea how we're getting these phones.

My desk is here!

For context: Rolling Adjustable Laptop Desk

For convenience if you look at the picture, we'll have the desk parts be long side and short side since it'll be different if you're left or right handed.

( About Assembly And Initial Use - A Breakdown )
( Deskness - The Good and the Less Than Good )
( A Charming Angle-Based Anecdote )
( Deskness - The Good and Less Than Good II )

Having said that: so far, have attached the clamps for the power strip and the portable monitor stand. When I have it properly configured, will post pics.

Portable Monitor Triumph

Update!

Back in Stock!

Lepow Upgraded 15.6 Inch IPS HDR 1920 x 1080 FHD Computer Display Game Screen is now back in stock! Price: $204.99

Note: camelcamelcamel shows its lowest price as $169.99 on January 3, 2020, well before Coronavirus was a thing in the US, and its highest at $209.98 on Mar 17, 2020, which corresponds with the near beginning of Coronavirus work at home becoming mainstream. In other words, it may go down to that again but probably not very soon.

I will enthusiastically repeat my rec: if you're looking for a second monitor for work that can also be useful for non-work stuff, this one is great, and Lepow is a brand I've never had a bad experience with. However:

ASUS MB169B+ 15.6" Full HD 1920x1080 IPS USB Portable Monitor - this is available like new from Amazon Warehouse for $180.49 and new for $199.99 with Prime Shipping.

The only reason I'm mentioning this one is that it was on my short list originally because greater than two review sites had it on their top ten list for portable monitors and it wasn't available for a while. And it's ASUS; they're extremely well known, and personally, my first tablet came from them and not a few motherboards I've owned or worked on. So if you're considering getting one, that's one you might also look at.

So far, the price range for portable monitors is running about $180 up for those that either appear in rec lists by reputable sites or have a high star + lots of reviews (I personally look for above 200 reviews for portable monitors no matter how high the stars and only go below that if it's a very dependable brand like Asus or Lepow, etc, it show on a rec list for a site I trust, and it's release date is fairly recent. Portable monitors have taken a major upswing due to Coronavirus, so I try to make sure it's one that has reviews pre-February/March.

Note: The only thing I almost regret is it isn't a touchscreen, but only as a matter of convenience for a very few functions. OTOH, portable touchscreen monitors are both more expensive and more fragile than a plain portable monitor of this size and most of what I need the monitor for I need a keyboard at minimum (in the GUI, also a mouse).

Device Compatibility Testing

I confirmed compatibility with both Ubuntu and Raspbian, so the official list plus my testing list are as follows:

Compatibility List
1.) Window PCs
2.) Mac PCs
3.) Android phones/tablets
4.) iPhones/iPads
5.) Nintendo Switch
6.) X-Box
7.) Playstation
8.) Ubuntu (tested in Lubuntu)
9.) Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS)

This is especially for brownbetty since she also has a Raspberry Pi. I have no idea if you'd be into this or even need a monitor for anything, but boy is it convenient if you're running headless with RDP.

Ubuntu Connection Guide

This is pretty straightforward but I like to be thorough.

Required:
1.) HDMI port on the Ubuntu computer
2.) Mini HDMI to HDMI Cable (came with monitor)
3.) USB-C to USB-A Cable + Power Block (came with monitor)

Instructions:
Attach the Mini HDMI to HDMI Cable to the computer and the monitor, plug monitor into outlet for power.

Raspberry Pi running Raspbian

Required:
1a.) Micro HDMI to HDMI Cable Male to Female - $8.99 - I bought this one
1b.) Micro HMDI to Mini HDMI Cable - $7.99
1c.) HDMI Adapters Kit (7 Adapters) Mini Hdmi to Micro Hdim Male to Female - $9.99 - the only reason I didn't buy this is that it's not available until May. Then I shall get it, holy shit, there are seven adapters in there. This will use the same steps as 1a, however, as there is not a Mini HDMI to Micro HDMI from the list I read under Product Description. (It does have a T shaped Mini HDMI and Micro HDMI Male to HDMI Female, though. I have no idea how I'd use it but I know i could.)
2.) Mini HDMI to HDMI Cable (came with monitor)
3.) USB-C to USB-A Cable + Power Block (came with monitor)

Instructions:
For 1a - Attach 1a to the micro HDMI port on the Pi, then attach female HDMI side of 1a to the HDMI of the Mini HDMI to HDMI cable that came with the monitor. Then plug in monitor to outlet.
For 1b - Attach 1b to the micro HDMI port on the Pi and the mini HDMI port on the monitor. Then plug in monitor to outlet.
For 1c - see 1a

How To Get Them Working Together

For both Ubuntu and Pi, do the following:
1.) Hook them up to the Ubuntu/Pi system while they're running.
2.) Nothing happens, the monitor says no output, you're afraid.
3.) Breathe, I got you.
4.) Run Update/Upgrade from command line. If you don't know command line, open a terminal and type sudo apt update, let it run until done, then sudo apt upgrade.
5.) Reboot

Reason to Add Monitor While Live
So, it was stressful.

I tried adding live first, then adding at reboot and those didn't work. It did work, however, if I ran update/upgrade/reboot while the monitor was still attached, and I left it attached during reboot. After reboot, the monitor came up in the BIOS (for Ubuntu) and with the rainbow screen (pre-GUI on the Pi). Go figure.

My utterly no idea guess: it needs to be detected by the machine first to trigger the drivers or to tell Ubuntu/Raspbian to download them. Then you update/upgrade to download them. To be fair, I had downloads pending already for both so I can't really be sure; a couple looked vaguely like they might be for a display, but can't lie, I do not even pretend to recognize most of packages on site unless I manually downloaded the packages myself from the web and manually installed them from command line. It's possible if either one had ever been attached to an actual monitor instead of a TV, it would already have those drivers or packages, I have no idea, so YMMV.

If it doesn't work the first time; do not unplug the monitor, just update/upgrade/reboot again. I'm using a standard Lubuntu and standard Raspbian install with no unique configurations so pretty much any system running an Ubuntu flavor should get it done. I can't see how it'd be incompatible with any Linux distro or any Raspbian-based OS flavor, so don't borrow trouble if you're running a different Ubuntu, different Linux type, or a Raspbian-based derivative and it doesn't work the first or second time; it's most likely that whatever is needed to run the display is not in that distro's standard packages and you'd just need to google a bit.

Cables, Adapters, and Hubs

While we're talking about alternate ways to connect things with cables, a story.

When I got this laptop, it was apparenty one of the first USB-C only and I was excited as hell. Perhaps too excited. Despite my (usually) much better judgement, instead of calmly collecting USB-C to X adapters for ethernet, HDMI, and a couple more USB-C to USB-A (the computer came with two), I eagerly purchased one of those all in one USB-C Hub multiport adapters.

It was so pretty and so gloriously functional: it had three USB-A 3.0 ports, an HDMI port, a gigabyte Ethernet port, an SD card port, and even a USB-C power port so I could also power my laptop through it. With it, I would only need one thing attached to my laptop and it could do everything./

That...was a mistake. Or at least, a mistake of that being the only thing I purchased.

It was fine for about a year, right up until it tried to overload one of my USB-C ports and died messily. When I tossed it, though, I lost all my adapters, as I hadn't bought any other adapters. Which was a really incredibly stupid mistake just from the perspective of always have a goddamn backup.

I'm not saying those all in one hubs aren't useful: they are! They're great! But always have at least one backup adapter per type--HDMI, USB, ethernet, card reader, etc--that you use only at home and never, ever leaves your house. For the hub as well as that group of single cable adapters, don't short on price; get the one with the highest stars/most reviews combo with a name you at least recognize. For the hub this goes double and triple; if it's less than $35-$40 and not a sale, double check everything, because you need a hub that's extremely well configured for that USB-C port, which can carry enough power to run your laptop. A bad hub can indeed damage the USB-C port on your laptop or even your computer if it decides to die when you're using it, especially if you're using several of those hub ports at the same time. It can also make your laptop make a terrifying sound you will hear until the day you die.

Yes, get one of course, but be prudent in picking it, and pay attention if even one port on it starts acting sketchy.

Plain USB cables for when you leave the house or extras you keep on hand are a different story. One, they're ubiquitous, so yeah, get a lot, and those you should get cheap. Go for the $10 for ten USB-A 3.0 to whatever when you see them (I do, a lot), because lets face it, even if they were made to last forever you're going to lose them in like, three months or some shit (do you still have the cable that came with your phone? When's the last time you saw it?). As long as reviews don't say "WILL BLOW UP YOUR COMPUTER" a small performance hit is worth the trade off of not feeling guilty you don't remember where you left your phone cable last night/last week.

Now, An Amusing But Relevant Anecdote

Why am I digressing into adapter cable purchase theory? Well, at work, we just upgraded our test phones for the second time. And as of the first time we upgraded, I buy discount cable packs for work for my co-workers to use; I have a desk drawer with nothing but USBs and lightning cables and power blocks. How are these related, you're probably asking yourself if you're still reading in sheer fascination with why on earth I am so into cables? Let me explain.

Among the programs we test are two apps for mobile phones, and so we have several Android and iPhones to use to do that. I'm primary tester, but sometimes I get a team together, and we all use those phones. You can guess what happens, every time. I mean, to those test phones' cables.

1.) We all use either Samsung, a rare flavor of Android, or iPhones for our personal phones and all the test phone cords do indeed look exactly like our cords. So yeah, they vanish pretty fast. Not because anyone is slyly stealing them for a free USB cable here: they look exactly like the cables we are charging our phones with at our desks. Like most people, when it's time to leave, we pack up the phones quickly, take them to our manager's office (or my desk), grab our stuff, and go home...including our (we think) cables that due to rush, we probably forgot to put back in the box.

Me? I have brought home work phone Samsung cables thinking they were mine greater than two times, and during mobile testing, I check the phones every day before I leave. And yet, I still grabbed that white cable and tossed it in my purse before taking all the phones back to my manager's office. So yeah, everyone does it and it will happen.

2.) Everyone borrows them to charge their phones. They always mean to bring them back, always. But see 1 and the fact a USB/lightning cable's job is to get lost. It will happen. And saying "You can't" would be utterly ridiculous; there was no way to enforce it, no way to know who did it unless thy did it right in front of one of us, and literally no one--me, my manager, or the assistant manager--had any goddamn interest in even trying. I, for one, would fucking buy a replacement at full price and pretend it was under my desk first, and frankly, my manager and the assistant manager would probably pay for half because seriously? And that assumes it' a tester that does it; there are other groups that use our phone to for testing and oh hell no am I ever wandering through that building hunting down a goddamn cable.

(Everyone borrowed those cables. It's just fucking reflex.)

However, this does lead to having testing phones and no cables with which to charge them, so: I had an idea.

When we were getting ready for the very first phone upgrade from Galaxy 5's/iPhones some very low number to Galaxy 8s and iPhone 7s, we had two (2) USB cables and one (1) broken lightning cable left between ten phones. Obviously, I did not email frantically asking for cables or accuse people of stealing because I am neither an idiot nor someone who even knows how to fucking care about that (honestly, I can't be sure I wasn't an offender. Or possibly it was my manager, everyone borrows them). I did not talk earnestly to my manager or the other testers about USB Cords Mysteriously Missing Must Stop (though God I kind of wish I had, it would have been hilarious to see their faces until I burst into laughter); instead, I made a case for extra cables being purchased--they break, I told my boss seriously, who nodded back just as seriously and both of us did not look at our mobile phones, so fragile!--and with permission, wrote up a request for extra USB-A to microUSB, USB-A to USB-C, and lightning cables, and a few of the single piece microUSB to USB-C and USB-A to USB-C cable converter pieces. I was given the Official Work Catalog (Office Depot is one of our suppliers!) to price everything. I was reasonable--about three for each phone we'd get (4 Galaxy, 5-6 iPhones), and a few adapters to make a micro USB into a USB-C. Price: under $30 probably.

Whoever read my request was a realist of the first order and did the appropriate math. When the new phones came, so did a large separate box of mysterious purpose, and in there, I found boxes of cables. Boxes of one, boxes of three, fancy bags of three, boxes of those tiny one piece cable adapter. Roughly, we received thirty cables per phone when I stopped counting breathlessly as my manager looked on, starting to get worried.

Me: *star eyes as I unpack the box* AREN'T THEY BEAUTIFUL?
Boss: Are you...okay?
Me: YES

Would people borrow those cables? Oh yeah, of course, if they could, but I had a plan that unlike None May Borrow or Death, would actually work.

1.) All extra cables weren't hidden, but simply stored in the least likely part of my boss's office. His office has this nifty cabinet that includes a narrow coat closet to hang up his coat; I put the big box--containing all the little boxes--in there on top of a stack of binders. (His coat is very short.)

Now, it wasn't hidden, I didn't do it late at night under the cover of darkness, everyone could look in and see me doing it, and if you open that cabinet, the box is right there.

However, the steps required are:
a.) go to that cabinet where the phones are not located at all (so no excuse of just grabbing a phone to test with in case someone asked though nobody ever did or even care)
b.) pulling out that giant box and transferring it to the floor to open it (not a lot of room in that tiny closet)
c.) sifting through the many many many many small boxes to find a compatible cable. For after I finished swooning and checked and labeled them all, I fully closed each one and put it back in there. Some are one cable; some are three cables; some are connectors: no way to know unless you read the tiny print on the box, because I didn't label them with type and in fact used the label to cover the relevant information. (Me, I could identify the boxes by sight; I'd spent enough time opening them and checking them.)
d.) no way to get it back subtly into the little box inside the big box in its original coils.

All those extra steps did the job for me. The only missing cables are ones I used to replace the ones missing from the phones and vanished into the ether, but again, cables get lost.

2.) I bought cables myself. Lots and lots of cables.

Amazon's ten for fifteen, five for eight, whatever, I grabbed some of each kind my coworkers used for their phones, tossed them in that drawer, and sent out an email that if you need a cable for your phone, grab one here, no need to ask or wait until I'm there. I never checked or cared if they came back, just every so often did a count to see if I needed to buy more. And oddly, only two or three haven't come back (as opposed to the one I left outside, one I accidentally took home with me, and a couple died and were buried at trash). Possibly because they look nothing like the cables that come in the boxes; no whites or blacks, either bright colors or cloth textures or grey or something. Anything visibly or texturely different, basically. I also--for myself--purchased a USB charging cradle with four USB slots so I could charge my tablet and headphones; anyone was welcome to leave their phone or headphones or whatever there to charge, just don't take it off my desk.

And they did.

We still lost mot of the cables that came with the regular phones, but that was always going to happen. No one--especially me--was going to dole out cables like gruel to Oliver fucking Twist and company. It happened a lot slower, though, and for a surprise, three lightning cables and one USB survived this time.

(Literally the only reason I don't take home cables by accident anymore is that I bought a wireless charging cradle for work, since with my last phone, charging by usb (and jerking it out too many times by accident and sometimes on purpose) wore the port down badly, so I only usb charge at home when it's really, really necessary and wireless cradle it overnight. Even if I forgot to charge overnight (happens, but not often, since I have the wireless cradle right by the bed, too) and it's like at 5%, I put it in power saving and put it on the cradle; it's usually fully charged by lunch or very close.)

We just got the upgrade to new phones: one Galaxy S10, two Galaxy Note 10s (!!!!), and a split between the latest iPhones and iPhone Pros(!!!!!!). One Galaxy is on backorder, but a couple of weeks ago, I went to the office to take the delivery of the others and gloat.

I still need to go back and check, configure, and label them, but that must wait until a.) I'm not taking muscle relaxants, b.)I can walk half a mile over not always sidewalks and back without my back spasming, and c.) I can find somewhere that delivers face masks since Austin requires if you are over ten and in public you need to wear one.

(I do not disagree with this rule--I very much approve--but it is a little inconvenient. My sister cleverly already ordered some super cool ones from a coworker, so she's sending me one soon.)

So I made a terrible mistake Monday during my work from home; I stood up and my back decided enough was enough with that kind of bullshit (standing, apparently?):.

Short version: Agony, called my doctor and made a telepointnment for Tuesday, got worse, got worse, called the triage nurse, who called an ambulance when I started sobbing, who came to check my vitals and recommended heavily I not go to the hospital unless there was no choice.

(They were awesome btw; they were really clear without saying outright 'COVID and you may be lying there for hours like this before someone sees you not kidding. Your doctor will see you today somehow so try that first.' And yeah, they were right.)

When I called my doctor's office back, the nurse listened to roughly thirty seconds of my probaly not entirely understandable babbling, then apparently spoke to someone, so they fit me in twenty minutes later. It was literally a ten minute video appointment since my doctor's office went digital and she'd read all through the drama with the nurses and ambulance and was ready with a muscle relaxant, an anti-inflammatory, and some kind of gel. Then mom and Child (somehow) packed me into the car to stay at mom's house for a couple of days because I literally could do nothing but not move to avoid agony and that times ten if I got tense. As you can imagine, not being tense was pretty much goddamn impossible.

Verdict: I strained my back and possibly a disc but very unlikely. By...standing up too fast from a cross-legged seated position on the couch with poor back support and poor posture, something I literally do every day for work so yeah, this was coming.

The muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatory finally fully kicked in this morning, so I could move provided my back didn't. On the upside, I now understand entirely what people mean when they say 'lift with your legs and not your back' by dint of horrifying pain every time I used my back.

There are two comfortable positions: "hunchback of notre dame" and "broom nailed to back" and I can't do much in Quasimodo mode so I'm coming out of this with much better posture. So far I have mastered: standing up (mostly, with a convenient table or Child in place, sometimes on my own!), sitting down (can do on my own!) and walking, provided I keep my back straight (or alternate: Quasimodo, but nothing in between those two or screaming). The hardest part is remembering when I stand up to check my posture before taking a step (or agony), and checking my posture again before I sit down (see: agony). If I'm not straight, I feel it from my back straight down to both achilles tendons; talk about effective classical conditioning.

I honestly has no idea how many movements connect to a three inch area of my goddamn back and for that matter, how many alternatives you can learn so very fast to avoid that.

I am glad I have been sleeping in two-three hour intervals instead of full nights the last two weeks. Sleeping does stiffen everything, but I notice a big difference between a one hour nap and a three hour sleep and do not want to even guess what six hours would be like. I am going to set a couple of alarms tonight just in case.

One day, I'm going to have a fun adventure.

I replaced my laptop battery two weeks ago.

I knew it had gone bad, as batteries do. I had no idea how bad it had been getting before failure until I got the new battery (thank you ebay!) and realized that actually, it used to be able to hold a charge for 5+ hours in Balanced, not one and a half to maybe two hours at best in Power Saver. It's a whole new world.

Also I found in my battery settings I adjusted it to 'cool' settings which was hobbling performance. I have no idea why I did that or when but that does explain why I've been frustrated with performance along with dying battery.

Note: to be fair, I buy laptops that are overpowered; they're desktop replacements and I usually pick gaming machine specs with the highest CPU and either highest RAM or highest potential RAM; hard drive, don't care, I get the smallest because I usually replace it myself. So battery life will never ever be something to write home about, but still.

Also: finally, all Christmas-related items are now fully packed away, and I got a new cushion for my outdoor loveseat and am tentatively starting the move back to spending cool afternoons and evenings and (being me) nights on my porch instead of inside. I basically moved back inside ful time after Terrible August 2017, but when a 49.99 cushion appears before you on sale for around $13, that shit is a sign.

I need to put up the second set of porch blinds I bought when I moved in for the front left (first set and sunshade are up on the front right side) and get a new set for the left-left to block wind and get privacy at night, but it's shaping up. And a new outdoor rug, but only after doing a clean sweep. In April, I think I can also move some of my houseplants outside; currently, they colonize an end table hovering close to the sliding back door for indirect afternoon light, but I feel ambitious.

In August, I will have been here four years and will sign for a fifth year; I'm so glad I picked this place.

So my problem is: my nails are growing too much.

Yeah, that looks just as crazy as it sounded in my head, but it's true and it's weird.

I have never in my life had fast growing hair and nails: I also bite my nails. Pregnancy and about six months after is the only exception. However, two things have changed.

1.) I started taking a multivitamin
2.) I successfully--almost by accident--stopped biting my nails.

I'm gonna say (2) is a huge factor and frankly, you can't get back in that kind of habit once you start, as I tried the first time I realized I was missing keys when typing due to Nails. I hate it. But I own literally no things for nails but a battery powered nail buffer/file thing I used without batteries to quickly file down edges or something. Yeah, I went through a manicure phase a few years ago, but it didn't stick.

Now, why is this a problem, other than I lack the basic skills of a ten year old for nail care? It's affecting my keyboard use. Like, this is a hard no never wtf. I've had to borrow--BORROW--nail clippers twice to stop nail-tripping on the keys and yes, I need to buy some on the first but how is this my life? I used to want long nails when I was younger because everyone's hands looked so good and mine not so much and I was wrong. This is bullshit; I had null characters in my code and weird ass misspellings in a fic that are not in my autocorrect list due to my left hand being slightly faster than my right when typing (no, really). Worse, much worse, I couldn't feel the keyboard with three fingers due to asshole nails and that was like, IDEK, creepy: left middle and right middle and fourth, no keyboard feel but (sometimes wrong) letters appeared on the screen like a hex was involved.

I really needed to vent that; you'd be surprised how many people just don't understand.

So, the following happened:
1.) Had a birthday!
2.) Got a Galaxy S6 tablet!
3.) Cedar fever (cont)
4.) Got a cold...
5.) ...asthma took over.

It's not been my worst two weeks, but it's not in my top ten.

In other news: saw Birds of Prey and was pretty shocked how much I liked it.

( birds of prey )
( birds of prey, specific spoilers )
( birds of prey, specific warnings for those like me who need them )

There is probably stuff to critique, but honestly? Right now, I can't see it and don't care. I had an entire movie of fuck awesome and no cringe on treatment of women. I recommend. The characters were interesting, the plot came together nicely, I loved the out of sequence storytelling at the beginning, and I loved every damn character in it.

For anyone who speaks Arabic native, fluent, third, started two weeks ago or even cares....

Over the last nine months between work and other stuff, I lost duolingo entirely and went back to start over my Hindi (interesting and related here, but I'll come back) I saw they added Arabic, Navajo, and a couple of others, and even if I don't plan to start anything new, I like to start the first lesson to look around, kick the tires, etc. Then I spent three hours happily working through the first two Arabic alphabet skills before I realized what I was doing, which is super weird since I've never actually in my entire life spent any amount of time looking at Arabic script other than when friends would write things and I'd say "pretty" because yes it is, and also, Americans are intimidated by words that look like modern art to us or something, IDK. Americans, dude; we're like this.

I do not know whether this is true or not, but Arabic within the context of Duolingo shares a lot of basic southern drawl rules in how to deal with vowels and the perfectly logical uses of 'ha', 'ya', and 'ay' when vowels try to be boring. I'm not saying I am going to expertise this shit, but it's nice to be hanging in a language that is like 'maybe more Atlanta around here, but here, rural central Texas farmer is perfect, well done!'

Which has had the funny side effect of having to work codeswitching my English out of 'so that's a lot of drawl' which I can hear and have to fight down. This really doesn't happen anymore unless I'm in a conversation with another Texan (born or assimilated) and on first drawl, we both devolve. (We don't do this around Yankees unless we're screwing with you. Yes, you aren't crazy, it is deliberate, we call this 'fun'.) I never defaulted into a hard drawl--Texas variations include twang and a lot lot lot of Mexican Spanish and Texan Spanish influence and my parents spoke two different dialects of Central Texas (Austin and rural Hill Country)--but once you get any drawl variation, it's fairly easy to adjust to anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon from Kentucky and Georgia to northern Louisiana (French-Creole influence then becomes a thing and you have to rebase the rules).

More importantly, I never ever do it at work, because while everyone is fluent in English, I use 'diction is your friend' rules. We all work in tech, and often, I'm the only native English speaker in the room with everyone else super fluent in English but in second, third, fourth, and fifth position with diffent first language start values of, in order of frequency, Hindi and Telugu (yes, I do feel inferior thanks for asking). So I start precise and read the room as Hindi-first language and Telugu-first language speakers also have some variation in how they learned English. Again, perfect fluency everyone (see me, inferior) but that means it's super easy not to even realize something may be off and double check.

(Note: for any native Hindi speakers who come to Texas; eighteen months, you will be saying y'all regularly, lose some 'g' on more than a few 'ing's, and that's just to start, you won't notice, and that means Texas has claimed you for its own for all time and you're now Texan. You can physically leave, sure, but your linguistic English centers are now ours. Y'all will never leave your vocabulary and those 'g's are pretty much lost forever unless you concentrate very hard speaking for the rest of your life. I didn't make the rules, okay, I'm a victim too, this is just how Texas rolls. Welcome, my brothers and sisters; we're all in this together.)

Now, back to Hindi, which is what i was doing before Arabic southern drawl seduction; I erased all my progress because I remembered nothing, my own fault; it took me way too long to form pattern-recognition of Hindi script when they got to consonant-vowel sounds. When I started, I confirmed I have no goddamn language centers: I knew nothing.

This depressing state of affairs continued until lesson one, level three, and it wasn't like a dramatic flash of memory, an amnesia patient going "I REMEMEBER EVERYTHING" but just--there. And this time, my brain set up correct organization.

The first time, it took me a month to get through alphabet lessons one and two, all five levels, by which I mean until I did all lessons perfectly and that was a lot of repetition for something that still barely stuck. This time, it was three hours, give or take, and even better, everything was organizing immediately by consonant --> consonant-vowel --> consonant-vowel-vowel, etc. And I cannot say this enough; this is not like accessing active memory. I don't actively remember anything from before, but I do know that unlike last time, it's persisting. I no longer feel like I'm writing on a white board with an almost empty marker I keep having to go back and frantically rewrite as it fades (quickly), but have graduated to a number two pencil where I need to be careful of smears but remains legible.

Right now, anyone multi-lingual is wondering what sort of deal with Satan happened that I acquired my native tongue or even understand what language is; welcome to my life. I think my language centers weren't appropriately tested before deployment to the live environment via birth and so are not working by design. And this is why testing is important.

So lets start with the end of the story: according to the labs from my doctor's appointment on Thursday, I am very vitamin D deficient. The helpful and deeply ominous chart showed a range, with 30 to 100 being good, with an alarming legend explaining the following:

Optimal: >=30 ng/ML
Insufficient: 20-29 ng/ML
Deficient: <20 ng/ML

My number? Nine. Yeah.

( yes, )

Looking up Vitamin D deficiency, boy does that explain a lot.

Back in March, I talked about the drama of trying to get a small dog for my mom.

Update: Mom got her dog! It's a Havanese-something mix named Rosie that is small, precious, and spoiled to death.

(-something mix: yorkie is a possibility but still looking at similar dogs)

She also has increased the cat population of her home to five. We'll start with the dog drama.
( it was fate, probably )
Right, now the fifth cat. Which I visited to meet Rosie, it was like this:

Mom, surrounded by cats and single dog: This is Rosie!
Me: ...there are five cats.
Mom: Yes, I can explain that.
My sister, who lives with her: Wait for it.

From what I understand, it's the neighbor's cat from three houses down that walked in the door and just--doesn't leave. It apparently goes home like--never--and the neighbors do know but have done nothing. It was taken home at least once but that totally did not take, and if you're curious, keeping a cat out is about an order of magnitude harder than keeping one in.

Worse--much worse--it just sits on the front patio looking miserably patient with the vagaries of fate and cat ownership (if anyone can really say they own a cat) and will do this for a straight day without seeming to move and staring at anyone coming or going. My sister confirmed this actually happened and obviously, everyone's will broke after a day of that shit.

It's a good cat; does not jump on or destroy furniture or anything else, pretty chill, but it can't be denied, two cats you have 'a couple of', three cats is 'a few', four is 'some', but five, you're at 'clowder'. She has a clowder of cats.

Seriously.

So, dog achieved and a clowder of cats. What a time to be alive.

Watching Bones Season 6, episode 22 again:

( bones is totes my jam )

In other news, I acquired Jupiter Ascending for my first watch since the theatre and good God this movie is fun. I also got Pride & Prejuidce & Zombies and so recommend it right now

Okay, I meant to do this earlier:

Early Prime Day really good deal: Fire TV Stick 4K with Alexa Voice Remote for $25 off the price bringing it to 24.99.

The reason I'm posting this, however, is that with purchase, you also get $45 SlingTV credit, or $15 dollars per month for three months off a SlingTV subscription. That means you get SlingTV for ~$10 a month for three months, which is a hell yes.

Also, can't lie: I've had a Roku and used the native apps on three SmartTVs for streaming, and Fire TV out performs them all. Also, FireTV takes voice commands through all Alexa devices and I like feeling like a second class despot lounging on my couch while commanding others to entertain me. That's just how I roll.

This deal also applies to:
1.) Fire TV Cube, $119.00
2.) FireTV Recast, now $100 off bringing it to 129.99 and the lowest it's ever been.

Also:

Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote for $25 off the price, bringing it down to $14.99.

Again, not my primary: free with purchase is two months of HBO Go, value $30.

So it is June, aka It's Already Fucking Ninety Are You Serious?

After two weeks out sick, I finally went in for my CT scan, and the test results--written in medicalese--seem to suggest that yes, I have some kind of stuffed nose (the word 'mucus' was involved), many words which seem to suggest that indeed the septum is a righty ('septum' and 'right' appeared in adjoining sentences though a lot of words were between them) and nothing is remarkable. I assume a mucus goblin would be remarkable enough to mention, so there goes that theory.

Next: go back to the ENT so he can recommend something. Honestly, unless my life is at stake here, I do not want surgery and the medicalese seemed not to indicate it (degrees of right septumness?) but I'll know more at that appointment.

...good God I lead a boring life. That was literally all my drama for like, a month.

However, I got back in touch with an ex-coworker recently, whose age falls exactly between me and Child, which is significant here. And I realized abruptly while talking to him that Child was still a teenager when we worked together and now years later he is very much not and goes to the same clubs (it's not like there are that many).

( ex-coworker history )

Cue me being open and honest:

Me: Please don't pick up my son by accident that will be weird
Him: Wait, he's [no longer a teenager but with more words]!?!?!
Me: Oh God yes it's been [years] since you quit.
Him: Oh, that might be weird. But I'd be nice--
Me: I'll also make fun of you both for goddamn ever.
Him: ...[understood but with more words]

Secret: it's super goddamn hard to embarrass Child. I mean, he can be embarrassed but not by like, normal things or things that don't require more effort than I generally really care to expend. In other words, an empty threat...when it comes to him.

Ex Co-worker, however, is a normal human being, knows I am capable of acts of embarrassment that I'll invent, and therefore I win.

(But God that would be hilarious and I'd have material for like, years.)

...in my defense, it's not so much that a lot's happened is that I am both super lazy and things happened.

In some kind of order:

1.) Saw the ENT and have another appointment after a six weeks of antibiotics and steroids because nasal infections that last this long need the shock and awe treatment.

2.) Saw Captain Marvel and realized there was indeed a hole in my life before it appeared. Seriously, I had no idea there was so much Carol AND MARIA WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS.

3.) Learned to use a neti pot.

Okay, much like evangelists for Diva cups (divangelists?) and The Magicians (magelists?), I think everyone should Neti pot now because this shit isn't woo which was surprising. Interestingly, the most dramatic results were the second or third time and then after several days of use where I could feel the difference. So if you were on the fence, a.) head position will work out eventualy just keep tilting randomly until it works out and b.) try it. Not woo.

4.) Still not interested in Game of Thrones and still wish I could flog up the interest. This annoys me.

5.) My home network has undergone a change for teh better which I will go over at some point, including successful creation of a wireless bridge client that is basically a wifi repeater that took me only three separate tutorials to figure out how to get running using DD-WRT.

( random on ddwrt )

This has been a message from Seperis' Network Feelings.

So growing up rural means you generally need to have at least one dog; that's just making sure rattlesnakes avoid you, water moccasins avoid you, feral dogs and cats avoid you, and a decent burglar alarm. Specifically, a dog that could survive: a middle-large to large dog.
( background info: life and rural dogs )
My mother, all this time unbeknownst to me, has always wanted a small dog: a teacup poodle or--much much more--a Maltese. When we lived in the country, it wasn't practical; when we moved and kids still lived with her (multiple kids), it wasn't a good idea; now, however, she only lives with one child over the age of ten and my youngest sister. She is ready for her Maltese lap dreams to come true.

(The first time she showed interest a few years ago, things interfered, so this is technically Try Two At Maltese Dreams)

Mild digression: despite the fact she is not actually a cat person, Mom has four cats.

You're asking how. Fine.
( yeah, this is how it happened )
My mission: to get my mom a tiny dog. An impractical dog. An overbred dog, even. A dog that sits on laps like animate fur and barks at a painfully high pitch and you can brush and groom and literally could fit in a purse. An adult, not puppy. I'll take a maltipoo or yorkipoo or maltiyork (not sure of name????) or shi-maltz or basically any single breed or crossbreed from a reputable breeder OR that shows up in a rescue or shelter and has been evaluated for temperament et al that involves a Maltese and/or Yorkie; it must be tiny and useless as other that adorableness. Pretty easy, you'd think.

I want to do this without having to take out a loan: not easy.

Here is what I learned about shelters: they almost never have tiny dogs except chihuahuas and vaguely impossible/unholy/wtf chihuahua crossbreeds, because rescues get them before they go public.

(Note: It's not that chihuahuas aren't awesome, I've been around them/played with them my entire life, but if you've met one, you understand that's a dog you have to want specifically for what it is, be ready for, and commit to. It's made of nothing but energy and barking, and unless you can be damn sure of the temperament, not one to be around anyone under ten at best as they get cranky. Like, yeah, there are exceptions--I've seen some zen Chihuahuas--but you really can't count on that.

Exception: one of the random dogs that appeared in my life when I lived in the country was a dachshund-chihuahua mix and broke all the laws of both breeds by being what you might consider a particularly lazy sausage-shaped, chihuahua-headed sloth of good humor who preferred to be supine above all things. People who met it were utterly baffled by its existence, and I doubt I shall ever see it's like again.)

So far, I have learned this about rescues from Mom (and from contacting them or reading their literature): it takes less effort to get a goddamn passport (and possibly, security clearance at the Pentagon) than to secure a tiny dog.

One required an application, home visit/home assessment, family assessment, and then you could meet the dog (FOR THE FIRST TIME) under controlled conditions and perhaps at some point may actually get it no promises. One also had a background check. One had super strict rules about having other pets in the home across the board, not just relative to a dog's evaluation of temperament. All required some genuinely unsettling contracts you had to sign. Some had waiting lists that apparently can take decades. Fee ranged from $300-$600. This is only the stuff I remember, by the way, and that doesn't take into account how they make you feel really super judged when no, you're not really interested in the dog with some problems with children/other animals/existence and has a speckled history when it comes to using his teeth or bladder.

So reputable breeders and possibly taking out a loan for a pet-quality dog or retired show dog: oh God and I have no idea. See, that would require them answering inquiries about their dogs (as their sites have a tendency not to want to put up prices or even vague price ranges), which seems to be something of a problem since it can take a month after I ask about the ones I saw on the site for them to tell me all their dogs are gone like months ago (so why didn't you update your goddamn site already?) or the site says 'they could have dogs please inquire' but same problem as above.

Which means I'm on craigslist, even though it makes me nervous for various reasons including but not limited to:

1.) unless they're a reputable breeder, I could be hitting a goddamn puppy mill or backyard breeder and no. Fortunately, I am not in the market for puppies of any kind so not much of a worry.

2.) if it's a rehoming of an adult (and I assume 'one' isn't true), I have no idea about individual temperament or judge the probability using the dog's parents and generally you need more than a few minutes to judge how a dog reacts to cats, children, yards, et al. Yes, the seller said it's great with pets and kids, but don't they all? Who the hell says 'dog is hostile to the Achilles tendon and eats baby toes' or 'likes to pee in snoring mouths' or 'tried to kill me in my sleep with its tiny teeth, picture of scars available on request' and expects a response, much less anyone to pay $750 for their little psychopath?

3.) fee is $300 to $900 and are you fucking kidding me?? For your used, potentially demon-spawned luxuriously furred monster??????

It's so frustrating because yes, I get this isn't serious or a huge issue, but growing up, we were working class to poor most of the time. My mom didn't get to buy new clothes for years, she didn't get to have nice things or do nice things (she had to worry about paying bills and if the phone would get turned off and how much my dad would spend whether he was employed or not), she worked full time to make ends meet while clinically depressed, with anxiety, and subject to panic attacks sometimes on a daily basis (all this while on medication), and honestly, I don't think she actually liked living in the country and that doesn't include what little but very unpleasant knowledge I have of her childhood. Yes, now she's doing wonderfully financially, she can pay all her bills and even has a stock account, is in a better place and everything, but that kind of history lingers.

So by God, I want her to get her luxury dream dog. An impractical dog. A tiny dog whose only duties are to be goddamn adorable and sit in her lap and let her brush it's fur or whatever. And for less than two semesters at a community college, please.

While talking about smart home stuff in comments in another post, I realized that during my adventures in turning my home into its own surveillance state just so I can voice control everything and live like a Star Trek character, there are things I learned that are probably useful to everyone but not exactly easy to discover or like, realize were a thing. As we now live in the age of 'many devices and home wifi', it's possible this is one of the things you didn't know or didn't realize was a thing or even why it may or may not be important.

This one is my favorite. It just doesn't come up enough or easily (or at all) when discussing internet/router problems when you are desperately googling after the internet provider has confirmed many times it's you, not them and you kind of have to believe them at this point.

Problem:

My router/wifi keeps dropping some devices/throws devices off/internet is fine though/restart fixes then all goes to hell again fairly soon/help?

Condition question: Do you have at least eight devices that could connect to your wifi at the same time?

Before you answer: Laptop, TV, kindle, tablet, Roku/FireTV, phone: that's six without thinking too hard. Playstation, X-Box, Switch, Alexa? We're at ten right now and the danger zone begins at seven.

Danger zone? For what? Yeah.

( if you already know about this, feel free to correct me if I get anything wrong )

We'll now return to me packing for Escapade provided the dryer is done.