Darkoshi

I sent an initial email&text about getting the gate fixed, and got an initial reply.
I sent an initial text about getting a bunch of junk hauled away. There are a lot of wood boards and panels in the garage I want to get rid of, mostly still from the big shipping box from when my brother had his things sent here on a ship from Germany more than a decade ago.

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Qiao and I finished watching the live-action version of Cowboy Bebop on Netflix. I felt it was very good, and true to the original animated series although I don't remember many details of the latter (which I want to rewatch now). It's unfortunate that the series was cancelled after just one season. The character Ed only showed up once at the very end of the last episode; clearly a harbinger for the next season had it not been cancelled.

Ooh, I need to watch this:
Cowboy Bebop: Unlocked | FULL SPOILERS Official After Show | Netflix Geeked

Dang, looking at a couple other videos and their comments, some people really hated this live action version. Sigh.

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For over a year, the good exercise "bike" at my house has been half-disassembled. It is a cross between an exercise bike and elliptical trainer. Qiao bought it when he was living here, then ended up getting another one for his house too. Since then, I've used both of them much more than he ever did. The center part of this one's flywheel got worn out. It didn't turn smoothly anymore and began producing graphite-colored dust which fell to the floor beneath it. So in December of 2021 I removed the flywheel to inspect it and tried thinking of how to fix it. This weekend I finally did something. I cut off a piece of metal tubing of an appropriate size and glued it into the worn out hole. After giving the glue time to dry, I reassembled the bike (not an easy task) today. It works. But the flywheel is a bit wobbly and still seems to have the same problem as it did before, so it probably won't last long. I suppose next time I will take it apart for metal recycling.

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Often when I'm looking around my house for an unspecific thing of a certain size or shape, to use for a particular purpose (such as a narrow metal tube yea wide for fixing the exercise bike), I find something that is just right. This never ceases to amaze and delight me. This time, I first found a curtain rod which was the right diameter and could be cut shorter with no ill-effect on its curtain-holding ability. But the tube wasn't solid metal all the way around - it had a lengthwise slit. So I searched some more, and found a perfect solid tube on an old broken umbrella (the lime green umbrella mentioned in this post.)

I took the umbrella apart to get to the tube and to be able to cut it. Umbrellas truly are marvels of engineering. This one was a relatively small umbrella yet it had a 2-foot long spring inside the center.

Today I found out that Batteries+Bulbs takes button batteries, in addition to other batteries, for recycling.

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I went to Big Lots, expecting there to still to be Halloween decorations & lights available. It's still two weeks away, after all. Instead, they had Christmas stuff. I got a blue LED light strand.

While I was browsing one side of the store, I kept smelling weed even through my face mask. No one was nearby that I could see. I wondered if someone was smoking it in the back of the store, or if someone smelled so strongly of it that it lingered after they'd walked by.

Shopping really gives me a lift sometimes, finding things that look tasty&vegan&organic, or pretty&useful, or just-what-I-needed-or-wanted. I don't get that lift with known brands that I've had before, unless they are something really good and on sale for a great price. It's mostly with items that are new to me, unknowns, surprises. Big Lots is good for that, because I never know what I might find there.

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I suppose it's best not to give someone else in your household a food or drink you like a lot. It's a repeated anguish seeing it there, unopened, every time you open the refrigerator. You can't have it, because you gave it to *them* as a gift. I need to remind my niece about that bottle of Mama Chia Blackberry Hibiscus, cuz if she don't want it, I *will* drink it.

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Last week while I was working with the windows open, I kept hearing an unfamiliar whining/buzzing noise. I finally looked outside. It was a flying drone! Up over the area across the street where the erstwhile strip mall is. V-shaped, black, with white on the tips of the wings. It must have had propellers, but was too far away to see them. At one point it went up very high, and made me worry. No planes in the area, but still. What if it lost control and fell?

Come to think of it, I think there's a county sheriff's station in that strip mall now. I wonder if it was law enforcement testing out a new gadget, rather than some random person having fun.

Last weekend I went to a free concert in Finlay park, downtown. The band was Loose Ends featuring Jane Eugene, an R&B group from the 80s. I didn't recognize their name, but when I looked up some songs of theirs beforehand, at least one brought back nostalgic memories of my youth. So I thought I might enjoy the concert, and I very much did. They even had a meet'n'greet afterwards where audience members could buy CDs and get autographs and photos taken with the band.

I have a short clip of one of the songs that turned out pretty good audio-wise. I'll post it when I have time, if YouTube lets me.

I was at the concert with a family friend - it was her idea to go in the first place. After that concert was over, we met up with my mom and walked to the (tail end) of the Latin Festival which was taking place a few blocks away. We got to hear one or two songs over there before its last band wrapped up for the night. I bought a multi-colored flashing LED baton-type toy from a stall, yay!

The Wikipedia page for Loose Ends mentions several changes to the band members over the years, and seems to indicate that Jane is no longer with the group. That along with the "featuring Jane Eugene" part of the band name made me think that the other musicians playing with her here weren't original band-members, but I wasn't sure. I'm aware that band-members who have split up sometimes continue to perform separately under some variation of the original group name. Jane has a Twitter page and Loose Ends has a Facebook page, but looking at them, I was still confused.

Today I finally found an answer on this page:
https://citywinery.com/philadelphia/loose-ends-featuring-jane-eugene-11-7-2019.html
It lists the names of the musicians who perform with her; they aren't original band members, although Steve Nichol does occasionally make guest appearances.

There's a bit more info at the end of this page:
http://dance2.webdj.co/loose-ends-watching-you/
Carl McIntosh currently performs under the name 'Loose Ends Experience' or 'Loose Ends'...


Video title: Loose Ends - Slow Down
Posted by: koollatter
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdKdnCSeJwQ


1986 Soul Train performance of Slow Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzdPynoroCg



Video title: Loose Ends - Hangin on a String (Re-Edit A.V)
Posted by: 80's & 90's Forever
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-WWHoVH4QM

Over at Qiao's house, I hooked up a bluetooth mouse and keyboard to my laptop, as typing directly on the laptop gets frustrating after a while.

The laptop sits on a movable cart. First I tried putting the keyboard on another little table/stand in front of the cart. But that way, the screen was too far away. Then I tried turning the laptop sideways on the cart, so the keyboard could fit in front. But that way, the mouse didn't fit. Then I thought to try placing the keyboard right on top of the laptop's keyboard. I thought that would cause the laptop's keys to accidentally get pressed. But it doesn't. It works perfectly fine that way. Hah.

..

While searching for add-ons that work in Firefox 57, I found uMatrix. It's similar to NoScript, in that you can select what items are allowed to run for each web page. But it's a little different. For example, I think uMatrix can be configured to only allow Facebook scripts to run on Facebook pages. Setting up those kind of rules in NoScript isn't easy. Each add-on can do certain things that the other doesn't, and many people use both. So now I'm trying out uMatrix.

uMatrix can spoof your browser's user-agent string by randomly changing it every x minutes. You can customize the list of strings that are used. The next link has a dynamically created list of the most common user agents strings, based on the people who have visited that site. A comment on the page explains that the numbers are somewhat skewed to older browser versions, as it takes some time for the older entries to drop off.

As long as I'm still using Firefox, I think it is best to only spoof using other Firefox user-agent strings. Firefox's market share is low enough that I don't want to make it seem even lower by pretending to be using a different browser.

So, below is a list of the most common Firefox user agent strings, taken from that page today, along with their percentage. Each individual string is fairly uncommon, but sum is about 17%. That's actually pretty high, compared to the numbers on the Wikipedia browser usage share page.

2.7% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
2.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
1.5% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
1.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
1.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
1.1% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.8% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.6% .. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
0.6% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
0.5% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.5% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.4% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.3% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:56.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/56.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
0.2% .. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:50.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0

Putting silicone sealer on the mouse wheel to add traction had very good results, even though it didn't go on very smoothly.

Actually, it's an acrylic sealer. I previously had a silicone-based one, but when it ran out, the store no longer had it, so I got the acrylic one, which was listed as non-toxic and low odor.

Today it occurred to me that: 1) The insects are spelled 'beetles', 2) the cars are spelled 'beetles', 3) but the band is spelled 'beatles' 4) because the music has beats. It's a word-play, and it's possibly the first time I recognized it as such. I guess I always just thought they named themselves after the insects or maybe the cars.

The fig tree is growing little fig leafs again! The young leaves that died earlier haven't fallen off yet.

Just as I had driven up to my driveway this evening, I looked left out of the car window and saw a light moving across the sky in a straight line. In a direction from the south towards the southeast, sort of. Just a single white light, small, not blinking. It wasn't moving very fast, nor slow. The light flickered out for a moment, then came back, still moving, then flickered out again and stayed out. I thought it might have been a meteor, but the Lyrid meteor shower isn't supposed to start until the 16th. And my visibility here is poor. So it was probably a plane after all, maybe disappearing behind some clouds.

I like this song & video:

Video title: Space Unicorn - Parry Gripp and Brianne Drouhard
Posted by: ParryGripp
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17o1OlroNSE


And these songs:


Video title: Imagine Dragons - Believer
Posted by: ImagineDragonsVEVO
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wtfhZwyrcc



Video title: Wardruna - Wunjo (New Album Runaljod - Ragnarok)
Posted by: Tatiane Akemy Oshiro
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heDBX-HCMDA

Driving into the parking lot at work on Monday, I noticed the low tire pressure warning light on. There was a nail in my tire. I got the hole plugged at the service station nearby, but they recommended getting the tire replaced as the hole was close to the edge. So I the next day, I got the tire replaced at the Toyota dealership. The price seemed reasonable; I was surprised by that. The "advisor" who handled my case was cool... very gender variant looking. At first she struck me as a butch lesbian. Then I wondered, why did I assume that? Maybe he was FTM. Or maybe they were non-binary like me. His/her/their business card was stapled to my receipt. They have a gender neutral name! Later I wondered if they staple their card to everyone's receipt, and if they were as tickled by my gender variance as I was by theirs. And I wondered if something they had jokingly said early on could be considered flirting.

The waiting room at the dealership had many noises. Two TV's on, tuned to different channels. Kids shrieking and crying. Music playing. Vending machines humming. I had brought my work laptop to do some work while waiting, which I did, but the noise was distracting and stressful. Next time, it would be good to bring my noise-cancelling headphones.

The little fig tree didn't react well to the snow we got a couple weeks ago. The leaves withered and dried up. The pink magnolia reacted similarly. I hope they recover.

On the way to work, another company has a row of trees by the street. I saw them pruning some of the larger trees one day. It was after the trees had already sprouted leaves. (They surely didn't expect to trees to sprout so early this year.) Now when I drive by, the ones that were pruned are all bare, while the other ones still have their pretty green leaves. I hope the pruned ones recover too.

Yesterday I washed the dogs.
While I had the hose unfurled, I also washed the green algae and dirt off of one side of the garage.

I went to Best Buy to see if they have any quiet/silent wired mice, as the scrollwheel on my mouse at work is messing up, even after me taking it apart and cleaning out the dust. I didn't see any particularly good ones at Best Buy, so I ordered 2 from Amazon that were specifically advertised as being quiet. Two, because the one looks good and practical, but the other one looks awesome and lights up. And maybe the way the scrollwheel is on the latter, I can turn it further in a single swipe. I'm sure I'll need another mouse anyway, sooner or later.

I replaced the clear glass lampshades on the ceiling fan light fixture in Qiao's den with some translucent/milky alabaster glass ones, to reduce the glare. I also bought 2 colored LED light-bulbs (green and pink - Qiao chose the colors) to put in the 2 sockets which face us when watching TV, to further reduce the glare, as even 40W bulb equivalents up there seem pretty bright. The colored bulbs, even though they are only 3W each!, are still brighter than I expected them to be.

I raked some of the yard. I washed clothes. I vacuumed, and washed dishes and dog collars. I cleaned the tub using 4 different cleaners, and it's still not as clean as I'd like (I wish I had written down how I got it so clean last time). The "tub grip" (gah, they've increased the price by 50%!) that I applied to the floor of the tub to keep it from being slippery is very good in that regards, but it traps more dirt than a smooth surface would. Ecover used to make a tub/tile cleaner that worked very good, but it's not sold here any more. I'm not sure if a similar one I found on Amazon has the same ingredients or not, but I may get it anyway to try. Because I want my darn tub to be spotless! Then again, I read something about using dish washing liquid mixed with vinegar, which I may try first.

I rekeyed two locks today; it was my first time doing that. One was an Andersen storm door lock, and was very easy to rekey. The other was an old deadbolt lock which both Lowes and Home Depot hadn't been able to do. Lowes had just looked at it and said "No", which makes me think they refused simply because it's a brand they don't sell. The guy at Home Depot, on the other hand, at least tried. But apparently because of it being an older style, he wasn't able to get it apart. I had watched him trying, and it looked like something was stuck. He wasn't able to get it apart, to get to the pins.

Today, I was able to get it apart fairly easily. The one end of the cylinder needed to be screwed off - maybe the Home Depot guy didn't realize that. I have a Kwikset rekeying kit. The springs in the kit don't exactly match the ones from the old lock. So I tried reusing them, but in the process lost one. I searched high and low for it, but it's disappeared into the ether. I ended up using one of the non-matching springs, which made it more difficult as it stuck out more. And my kit didn't have a tool that fit for keeping the bottom pins and springs pushed down (aka "follower bar")*, so I had to improvise. And the top pins fell out a few times, and each time the sizes of the pins didn't seem to match what I had written down before... weird. So I got out new top pins. I finally got it back together and working with the new key.

*which is probably a good thing, in hindsight. If I had found the right instructions, and if my follower bar fit, I wouldn't have seen that the springs and bottom pins had a lot of oxidation on them, which was making them stick. It was when I was cleaning off the springs, that the one sprung away and disappeared.

Got home, washed specks off my windshield, washed algae off the vinyl siding on one side of the garage, washed dishes. Ate. Vacuumed dog hair off the carpets.

It felt comparably cool this evening when I left work and got home, though it was still 89 degrees outside. That is why I decided to take advantage of the relative coolness to do the windshield and siding washing.

I've had a small watering can sitting around the house for a while. It's the kind for potted plants with a long narrow spout. It hasn't gotten much use, as I usually use a tall plastic cup to water the plants. But I used it today, along with a sponge, for washing the windshield and siding. Much easier than dragging out the big hose. Much cleaner than having water in a bucket and rinsing the sponge in the bucket and getting the remaining water all dirty. Yep, the watering can has finally found its calling.

My passport will expire soon, and who knows when I might want or need to go on a trip. So I need to fill out a renewal form. Monday I went and got photos taken for it. But now I'm procrastinating filling out the form. It is just a form, but for some reason it seems like a difficult task.

Forestfen lost her camera, so I decided to buy myself a new one and give her my old one. (When her old one broke a few years back, I bought her a new one as a gift, and was slightly envious over the extra features it had compared to mine, although mine was still perfectly good and still is.)

As I've had audio problems in the past when recording videos, the main feature I was looking for in a new camera was an external microphone port. There aren't many compact point&shoot type cameras to be found with an external mic port. But snapsort.com had a listing of cameras with this feature. I finally decided on one - the Canon N100 - which was only slightly larger than my current camera.

I then ordered it from the website of a local store so that I could pick it up at the store without having to deal with shipping and delivery. Today while inspecting my new camera and reading the manual, I find out that it doesn't actually have an external mic port! Snapsort.com was DEAD WRONG about that, and also wrong on my 2nd choice, the Canon SX700 - apparently that one doesn't have an external mic either.

I thought I had seen the external mic port mentioned in other reviews, but that must have been when I was still researching other cameras, not the Canons. Why didn't I think to double-check the specs on Canon's website? Doh!

It might end up being a great camera in spite of that, but that's a lesson for me. Never trust the specs listed on a single website! As it was my own mistake, and not the store's, I'm not going to try to return it. At least the built-in microphone is in stereo.

This is almost on par with my great vacuum cleaner debacle of 2007.

Hrmm, re-reading that first post, I never did get around to painting any of the rooms in this house. All I painted was a closet and a doorway. I still feel proud about that closet.

Oh, and speaking of carrying a heavy vacuum cleaner up the ladder into the attic, I was doing that just this last weekend to clean out the remaining rat droppings from up there.

Verdict: undecided. (See Below)

It's a nice, light, quiet, and inexpensive keyboard.

But a defect with the Enter key on the keyboard I got makes it fairly unusable for me. I am returning it for a different model, rather than risking getting an exact replacement which might have the same problem.

The end portion of the video compares the loudness/quietness of typing on this keyboard compared to a laptop and a standard keyboard.


2013/10/13 UPDATE: I returned the defective keyboard and ended up buying another one of the same model, as I really liked it except for the defective key. The Enter key on the new one worked fine, but unfortunately the new keyboard had a different defect. The period (.) key didn't work unless pressed very hard. The Alt key also sometimes didn't work. As I got 2 bad keyboards in a row, I would advise against this model.

I have also tried out a different SIIG model - JK-US0412-S1. That one is more expensive, and the one I got does not have any defects. It is fairly quiet, but seems somewhat louder than the JK-US0612-S1. Key-presses on the US0612 sound thuddy, whereas on the US0412, they sound higher-pitched and "clickier". I'm not sure why, but typing on the US0412 doesn't feel as good to me, particularly when I happen to hit keys with fingernails rather than fingertips.