Category: Tech

Dock

The iPhone dock that I bought when Apple first took our headphone jack away died on Friday. (It was the Apple model with the 1/8″ headphone jack in it) It was sad. I was sad. I was even sadder when I found that Apple doesn’t sell that dock anymore even though they use them to display all of the iPhones in the Apple stores.

I found a super cheap replacement. It doesn’t have a headphone jack, but it does have space for a watch charger.

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Rough Night Tonight – Half Day Tomorrow

It was a pretty quiet day around here. Harry stayed at his dad’s house last night. Bellana stayed here but left for dad’s at around noon. We missed them both but made the best of it. Jen was busy so I mostly just goofed off with the new film blog and Instagram. The Instagram already has more engagement in two days than my main account has had in however many years it’s been up. It’s nuts. I put a couple of film related tags on each post and people are coming from all around. I’m getting more notice than I usually get from Flickr, and I do all right (by my own personal, meager, non- viral, non-influencer standards) on Flickr.

The rough patch came at dinner. I took one bite that was way too big. I knew it was bad as I was chewing it, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Nope. I got nice and sick. I felt queasy for a while and thought it was going to pass. Nope. My food tracking spread sheet has a column for nausea. On a scale of 1-10, that particular instance was a 10. The worst experience yet, by a long way.

I wanted to play guitar today but did not. I probably won’t tomorrow either. I took a half day in the morning because I thought I was bringing Bellana to the Registry of Motor Vehicles (or whatever New Hampshire calls it). Nope. Dad is bringing her. I am now on car inspection detail instead. I want to be out early enough to warm up the car and get to the garage before they open. If I can get in and out quick I might work on some song ideas before I punch in. Or maybe I’ll put that weight bench together. We’ll see.

Until then, g’night.

Distance and Social Media Stupid

Yesterday I used the Distance function on the Indoor Walk setting on the Apple Watch Workout app for the first time. It said my longest indoor walk was 3.20 miles so I set my distance at 3.20 miles and off I went.

Today I went to do it again. This time, however, the default distance it gave me was 3.21 miles. Well honk my hooter, it wants me to set a new record? Off I went. I did it. 3.21 miles of walking in place. It took 45:07 seconds. My legs feel battered and weak, but I will be okay after I rest up a bit. I haven’t had any protein yet today so I think I’ll need some breakfast soon, yeah?

I expected to get an award from the iPhone activity app for setting a new distance record. I did not. I am sad.

So I reblogged a couple of pictures from the new film-only-photos page I started last night. I don’t know how long that page will last. I’ll probably either get tired of maintaining two pages or I’ll just forget that it’s there and post everything here like I’ve been doing for almost 14 years. You know, habits and all.

What I didn’t mention is that I did the same thing with Instagram. I started a new account there too. I already forget the user name so I’ll cross post something later on so I’ll have a record of it. Forgive me for being lazy, I just faux walked five kilometers.

Anyway, I was sitting in the car last night, waiting for Jen and Bellana to come out of the airport. The attendant at the parking lot told us not to leave our car unattended. Otherwise I would have gone inside too. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll make that new Instagram right now. It was amazing how idiotic the process was. For example: I did all of the setup for the new account and then clicked the final “create” button and… I got an error message saying I could not create a new account at this time. What? I started over and went through it all again and when I hit create again it told me there was already an account for that email address. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before? Also, who hacked my email and started an account with it?* So I made a new email address and did the whole process again and it errored again! This time instead of clicking the create a new account link I just logged in with the email that had just failed and… It said I was locked out due to a violation of the terms of service, or some shit like that. What the hell? How could I have violated the TOS when I haven’t even logged in yet! Ugh. I disputed the accusation and all it asked me to do was do a captcha and a two-factor authentication and then I was in.

I mean… really? Assholes? I know you’re facebook and I know that facebook is the root of all evil, but give me a friggin’ break.

Whatever. Yet another social media account to lose the password to and never log into again. Probably.

*After the second failed account creation I realized that I wasn’t hacked and I didn’t already have an account for that email address. Instagram is just fucking stupid.

Here’s the new Instagram account:

Amazing View

NASA did a Live Stream event today (it might still be going on, not sure) to release the first official images taken by the Webb Telescope.

Spectacular is a massive understatement.

Yeah… color me dazzled. Thanks, Webb!

Tuesday Stuff

Happy Amazon Prime Day. I don’t really know what that means, but my beloved wife spent her pre-work morning shopping for bargains. I don’t know if she got any, but we have a new dorm room to partially populate at the end of next month so fingers crossed for good stuff.

Today is my work anniversary. 18 years ago today I started a new job. Eighteen (18) years… That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with anything in my whole life. It’s crazy. Crazy, I tells ya.

My father is moving to a new room within the assisted living facility he’s currently living in. The moving day is tomorrow. I haven’t seen his new room, but I’ve seen one that is similar. It’s bigger than his current room and it has an actual kitchen. I took the day off to help out. I’m not sure how it’s going to go yet. We’ll see. I’m optimistic that this is going to be a good thing. I am not sure if my father agrees or not. Again, we’ll see.

Bellana is coming home on Friday. Repeat: Bellana is coming home on Friday. We’re going to have both kids in the house at the same time and it’s everything. Literally everything!

My Ebay camera purchase that I kinda wanted to back out of but didn’t is supposed to be delivered today. Here’s hoping the lens that the seller chucked in for free actually works. I am not sure it will. Unfortunately, Amazon Prime Day doesn’t have any deals on Nikon lenses from the 80’s so there’s no help coming from there.

18 years. I’ve actually stuck with something for 18 years. Who woulda thunk it. I wonder how many other folks from my new hire group are still around. Our careers are old enough to vote. So weird.

Ebay = Stress

I put a bid on a Nikon camera with a lens that may or may not work last night. There were no bids on it at the time and the auction was set to end just after 9:00 on Sunday (tomorrow) night.

I just checked it and someone else put in a bid as well. It wasn’t enough to top my tiny max bid, but it bumped up the price from $10 to $17.50.

Eeek! Ebay is stressful!

Tuesday July 5, 2022

The long weekend is over. It was nice, even though July 4th is now meaningless. Mostly Jen and I just hung out, but I also visited mom a few times and bought some clothes that fit (for now) and took a shit load of pictures on both Dad’s camera and my camera. We also went for a random drive to enjoy the nice weather yesterday. It was a pretty good weekend.

And now it’s over. We have a couple of contractors coming today to give estimates on fixing a potentially huge issue in the new bathroom. We’re pretty much guaranteed to lose the shower in there, which makes me sad. It is a walk in shower and I always wanted a walk in shower. Unfortunately there is a leak somewhere and there is evidence that the wall behind the shower stall is rotting so… buhbye walk in shower. Not sure what we’ll do with the space once it’s cleaned up. A linen closet? Maybe?

As for everything else. I did not get a chance to work on any music last night. I’ve been so hung up on the photography stuff lately that I haven’t been thinking music much at all. Time to find a middle ground where I can obsess over both topics. Music needs to be written, guitars need to be played, thrift stores need to be combed for inexpensive old film SLR cameras. Lizardfish needs to reunite. I sent a chat to the band yesterday saying if we don’t practice soon I am going to die. Here’s hoping they can save my life.

Okay. Get to work.

Paid Our Respects

Jen and I went to the Apple Store tonight to pay our respects. We were returning something so it wasn’t as happy a visit as it could have been. We were the only people in the store with masks on, but we weren’t the only ones in the mall. I’ll take that as a win. A very lame win.