silent night, weary and bright

I'm feeling increasingly alienated from other people. But actually, no. I already felt that way. About everyone actually. Every single one. My mom, after having had a bit too much to drink perhaps, said a couple of things which disappointed me. And I thought, even her, such words? But she, like so many others, loves her God that she believes in. So, I was already alienated from her in that regard. This was just one more thing.

I'm free. Free as a bee without a hive.

But I still get along fine with people. Everyone seems fine and sane and dandy until they speak on certain topics.

Today I downloaded this year's tax forms, and printed out the ones I'll need. This is the first year since 2014 I got that done before March. So I'm a step ahead, yay. Can't say when I'll get the forms filled in, but still. Might be tomorrow even.

I also got registered on my company's new 401k website. That was quite a hassle. 401k websites are some of the most unfriendly ones I've encountered. Both the old one and the new one. Turns out I already had an account on the new one. Apparently from about 20 years ago, when my company was dealing with them before under a different name.

me: Register as a new user
site: You've already got an account! Do you want to find out your user name, or reset your password?
me: Find out my user name.
site: Your user name doesn't adhere to our new standards. You have to change it! In order to change it, you need to tell us your password.
me: Cancel
me: Register as a new user
site: You've already got an account! Do you want to find out your user name, or reset your password?
me: Reset password
site: We've sent you a verification code to your email address
me: Oh, so I don't need to know my old user name in order to reset my password. That's a relief. Here's the code
site: Cool! You can change your password now. And by the way, you need to change your user name too.
...
me: Ok, all done. Now where's my 2019 account statement?
site: I've only got data starting from 12/31/2019 because that's when the transfer happened.
me: That makes sense. But wait, you don't even provide downloadable PDF statements? I have to save a screenshot each time? This site is no improvement over the old one.

Yesterday I went through old paper documents from work and got rid of a big stack of mostly obsolete stuff. I scanned a bunch of stuff too. Now there is space in the cabinet for new papers.

I read some articles yesterday about accidents in the last few years involving self-driving cars. I hadn't realized there were normal cars with that functionality already being used by normal drivers, as opposed to special cars still being trained and tested by special people. It's a sorta scary thought, that some of the cars I encounter on the road may not react like a human-driven car would.

strings of lights in the sky and falling dominoes

This would have been neat to see. I wonder if I ever *have* seen something like that, though surely not that many in a row and not so close together, and thought it was simply a military exercise, some kind of formation flying.

Watch on YouTube

Video title: SpaceX Starlink Satellites Spotted Over Netherlands
Posted by: VideoFromSpace
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytUygPqjXEc
Date posted: May 24, 2019


Whenever I see a bright star in the sky, I think to myself, that is Jupiter, or Venus, or Saturn. Whenever my mom sees a bright star in the sky, she tells me it's a satellite and won't believe otherwise. Maybe she's right some of the time after all.

This is amazing. So so so many dominoes that you might actually get impatient waiting for them all to finish falling down.

Watch on YouTube

Video title: 128,000 Dominoes Falling into past a journey around the world 2 Guinness World Records) YouTub
Posted by: Ahmed Samir
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLRjiiAawGg
Date posted: Aug 24, 2013

translating spoken Chinese from audio file

I got a strange voicemail in Chinese on my cellphone from the number 202-495-3793 (a Washington, DC area code). It's a short official-sounding recorded message in a female voice, with a simple musical tune in the background. (I like how the Chinese language, being tone-based, is itself melodic even without the music.)

I was curious as to what the message said, so I saved it to an audio file on my laptop. Then I opened Google Translate in the Chrome browser (the option for translating from audio / microphone input is only available in Chrome, not Firefox). The page's text input box has a microphone icon in the lower left that you click for it to start listening. But first you need to select the language; it won't auto-detect when using the mic input. Then I played the audio file.

The translating didn't work very well. I tried it several times. Mostly, it didn't recognize any words, and showed no output. A couple of times, it showed the following output. This is only a small portion of what was said:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi
Chinese Ambassador to the United States

But I'm not even sure that much of it is correct. In the audio, I can hear "Zhongguó zhù" at the very beginning, but not "mei dàshi" after it. Maybe that is from a different part of it. It's spoken so fast that I can't tell.. I do hear "shi" a few times but not sure about the rest.

I tried again and this time got:
Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan
中国驻美大使馆
Chinese Embassy in the United States

Zhongguó = China
dàshi guan = Embassy

I also tried playing back the recording at 2/3s speed, in hopes that would let Google Translate hear the words better. But it did not help.

Hum, this is sort of fun: Try to say Chinese sounding things and see what it translates to. But you have to click the mic to stop and restart in between, as otherwise it seems to output the same thing over and over again. ("No no no")

I seem to have learned how to say "China" (Zhongguó) pretty well! (But I doubt I'll remember it.)

Ah, in my trying to read "Zhongguó zhù mei dàshi guan", it instead translates it to "The beauty of life".

But I tested translating from me speaking German, and it translates that very well! I can hardly say anything that it doesn't understand! Even with my not-so-great speaking voice.