Last night, I finally got my twitch, Discord, and Steam accounts to sync up in both Epic, and New Moon.
No big feat that, however, in keeping with established theories regarding the Dunning-Kruger Effect; this morning, thus emboldened by this junior varsity facsimile of "productivity", I resolved to sync and tether the Kyocera Smartphone and my iMac.
Well, that was non-intuitive.
Most every online guide I found turned out to date from before Mojave and 'Grea' is using the newest iteration of Android. I get the impression that Apple and Google really don't want you to do this.
That aside, Holo and Grea are now talking to one another, ALL of my pictures from the old Blackberry's SD card are saved and I can begin the process of deleting unwanted/obnoxious apps, and possibly installing new browser.
This is the second time (the first time they had to have the city come in and do some things on the city side of the line). They've all left again now, but THIS time everything flushes. The bathroom is now clean and the poo smell is leaving.
I'm letting the nominally clean tub soak in bleach water for a few more minutes, but soon I will take a shower for the first time since Saturday.
This, has been hell.
Out of consideration for our readers the picture is unrelated to the recent unpleasantness and instead looks forward to a brighter tomorrow.
This young lady exquisitely exemplifies how I and most of my coworkers feel this evening....
Art by is by Itou,who understands what Christmas is like today.
I believe I personally lifted over 10,000 parcels today, mostly in 50 pound bags of small packages. This was a light day compared to previous weeks. I got home, sat down in the chair to take off my shoes and...suddenly it was six hours later. I am SO tired of all the winning, but can take solace from the fact that the hurting will soon fade.
1
Bit late to the party here, but I note with interest, Amazon has a brand new delivery facility in a former warehouse here in Houston. I estimate 50k internal sq.feet, and that's assuming the original single-floor arrangement still exists. There is plenty of room for them to have modded a second floor for personnel offices. Dozens of vans are parked there, and they appear to be hiring. Next Xmas might be less strenuous for you...
2
Oops. Cant edit.... I was waaaaaay off; forgot the second part of the building and was only counting the original showroom floor... make that 175k sq ft. Also, the Google Map pics are way out of date; the large covered marshaling area for the vans that got added isn't shown.
I've been an employee at U.P.S. for 27 years. In all that time I've never seen a Christmas like this one. I've seen it get heavy, but I'd never seen every day for over a week be higher than our peak day last year, nor heard the belts grinding from too much volume all day for three days. I have never, ever, until Tuesday, seen a 53 foot trailer come onto our lot bulging like a can with botulism. The other day one of the drivers from one of the big sort hubs came in to help after dropping off a load. He said that the hub was so packed that it took him 25 minutes to get from the bay door where the trailer was parked to the guard shack at the gate.
Young lady who understands what Christmas means to me is by Itou.
I honestly don't think I've been this sore every day since basic training.
Frankly, this is not any failure on the company's part, we're just experiencing the biggest Christmas EVER and our physical plant wasn't designed for an economy this good. It does bring a smile to my face to see all the Amazon packages coming through though. It seems that after declaring that they didn't need us and were never going to ship with us again...well... it looks from my modest vantage point that the Bezos brigade completely choked, as we've been getting trailer upon trailer of Amazon boxes that Amazon couldn't handle, and, despite this unexpected surfeit of cardboard, at least at my building, we haven't rolled anything over to the next day yet. Everything's gotten delivered. The hours are quite insane though.A few years ago I worked some double shifts and still didn't make as much overtime as I have this week. Today was odd, we actually finished early, however, as a result Monday's start time has been moved up to Sunday.
Monday's gonna suck.
On the other hand, I've lost 13 pounds and my pants are threatening to fall off.
Meanwhile, my current mastery of basic household chores, web-presence and Christmas preparations can be described thussly...
I'm not an important member of the blogosphere, haven't posted anything involving actionable evidence about the Clintons, and in any event, there was no note attached
Last week I received an E-mail apologizing and informing me that me that my confirmation
E-mail had gone to spam and that the snacks were in the mail.
Allow me to explain...
BILLY VERSUS SNAKEMAN is one of the many less than productive slices on the time allocation pie-graph of the Walter Mitty LARP that is my life.
It's a fun little anime themed browser game where one vicariously lives the life of a text based ninja living in a text based ninja village working with one's fellow ninja villagers to protect the village from attacks by other ninja villages, rampaging Kaiju, zombies, snowstorms, petitioners, sketchy peddlers, gambling schoolgirls and renegade tattoo artists, all the while going on quests and missions (to other anime genres) that pit you against the malign elder deity that is The Random Encounter Table. There's a TV Tropes page for it.
The game is actually surprisingly well designed. It's fun and despite the limitations of a text based browser game, it affords considerable freedom and a surprising ability to cooperate with other players in your village, and occasionally others villages as well.
It's run by Hammergirl Anime in Rochester New York which is relevant to this explanation because on the very day I had it confirmed that I'd graduated from college, I was informed that I had won "25 Dollars in Weird Japanese Snacks From Hammergirl".
And today...
Huh...
This box from Hammergirl Anime contained a whole bunch of 'Weird Japanese Snacks'.
But that's exactly what was promised!
"So. As a video game company Hammergirl is already way ahead of Bethesda."
Indeed!
If you're interested, you can play Billy Versus Snakemanhere. Pixy and I are in Snowflake Village. Which is...totally not for snowflakes. Hopefully, we will be accepting memberships again this evening or tomorrow.
Update: Snowflake Village is accepting new members. Thanks Pixy.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Sep 30 19:41:15 2019 (YUAc9)
5
A buddy of mine has had Hammergirl as his friendly local shop for ages and ages. I remember when I was playing BvS and told him about it. "Oh, it's that game that (11DB) made!"
I learned to play hanafuda AND mahjongg from that game.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tue Oct 1 01:37:36 2019 (v29Tn)
6
So, what is the "Mini Bromaid" Pizza-taste Snack with a picture looking like corn?
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Oct 1 17:05:39 2019 (LZ7Bg)
7
The "Mini Bromaid" was a puffed cheese thing with a taste that is not quite mozzarella but very close. It wasn't bad at all.
The "Umai" (The Doremon themed confections) came in three varieties:
Tonkotsu, which was a crunchy thing that one might be persuaded under duress to describe as that of pork Ramen.
The Cheese variety was surprising as it was the most cheddary thing that ever cheddared. It as more cheddary than Cheese-Its. I never encountered cheddar in Japan and was quite surprised to see them get cheddar right.
Both the above would likely go well with a soda or sweet tea.
The chocolate "Umai" was an amorphous cookie-esque thing wrapped in chocolate. I can't overstress how non-dense the cookie part of this is. I imagine that eating an aerogel coated in chocolate would be similar. The chocolate was, well, perfectly serviceable chocolate. The effect is similar to eating a chocolate KitKat if the cookie portion had the same tensile strength, but the density of cotton.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Oct 1 19:43:00 2019 (YUAc9)
After about an hour, management decided to send extra people home. Out of habit, they told me I could go, as I always asked to be one of the first ones cut loose and am at the top of the seniority list.
Also out of habit, I walked out the door, got in the van, drove down the interstate towards the school to camp out in the library and study when it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I don't go to school anymore....
Anyway:
When I got home, I somehow managed, in a bizarre feat of PEBKACery, to wake the malign elder god Siri on my iMac.
Below the fold is the Siri information page on my iMac user guide, which is replete with all the ways to access and help Siri to utilize the data that Siri is collecting on me.
Note what is missing.
Any way to turn the damned thing off.
I've gone through Preferences
and cut off everything that I can but this only disables the interface as
far as I can tell. I have the uneasy feeling that I've merely removed
the reminder that my every keystroke is being logged and assessed.
I'd promised myself I'd never get another Mac. But my paper was on the
lightning-struck iMac, and I needed to salvage it, which I did...but
that paper was declared unsuitable, so I actually gave 1700 dollars to
Tim Cook (who hates me and people like me) and helped him to spy on me
for no benefit.
I cannot be an example to you, gentle reader, but I can be a horrible, horrible warning.
more...
1
Have some spam comments, apparently.
Have you tried asking Siri how to get her to go away? (I am assuming you're past the return period on the new machine.)
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Aug 28 11:27:01 2019 (Iwkd4)
2
How to disable Siri on macOS manually
Open the main Apple menu from top right corner.
Choose System preferences.
There’s a new Siri icon, click on it.
From the right pane uncheck Enable Siri option.
Uncheck Show Siri in menu bar.
Now Siri should be disabled and hidden.
I don't have a Mac, so no idea if this really works or still works.
The site where I found this had recommended that you also get some kind of cleaning or blocking app for your Mac.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Wed Aug 28 18:27:36 2019 (sF8WE)
3
Not the best instructions, given that the Apple menu is in the top left corner.
I think this is more about not trusting the preferences panel than not being able to find it. Apple makes it easy to turn this stuff on, not so easy to make sure that it's off. For instance, I just ran the latest software update, and on reboot, it tried to get me to log into icloud, which I know from long experience will result in adding back some cloud features I've deliberately turned off half a dozen times already. And every time I update the watch software, it "helpfully" reminds me how easy it is to make Siri listen to my every word...
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Aug 28 19:11:05 2019 (LGSd2)
4
All those places where it says to make sure listen for Siri is turned on can be where you make sure it's turned off.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Aug 28 21:42:17 2019 (Ix1l6)
5
Sure, Mauser, they *can* be, but they *aren't*, because that would hinder Apple's spying on you.
Personally I would disconnect the mic, but I realize not everyone wants to do that.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Aug 28 22:19:52 2019 (Iwkd4)
I think this is more about not trusting the preferences panel than not being able to find it.
Yes. Exactly.
Personally I would disconnect the mic, but I realize not everyone wants to do that.
Here's the thing. the iMac consists of a sealed magic smoke container with a 2 dimensionally adjustable stand and some USB ports and there is no physical switch other than an oenoefef button.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Aug 29 04:08:14 2019 (YUAc9)
7
"the iMac consists of a sealed magic smoke container"
Yeah, I know. I guess if you were determined you could jab a needle into the mic or something to break it.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Aug 29 10:35:11 2019 (Iwkd4)
As I ponder the direction I'll take as I approach one of life's crossroads, I want to thank everyone for all the kind words regarding my recent graduation.
It is truly gratifying and I appreciate it more than I can possibly express.
Posted by: Canthros at Tue Aug 20 20:39:38 2019 (mToqK)
2
Congratulations! I've known few people to hit quite the number of roadblocks towards a goal I've seen you recount over the years, your persistence has been admirable. It's awesome that you've finally made it!
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tue Aug 20 21:44:57 2019 (jl9eJ)
3
Congratulations! I must admire your perseverance, I'd have either given up, or just possibly "gone postal" quite some ways back in your catalog of woe.
So, what field of study will your masters be in?
Posted by: David at Tue Aug 20 21:48:27 2019 (wXI5i)
Posted by: Doug O. at Tue Aug 20 22:09:05 2019 (kqK5x)
5
You are a gentleman and a scholar, sir.
And your university should be crawling on its hands and knees to apologize to you. Thank God you finally got a few people who weren't too proud to do their fricking jobs, opposing the vast army who apparently were.
Either way, I wish we could all make merry with you, but obviously kidney stones are not conducive to anything but deep thankfulness at finally having passed.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Aug 20 23:01:29 2019 (sF8WE)
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Wed Aug 21 11:21:29 2019 (ug1Mc)
15
Congratulations, 'muppet! I won't say you beat *the* system, but you beat *a* system; a system that seemed intent on throwing every single roadblock it could in your direction!
Posted by: Ben at Wed Aug 21 11:57:59 2019 (osxtX)
3
I learned that there's no university policy that cannot accommodate an exception. In fact, all of them even have instructions and procedures about manufacturing these exemptions. But it all comes down to relevant people willing to go the extra mile. Sometimes it's possible to escalate up.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jul 17 02:39:46 2019 (LZ7Bg)
4
You need to talk to your congressman or local tv station.
This is freaking ridiculous. You have enough credits for three degrees, and exemptions are made for this kind of situation.
St. Catherine of Alexandria! St. John Bosco! St. Anthony! St. Joseph! St. Jude! St. Expeditus, for goodness sake! All you holy helpers of students, please pray for him! Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for him! In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, and in the name of the Holy Trinity, I call for some justice and mercy, and at least one fully awarded degree!!!!
And if this person has some hidden enemy or annoying demon, I ask St. Michael to smite said enemy or keep him unable to mess around with our friend. And if you know any tech support angels, feel free to send them along, because he needs some serious help in that department.
O Holy Spirit, comfort our friend and cheer him. Grant him the spirit of wisdom and understanding, and refresh his hope and faith and love. Be his Advocate, I pray, and give some common sense to his poor excuse for a college administration. Because this is getting very old.
I ask this in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Fri Jul 19 14:23:06 2019 (sF8WE)
5
So...Does anybody else see Feigiap's cityscape in the negative?
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Jul 20 21:54:14 2019 (YUAc9)
6
Not sure why you're hanging on it. It is just as impractical and uncomfortable, not to mention unsafe place to live as the flooded city you posted previously. But it's not the point. The artist just wanted a pretty picture with a citiscape that it's out of the ordinary. The UHF antenna is super cute. That building is probably some kind of local maintenance and administrative office (unless a poor as a rat ham radio operator lives there).
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sun Jul 21 07:54:51 2019 (LZ7Bg)
I don't mean does anyone have a negative opinion of the picture, I mean do they SEE it in the negative.
That's how it looks in Pale Moon. It looks normal in everything else.
As far as I can tell, that's the only picture affected.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jul 21 08:29:11 2019 (YUAc9)
8
Ah.
There IS one other picture that has the same effect, also by Feigiap.
The other two times I've used his pictures (here and here) they are unaffected by the glitch.
Both of the affected pictures are from a specific art set; one of views in modern day Penang.
This effect does not show up on any other browser and did not show up when I posted using Pale Moon on my old iMac with Mountain Lion. I'm wondering if this is a terribly ineffective attempt DRM or just an obscure glitch in an obscure browser.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jul 21 09:24:15 2019 (YUAc9)
A Less Than Comprehensive Selection of First World Problems...
...lurk below the fold.
For those disinterested in an old fat guy's first world problems here's the exact opposite; a cute girl, walking home from school, carefree in Penang.
.
Art by Fei-Giap, who can also be found here and who is selling an art book here.
Anyway: While going through the hurricane box and checking for dates, I noticed that
there was DAK ham with an expiration date of 2008. If I've learned
anything from wasting time on the internet, it's that expiration dates are meaningless so I figured I'd have it for lunc.....
more...
1
My guess is that Parallels had an update recently which included their new payment model, and you "accepted" the accompanying license change. Most likely, reverting to the old version will restore your perpetual license, if you can find a downloader for it, and they didn't gratuitously change the disk image format to something incompatible with that version.
Alternatively, a bit of Googling turns up instructions on how to migrate from Parallels to the free Virtualbox.
I used Parallels once upon a time, and switched to VMware Fusion for compatibility reasons I no longer remember. I've bought some upgrades over the years, but I'm pleased to report that they still sell honest-to-gosh licenses, not rentals.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Jun 5 18:22:44 2019 (ZlYZd)
2
Yeah. VMWare Fusion keeps asking me to upgrade, but - and this is rather important - it still works.
I run Virtualbox on Windows for my Linux dev environment, and it's great for that. I haven't tried it on Mac though.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Jun 5 19:37:19 2019 (PiXy!)
3
Airborne Express once left a $400 hard drive in plain sight on my front porch in January in Boston. By the time I got home it was sitting in and under about an inch of snow.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Jun 5 20:16:07 2019 (Iwkd4)
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jun 5 23:27:50 2019 (Ix1l6)
5
I just ducked in to buy some ammunition. I haven't been to the range lately though.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Jun 6 02:46:45 2019 (xOgT9)
6
I've been experimenting with running a Windows 7 guest on a Linux host using virtualbox. So far so good, with one exception: I need to install their guest additions to do things: If I install and enable the vanilla 3d-accelerations, Makerware will work (I'm guessing they use directx even when it's not available), but the default photoviewer will crash. If I disable, then some directx based programs will sort-of-launch but not display any directx calls.
I do use a Windows host with Linux guest. The point of the former experiment is to have a Windows virtual machine that has all the driver goodness of interfacing with my USB devices and software, but which Microsoft can't arbitrarily screw up one day.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Thu Jun 6 06:33:22 2019 (K+Kza)
7
PS: Software as a service/subscription model BS is digital serfdom. Unless I am forced into it, I'll have nothing to do with it. Kill it with fire.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Thu Jun 6 06:35:04 2019 (K+Kza)
8
If you want Linux and aren't bothered by Windows 10, the Ubuntu under WSL thing is pretty nice as long as you don't run into any of the limitations.
You can even install a Windows X server and run X applications on your desktop.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Jun 6 09:53:28 2019 (Iwkd4)
Tuesday I went to school to make arrangements for re-enrolling in my final class. I checked my Student E-mail to see if my advisor was available for consultation. It turns out that she has left the country and won't be back for over a month but she insisted that rather than signing up for the current session that I "DON'T DO ANYTHING!" She said that she's pretty sure that I'm good to graduate, but that the process of applying for another class involves removing my graduation application. I also noted that my graduation worksheet"Degree Works" says that my credits requirement has not been met; that I have 'only' 123 out of a needed 120 credits.
Well. That's odd.
So... I'm going to hold tight while the chocolate ration is adjusted.
Below the fold is the a copy/paste of what I typed in the two fields of the senior survey I was asked to complete last week.
Below this text is a good visual representation of how not to stagger ladders for safety.
As there is likely little interest in the banality that lurks below the fold, we've decided to provide, as a service to you, gentle reader, a helpful demonstration of how to deal with some of those pesky manticore issues that may crop up from time to time.
Helpful demonstration by Painterfiend. Support them on Patreon here.
Apologies for two consecutive posts concerning the banality of my Walter Mitty lifestyle. Here, as partial compensation is something pleasant by Sukabu.
Additionally, Sukabu still has a Tumbler page...somehow...Infer what you will from that statement.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Jan 18 09:01:31 2019 (PiXy!)
3
The "computer" overwrote an "A" with an "F"? Not that it matters at this point, but that's either one hell of a bug that's likely affecting hundreds of students, or someone is fibbing to you.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 13:27:42 2019 (yXPNh)
4
Yeah, that's a bogus explanation. Reminds me how one assistant professor in my wife's department was fixing to get a tenure. So other professor broke into an office (I don't remember if Dean's or some clerical office) and trashed the assistant's file with all the tenure docs.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri Jan 18 13:37:21 2019 (LZ7Bg)
...that's either one hell of a bug that's likely affecting hundreds of students, or someone is fibbing to you.
That is the professor's story. And the professor is sticking to it.
It might well have been a PEBKAC error of course, something as simple as clicking on the wrong icon in the rush to turn grades in before deadline.
However, I THINK that what happened is that the computer system now automatically assigns a grade of "F" to any class that was marked as "Incomplete" and this has to be corrected. There may be other issues as well. For example, it's possible that if a person in a class with a strict departmental attendance policy is given a waiver because of, say, a doctor's note, the actual attendance figures might cause the system to override the teacher's waiver without additional steps being taken on the instructor's part. Both situations would have applied to me in that class.
The school has had various "issues" with its IT upgrades for months.
There is circumstantial evidence against the PEBKAC theory;
Yesterday, when I went to registration to get entered into my new class (which, as I'm an undergrad, required a waiver) I asked if THEY could see my change in status (I sure as hell couldn't). The young lady in registration who was helping me said it wouldn't be visible for a day or so, but she also mentioned that this was not a unique issue and that she'd been in the same position previously. I inferred the conversation that this was a not-unheard of situation. I don't know WHAT is going on, but I suspect (albeit with no hard evidence) that the root cause is someone in the administration with micromanagement tendencies.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Jan 18 15:53:30 2019 (gxCG3)
6
At the university I teach at, incompletes become Fs after one calendar year. And it requires moving heaven and earth on the part of the prof to undo that. (I had a student once with a SERIOUS, and I mean SERIOUS health problem, who couldn't come back within the year and....well, he finally completed the class but I will note the then-Dean made *me* cry in her office with all of the rigamarole about what I had to do (she was also quite rude to me)
It's also totally possible, at least in today's grade-entry systems, for a professor to fat-finger the wrong grade. I've done it. Fortunately, not often, and the student usually e-mails me to go "this can't be right, can it?" (I have an online gradebook so each student should be able to look up what they are earning). If they let me know within a couple days, it's an easy fix. Longer, it's a bit more complicated but not hard...
it's entirely possible you F is an F for fat-fingering...
Posted by: fillyjonk at Fri Jan 18 19:14:02 2019 (+MBAo)
7
Hm. It's certainly true that "the computer made me do it" is usually shorthand for "that's the way the bureaucracy is set up to work oh god are you going to make me go in there."
The true a**holes of the world are the ones who want a computer system to make irrevocable changes. The entire history of computing is is trying to get AWAY from that. The computer is meant to be your friend, not Friend Computer.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 22:11:21 2019 (4TRZx)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Jan 19 09:18:44 2019 (PiXy!)
10
Yeah, that pretty much encapsulates it Pixy. Badass thug-girl in a fictional Brazil-like country who's not as smart nor as badass as she thinks she is, but gets through on pure oblivious stubbornness. Rescues her kid from rotten foster parents and searches for the father while the girl tries to talk sense to her.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Jan 19 18:57:27 2019 (Ix1l6)
1
Bifocal prescription safety glasses here, with removable side shields. Used to have the "Transitions" lenses, but they actually have to screw up the close prescription to make that work, leaving you with only a small spot that isn't distorted. Got regular bifocals this time. Much better.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jan 16 23:46:34 2019 (Ix1l6)
2
Cool! You're only five or six years behind me...
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Jan 16 23:49:22 2019 (PzbzM)
3
I've got progressive bifocals and I'm not sure I like them much. I get a lot of eyestrain from various screens...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu Jan 17 04:31:49 2019 (v29Tn)
4
I'm just getting three different pairs of glasses. This clearly proves I am not old.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Jan 17 06:56:49 2019 (PiXy!)
5
Progressive trifocals here, but the place I went screwed up the last set. Twice.
Posted by: ubu at Thu Jan 17 07:25:07 2019 (UlsdO)
6
I have driving glasses and kanji glasses. I also have a pair of Foster Grant Multi-Focus cheaters that I bought at an airport that range from 0.5 to 1.0, which come in handy for late-night reading. (I haven't seen these in stores outside of airports, oddly enough)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Jan 17 17:36:13 2019 (LGSd2)
7
Yeah, the Progressiveness is not worth it. At least if you have any astigmatism.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Jan 17 22:03:24 2019 (Ix1l6)
8
I got progressive trifocals last year, and I've had near-constant eyestrain ever since. I imagine next year I'll go to some basic bifocals.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 13:22:12 2019 (yXPNh)
Last night, I got a call from my brother (who is visiting our folks) that Mom suffered chest pains and then got a case of the shakes, felt cold and her vision went blurry. None of these things are good.
This morning, the diagnosis was a clot in her lung, which is pretty terrible, however as of now that does not appear to be the case. She's being scheduled for "cathaterization" so it sounds like they are going to do an angioplasty or something.
I'm getting slightly conflicting reports from relatives on-scene (250miles away), but prognosis seems much better, even good as of now.
Blogging will remain light to nonexistent.
UPDATE:
They couldn't find a blockage, or a stroke or anything, which is troubling. More tests results are pending, but for now she is released and is staying in the guest room in their house (as she is forbidden to deal with stairs.) One theory is that she may have just been suffering from exhaustion. Perhaps now she'll listen when we tell her to calm down and not drive herself to hard about Thanksgiving.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Nov 6 16:03:01 2018 (LZ7Bg)
2
Indeed.
Cost isn't technically the issue though. I've been looking at downgrading to a flip-phone or smartwatch for some time now. However I now have a reason to upgrade from my Blackberry to a real smartphone...it's required for Uber.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Nov 6 18:55:28 2018 (gxCG3)
3
As far as cost goes you can realize a huge amount of value by avoiding the headline flagship phones.
A Galaxy S9 costs, what, $900 or so right now? I ordered a Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S from Gearbest a couple weeks ago for $400. This is an all-four-carriers Snapdragon 845 with a 6" screen and 6GB of RAM: basically the same specs as an S9, but at half the price, and it works on Sprint/Verizon! (It also is a dual-sim which is pretty rare in the US.)
If you don't need that much power, the Motorola G series (just to pick one example) give you most of the same power at a fraction of the price--I got a G5S Plus on sale a while back for about $200, or $50 or so less than it normally goes for. A phone like that will pretty much do anything but the most GPU-intensive 3D games.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Nov 6 20:08:15 2018 (Iwkd4)
4
I have a Moto G4 Play. Solid and reliable, but the camera is pretty bad. That's the bottom of the Moto G line though and two generations behind. Any current model will be a lot better.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Nov 6 21:54:47 2018 (PiXy!)
5
I found the camera on the G5+/G5S+ to be pretty nice as cell phone cameras go. IIRC the 5+'s camera is widely considered to be good.
Having said that I don't take a lot of pictures.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Nov 6 22:51:12 2018 (Iwkd4)
6
If I weren't flying, I would still be using my flip phone. But I needed a backup device, and my $60 no-carrier phone just wasn't cutting it anymore for the Garmin Pilot app. So, I bought a carrier LG phone, which replaced both devices. Still, it was $240. You just can't get anything much cheaper from a carrier, unless it's a VNMO that rapes consumers in monthly fees.
I remember back when Europe had expensive phones with SIMs, and we had carrier-locked phones that were given away. That was the grand bargain. Now we have $800 phones and no portability - the worst of both worlds. Thanks, Obama!
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Nov 7 09:42:08 2018 (LZ7Bg)
7
"You just can't get anything much cheaper from a carrier, unless it's a VNMO that rapes consumers in monthly fees. "
No, but if you're on AT&T/T-Mobile, you can buy any old unlocked phone and use it. The smartphones under $240 or so probably aren't going to be very good, though.
It turns out if you have an activated Verizon SIM card, you can stick it in a new (compatible) phone and it'll just work, like AT&T/T-Mobile always have, without getting special permission from Verizon like you used to have to. I found that out accidentally when I got my new Xiaomi last month. I was going through VZ's website, doing the "I want to switch my phone" form, which kept erroring out, but I'd already done the SIM swap, and noticed the phone went from "no service" to "Verizon".
It is kind of painful saying nice things about VZ, but there you have it.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Nov 7 10:24:12 2018 (Q/JG2)
