The phone battery saga - 2025 10 20

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:30 pm
gentlyepigrams: (mac daddy)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
I have a iPhone 14 that's about 2 1/2 years old now, maybe a little less, and it's still under AppleCare, so when I got a battery warning, which of course happened when I was traveling, I got it to the Apple Store ASAP, which happened to be on the way home from DFW on Monday. Usually we go to the NorthPark or Knox/Henderson stores but this time the best appointment was available at the Galleria.

I made sure everything was backed up and did all the pre-diagnostics in the car. Then we went to the store and showed them the phone and sure enough, they needed to replace the battery for free. They said they could get it done by the time the stores closed at 8pm so we went off to have dinner in the food court.

We came back at 7:30 and it wasn't ready. We were told to ask again at 8.

When we asked at 8 we were told it had been put in as overnight. The manager was super apologetic and had us stay for an extra 30 minutes so they could put in a new battery on the spot. It was pretty clear one of the two "geniuses" involved in the transaction had made a mistake, which was OK, and we were understanding. I had been traveling for 12 hours so as long as I got my phone back I was set to be "whatever, dude" as long as I had my phone for jury duty in the morning.

The phone is now working though I clearly need to figure out what's eating so much power because it's not lasting as long as I'd like. I have a mag-safe battery and an external that plugs into it, so as long as I'm not away from power for days on end, I should be OK. I'm glad I don't have to replace the phone just yet because that's not in my budget.

Jury duty - 2025 10 21

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:25 pm
gentlyepigrams: (*sigh*)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
It sucks to come back from a trip and do jury duty the next morning. This was my second time at Frank Crowley (the first time was right after the building reopened after the COVID shutdown, when the defendant turned out to have COVID in his pod so we were released) and everything went pretty much the same: they got us all in there, swore us in, dealt with all the folks who went to the wrong court building and forgot their paperwork. And then we waited. I was sitting on the left side of the service room reading my book and they picked from the right, so I wasn't grabbed for the first panel.

Apparently they only needed one so I was out of there at 8:30. This time instead of trying to walk to the train station, I took a rideshare home.

We ate at: Kai in Phoenix (backdated)

Oct. 19th, 2025 10:24 pm
gentlyepigrams: (food)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
Kai. It's an indigenous-centered tasting menu restaurant at a big Sheraton resort. The service was excellent, almost too much so, and the food was delightful. You get five courses with an amuse-bouche to start and truffles afterwards. They had no trouble accommodating my friend's gluten-free needs. The presentation was as good as the food.

For the two main courses I had bison and venison and both were top-notch.

Definitely want to take Spouse here.
gentlyepigrams: (screened words)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
The Musical Instrument Museum. A very large single-subject museum, which it has to be to cover the subject of "musical instruments". The permanent galleries are arranged by country, and I started running out of steam before I finished the American gallery. There was no special exhibit when we visited, alas, but if I lived there I'd be a member and also hit their concert series. They had an excellent shop and book store and I have a ton of photos to sort through.

The Heard Museum. Excellent museum of indigenous art and culture. Kind of what I would expect if the NMAI (pre-TFG) and the McNay in San Antonio had a very lorge baby. The exhibits were fascinating and I learned a lot, though with the time and energy we had I had to pass on the boarding school exhibit. The gift shop had amazing jewelry and rugs that were Out of My Price Range and a cafe with some very nice food. I have some photos but the multimedia work is not amenable to photography.

I want to go back and take Spouse to both of them.
gentlyepigrams: (books - shelves)
[personal profile] gentlyepigrams
Books
Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, by Dorothy Armstrong. Popular history of the numbered object type centering on the central, southern, and western parts of Asia and their carpetmaking traditions. I expected all the colonialism around Britain and the US, but was surprised by some of the other stories.
A Peculiar Combination and The Key to Deceit, by Ashley Weaver. First two in a WWII mystery series featuring a young female safecracker gone straight and the officer and gentleman who put her on that path as they deal with Nazi spies and the Battle of Britain. Engaging so far, with two interesting mysteries, and the romantic triangle the author is setting up is sufficiently subtle that it's not ruining the rest of the story.
A Case of Mice and Murder, by Sally Smith. First in a mystery series set in the Inner Temple of London at the turn of the last century featuring a clearly autistic-coded attorney. This one involves the dual mystery of the murder of the Lord Chief Justice and a case centering on who wrote a popular children's book. I'm in for the next one.
Breakout Year, by KD Casey. Queer baseball romance featuring fake dating and two Jewish characters with a complicated history. Light and fluffy when it's not dealing with heavy issues.
Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City, by Bench Ansfield. Now I know why the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire. Centering on the historic burning of the Bronx in the 1970s and extending out from there, this is economic history about the insurance industry and the financialization of, well, everything. Definitely worth your time if current events and economic history are your thing.

Movies & TV
The Hobby: Tales from the Tabletop. Watched this short documentary about boardgames on a plane flight. It's all about the subculture around them, which I'm personally not involved in but a lot of my friends are, so I was prepared to like the character types involved. I'm not sure how it would hold up in terms of background material if you didn't already know a little bit about board games.

went to the doctor with Adrian

Oct. 22nd, 2025 07:09 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
I accompanied Adrian to her doctor's appointment this afternoon, to provide moral support, take notes, and ask any relevant questions she didn't think of. This was last minute on my end, because she only realized this morning that she wanted company. So, some rearranging of my (vague) plans, but it worked.

It seemed like a good appointment, with a doctor who explained things pretty well. We walked home, which would have been a better idea if the google maps estimate of the distance had been accurate. Instead, we spent a lot of time walking around the parking lots of the hospital complex.

This used enough energy that I decided not to go to the optician tomorrow morning, before seeing my own doctor in the afternoon. I will go to Somerville, eat lunch in Davis Square, see Carmen, and then decide whether to come straight home, or stop for ice cream and/or other shopping.

more financial paperwork

Oct. 22nd, 2025 04:06 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
After a bunch of back and forth, it appears that the reason Chase would provide a medallion signature guarantee for my brother, and not me, is that he's an executor of my mother's estate. (Mark and I both have accounts at Chase, which is part of what confused me.)

The banker at Chase suggested talking (again) to either Vanguard or TIAA and see if they will do this. She said she looked online and it said TIAA does provide these, and I've had an account with them for at least 30 years.

Also, Attitude's and my joint account at Chase is dormant, and to wake it up, one of us needs to go to a branch, talk to someone, say we want to take the account out of dormancy, and make at least a $1 deposit or withdrawal. And no, I can't pick up a deposit slip, take it to a teller, and make the trivial transaction, we would need to actually talk to someone. To keep it active, we will need to poke at it at least every 364 days. But doing this once would at least reset the clock of "inactive account, transfer funds to the state for safekeeping."

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

Oct. 22nd, 2025 08:53 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A robot muses contentedly on the events that led it to its rapidly approaching doom.

A Thousand Blues by Cheon Seon-Ran

home cooking

Oct. 21st, 2025 09:27 pm
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
[personal profile] redbird
We had a roast chicken a few days ago, then [personal profile] adrian_turtle used some of the leftovers to make a salad with greens, pieces of chicken, and grapes. [personal profile] cattitude just turned the remaining leftover chicken into matzo ball soup.

There will be homemade chocolate cake later, because Adrian wanted to check whether the springform pan would hold cake batter. We eat well around here.

The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis

Oct. 21st, 2025 08:55 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


The story that began the grand tradition of picking on a teenager's work.

The Eye of Argon by Jim Theis

Bundle of Holding: Ghastly Affair

Oct. 20th, 2025 02:04 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


A bundle for Daniel James Hanley's tabletop roleplaying game of Gothic and Romantic Horror in the decadent, disastrous age of Marie-Antoinette, Napoleon, and Lord Byron.

Bundle of Holding: Ghastly Affair

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Clarke Award Finalists 2019

Oct. 20th, 2025 08:54 am
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll
2019: The Tories somehow find someone worse than May to be Prime Minister, UK pleas to the EU for a Brexit negotiation do-over on the grounds “our negotiators were fucking numpties” fall on deaf ears, and Tory MPs reject multiple Tory Brexit proposals, for which UK voters rebuke the incompetent Tories with a massive majority.

Poll #33744 Clarke Award Finalists 2019
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 33


Which 2019 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Rosewater by Tade Thompson
7 (21.2%)

Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
2 (6.1%)

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
25 (75.8%)

Semiosis by Sue Burke
10 (30.3%)

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag
4 (12.1%)

The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley
1 (3.0%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2019 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Rosewater by Tade Thompson
Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee
Semiosis by Sue Burke

The Electric State by Simon Stålenhag
The Loosening Skin by Aliya Whiteley
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Mars being unfit for humans, there is no alternative but to make humans--or at least a human--fit for Mars.

Man Plus (Man Plus, volume 1) by Frederik Pohl

No Kings rally

Oct. 18th, 2025 07:32 pm
redbird: clenched fist on an LGBT flag background (angry queer)
[personal profile] redbird
[personal profile] cattitude and I went to the No Kings rally on Boston Common. It was a large crowd, large enough that we couldn't really hear the speeches, but that's OK, we were there to be part of the crowd. I saw some good signs, including "Of course he hates veritas" and "America runs on dissent", for local flavor, and "No kings [large image of the One Ring with a slash through it] to rule them all." Almost all the signs were homemade, and different.

Happily, it was warm enough for me to unzip my hoodie and show off my Boston Dyke March T-shirt, and for other people to wear t-shirts, some of them more relevant than others. I was amused by the person in a football jersey: the local NFL team is called the New England Patriots.

There were also a bunch of inflatable animal costumes, including at least three chickens, a dinosaur, axolotls, an octopus, and a pink unicorn. The unicorn was blowing bubbles. I bought a T-shirt with a drawing of a frog and the word "resist."

The above paragraph would have made no sense a month ago, but we are living in weird as well as scary times, in which the administration apparently sees the Emergency World Naked Bike Ride as a threat.
annathepiper: (Final Test)
[personal profile] annathepiper

This is a followup guide to this one that I wrote a while back: HOWTO: Set up a radial menu on a Steam Deck game. Tuxborn players expressed some interest in the details of my decisions on how to set my radials, so I’m going to write those out for this post here.

The primary audience for this post is Tuxborn players on Steam Decks. But a lot of this can apply to any Skyrim players on Steam Decks, especially if you’re running a load order similar to Tuxborn’s, and if that load order happens to include the BFCO-related mods we have.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read more on Anna Plays Skyrim.

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
[personal profile] james_davis_nicoll


Seven books new to me. Well, six and one replacement. Four fantasy, one historical, one horror, one science fiction. Two appear to be part of series.

Books Received, October 11 to October 17


Poll #33737 Books Received, October 11 to October 17
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 51


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Boys With Sharp Teeth by Jenni Howell (July 2026)
6 (11.8%)

Behind Five Willows by June Hur (May 2026)
16 (31.4%)

Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher (August 2026)
34 (66.7%)

Heir of Storms by Lauryn Hamilton Murray (June 2026)
4 (7.8%)

City of Others by Jaren Poon (January 2026)
20 (39.2%)

Starry Messenger: The Best of Galileo edited by Charles C. Ryan (November 1979)
7 (13.7%)

How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jessie Sylva (January 2026)
18 (35.3%)

Some other option (see comments)
0 (0.0%)

Cats!
35 (68.6%)

April 2017

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