August continues to be much less hot than expected.
Also, my computer has been up and running properly for more than 24 hours at the moment, after a couple of days of being rendered a paperweight that culminated with over an hour Friday night of me and my sighted housemates fighting with the bios to disable secure boot that had somehow been re-enabled and was preventing me from booting a flash drive to reinstall Debian.
On the upside, while my computer was unusable and I was without sighted assistance due to my housemates being at work, I managed to clear out the backlog of recent YouTube uploads I had downloaded betwen 30 and 50 minues of length as well as several of the 90+ minute videos I had downloaded split into chapters… Of course, since I missed a few nightly YouTube sessions, I have a ton of new sub-30 minute videos to go through and some new 30-50 minute videos… still have a dozen in the 10-20 minute range and over two dozen in the 20-30 minute range… even downloaded the 20-30 minute videos for offline listening, something I normally only do for new uploads over 30 minutes.
Also, my sinuses are clearer to day and my quads are hurting less than they did over the last two days… I spent much of the time my computer was out of order tidying up, some of which was needed just to get my desktop out of my room to hook it up to the television in the living room, which naturally stirred up dust to irritate my sinuses and lead to putting more strain on my body than usual.
Also, I’ve straddled the 310 pound barrier the last few times I’ve stepped on the scales.
I’ve managed to accumulate 4 canes over the years… though, as a blind person not quite at the point of requiring external supports to stand and walk, they are the kind of cane used to scan the ground in front of you for obstacles, not the kind that is used for supporting one’s waight… and in fact, I’d be surprised if any of my canes could actually support my weight.
Though, speaking of canes, If I could afford one of those decorative canes that are part of the refined gentleman aesthetic, I would want one with a d120 carved from Amethyst as the handle and a shaft carved from purple heart… and my D&D Wizard self carries a purple heart staff topped with an Amethyst carved in the shape of a 7-fold symmetry polar zonohedron.
Inspired by recent progress I have expanded my zmachine mapping to handle multiple rooms which correspond to the same place on the map, displaying paths between rooms as they are travelled, and marking the player’s location. I’m working on some improvements that will let it track other things too, like the robots in Suspended.
For the past two weeks, this tiny friend has been very indecisive as to where its web should be. Every couple of days, it would take down its old web and set up shop in a different corner.
I walked into the bathroom this morning, and it was just hanging out in the middle of the room, suspended above the floor at face-height, legs out, completely still, save for a slow rotation from web line tension.
I like to imagine it was saying, “Hi. Um. Yeah, so I’ve run out of ideas. I don’t suppose this idea will work, either.”
So into the jar it goes!
There are two cellar spiders in this bathroom, already, and they’ve claimed both of the good spots. The jarred spider is a species that is driven to optimize, so I don’t think it’ll ever be satisfied by camping in the bathroom, so I’m rehoming it.
Also, I think my family has figured why we’re having so many more bug encounters lately. Usually this area is full of lizards. Literally everywhere you look, you would see a lizard.
Two years ago, a pair of cats moved into the neighborhood, and we think they’ve been eating most of the lizards. With fewer predators remaining, the local bug population seems to have exploded. It’s gotten to the point that spiders have started to peacefully cohabitate. I regularly see three or five spiders per web. With such an abundance of food, I think they’ve stopped being territorial.
There is generally a couple of tiny spiders casting their webs behind the always open bathroom door in our master bedroom. I cheer them on since mosquitos always manage to sneak in through the front door when it opens and closes.
I have decided to write a musical. Please don’t support me in doing this, because I know it’s a dumb idea and my whole intention is to end up in a situation where I’m bored of writing it, to the point where I go to myself “right, I tried it and it didn’t work, now can I get on with revising and writing normal songs?”
well, every March is a bit hard deciding about the Amnesty day’s contribuitions; as noted during the various Amnesty days, here are too many WIP in various degree of completion on the slips and fitting out docks…
Mentioned this in the exercise thread, but I broke another 10 pound barrier, weighing in at 308 pounds today.
Also, was forced to reboot yesterday evening, and while my system came up in a usable state, I did have to manually enable my ethernet, figuring out a new method in the process… also encountered this weird bug where some websites would load but others wouldn’t, this forum being among the ones that wouldn’t, a bug that had proceeded the breakage that lead to the aforementioned fight between me and my less tech savvy sighte housemates and my PC’s bios to disable the secure boot bug… but fortunately, I was able to fix my internet without having to reinstall the OS this time around.
Also, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone go to half the effort Inventor does to manage their local arthropod population that isn’t just trying to make them locally extinct. Though, the comment about lizards and cats reminds me of the massive mouse infestation this trailer had for months following local animal control deciding to round up all the stray cats in the trailer park and all the block ramen those mice ate before I invested in a storage solution they couldn’t chew their way into.
It’s a pity that my biological obsessions all involve things that can’t be seen without an electron microscope, which I haven’t had access to for years since I ditched the doctorate. But seriously, what could possibly be cuter than a bacteriophage?
