2024

26 August, 2024. 1,165 words.

Dispatches from @ultrviolet@gts.endgameviable.com:

Monday 08/19

08:36 # Somehow with all the windows open and the temperature outside much lower, my house still got a couple degrees hotter overnight. It’s hard to sleep in those conditions, in case anyone was wondering.
08:38 # I finished the A Storm of Swords audiobook in my re-listen of A Song of Ice and Fire. Seems like a good place to stop for now.
09:06 # I had gotten the first of the Sarah J. Maas books on Audible a while ago to see what all the fuss was about since all those books were plastered all over the bestsellers lists there and I keep hearing the nearly mythical tale of how Sarah J. Maas took over the literary world or something along those lines. I was ready to give up on the book after three chapters of nothing happening but I pressed on through some fifteen chapters of girl-meets-boy-but-still-not- much-happening and it’s pretty much exactly what I expected a book of this type to be. I can’t really judge if it’s a perfect teenage romance but what I can say is I didn’t find any of the characters deep, the setting is unmemorable, the plot is contrived, and the writing is fair. It sounds very much like it was written by a 16-year-old, in other words. An amazing achievement to complete a book at 16 to be sure, but it feels like the real story here is more one of marketing or promotion.
18:09 # My heat pump is fixed again. Modern heat pumps are so finicky. They shut down at the slightest thing now. Apparently now they just shut themselves off if you forget to change the filter often enough, which causes some kind of electrostatic or pressure buildup or some such that causes the condenser to shut off. I’ve never heard of such in a lifetime of heat pumps. This is a particular nightmare for me, who also has a lifetime of experience at forgetting to change the stupid air filter. It’s a conspiracy by Big HVAC, I tells ya.

Wednesday 08/21

10:34 # Yesterday was a bad back day so I didn’t do anything for the blog. Today is shaping up to be another bad back day so probably won’t do anything again, unless it gets better toward the end of the day.
10:39 # I dug out my old Apple wireless keyboard to use while I’m flat on my back. Forgot how much of a pain in the butt it is to re-pair an old Apple keyboard from one device (an ipad) to another device (a laptop). Once you pair it, it’s paired FOREVER, until you find the original device you paired it with (an old ipad in my case) and unpair it. Apple is silly sometiimes. Most times, really. Still baffled why people defend Apple’s our-way-or-the-highway design decisions. It’s great if you happen to want to work the same way Apple expects you to work, otherwise it’s a nightmare.

Thursday 08/22

18:06 # I love that feeling you get when you see a bunch of people watch the first one or two videos in a series and then NOBODY watches the rest of them heh.

Friday 08/23

07:41 # So that thing I said about my heat pump being fixed? That was wrong. It’s broken again. The condenser unit shut down again for mysterious reasons. I didn’t notice until the end of the day yesterday because it was a fairly mild day so I didn’t notice the air conditioning wasn’t working all day. This time it can’t be the air filter because I just changed it less than a week ago. Sigh.

(Update: Folks came out Friday and added more refrigerant and now it’s working again. Whatever. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that it’s just a money sink.)

Saturday 08/24

08:49 # I think I’ve beaten all the bosses I’ve found in the Elden Ring DLC. The last two were Rakshasa (yuck) and the Scadutree Avatar (triple yuck), which I got last night. Then I went to a wiki to lookup any bosses I missed, and there are about a dozen of them left to go. Yeesh.
08:51 # Man fighting these Elden Ring bosses is such a joyless chore. Completely gone are the heady Dark Souls days when I laughed when I died to a boss, thinking, “Oh good show, you really got me on that one! But I’ll get you next time!” With Elden Ring it’s all just “oh screw you that’s such unfair random b.s. what a crock.”

Sunday 08/25

11:39 # Been having some unexpected audio troubles the last few days. First I recorded two whole videos where the main microphone track was just missing. Now I’m hearing distortion on the main microphone track. Kind of disconcerting. Having to go to my backup microphone track way more than usual, and having to figure out how to do noise reduction in REAPER because my backup microphone track sounds TERRIBLE.
- 16:29 # So I think my relatively brand new PodMic is breaking down. Either that or it’s the mic cable. Either way it’s pretty annoying.
- 17:53 # It’s the microphone. Tried three different mic cables with no changes. I banged the side of the microphone and it kind of started working. Not a good sign. I guess that means I can’t recommend a Rode USB PodMic. Well, I dunno, maybe the USB part will still work so maybe I can turn it into a backup microphone.
17:58 # I bought an entire set of coveralls and some gloves with super long leather armguards like armor so that I could do some cleanup work outside in the vicinity of some poison ivy while having every part of skin on my body covered, but I chickened out and decided not to do that today. It’s just too risky. There’s still a tiny chance that poison ivy oil could touch my face or neck, so I ordered one of those plastic face shield things heh. This might sound excessive but it’s been over four weeks and I still have fading red marks on my arm from the last poison ivy incident.
19:48 # I got Bayle the Dread in the Elden Ring DLC tonight, and I think that’s the last unfinished DLC boss on my list. It goes without saying at this point, but it was a garbage boss fight design. You can only lock onto his head? Pure garbage. Gar-BAGE. Oh and the dude you summon is completely worthless, except for a tiny tiny bit of distraction. Couldn’t see anything in the second half, it was pure luck that I didn’t get hit by the blinding, screen-filling fire flying around in all directions. Man I’ve really soured on From Software boss fight designs lately. I genuinely can’t tell if it’s me or them. I was completely convinced it was them, but maybe it’s me.