I’m trying to listen to a Jefferson Airplane playlist on my iPhone and have it stream over to the HomePod on the shelf above my desk.
It keeps crapping out on me. Failure is the theme for this day.
Robin stares off into infinity, pondering the mystery of audio streaming between two Apple devices.
I mentioned in the last post (at least I think I did) that one of our cars has its check engine light on. Earlier today I went to the website for the dealership that sold us the car. I wanted to see if I could schedule an appointment to have that idiot light looked at. I found the link to their service department site and went to it, but when I got there…….
My only option for scheduling required me to… oh it’s too awful to even type it out… okay… here goes… it required me to talk to an AI chatbot. Disgusting!
I feel so dirty. It asked me for my name and I ignored it. I don’t want some random AI bot to know my name. To hell with that crap! It was just gross. Why would any company that respects its customers want to subject them to such bullshit? I would have preferred being asked to call them and then getting stuck in voicemail hell for half an hour. That would have been so much less demeaning.
At one point it even tried to tell me its name, as if it were pretending to be an actual human being. I feel so dirty! It was just icky and gross and dehumanizing. And the worst part? This was hours ago and it told me it was going to have the service department call me to book the actual appointment and I still don’t have a fucking appointment! Insert the grossed out scream of frustration here.
Fucking AI. Screw you, Skynet wannabe, poorly written, bug riddled code.
Hulu released three new episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m a few minutes into episode two. The best description of the first few seasons that I heard was “misery porn.” That is accurate. Painfully, crushingly accurate. The current season is not expected to tow that line. Instead it’s looking like it might be “revenge porn.” Given the state of the real world… here’s hoping.
The Handmaid’s Tale this morning, Daredevil tonight, Doctor Who on Saturday, and The Last of Us on Sunday. Hey television world, why not spread out the riches a little. Share that wealth with the rest of the calendar.
Something is up with my Flickr account. Yesterday my hit count was about 10 times what I usually see. This morning before 7:00am it’s already more than yesterday. I think some bot somewhere is crawling me. It might be time for a new backup. Just in case. I hope the bots enjoy all of the cat pictures.
Okay, I have to post this now. I can’t keep typing up brain droppings while hanging on every word of one of the best television shows Earth has ever produced. Seriously. A million years from now some alien species is going to find our remains and turn our planet into an archeological site and watch this show and think… those beings were seriously fucked up but I cannot stop watching.
A few years ago I went on a journey. A journey to find a new favorite web browser that wasn’t called chrome. I found one. It was… basically… ya know… chrome without actually being chrome. I settled on Vivaldi. I like it. I put it on my MacBook Pro, and my personal Windows desktop box, and my work laptop (just for personal stuff like my personal email and… ya know… this blog) and as soon as it was available I also put it on my iPhone and my iPad.
Yesterday the company I work for updated its list of approved applications and Vivaldi was not on it. Boo. In order to comply with the rules, I had to give it up on that machine. Firefox is on the list though, so I have brought that back for my personal use (while we all use Chrome for work use).
It is fine. No complaints about Firefox here it’s just… not the browser I want to use.
You know, it’s all fine and good and everything is okay and the universe isn’t spiraling down the drain and heading for the sewer. Yeah, that has nothing to do with web browsers it’s just… you know… blah. Boo.
Here’s a couple of pictures of a cat because even though the universe is collapsing into crap, cats are still fuzzy and cute and adorable.
First off, I promise I am not going to just cross post crap from bluesky to this page (assuming I don’t delete this account outright, which I am still seriously thinking about). I might do that once in a while, but twice in one day? Come on, Rob. Don’t be a lazy asshole.
Still, in this case… I just watched the two episodes of Daredevil that Disney+ gave us today (Born Again season one episodes five and six, I think) and I wrote a detailed, in-depth spoiler free review over on the bluesky and thought I’d just cross post it here just this once so that I wouldn’t have to type it all out again and yadda yadda blah.
Anyway… spoiler free review of episodes five and six…….
Go back in time two posts and look at the picture I shared of my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 amplifier with something that appears to be mold covering the imitation tweed. I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know why it’s on that amplifier but not on either of the other two Bassbreaker products I own (the Bassbreaker15 watt amp and the 1×12 extension speaker cabinet).
It’s gross.
I found a post on reddit that suggested using white vinegar to clean off whatever that mold looking shit is. I guess mold growing on tweed amps is a thing? I’ll share a screen shot of the post here:
I went grocery shopping today and picked up a bottle of white vinegar. I just finished sponging off the amp and it looks like it worked. I am mostly pleased with the results. The only negative I can see at this point (assuming whatever that shit was doesn’t just grow back immediately) is that now my amp smells like vinegar… and so does my cellar… and so do I. Oh well.
It looks good so far though.
Haven’t had a perfect week in a while.
Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, had some wonderful things to say about a couple of dirty, disgusting, fascists. Allow me to quote an article from Huffpost, written by Marco Margaritoff…..
While Steve Wozniak has long criticized the personality flaws of his late friend and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, he has far more damning things to say about fellow tech mogul Elon Musk.
The 74-year-old entrepreneur shared his thoughts with CNBC on Tuesday at a tech conference in Spain.
“I don’t know what got into his head,” said Wozniak, referring to the Tesla CEO. “Sometimes you get so rich at these big companies, and you’re on top. It goes to your head, and you’re the most incredible person in the world and the brightest, and you’re gonna dictate what others will do.”
As a “special government employee” heading Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has been dismantling federal agencies with the purported aim of slashing wasteful public spending.
This has led to thousands of federal workers being fired and legal pushback in the courts.
“Bullying is the best way to think of it,” Wozniak told CNBC. “If you’re in school, the bully’s gonna force their way on the little guy. I don’t know, I’ve always favored the little guy over the big guy — and I’ve always favored the consumer of a good over the producer.”
Wozniak had even harsher words for Trump, however.
“There are types of people that you associate with in your life that are good, pleasant, friendly and care about others, care about animals, even,” he told the outlet. “And Trump is not one of them. He’s a disgusting person and has always been and always will be.”
After the Supreme Court thwarted Trump and Musk’s efforts to freeze some $2 billion in foreign aid, Musk urged Republican senators on Capitol Hill to help him find another way to rescind that funding.
Democratic lawmakers resoundingly booed Musk Tuesday evening when Trump thanked him during his address to Congress.
Meanwhile, Wozniak also accused Musk of ruining his electric Tesla vehicles with steadily worsening designs. Wozniak, who invented the Apple I and Apple II computers, owns several Teslas himself.
“Every step up where they changed things in the car, it got worse and worse and worse, and now it is just miserable for user interface,” Wozniak told CNBC. “Coming from Apple, user interface, the way you deal with technology, is the most important thing in the world.”
He concluded, “And Tesla is the worst in the world at that.”
Thanks, Woz. You are the man. Now and forever, you are The Man.
Spoiler alert, this post is a tease. It does not pay off.
My wife and I just watched a youtube video about the nightmare that is AI generated youtube videos. The examples it showed were awful and creepy and painful and will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
So naturally I decided to see if I could find a site that would AI generate a music video for one of my RPM Challenge songs.
It worked… sort of… but it was so beyond awful that I can’t share it. I uploaded a photo to go with the song. It was a selfie I took in Disney World while I was on an elevator and it took some of my fave and glued it onto some douche bag’s head and I will never recover from the emotional trauma. I then generated another clip using a face that the website provided. I’m trying to decide if I want to share it or not because… damn is it awful.
Nope. I can’t share it. It’s too awful. Sorry for the tease but damn it was just creepy as all hell. I actually closed my eyes for part of it. Nope. Not going there again. Sorry, AI Charlie.
Inside the Red Head's Head 