azurelunatic

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I had a delightful conversation with Etsy tech support about the use of basic Boolean operators (namely, NOT, or the minus sign), in which tech support told me that I could filter out unwanted results by saying, for example, crazy daisy -Pyrex.

After the photo of my computer screen with a search like that, and the first two results bearing Pyrex in the product name, tech support told me that it wasn't a matter of me getting the syntax wrong, but I could narrow things down by Category! :D :D D

I pointed out the Pyrex pattern Crazy Daisy embroidered tea towels. And said that in fact it was so crazy to not include a basic Boolean operator like the minus sign in one's search that tech support themselves had instinctively said I could use it.

And that I was not interested in an email back unless it was something like "You're right, it is a mistake to not have basic Boolean operators in search, and we are re-implementing it."

I fell short of requesting the article on how to delete one's account, but I was tempted. People who were on the fence, however, might be able to get a little mileage out of that.

My phone was getting sketchy. I looked over the options. Pixel 4a was the last one to have both the eternal photo album and a headphone jack. I found one and ordered it. It arrived a little early, but I'd already reserved the next day for setting it up.

And lo, the very next day, I dropped my old phone in the bathtub. Belovedest dropped it in the rice bag at once, but it wasn't enough to keep the battery from turning the phone into a forbidden ravioli. It couldn't be recovered.

Fortunately, the backup was only 6 hours old, and I hadn't done anything of significance since. The most obnoxious part was getting all my library cards back into Libby.

So. Farewell, 3 Eldritch Cats in a Trenchcoat. Hello, 4 Eldritch Cats in a Trenchcoat.

Soooooooooo I got this email.
Apparently I'm a top local guide! (This is mostly because I take pictures, grumble about entrance and accessibility data being incorrect, and once added an important toll booth to the map.)

Early access: Help shape the future of Google Maps
Azure, as a top Local Guide, you have been selected to be the first to try our new generative AI experiment in Maps!
Say you’re looking for date night inspiration. Or rain changes your plans and you need alternatives nearby…quick. Google Maps now combines the power of AI with insights from contributors (like you!) to make it easier to discover places to go.
Give it a try:
1. Tap the search bar in the latest version of the Google Maps app
2. Select “Search with generative AI”
3. Try a couple searches, explore the suggestions, and ask follow-ups
4. Share feedback by tapping or at the bottom of each response
We'll reach out again in a couple weeks to hear more about what you think of the experiment. We're excited to have you join us in shaping what’s next for Google Maps.
Try it

So far, I've thought about combining multiple niche accessibility needs in my searches, and screening results for reviews that say it explicitly does NOT meet those needs.
What else should I be asking this thing?

The reason I dislike the <details> tag in comparison to the DW-specific <cut> tag is because my browser fails to tell my mouse that the wee triangular fucker next to the summary is interactive.

I should probably file a ticket. Sigh.

Edit: https://github.com/dreamwidth/dreamwidth/issues/3338

( Read more... )

Oven is in!

I am sure I will gather further opinions as I try to use it, but here's what we know so far.

* It has a Proof setting!!! (I had to explain this to the installation techs, who hadn't the foggiest but knew it couldn't possibly be for booze...?)
* It has a Steam setting for cleaning (Even though it's not hooked up to water, pointed out the techs) -- you pour a cup of water in the bottom and it cleans the oven with steam, not fire, so a lower temperature.
* It ... has wifi. DON'T GIVE WIFI TO FIRE. DON'T GIVE FIRE TO WIFI. We're considering downloading the app for long enough to ban the oven's MAC address from the local network at the router. (We would vaguely like to see what the oven is doing, if only that didn't entail also being able to command the oven remotely.)
-- does anyone know how to pirate the SmartHQ mothership so we can just reroute it to localhost? :D :D :D
* The alert noises it makes are not loud enough to reach the living room in all circumstances, even on the loudest setting. This could be a problem. Perhaps a problem that ought to be solved with technology. Of some kind.
* It does have a "make a noise until you physically touch the oven" setting, which is what it's on now.
* It does have Sabbath mode, ~~K-star~~ Star-K certified. Not that we need it, but it's good to know it's there.
* Belovedest: "Now I know what 'Hidden Backlit LCD' means." (The controls vanish when the oven is on standby. Tap the button area, or open the oven door, to light up the button area. I may put a tactile dot on the Cancel button just 'cause.)
-- I did in fact put a tactile horizontal bar sticker on the thing.
* I JUST HANDED BELOVEDEST A BLOOTOOTH DONGLE FOR HOME ASSISTANT PRAY FOR US (unless you're Evangelical, in which case I would appreciate Not)

Current Mood: warm
Current Location: adjacent
Current Music: Mortal Kombat: Annihilation soundtrack

Next step for the old broken plastic star shaped desk chair base: sawzall.

Got my next oral surgery step done. Lost the Wham! game there.

New monitor is still jitter, which implicates the port (cable swap changed nothing).

Ok few days with Belovedest's chronic stuff.

Bad dreams have returned.

We had some Precipitation!

Tomorrow I had better get my act together for potentially going on Saturday to see Ev.

Surgeon uncovered the site and I now have a "healing cap" in place. Next step is dentist in about 4-6 weeks.

Thursday was not, in fact, the oven's last hurrah. We waited most of yesterday for the tech(s) to appear before Belovedest signed in and found that we are in fact still waiting on part(s) before they can schedule our replacement. Bah.

The replacement star base for my desk chair has arrived. I had some words for that.

I have just called the new part for my desk chair an arschbucket, so that's going well!
— azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org 🥃🥃🚀🚀😷 (@azurelunatic) November 27, 2022

This is the replacement base that is available in gold, chrome/silver, and black. The description says it's metal! Until you select black. The bottom requires assembly. The central hub of the silver one is ... black. And yet you've only got nylon for the black one!! #goth
— azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org 🥃🥃🚀🚀😷 (@azurelunatic) November 27, 2022

My glass chair mat has destroyed two (plastic) chair bases so far, via falling off the edge and whacking the wheel socket in the course of getting back up onto the platform. Best chair mat I've ever had except for that TINY problem.
— azurelunatic.dreamwidth.org 🥃🥃🚀🚀😷 (@azurelunatic) November 27, 2022

It's mallet time next, because two screw-holes are being squirrely.

Next stop today: ENT office, to go through my instructions and get my nose swab. I'm excited!

Steph made me coffee ♦️💙♦️ which is good because I got more than None Sleep, but last night is still going to be charted in red on my log sheet.

The other day I heard a rattle coming from the oven fan. It's apparently got both a convection fan and a cooling fan. Warranty folks came through and
a) agreed with me: this fan does not work well
b) guess what, the replacement part does not exist,
so
c) we're getting a new replacement oven
d) to be installed the day after Thanksgiving (US).

Oven still works, though, and we have The Roaster if we choose to do a turkey.

Sadly, Costco was out of my protein powder, so I said "ok we can get a chocolate flavored one" but UNFORTUNATELY we didn't read the label, so now Belovedest is returning it (unopened) because not only does it have HIDDEN BELL PEPPER WTF, it also has banana. I am willing to chance trace amounts of bell pepper, but based on the way my lips tingled the last time I allowed banana to touch them, there is absolutely no way.

I believe I have tracked down the source of the hot electronics smell that shows up when the living room mini-split is on. It's my computer, which is currently sitting directly in the hot air path. So I am determined that I will move the tower very soon.

Mama has been sending boxes of my old stuff, now that she's no longer occupied by urgent house stuff and nursing Dad. The first one arrived Friday. The next three showed up today.

Among other things, I now have my Spock marionette, a few Star Wars items, several small boxes of tiny treasures, two baby blankets and an afghan, and most of the memorabilia associated with Nerd Camp.

I ... found my first engagement ring, in all its pewter glory.

Meanwhile, Belovedest has their ZigBee radio, after the Sengled hub started only occasionally talking to the internet. They've been muttering to themselves about assorted programming decisions.

We did not get around to moving my desk around today.

(as sent to Apple)

Bug report:

I re-awakened my dormant iPad after losing track of my iPod. A few podcast subscriptions that I had made on my iPod were present and began downloading. A few days later, I went to listen to a podcast and found that the podcast app was missing and my storage was completely full. The podcast app had downloaded all of the Sleep With Me archives that would fit, and deleted several apps to make more room. Including, apparently, the podcast app itself. I am aware of how to limit downloads on any given podcast. I have previously had a different version of this problem with the Google Photos app, which will download images until there is no room for podcasts. I would like to be able to set a storage cap on any given app so a single app cannot go wild.

Feature request:

A number of apps have the potential to download a large amount of data. Some of these apps have the ability to restrict those downloads within the app. Other apps have no apparent way to prohibit them from taking up all the free space on the device. (I am thinking of several incidents with Google Photos.) I would like to be able to go into Settings and make sure that any given app stays within a storage limit that I assign to it, and if it wants to exceed that limit, it should tell me so and I may choose to grant it more space.

This year I told myself that I was probably not doing NaNo because I didn't have the energy and didn't have any inspiration.

Belovedest's been watching the TAB 2020 Olympics and the Paralympics, and there's a particular ad that includes a smart car that's a member of the team. And that got me wondering, what with the usual headaches that go along with something "simple" like upgrading a phone ... what happens when you have to upgrade a complicated piece of equipment like a car? (This also may have been in the immediate wake of a notable Tesla incident, probably the one where the guy's car bricked itself in the middle of a lane and couldn't be pushed to the shoulder. Having had a car die on me in the middle of a not-shoulder lane, this is viscerally TERRIFYING.)

Today's Facebook DNS shenanigans underlined that.

When the internet said "DNS", I got the metaphorical popcorn, as well as sparing a moment of empathy for the poor sap who had managed to save the zone file without the A or AAA records in it, wondering what the TTL was.

At that point I did not also realize that because Facebook is so arrogant, short-sighted, and incorrectly paranoid that they use strictly in-house technology for everything, that they were boned in a way that I have not personally seen anything approaching since Virtual Hammer accidentally ended my contract on my birthday with an internal conference in the next week. I couldn't open doors. I couldn't log in to my computer. I couldn't even call the fucking help desk because my desk phone was tied to my login. (They later did something similar to a fellow with a scarily low employee ID number, and when I say "fellow" I mean "Fellow", as in he had one of the extremely rare company fellowship positions. He tried going through the system in the usual way before pulling rank, and had some really scathing reports about the experience, which I'm assuming he dropped into some relevant ears.)

Facebook basically did that to everyone internally, all at once. There was a report of needing to use an angle grinder to get into the correct part of the data center, which detail is so poetically perfect that I intentionally reject all fact-checking. _{https://twitter.com/pettazz/status/1445200895554228224}

So I'll have to remember to bring all my experience of being caught in a bureaucratic web where nobody really checks to see what cracks there are and what/who has fallen through them. The more things are automated, the easier it is for a human to say "That's Not My Responsibility" even if it should be theirs, and the more they are forced to extreme metrics, the less they can be bothered to care about the actual people being harmed.

I should get some keyboard dots and put one on the F5, because I use it a lot and yet don't have the location memorized on this keyboard. Since it's one of the split keyboard ones, the halves can migrate a little, and hand orientation to body as well as hand orientation to keyboard matters. I'm not always looking at the keyboard, in part because eye contact with the screen, but partly because the cat-guard shelf over the keyboard sometimes collects Quest Items (it's not clutter, I'm using them).

Tuesday was all the errands. ( Read more... )

Car went into the shop on Wednesday and the driver's door was finished on Thursday. They're waiting on parts, but it's driveable again so we brought it home. I'm feeling less trapped now, but also money :\
They'll get the parts in next week sometime; they said "midweek" so I have that in the calendar so we don't schedule over it.

Also Wednesday was another dental deep-clean. After my yelp of pain while maneuvering the anaesthetic, they may have given me an excess of it, because my face was still numb in that place after about six hours. I demanded pity pho.

Today was the yearly furnace maintenance visit. ( Read more... )

I am using an extraordinary number of qtips to deal with my nose situation, so the time to get more is when I open the last known box and put it on the specific bathroom shelf. On the last formal shopping trip, Costco was out of them. (Even though both Belovedest and I had a vague memory of having gotten some recently, but they weren't where I expected to find them, sooo...) So I snagged some on the Tuesday trip.

I decided that Wednesday should include some Dealing With That Stuff At The End Of The Bedroom Hall. We did not follow through. But today... So I was leaning over to see what exactly was in the other side of the cupboard and let out the sort of angry-surprised yelp that had Alex come running to see whether I needed assistance. There, on the lower middle shelf, just out of sight, was the damn new pack of qtips.

We were correct to get toilet paper when we did. We need sneezecloths. The wet wipes are stacked neatly. AND WE HAVE TROP DE QTIPS.

Well, beaucoup de qtips. We'll use them eventually-soon.

Refrigerator: It's about a week and a half until the refrigerator service window. We are still going through the stuff that's still good. I am moderately cranky about this but no longer in a state of extended screaming unless I think about it for too long. It is making food a little harder to deal with because we do not always want to have a thing that is visible, and we also do not want to create leftovers that will then need to be stored.

We are probably better equipped than many to handle refrigerator fuckery. The main refrigerator is upstairs, side-by-side, and is one of the fancy ones that does ice and water; it was bought in the time of the ex and was a slightly dinged floor model.

Downstairs, we have a chest freezer that is basically at capacity, and a small refrigerator (but generous for a small one, rectangular rather than the tiny dorm cubes) that's mostly used for soda and other bar-related shenanigans. There are a lot of jars of boozy cherries in there.

Last night we went through the fridge and tossed stuff, and took other things downstairs. Fortunately it was trash night, so everything that we tossed was able to go directly out in the bin rather than hanging around for longer.

A while ago I got some temperature/humidity sensors, small and very cheap, and two of those are in both compartments of the upstairs fridge. The numbers fluctuate from reasonable to Not Good and back. At least the freezer side is not the worst ever.

I don't want to get takeout to weather this until we have enough space in either the downstairs fridge or the upstairs freezer side to take on any leftovers.

Tonight was hamburgers (frozen pre-formed) and fried potatoes. No leftovers.

As related to

awesomeers:

Dried off the bed after I spilled a water bottle all over it.
Helped catch Escape Calico after she got onto the lawn (again).
Got a covid test, helped housemate when their phone did not work with the form.
Submitted the test site to the map app.
Picked up pills.
Tried several things when one of my car doors would not unlock. (Failed in all the things I tried. Not even the key in the lock worked.)
Tracked down the correct port in my computer-industrial complex to replace the mouse. (The old mouse had served long and well, but the right button was starting to go.)
Tried making popsicles.
Uncovered a refrigerator problem (not cold enough in either the freezer or fridge sides, as confirmed by two of the little digital thermometers I've had scattered around the house). Played my role as the one with the food service background to provide perspective on what kind of a situation we have here. (The freezer will go cold enough, but the fridge refuses to. The stuff that needs the fridge to be functioning is getting used IMMEDIATELY, transferred to the small fridge in the basement, or getting tossed.
Making emergency quiche, to the very experimental recipe of nearly everything that seemed usable.
Let my partner know that the authentication information for the warranty service was not where it was expected to be. Did not blow my top upon discovering that the warranty service will take nearly three weeks to even arrive on site.
Haven't fallen over sobbing ... yet.

I am flatly refusing to drive my car (outside of a dire emergency) until it's time to take it to the fixit appointment next week.

At my direction, Belovedest brought home a 10lb bag of ice, which I've set in the freezer to help in the effort. Yay.

We're all going to be in A State tomorrow.

I slept fairly solidly, except for a 5am wakeup, which fortunately only lasted for an hour.

My nose is giving me grief, in that the inside of the left nostril is raw and annoyed.

My left deltoid muscle is indignant at its rough treatment, and is only this evening beginning to subside into a lower level of crankiness (still not worse than the day after moving a bunch of boxes). The injection site has a small red mark, and skin irritation from the bandaid. A line of three small and nearly invisible welts popped up along an awkward crevice, which just as well could also be attributed to any small amount of dampness and friction, which are also a strong possibility.

Belovedest has trained Castle Heterodyne on my attention phrase for it, which is also "Castle, Awaken!" which leaves just Alex of the immediate household members who hasn't yet got a voice sample to rouse the beast. I have not succeeded in getting it to respond to "Casserole bacon!", but did get a gratifying hit from "Asshole, awaken!"

My bright idea of installing a Roomba safeword has so far failed to get helpful results. My idea was to set "StoppitStoppitStoppitStoppit!" as an attention phrase that also pauses the Roomba, but a) Belovedest is having trouble getting the Roomba to do anything but start, and b) apparently you cannot do an attention phrase that is itself an action, you must get attention first and then emit coherent dictionary words. Belovedest's current idea is to have me wake the assistant and only then say the stopword. Which, again, must be coherent dictionary words recognized by the assistant, from another room, while a roomba is charging my feet and tickling. (Several Scotsmen in an elevator swear at this juncture.)

Once they get the command working, we'll see how it actually performs under real world conditions.

The new phone (3 XL) and the replacement old phone arrived on approximately the same day. It turned out to be 10-11 days without a phone. I have a sketchy draft of a thinkpiece about the experience, which was generally lousy, confining, and isolating.

I've been using the replacement OG XL as a dedicated camera device. I like the time lapse feature for driving.

Day 7 without a phone, since I dropped it off on Sunday. It's annoying, because while I don't actually use the phone as a phone that often, it's still necessary.

It's hitting my sleep; my method of coping with waking up and not immediately feeling like I could fall back asleep is playing a slightly boring game of Spite & Malice with a dark background and no ads.

I'm honestly okay with ads scattered around the play field. I am not okay with noisy video ads jumping up at a time when I'm supposed to be asleep and my bedmate is definitely asleep. It's counterproductive.

I'm not sure I want to reward the proprietors of such apps with getting the paid version, either.

Bejeweled Zen mode is almost correct, but a little too exciting and bright.

On the strength of the internet saying "Oh wow that was SO COOL", we watched The Old Guard.

I enjoyed it! It felt solid, and included women talking together about women, women talking about powers, Black people having a conversation about a topic including nonwhite people, women having a conversation about domestic violence, and someone getting a richly deserved comeuppance.

It also is about a group of immortal mercenaries who put themselves in dangerous situations. On a scale from The Avengers to Kingsman, this is slightly below Kill Bill, with plot-important and visible gore, stabbings, and torture.

( Miscellaneous chatter about it, not trying to spoil the twists but not going out of my way to avoid things )

I got the call back from the phone repair place, who will be replacing my phone as the screen repair did not take. It still powers on and buzzes, but the screen just doesn't. Belovedest and I may attempt to extract some data, but I'm glad that pretty much everything I cared about on there is backed up elsewhere.

I was able to rescue all my open tabs, so there's that.

Today was hot. I'm very flomp.

Necessary, good: the marriage of one of my partner's friends, and the politely riotous celebration thereof. There was cake. There were mini cupcakes in all the flavors. The bridal figurines were screaming and flailing in the grasp of large tentacles.
Unsurprising, bad: Mosquitoes crashed the party when the sun set. I am slathering myself in lidocaine aloe and regretting my life choices.
Unexpected, good: when Yellface and Murderface got out accidentally the other night, they didn't brawl.
Inevitable: Belovedest has been poking the software on a somewhat battered Galaxy Note 8 tablet. I volunteered to try figuring out how to mount it in the kitchen. Fucking magnets: this is one of the models that shuts off its screen in the presence of a magnet (so a magnetic cover will make its screen turn off). Thus idea #1 with the Sugru was a non-starter, unless... I presented my research to the household council, complete with crude MS Paint diagram. "But will it fit in a commercial case with the screen bubbling?" asked Belovedest, who had a good point. They fetched my spudger, at which point we found out what a swollen Samsung tablet battery looks like. It's sitting in the garage in the casserole dish of shame, powered down and nowhere near a power adapter.
Inevitable and loud: Since the ladies had recently come face to face and nothing overtly bad happened, I suggested a supervised same-room adventure. Alex suggested closing doors. Then I released Yellface from the basement. Murderface was relaxed. Yellface casually strolled out. They caught sight of each other. A few things happened at once. There was a savage growl-roar. The cats merged. The cats rolled out of the living room, through the kitchen, around the corner into the foyer. About 5 seconds later, I caught up. There was a tumbling blob of angry fur and extremities. I reached in and extracted Murderface, who added to my collection of cat-related bruises. Alex appeared with a laundry basket. I handed Murderface off. She was not pleased. Yellface, despite having contributed most of the clumps of fluff floating around the foyer, looked undamaged but indignant. Alex carried Murderface off the scene. Belovedest located the guilt-minnows and started hand-feeding Yellface.

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Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺

August 2025

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Entries tagged with technical difficulties

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As if you needed more reasons to quit Etsy

Alas, phone

Anyone want to help me discover problems in google maps AI (on purpose)?

is it just my browser or do all browsers treat the tag badly

A Chat with Customer Support: Fred Meyer pharmacy cart overflow problem

Sharpen the mix / Do all kinds of tricks / Up to the pressure / Feeling the kicks

Miscellaneous

Oven, chair

Pre-op! Oven! Protein :(

More boxes

iOS 12.5.5, to answer the question posed by the icon

NaNo 2021: Upgrade Path (working title)

Trop de errands, trop de qtips

Refrigerator

It's been A Day.

Day 1 reflections, and more Castle Heterodyne

Phone update

Day 7

The Old Guard and other dead/undead things

Excitements