Category: Tech

D’OH!

Damn it, Roomba!

Our bedroom used to be the garage. There is a heavy door between the bedroom/ex-garage and the mud room that used to be an exit for the house proper. On Roomba nights we close that door most of the way. It’s closed enough that Roomba won’t come in, but open just enough that Patches the Wonder Cat can get in if she wants. The mud room is tiny, more like a breezeway than a mud room, but we call it the mud room. There is a door between the mud room and the kitchen that we always leave open. Sometimes if we have all the windows in the house open the breeze will blow it shut. Otherwise, it’s open.

I got up this morning. I needed to go into the kitchen. I was still 80% asleep and it was dark. I pushed open the mostly closed bedroom door, took two steps without really paying attention to what I was doing or really even opening my eyes all the way and

BAM!!!

The kitchen door was closed about 50% of the way and I walked straight into it. I took most of the hit with my foot, I stubbed my toe something fierce, and the rest of it got me square in the face.

It looks like our friend, Man Servant Mr DJ Roomba, Esq tried to clean behind the kitchen door last night and left it part way closed. Fortunately there were no permanent injuries. Except for the injured pride.

Also, my iPad tried to install updates last night and I got an error stating that it was out of storage space. I don’t store anything on it. I put movies on it and music too, but only when I know there won’t be wifi, like when I was going on a plane to Florida 13 months ago. I’m not sure how my browser ended up with a billion gigs used. Like… what the hell?

The Snyder Cut is Here

Justice League… the Snyder Cut…

It’s here.

I’ve got an hour before I have to punch in to work. Hows about we pick off the first 25% or so?

Kevin Smith said it was good. rottentomatoes has it at a 78% where the theatrical cut was at 40%.

Let’s give her a spin and see how she rolls, eh?

USB Fail Part 2

The plan was to plug a DAC and the USB powered speakers I bought into two USB ports on my monitor. That way I could use the speakers on both my MacBook Pro and my work laptop. It didn’t work. The DAC and the speakers had power, I could switch them both on, but the MacBook Pro couldn’t find them. It wasn’t an option in my sound preferences. I moved the DAC to my final USB-C port on the MacBook itself (via an adapter) and it worked fine. I listened to a little King Crimson to test drive (Epitaph) and it sounded 10 times better than the speakers built into the monitor. I doubt I’d use them to mix a song or anything, but they sound great for watching Netflix (I test drove it with an episode of Community. The one where Jeff takes a pool class and they meet an Abed look alike).

So it didn’t work the way I planned, but I wasn’t really intending to use the speakers with the work machine anyway. It would have been nice to have the option, but I don’t really need it. It worked well enough on the Mac though, and that’s the important part. So we’ll say it’s only a partial fail.

USB Fail

I tried to add something to my work desk and I failed. Temporarily, but still failed. My work desk is in my bedroom. It used to be in the office with Jen’s, but early in the pandemic when both of us started working from home full time we were stepping on each other’s toes, figuratively speaking, when we both had conference calls at the same time. At first I started taking calls in the bedroom and then working in the office, but after a really short time I moved everything into the bedroom and setup a second desk. I still have a desk in the office, it just doesn’t have a computer on it anymore.

Pre-pandemic, when Jen was working off hours and I wasn’t, I would sometimes sit on my computer in the office with headphones on doing whatever. Music, surfing, writing, watching TV shows or movies. Whatever. Now I do that in the bedroom which means I don’t need to wear headphones. I had a DAC and some nice speakers in the office but I didn’t really need them in the bedroom, and they also took up more space than I had available. We have a homepod mini in the bedroom (two of them, actually) and when I’m on my MacBook I like to air play all of my audio through them. When I’m on my work laptop I run the audio through my headset mic that I use for conference calls. I don’t like to run my work machine through speakers, I like to keep it to headphones. While I work though I often listen to music or podcasts and for that I use my iPad and air play through the homepods.

Recently, for non-work time use, for steaming video I have been choosing to use the speakers built into my monitor rather than air play to the homepods. I think it’s because the homepods are on the other side of the room and in order to watch TV through them I have to crank up the volume quite a bit. It sounds great, but I feel like everyone else in the house can hear what I’m listening to (even though they can’t) and that bothers me. If I use the speakers in the monitor I can keep the volume way down. Unfortunately, they sound like shit.

So yesterday I ordered a little pair of USB speakers for my work desk. The plan was to plug them into a USB input on the monitor so that I could use it for both computers without having to switch any plugs. Unfortunately, I failed miserably in this attempt.

The speakers are USB powered… but they don’t connect to the audio via USB. They have an eighth inch phone plug for that. Shit. My monitor doesn’t have an input for that, and neither does my MacBook (I honestly don’t know if the work laptop does or doesn’t and I am too lazy to check, even though the laptop is literally an arm’s length away from me as I type this). I was on amazon, saw an inexpensive set of speakers that said USB and bought it. I didn’t read it close enough. Ironically, Jen has the same speakers and bought them for the same reason and made the same error. We’re kinda awesome like that, aren’t we? We finish each other’s sentences AND we screw up our computer audio plans in the same way.

The solution is easy. I have two USB inputs on my monitor, so I just need to grab the DAC from the office desk and use that. That’s what Jen did. That’ll work fine. I just didn’t want to have to add three things to this desk instead of two (two speakers, of course).

I had another item delivered by amazon today too. I didn’t screw this one up. It was Tide Pods. Let’s do some laundry, kids!

The only other outstanding online order I have is the attenuator I ordered for my 30 watt amplifier. I got a notification that it’s shipping label was printed on March 9th. Running the tracking number tells me that it still hasn’t shipped. It’s been a week and it hasn’t shipped yet. It’s just sitting there, missing me. Not a complaint, of course, there is a pandemic going on. I ordered from a home business and life is rough. I just really want to get this thing so I can crank the amp without causing injury and property damage.

And that, my friends, is what’s up with me today. Well… that and work and everything. Whatever, you know what I mean, right?

More Social Media Birthdays?

Yesterday was this wordpress.com account’s birthday. I had no idea.

Today is, apparently, my twitter account’s birthday. I also had no idea.

The bloggie is in preschool. The twittah is in middle school. I don’t remember the circumstances surrounding creating this version of the blog. I just remember being tired of medium. Twitter is different. I signed up for that during a lunch break while I was working in Framingham on the third floor by the front window before they moved us to the mini-desk section on the second floor. Jen and I opened Facebook accounts together at around the same time, but I think I setup the twitter on my own. I can’t remember if she created hers before me or not. We were dating and we were kinda social media cool back then. If you can ever believe I was cool based on the dumb stuff I post here. Like, cool people don’t celebrate twitter birthdays, right?

Dispo Roomba

Mr DJ Roomba, Esq kicked off his journey at 3:00AM today. I woke up, for some unknown reason, about 10 minutes later. In my 99% asleep state I thought it would be funny to take a picture of Mr DJ Roomba, Esq rolling around the kitchen and dining room. I figured I’d use Dispo because I am a sucker who suffers from crippling FOMO.

I probably should have turned on the lights. In my defense, I was 99% asleep.

One Note About Dispo

Just making note of one little thing I learned about using Dispo. I took a couple of pictures yesterday. They developed (ugh) today. They mostly came out awful. I would have deleted them at the time if I’d known, but that’s not the point of this dumb app that I am using for some reason I cannot explain.

When they uploaded to Flickr they were marked as having been taken today. Not just uploaded today, but taken today. That is kind of expected but still a little unfortunate. Oh well.

I took this one this morning just before the 9:00 develop (ugh) time so Flickr has the correct taken date. That’s nice.

FOMO and the Kiss of Death

I’m on Dispo. I put myself on the waiting list because I don’t know anyone who could send me an invite. I don’t have any pictures to post yet because the entire premise of the app is dumb and you have to wait a day after you take a picture before it’s available. Like a disposable camera that has to be developed… Disposable… Dispo… get it? Clevah.

I’m RobJ_1971, just like Flickr. Come find me and let me bore you to tears with cat and guitar pictures… a day after I take them.

Of course, as with most wait list app situations, my getting an account is basically the kiss of death. It’s ello all over again. Now that I’m in the rest of the universe will lose all interest and the entire company will collapse. It’s a given, right?

ADDENDUM: Apparently the 9:00am thing with Dispo is anything taken prior to 9:00am is “developed” at the same time. I took a few pictures when they first let me in. That was a little before 8:00am. They were “developed” (ugh) at 9:00am.

Two More Random Things

It’s one of those days, kids.

  • I’m on my lunch break. I just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a little snack pack of Pringles. Mmm, mmm, good. Often during lunch I will peruse Google News, or the Twitter, and catch up on any interesting stories of the day. I can’t do that today. Why? Our plan to watch the season (series?) finale of WandaVision is to do so after work while we eat dinner. That means for the next 4-5 hours I have to be in full on, hyper vigilant, spoiler avoidance mode. The Twitter and The Google News are both riddled with WandaVision spoilers right now and that’s why I am writing this post and not reading up on the world. No Spoilers!
  • Take a look at the top of the page. Go on, I’ll wait. See it? I changed the title of the page and the little headline blurby thingie. The last time I did that I brought back my original Blogger title. This time I am bringing back my first wordpress.com title. Why? Because I am really old and I’m out of ideas. My brain is creatively empty. Hell, just listen to my RPM album. Empty. The headline blurby thing is also for a previous blog though I cannot recall exactly when, where, or what it was. It was something about the cat taking over the world so this is close enough.

I wonder what stupid, pointless, unoriginal thing I’ll write next?

NO SPOILERS!